Oct 28 Sat
Can the Church bless homosexual unions?
Some claim that the Church should bless these unions out of “charity.” Yet the main manifestation of charity is to transmit the truth. The Church cannot lie for the sake of false “accommodation”.
I would tell a person with homosexual tendencies: God loves you just as you are, but when you let yourself be loved by Him, he transforms you and sanctifies you.
God cannot bless a path that goes in the wrong direction.
There is a difference between homosexual tendency, and homosexual act. Thus, God blesses sinners –like all of us– but not sin.
The Church distinguishes between people with homosexual inclinations, whom she accompanies and blesses so that they may grow, and homosexual acts that are clearly contrary to God's design.
The Church recognizes that the homosexual tendency is not in itself a sin.
The action is. Every sexual relation outside of marriage is a sin.
God also calls all to live on the path to holiness, even those within that homosexual inclination. God can redirect a homosexual inclination, with his grace, and human correspondence: with prayer, sacrifice, and the sacraments.
The Church has three reasons for saying ‘no’ to the blessing of the union of same-sex couples.
The first reason is that blessings are similar to the sacraments, which are liturgical actions of the Church that require a consonance of life with what they signify. That is to say, a human blessing requires that what is blessed is in accordance with God's design. One cannot “bless” what God rejects (something sinful).
The second reason is that God's design with respect to conjugal love is that it should result in the union of a man and a woman, open to the transmission of life, and stable forever.
The third reason is that such a blessing would imply a sacramental simulation. It may “look like,” but it cannot be a sacrament.
On this question of whether or not the Church can bless homosexual unions, neither a Synod, nor a Council, nor a Pope can change the response, since the opposite would be a break, or rupture with the Magisterium of the Church.
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