Fiducia supplicans wants to be as clear as possible about what is and is not liturgy: “Rites and prayers that could create confusion between what constitutes marriage—which is the ‘exclusive, stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to the generation of children’—and what contradicts it are inadmissible.” A priest may “spontaneously” bless a person in a same-sex relationship, but the priest (and presumably also the ones being blessed?) must take every precaution to “avoid any form of confusion or scandal,” which might result if the blessing is “imparted in concurrence with the ceremonies of a civil union,” or “performed with any clothing, gestures, or words that are proper to a wedding.”
So married gay people can be blessed but not their unions, and only if they “do not claim a legitimation of their own status.” But what constitutes such a claim? Isn’t such a legitimation implicit in the very decision to get and stay married? Does the document mean that married gay people can only be blessed if we believe our marriages are fake?
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