1. A Confusing Nothing-Burger.
In terms of explicit moral principle and intellectual clarity, Fiducia Supplicans is a nothing. There is no internal form, no intelligibility, no logic, no meat; it is vague, vacuous, ambiguous, indefinite. Classic Francis! In this it resembles "snodality," a phantasm of incoherence. On the one hand it clearly, painstakingly restates standard Catholic teaching: a gay relationship is not a marriage, it cannot be celebrated by anything like an official liturgical ritual, it is not to be associated with a civil ceremony suggesting a blessing on that. Then it states the obvious: any sincere person, involved with sin and disorder, can ask for and receive a prayer of blessing understood as seeking of God's help and expression of his Mercy. Nothing new there! But then it becomes confusing and incoherent: it approves a blessing "of the couple, of the relationship." So: what is it blessing? It talks about affirming and strengthening all that is good, true and wholesome in the relationship. That sounds fine. But if the relationship itself is sinful, how can we bless it?
If my friend, a mobster with pious Catholic sensibilities, asks me to light a candle in Church for his bank robbery that afternoon: that he and his goodfellas work well together, that no one is injured or killed, that he use the money well for his family-community-Church, that the funds stolen harm only the rich and not the poor...do I do so? I don't think so! If I love him, I assault him: "I'll have NOTHING to do with this! Are you nuts? This is a crime and a sin: against Christ, your own soul, your family and everyone! You are on the road to hell! I will have to report you to the police, especially for your own welfare!"
2. Sentimental. Francis and his cohort are worried about feelings: "Oh no! The gays feel rejected! The divorced feel excluded! The porn producers and users don't feel affirmed!" And so this new declaration is intended to say: "If we can't change Catholic teaching we can avoid it, diminish it and tell you that you are okay just the way you are." In a League of Their Own coach Tom Hanks exclaims in consternation to his female ballplayers: "Crying!?!? There's no crying in baseball!" I want to scream at Pope Francis: "Feelings!?!? This is not about feelings! This is about truth, goodness and evil, virtue, heroism, moral integrity, intellectual clarity, purity of heart, fidelity!"
(The saccharine, effete sentimentality also calls to mind the affirmations of faux-self-help-therapist Stuart Smalley, played hilariously by Al Franken on "Saturday Night Live" of the 1990s: "I'm smart enough, I'm good enough, and doggone it, people like me!" His flamboyance suggests a sex/gender ambiguity; his friends all have gender-neutral names; and his father complains "You would drink too if you had Liberace as a son!")
3. The Asexual Pontiff.
Francis has conspicuously ignored John Paul's catechesis on the human body, sexuality, gender, marriage and family. More accurately: he has attacked it by destroying the JP Institute for Marriage and the Family in Rome. But he is really not a sexual liberationist either. He is something stranger: non-sexual. He has no apparent interest in sex. For him, it is no big thing: chastity, fidelity, covetousness and lust are overrated; they are small change! The real issues are care for the poor, global warming, immigrants, capital punishment. His implicit, but not stated message in this recent document and throughout his papacy: Don't worry about sex and lust. It's not a problem. Hey...we all have some problems. His agenda is not to reverse our teaching but to ignore it, diminish it, deflate it.
This is strange and troubling. He shows no awe or reverence before the sacredness of sexual, gendered love. He has no fear or dread of the devastation caused by lust and concupiscence. He wants to live in peace with the sexual revolution which devastated the world of his early adulthood. He wants those in sexual sin to relax, feel accepted and know they are loved just as they are. He wants everyone to feel happy. And to rally around his geopolitical agenda.
4. An Emasculated Papacy.
About his own person and his clique there is an effete, demasculinized flavor. If not a dominant gay culture, there is clearly a friendliness to such. But more importantly: a lack of paternity, of virility, of virtue. Instead we have: emotionalism, resentment, sentimentality, lack of clarity, aversion to law and tradition, obsession with feelings-acceptance-inclusion, a soft pacifist flight from agonistic combat, and passive-aggressiveness as the hallmarks of this papacy. These are not feminine in the wholesome sense, but an effeminacy as a deficiency in virility. And it characterizes the authoritative declaration before us. This is a serious, even insulting claim. But if it is true, it must be said for the good of the Church. This plague of effeminacy afflicts much of the Church, but until now has not been so overt in the Vatican.
