The Church is experiencing a surprising crisis due to the harsh reactions of hundreds of bishops and entire episcopal conferences who have condemned the pontifical document Fiducia Supplicans that authorizes the blessing of same-sex couples, clarifying that it is a pastoral gesture that does not influence blessings and liturgical actions.
Catholic marriage between a man and a woman open to birth is safe, say the pope and fellow Argentine Cardinal Victor "Tucho" Fernandez, who arrived in Rome in July to become the pontiff's right-hand man as prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith.
While the controversies, clarifications and climate of disorientation in the Church spread, looking at the worst crisis of Jorge Bergoglio's ten-year pontificate, the background that led to the outbreak of the open confrontation between progressives and conservatives from the fatal document of December 18 authorizing the pastoral blessing of two people of the same sex by a priest is obvious.
Although the document devised by Fernandez, approved by the Pope, and the subsequent clarifications in a Press Release signed by the Argentinian cardinal establish that the blessing of Catholic homosexuals, in particular couples, represent a pastoral gesture and not a ritual, sacred, which has nothing to do with a Catholic marriage, the hurricane of protests encompasses a good part of world Catholicism. with a very strong peak reaction: that of the African churches.
Argentine Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, author of the document on the blessing of same-sex couples. Photo: AFP
On the continent where the Catholic faith is most expanding, the rebellion of the national bishops' conferences and of priests and parishioners takes on worrying dimensions.
The basis of all this contrary demonstration, which fully affects the authority of the Argentine pontiff, is the historical culture of Africans themselves, who are opposed to homosexual activities, which in some cases even go beyond prolonged prison sentences and increase the punishments to the death penalty.
Nigeria, Africa's most populous country with 46 million Catholics, said "no" to the novelty of pastoral blessings, as the continent's bishops' conferences consult each other about the opportunity to meet to consider the thorny issue.
It is useful to read the crisis in perspective. When his pastoral government is ten years old, the Pope faces a new panorama of his reign. On December 31, 2022, Pope Emeritus Joseph Ratzinger died at the age of 95. Almost ten as pope emeritus, a unique condition: he had renounced 85 years as Pope Benedict XVI, an extraordinary novelty in the Church, where the case of a pope who resigns of his own free will dates back almost seven centuries.
The death of Ratzinger, an extraordinary conservative theologian who was Polish Pope St. John Paul II's right-hand man from the position of prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith, a position to which Argentine Cardinal Victor Fernandez is successor, left the traditionalist factions without their leader.
Changes, controversy and infighting
In 2023, the pope was thus able to smoothly address his desired initiative to open the final stage of his pontificate with doctrinal changes and readjustments, for which he called Cardinal Fernández to help. We must remember the frustration experienced in 2020 when the World Synod on the Amazon was held.
The synod fathers approved revolutionary initiatives such as that of the "viri probati", heads of communities that would help alleviate the dramatic lack of priests in the Amazon. Married and heads of households. The measure was also restricted to Amazonian areas. So do other progressive decisions.
Catholic faithful followed the Pope's Angelus in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican on Saturday. Photo: EFE
But while the Synod of Bishops broadly supported the changes, in the final document the pope drafts, all the major reforms were not considered by Jorge Bergoglio.
Francis opened a new period, that of the final phase of his pontificate (the pope turned 17 on December 87), which began in October 2023 with the first phase of the Synod of Synods, a large assembly of world bishops, which will be completed with a second phase in October of this year that has just begun.
The aim is to promote change but to use the brakes to contain the strongest pretensions of progressives and conservatives and to save the Church from any schismatic impulse.
The most dangerous tensions are the ultra positions of progressives and conservatives that can lead to serious ruptures.
In the first phase of the Synod, Francis managed to contain the changes sought by the progressives.
The vast majority were unaware that the pope had quietly launched a major surgical operation. Openness to homosexuals, who represent for progressives a gigantic ball of lead for a pontificate that wants to confront once and for all an issue that poisons the Church.
It is in the European region that most of the bishops, priests and laity want to tackle the problem once and for all.
On November 7. The pope uttered in a low voice the wild cry: "The Church is open to all, all, all."
A clear recommendation. The new line was the world premiere of the most red-hot theme in the Church. It was interpreted by a document by the Argentine theologian Cardinal "Tucho" Fernandez approved by the Pope.
Priests and bishops, at the Vatican last October, to participate in the Synod of Synods. Photo: EFE
The text dissolves some theological doubts, putting in black and white that transsexuals can also ask for and receive baptism, can be godparents and witnesses of marriages. The Prefect's Document for the Doctrine of the Faith gives the go-ahead to same-sex godparents who live with another person. It is enough that they "lead a life according to the faith."
Although the Catechism of the Church is adamant that chastity must also be included, the document hovers over the issue.
Prefect Fernandez's document is motivated by doubts presented to the former Holy Office by a Brazilian bishop who asked to be enlightened regarding what to do if potential participants for the sacraments of baptism and marriage present themselves to trans people.
The document states that a transsexual undergoing hormone treatment and sex-change surgery can be baptized under the same conditions as other faithful.
"In this case, children and adolescents with problems of a transsexual nature, although prepared and willing, can receive baptism," he concludes.
In the light of this background, the document also prepared by Cardinal Fernandez and known on December 18, which has unraveled the crisis at the global level, is seen with different eyes. There is an obvious logical connection between the two documents.
After the outbreak of the protests of the conservatives and the special case of the harsh reaction of the African churches, a real burning coal in the hands of the Pope, Prefect Fernandez published a Press Release in which he elaborated at length on the difference of the pastoral blessings and their separation from the entire liturgical area.
He even hypothesized with an example of a pastoral blessing a couple of trans Catholics, in which the priest spends about 15 seconds to give his blessing, without knowing anything about the lives of his faithful interlocutors who ask him to bless them.
The crisis, meanwhile, spreads. The famously conservative Catholic theologian, Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, who demolished the shelf of recent papal documents, summed up his condemnation in one word: "blasphemy."
CB