Céline Béraud is a sociologist, director of studies at EHESS. A specialist in gender and sexuality issues in Catholicism, she analyzes, in an interview with Le Monde, Pope Francis’ decision to authorize the blessing of homosexual couples.
What does this decision mean for same-sex Catholic couples?
It is a real opening, the continuation of the opening initiated by Francis. In France, this type of practice already existed. During investigation that I had done in 2014-2015 with married gay and lesbian Catholic couples, I had identified different types of ritual forms of same-sex union: from a simple time of prayer to the mass of thanksgiving and to baptism in a homoparental context, including blessings. However, these were marginal practices, carried out in complete discretion. And it was not systematic, but rather negotiated on a case-by-case basis, with priests, by very practicing couples, particularly aware of what was possible or not possible to do. That Rome officially opens the way to blessings is still quite a change. About ten years ago, in the midst of the mobilization against equal marriage, this would have been unimaginable.
What is actually changing?
This is not an evolution of doctrine. But a pastoral opening, which is located in the continuity of “Who am I to judge” [phrase prononcée par le pape François au retour d’un voyage en juillet 2013]because, in the end, what the Pope reiterates today is the need to welcome homosexual people into the Church.
This supports a certain number of priests who invented and tinkered with these couples a way of living their union within the Church. For the people concerned, this is a first form of recognition of their couple by the highest Catholic authorities, even if it remains very modest.
If this recognition of homosexual unions has been discreet in France until now, this is not the case everywhere…
In Belgium, things were done more openly. The Flemish episcopate was, for example, one of the first to say that the Church needed to reflect on the blessing of homosexual couples and even proposed a specific prayer in September 2022. Germany too. In 2021, priests publicly expressed their disagreement with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which had just formally banned it by blessing couples in around a hundred parishes in full view of everyone.
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