5. Cunning: The "Spirit of Fiducia Supplicans" as a Trojan Horse
The guile here is obvious: there is no explicit heresy, but the intent clearly is to approve, in an amorphous, unspecified fashion, gay unions. This is done not by clear, direct contradiction, but by a tone of tolerance and acceptance. Already the progressive elite, media and clergy are proclaiming a major change in teaching. Now the declaration will be used to push further, ignoring the explicit prohibitions in the document, in the blessing and embrace of sexual disorders "in the Spirit of Pope Francis."
6. Irregular Relationships...Abuse of Self and the Other
Significantly, these new priestly blessings are not reserved for homosexual unions, but for those in "irregular situations." What would they be? Cohabitation/contraception, adultery, casual hook-ups, anonymous sex, incestuous unions, open marriages, porn/masturbation, sexual-emotional-physical abuse, pedophilia, and beyond "couples" to threesomes, free-sex-communes, polygamy/polyandry, sadism/masochism, and why not beastiality and necrophilia? All such disorders and sins have a common core: ABUSE. Abuse of self. Abuse of the other as an object of pleasure: be that girlfriend, hook-up, porn star, etc.
With her customary insight and defiance of convention, Patricia Snow in an article entitled "Self Abuse" (current issue of First Things) draws surprisingly from D.H. Lawrence (of all people!) and his infamous Lady Chatterley's Lover, to make the straightforward, sober, lowbrow, commonsense, Catholic case against masturbation: it is widespread and "ordinary," it is isolating and lonely, it is toxic, it is a sin. Don't do it! But don't get all nervous, shameful and guilty about it! Just don't do it!
Homosexual, especially male, relations are especially abusive: they entail acts that are inherently dominant/submissive, violent and biologically toxic. The gay culture is saturated with anonymous, impersonal, extrinsic, sterile, desecrating acts. I once heard a doctor speak of his sexual addiction: he tired of women and tried men, then he wanted two at a time, than he wanted identical twins. We see here the masturbatory, dopamine-fueled compulsion out of control: obsessively he was using a series of increasingly intense triggers to arouse and satisfy his imperial cravings. In this pursuit he was brutally using, abusing and desecrating his so-called-partners.
To "bless" or tolerate or minimize such decadence is to be an "enabler" of the addict. Imagine my in-law came to me, without any contrition, and said: "I am unfaithful to my wife (your daughter or sister); I am in love with my mistress; I indulge her and that is why we can't pay our debts; that is why my wife is depressed and in therapy and our kids out of control." Would I say "Let's pray a blessing, informal and non-liturgical of course! So no need for an exacting moral inventory or some alleged moral perfection?" Would I say: "I wouldn't worry about that! Sex is overrated! More pressing: You are not voting for that party that denies global warming are you?" I would, of course, punch his lights out!
Fidducia Supplicans, along with the entire Francis agenda, is toxically enabling of sexual chaos!
7. Creeping Clericalism
Self-righteously the great crusader against clericalism, Pope Francis practices a more disguised, but dangerous form. Resentful of a clergy removed from the ordinary, he advances an imperial colonizing of the properly secular/lay by an unrestrained hierarchical arrogance. Disrespectful of the sacred/secular and Church/state binary, he abuses his papal authority to cross boundaries and impose his sociological ideological preference on complex, prudential, secular issues like immigration, climate, and the death penalty. About these he has no competence; as they are the domain of the secular, governmental authorities and their advisors and electoral protocols.
On the current issue, he is pushing priestly ministry beyond its correct domain into lay areas. The priestly realm is the liturgical/sacramental. An entirely different reality is the spontaneous, organic, random, shared prayer in the midst of secular life: family, friendship, work, afflictions. No one is happier in such prayer as myself! I do quite a bit of it. It is unregulated, creative, spontaneous. The other day in the ER, we asked homeless Miguel what he needed. He quietly, soberly said "I need to stop drinking. I was in a program but have now relapsed. I am registered to enter a 7 day program tomorrow but have problems with transportation." Reverend Cindy and I prayed with him and for him. We gave him our phone numbers; he didn't call. That was not a clerical exercise. Of course a priest could do the same, but by virtue of his baptism/confirmation, not ordination. Such prayer is unsupervised, free, serendipitous. It is entirely lay!
There is no need for the pope to intrude in this zone of liberty and institute a new "quasi clerical-but-not-liturgical blessing." It is an anomaly; a contradiction. It is not sacramental or liturgical; but it is priestly. It is an incoherence. It has no intelligibility or form. It is sentimentality. But it is also deceitful and disguised: a covert plot to normalize sexual disorder.
