Pope Gives Priests New Guidance About The Blessing Of Same-Sex Marriages

Pope Francis has NOT been a conventional Pope. He has NOT held conventional values — especially with respect to issues referenced in the political fight between the left and right.

The Vatican is taking almost the very same approach to marriage that proved to be so disastrous for the Church Of England’s Archbishop of Canterbury earlier this year.

A Synod in England voted to ‘bless’ same-sex marriages, and the Global South led an international rebuke to their apostasy on the part of 52 countries, 315 bishops, 456 other clergy and 531 laity.

When the Archbishop of Canterbury did not relent, he was stripped of his authority in as the ‘first among equals’ between Archbishops. The Anglican Tradition will carry on just fine without his apostate leadership.

The Catholic Church has been wrestling with a similar issue. Now that same-sex marriage is legalized, how should catholic priests respond to this new reality?

It’s beyond ironic that the Pope has more or less followed the example of England on this question… seeng as a question of the validity of his divorce and re-marriage was one of Henry VIII’s reasons for playing the pivotal role he took in English religious history.

The Vatican’s newest declaration elaborated on the response the pope gave earlier this year to conservative cardinals who had asked him for his input on the matter. At the time, the pope suggested he was open to blessing same-sex unions but that the Catholic Church should avoid any type of ritual that would suggest same-sex unions are recognized like traditional marriages.

The more in-depth answer published Monday reaffirms marriage between a man and a woman, but states the Catholic Church “must shy away from resting its pastoral praxis on the fixed nature of certain doctrinal or disciplinary schemes.”

“Thus, when people ask for a blessing, an exhaustive moral analysis should not be placed as a precondition for conferring it. For, those seeking a blessing should not be required to have prior moral perfection,” the declaration states. — JustTheNews

It remains unclear whether the Pope will give guidance regarding extending similar blessings to guys who are shacked up with their baby-mamma, polyamorous relationships, or other relationship models that deviate from the sacramental marriage of one man and one woman as described by Jesus.

What we can say for sure is that Jesus was not afraid to talk about such situations — and the deeper spiritual need they represented — like he did with the woman at the well in John 4.

He bid her call her husband. She said she didn’t have one. Jesus called her out on her half-truth and offered her redemption in the process. He did the same thing with the woman caught in adultery by the crowd who called for her to be stoned.

The point of Jesus broaching these issues was never to merely condemn, like so many people do. It was something more.

Jesus didn’t come to destroy people, but the power that the grip of sin had over people. He invited prostitutes and tax collectors — the epitome of his culture’s sluts and sellouts — leave those lives behind and step into a whole new kind of life.

But the invitation would come with a warning. That’s because Jesus actually cared about what happened to them.

Afterward Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, “See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.” — John 5:14

Offering a blessing on anything God warns against — regardless of what specific way that deviates from God’s proscriptive will — seems like the very opposite of the example of loving calls to repentance offered by Jesus and his Apostles as the door by which we enter into a new kind of life.

Then again, Jesus and the Apostles wouldn’t have tolerated a fertility ritual in a Christian religious gathering, or setting up idols in churches, either.

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