NO ONE SHOULD BE DENIED GOD’S BLESSING: WELL YES AND NO, IN MY MOST HUMBLE OPINION

 

A theologian recently said this:

The Catholic bishops in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium made headlines last September when they published a prayer service that included a type of blessing for same-sex couples. Some claimed that by doing so they were defying the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which had issued a note several months earlier saying the Church has no authority to give such a blessing. The issue is expected to come up next week when the Belgian bishops come to Rome for their "ad limina" visit, which will include meeting with Pope Francis and top Vatican officials.But Mgr Philippe Bordeyne, the president of the Rome-based Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family, says a blessing is not aimed at validating a particular way of life. Rather, it's a way of manifesting the good that God wants for humanity. The 62-year-old French theologian, who was rector of the prestigious Institut Catholique in Paris from 2011-2021, explained to La Croix's Clémence Houdaille.

Read more at: https://international.la-croix.com/news/religion/no-one-can-be-denied-a-blessing-says-top-family-official-in-rome/16925?utm_source=NewsLetter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Mailjet_21Nov22

My astute comments: Everyone and almost anything can be blessed, from persons, to soil, to planes, trains and automobiles. No one is denying this.

And at Mass, anyone and everyone, including the non-baptized are blessed and in a particular way at the Dismissal. No one is excluded.

But, there are blessings and there are blessings. Sinners can be blessed, sin may not be blessed without the possibility of sacrilege. 

Thus, if a homosexual couple comes up to me and says, we would like a blessing Father, I would give them a prayer and bless them both. 

If they say to me, though, Father we are a gay couple civilly married and we would like you to bless our marriage relationship, I would have to decline. I would be blessing sin in that regard, not just them. I might give them an individual blessing as they seek to live a chaste life. I can bless their chastity or the hope they have to live chastely. 

The same would be true of heterosexuals who marry outside the Church because there is a serious impediment preventing them from marrying in the Church. I could not bless their civil union, but I could bless them with a prayer that they will make regular their marriage before God and the Church.

In fact, those who have their civil or non recognized marriages convalidated in a Church Blessing, are through that blessing of their marriage, validly married in the Church and if they are both baptized there unrecognized marriage becomes a Sacrament. The blessing accomplishes this.