8. Sleeping with Lucifer
This pontificate has adulterated itself by sleeping with the Communist Party in China and with Sexual Progressives in the West. There is a compulsion to accommodate, to "make nice" with what is intrinsically disordered. A moral incapacity to recognize and decisively renounce Evil! An aversion to clear ethical judgment, to decisive moral action, to agonistic combat with evil on behalf of the good. This was seen in his tepid, irresolute response to Putin's invasion: he imagined himself as above the fray, transcendent in his universal-inclusive-reasoned-mercifulness. He repeated this in regard to the Gaza situation, seeking to please the Palestinians and their sympathizers by avoiding a hard judgment against Hamas. This incapacity for authoritative correction, combat, and contradiction flow, as noted above, from a weakened paternity. Much of this papacy resembles the recycling by the son, indulged by Mom, of resentment at the father experienced as distant, weak or abusive. And so we find a paucity of virile qualities but a drag-like exaggeration of female attitudes (inclusion, acceptance, etc.) corrupted in an enfeebled man.
9. The Powerful Mimetic Energy of the Gay Movement
A serious, self-respecting gay-friendly ethicist should be enraged by this document: explicitly it reaffirms Catholic teaching that homosexual acts are not moral. But the cultural/theological wars are hardly fought over logic, but by deeper, darker cultural dynamics. The day after the declaration was released, the NY Times featured a picture of a gay couple receiving a blessing from the El Cid of Catholic gay liberation, Fr. James Martin S.J. In accord with the declaration, they are casually dressed with no liturgical symbols. But: the picture is in the Times! Next to it is a picture of the two men after their civil wedding, kissing each other on the lips. The message is unambiguous: millions will see it and be certain that the Church approves of homosexual practice. A single picture outweighs a thousand words. Ironic: this blessing is supposed to be private, quiet, anonymous, but Fr. Martin, a magnate of celebrity culture, exploits it within 24 hours on a global level.
In her essay, Patricia Snow observes that sin itself is not the biggest problem; rather, the conviction that sin is not sin is a problem; it disallows repentance. And so, homosexual practice itself is immensely overrated: in homophobic circles that hurl it as disparagement; and in progressive culture with its "pride." Homosexual activity is a mundane, garden-variety form of self abuse: in form it is identical to porn-using masturbation, the hook-up, the extra-marital affair, cohabitation. All of these and countless others use and abuse the other in self-abuse. The pervasive support for the gay life flows from the undiagnosed pandemic of self-abuse, that is seen as "normal." We see that the photo engineered by Fr. Martin will encourage many into sin: "Whoever leads one of these little ones who believe in me into sin, it would be better for them to have a millstone tied around their neck and be thrown into the sea."
The "gay" condition, however, is far more dense, complex and perverse than the sin of the flesh. It involves: self-indulgence, sexual addiction, narcissistic/histrionic traits, borderline aspects, self-righteousness, disparagement of the order of Creation and Christ's Church, a mysterious sadness/loneliness, and the despair of unchastity and sterility, however denied.
10. The Anti-Magisterium
The clear intent of this declaration, however contradictory of its actual words, is to accept blessings of gay unions and grant moral approval to "gay" self-abuse. It contradicts the teaching of previous popes, of the entire Tradition, and even of the recent document out of the Vatican. We now have two contradictory magisteriums. This is a clear binary: on gay blessings it is thumbs up or thumbs down. There are no other logical options. Within days we have the usual suspects (Cardinal Cupich) lauding the change; in Kazakhstan, Zambia, and Malawi bishops sternly forbade their priests to do such blessings. Such a division within Catholicism is unprecedented within recent history.
We will now have a dividing of the sheep and the goats. In such a war, there is no Switzerland, no neutrality. But I suspect the majority of bishops will follow their irenic, "people-pleasing" impulses and make no comment, for or against. In fact, this will be an allowance, a tacit collaboration, a codependency.
Conclusion
This declaration does not greatly trouble me. We cannot be distracted or disturbed by such nonsense! The mass readings today dealt with the births of Samson and John the Baptist: all muscle and bone, fierce, fearless, pure (except for Samson's engagement with the seductive Delilah) men. The meditation in Magnificat has Cardinal Danielou assuring us that John the Baptist always comes with but before Christ: in birth, in public ministry, in death, in the Return, and in our daily life. By contrast we have Herod, fascinated by the Baptist, but subservient in his incestuous craving for his brother's wife. In the short term Herod had John killed. But we play the long game. We wait patiently, serenely, joyfully with Mary the Immaculate, serene in expectation, and with the Baptist, all ferocity and passion, for the King, the Lion of Judah: Come Lord Jesus!
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