‘The World Needs Blessings’

Francis’s critics often complain that the pope’s gentler, more “pastoral” approach to neuralgic ecclesial issues like same-sex relationships creates confusion and sows division. Fiducia supplicans, written with doctrinal precision and spiritual charity, does neither. It affirms, rightly, what too many Catholics often forget: that the Church is not primarily a redoubt for the perfect, but a community of flawed human beings humbly committed to serving a merciful God. It should therefore be as generous as possible in dispensing blessings, and less anxious about the purity of those who receive them.