Following Pope’s Order, a metropolitan archbishop has become the first prelate to issue guidance to his flock on the Vatican’s declaration allowing same-s*x blessings.
In his guideline, he firmly prohibits priests and faithful from accepting or performing any form of blessing of couples in an irregular situation and same-s*x couples.
In a statement dated December 19, and sent to all priests and parishes in his archdiocese, Archbishop Tomash Peta of Saint Mary in Astana, Kazakhstan, together with Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider, firmly contend that the new declaration, Fiducia supplicans, is a “great deception”, and that its proposed blessings of same-s*x couples “directly and seriously contradict Divine Revelation and the uninterrupted, bimillennial doctrine and practice of the Catholic Church”.
The declaration, issued on December 18 by Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith Prefect Cardinal Manuel Fernández, and signed by Pope Francis, claims to offer an “innovative contribution to the meaning of blessings” which allows the “possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations and same-s*x couples without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage”.
While affirming that the Church “does not have the power to impart blessings [proper to the sacrament of marriage] on unions of persons of the same s*x”, the declaration permits priests to offer a non-liturgical and “spontaneous pastoral blessing”, i.e. a new category of blessing, to such couples.
In his statement responding to the declaration, Archbishop Peta, a native of Poland, warns priests and faithful that “this effort to legitimize such blessings” will have “far-reaching and destructive consequences” and, at least in practice, turns the Catholic Church into a “propagandist” of “gender ideology”.
Here below is the official English translation, from Russian, of the statement signed by Archbishop Tomash Peta and Bishop Athanasius Schneider.
Statement of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana regarding the Declaration Fiducia supplicans, published by the Dicastery of the Doctrine of Faith and approved by Pope Francis on December 18, 2023
The manifest purpose of the Declaration of the Holy See, Fiducia supplicans, is to allow “the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations and same-s*x couples”. At the same time, the document insists that such blessings are performed “without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage”.
