LAre gay or lesbian couples about to become couples? “irregular” like the others in the eyes of the Vatican? Read the declaration Fiducia supplicans published on December 18 by the dicastery for the doctrine of the faith, one might believe so. Because if the latter does not abolish the condemnation of homosexual acts included in the official catechism of the Catholic Church, it claims to authorize the blessing of same-sex couples under certain conditions. How far away the time when certain bishops “blessed” the processions of La Manif pour tous.
Until now a priest could possibly bless people. In this new text, it is indeed the couple that can be a couple according to Rome. Such a conversion of views on LGBT conjugality was undoubtedly already a small step for Francis – who was, let us remember, a virulent opponent of marriage between people of the same sex when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, describing the law as “devil’s design”. But this authorization is undeniably a big step, even a leap into the unknown, for a Catholic Church at odds with Western modernity on the subject.
The Roman Catholic Church is in fact largely stuck by what I call the “priestly lock”. By this we must understand five elements that she has linked in an unfailing manner and which have become her signature in matters of gender and sexuality: the priesthood understood as a sacralization of the masculine individual who embodies it (1), made patent through the sacrifice of his sexuality (2), establishing “an essential difference” between him and the laity (3), the exclusion of women from this position of power (4) and a discourse establishing the heterosexual married couple as the only way of access to licit sexuality for the laity (5).
This priestly lock is today erected by certain Catholics as a totem of identity. On the contrary, it appears to others as the element in urgent need of reform, as it proves “toxic” for the faithful as well as for the priests themselves.
Small steps and big gap
In this polarized context, Pope Francis seems to be seeking to at least unlock the system, without losing either one or the other. Particularly since its takeover of the dicastery for the doctrine of the faith and the appointment as head of the Argentine Cardinal Fernandez, this will is unfolding at an unprecedented speed. On the questions that irritate it, it adopts a middle path which seeks to neither let go of the doctrine on which the conservatives are waiting for it at the turn, nor a pastoral of openness practiced for a long time quietly by the progressives, but now claimed by episcopates whole (Germany, Flanders).
You have 60% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.