No, Austrian bishops, the Church may not “bless” same-sex unions.

atholic News Agency reports that the Aus­tri­an bish­ops are agi­tat­ing for the Church to give a “for­mal, litur­gi­cal bless­ing” to “homo­sex­u­al cou­ples.” (It nev­er ends. The answer is no, but it nev­er ends.) Their com­mit­tee on the litur­gy asked for a book to be writ­ten explain­ing how such a thing may be done. The title of the book is The Bene­dic­tion of Same-Sex Part­ner­ships. CNA does not say whether the book lim­its bless­ings to “part­ners” who are celi­bate. It does not mat­ter, in any case, because the Church has ruled it out. Here is the pope in Amor­is Laeti­tia:

52. We need to acknowl­edge the great vari­ety of fam­i­ly sit­u­a­tions that can offer a cer­tain sta­bil­i­ty, but de fac­to or same-sex unions, for exam­ple, may not sim­ply be equat­ed with mar­riage.

 

251. In dis­cussing the dig­ni­ty and mis­sion of the fam­i­ly, the Syn­od Fathers observed that, “as for pro­pos­als to place unions between homo­sex­u­al per­sons on the same lev­el as mar­riage, there are absolute­ly no grounds for con­sid­er­ing homo­sex­u­al unions to be in any way sim­i­lar or even remote­ly anal­o­gous to God’s plan for mar­riage and fam­i­ly.”

Some like to say, Well, no, we’re not say­ing it’s the same thing as mar­riage. We don’t call it a sacra­ment. Etcetera, etcetera. So, for exam­ple, Dieter Geer­lings, the aux­il­iary bish­op of Mün­ster, said this:

I’m not for “mar­riage for all,” but if two homo­sex­u­als enter a same-sex rela­tion­ship, [He does not spec­i­fy celi­bate or no.] if they want to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for each oth­er, then I can bless this mutu­al respon­si­bil­i­ty.

No, you can’t. The lan­guage of Amor­is Laeti­tia pre­cludes any effort to nuance it this way. Same-sex unions, it says, are not “even remote­ly anal­o­gous” to mar­riage. Ear­li­er this year, a priest in Brazil was sus­pend­ed for giv­ing a bless­ing to such a union.

Now, the bish­ops know this but keep insist­ing they will find some way around it. Fr. Ewald Volgger is one of the authors of the new book that’s going to show the Aus­tri­an bish­ops how to tip­toe. “Accord­ing to the Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church,” he says, “homo­sex­u­al acts are in no way to be con­doned and homo­sex­u­al peo­ple are called to chasti­ty.”

You don’t say.

But, he says (for the word “but” always finds a way to sneak in), “there has been move­ment on the sub­ject.” (The “sub­ject” being how to get around all that.) The Church, Fr. Volgger says, might think about rewrit­ing the Cat­e­chism to allow an “offi­cial litur­gy” that is still, some­how, “based on Church doc­trine.”

But wait. If an “offi­cial litur­gy” can be “based on Church doc­trine,” why the need to rewrite the Cat­e­chism? That does­n’t make sense, unless the idea is to change Church doc­trine first, then claim that the new litur­gy is “based on Church doc­trine.” Very clever.

More from Fr. Volgger:

The doc­trine on homo­sex­u­al­i­ty has been dis­cussed through­out Europe in such a way that an open­ing up is not only debat­able but can also be demand­ed.

Let me trans­late this. We in Europe, says Fr. Volgger, don’t much like this part of Church teach­ing. We in Europe have opened up. And so we in Europe demand that the Church cave to we in Europe.

Let it not be said: Well, you know, we don’t say this is mar­riage. We don’t say this is a sacra­ment. Of course we say that gay cou­ples must be chaste. Of course, of course. Because no soon­er do advo­cates of same-sex bless­ings say that, than they come right out and talk about chang­ing the Cat­e­chism.

Fr. Volgger makes no secret of his desire at all:

[T]here are also a con­sid­er­able num­ber of bish­ops who would like to see a rethink­ing of sex­u­al moral­i­ty [So gay cou­ples can have sex after all.] for the eval­u­a­tion of same-sex part­ner­ships. … A bene­dic­tion, as it is pro­posed from a litur­gi­cal-the­o­log­i­cal point of view, would also have an offi­cial char­ac­ter, through which the Church express­es the oblig­a­tion of fideli­ty and the exclu­sive­ness of the rela­tion­ship.

That’s mar­i­tal lan­guage. This is a back-door way of try­ing to have same-sex mar­riage with­out call­ing it mar­riage. And the irony here is that Fr. Volgger claims that same-sex cou­ples can get a “bless­ing,” that the bless­ing gives them an “oblig­a­tion of fideli­ty,” while at the same time he spurns his own oblig­a­tion of fideli­ty to Church teach­ing.

Fr. James Mar­tin will have none of it. He says:

If a priest stands up, in his col­lar espe­cial­ly, and says a prayer at a recep­tion, some peo­ple might come away and say, ‘Isn’t that great, that the Catholic Church approves this now? It would be mis­lead­ing to peo­ple and in a sense unfair to the cou­ple, too.

Well, yes, and it would be unfair in more than just “a sense.” Ger­man and Aus­tri­an bish­ops try to excuse this under the mag­ic words “pas­toral accom­pa­ni­ment.” But accom­pa­ni­ment does not mean you grant sin any sort of legit­i­ma­cy; it means you help a per­son defeat sin. Even if you were to say, no, this is not mar­riage, this is dis­tinct, we’re being very cau­tious, you must be celi­bate, it has all the char­ac­ter of a tiny lit­tle toe in the door that will inevitably lead to smash­ing it down. For peo­ple would say, gee, if we can have this, why not mar­riage? And sure­ly some agi­ta­tors would not be sat­is­fied and call it “sec­ond-class mar­riage” or words like that.

Here is Pope Fran­cis again: There are absolute­ly no grounds for con­sid­er­ing homo­sex­u­al unions to be in any way sim­i­lar or even remote­ly anal­o­gous to God’s plan for mar­riage and fam­i­ly.

No grounds. None. And in an ide­al world, this kind of pub­lic defi­ance—Hey, write a book for us about how we can find a way around Church teach­ing—would get the entire Aus­tri­an bish­op’s con­fer­ence excom­mu­ni­cat­ed, or at least removed from their offices. Every time that does not hap­pen, defi­ance gains legit­i­ma­cy.