When I saw this New York Times headline yesterday, my first thought was that the pope has endorsed homosexual relationships. Judging from the media reaction, many are making the same assumption. When I read the actual Vatican announcement, I learned that the truth is much more complicated. Nonetheless, my first impression is, I fear, the lasting impression this news will leave with our secularized culture.

At the outset, I want you to know that my response does not express an anti-Catholic bias on my part. I have been privileged to know and serve alongside many Catholic priests across my ministry and am grateful for the many Catholic readers of The Daily Article. Catholic writers and theologians continue to inform and enhance my personal spiritual life. And I deeply appreciate the church’s continued support for the sanctity of life.

Nonetheless, I believe the Vatican’s announcement to be a foundational mistake with massive cultural ramifications we need to understand through the lens of biblical truth.

“When people ask for a blessing”

Titled “Fiducia Supplicans: On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings,” the declaration was submitted to Pope Francis for his review and approved with his signature. It “remains firm on the traditional doctrine of the Church about marriage, not allowing any type of liturgical rite or blessing similar to a liturgical rite that can create confusion.” In this way, it is not “changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage.”

In fact, the document quotes Francis’ definition of marriage as the “exclusive, stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to the generation of children.” The declaration adds, “It is only in this context that sexual relations find their natural, proper, and fully human meaning” and states that “the Church’s doctrine on this point remains firm.”

What is new here, however, pertains to the “blessing” of individuals by the church, an act separate from the sacrament of marriage. In short, the declaration extends to Catholic clergy the authority for “blessing couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples.”

The document then spells out in detail the practice of “blessing” in Scripture. It notes that biblical blessings are often conveyed by God to people and by people to others without moral preconditions. It therefore advises: “When people ask for a blessing, an exhaustive moral analysis should not be placed as a precondition for conferring it. . . . those seeking a blessing should not be required to have prior moral perfection.”

To summarize: Fiducia Supplicans authorizes Catholic clergy to pray for God’s blessing on those in “irregular” and same-sex relationships, so long as this is not confused with the liturgical sacrament of marriage, which remains available only to a man and a woman.

“If the trumpet makes an uncertain sound”

Fiducia Supplicans states that “the Church does not have the power to confer its liturgical blessing when that would somehow offer a form of moral legitimacy to a union that presumes to be a marriage or to an extra-marital sexual practice” (my emphasis) and adds that “there is no intention to legitimize anything.” But this is already how the document is being interpreted by LGBTQ advocates and the mainstream media.

This is because to “bless” someone in non-theological Catholic terms means precisely to “legitimize” them. When I asked my then-girlfriend’s father for his “blessing” on our engagement, his affirmation was obviously his endorsement of our marriage. As Merriam-Webster makes clear, to “bless” someone means to “approve” of them.

Rev. James Martin, a prominent Catholic LGBTQ advocate, responded to the Vatican’s declaration: “Along with many priests, I will now be delighted to bless my friends in same-sex unions.” Anyone reading his words would assume that they “offer a form of moral legitimacy” to such unions.

This is a significant step toward normalizing LGBTQ relationships, now with the “blessing” of the leader of the largest Christian denomination in the world. Such normalizing is unbiblical since Scripture clearly forbids “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality” and all sexual activity outside marriage (Galatians 5:19). Rather than give such an “uncertain sound” (1 Corinthians 14:8 NKJV), we are to “flee from sexual immorality” (1 Corinthians 6:18) and encourage everyone else to do the same (cf. James 4:17).

“We must obey God rather than men”

Fiducia Supplicans offers the Church’s blessing not only to same-sex couples but also to those in “irregular situations.” The document nowhere defines the term, but it does refer to those who are engaged in “extra-marital sexual practice.” I assume that the two phrases are meant to be equivalent.

Would they include those in polygamous and polyamorous relationships, a growing movement in our culture? What about adulterous relationships? Sexual relationships between adults and minors? Between humans and animals?

Once we start blessing what God forbids, where do we stop? This is why the apostles’ testimony should be ours: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). And it is why Scripture warns: “Desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (James 1:15).

“There is no freedom without truth”

It seems that Pope Francis wants the Catholic church to be more loving toward all people regardless of the sins they commit. I commend such inclusive grace. God loved us “while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8) and calls us to love others in the same way (cf. Matthew 22:39).

But in a culture that understands “blessing” not in the technical terms of the Vatican declaration but in the general dictionary sense of approving, the document will mislead many into believing that God condones what he in fact forbids. It will therefore encourage people to commit sexual sins—homosexual and heterosexual—that are harmful to them. And it will be used to marginalize and stigmatize further those of us who declare and defend biblical morality.

Pope St. John Paul II observed, “Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.” How do we know what we “ought” to do? He added: “Man’s free creative forces will only develop to the full if they are based on the truth. . . . There is no freedom without truth.”

Where do we find such “truth”?

Jesus said to his Father, “Your word is truth” (John 17:17) and promised his followers that the Spirit would “guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). Accordingly, during this Advent week of joy, we can say to God, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11).

Will you walk God’s “path of life” into the “fullness of joy” today?

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This headline caught my eye over the weekend: “If Hamas is allowed to survive, their web of terror will threaten us all.” The subtitle warns: “It’s not just Jews who are in grave danger when terror groups like Hamas grow in strength and number.”

The writer is responding to reports that seven people were arrested in Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands last week on suspicion of planning attacks against Jewish institutions in Europe. Four of the seven were suspected Hamas members. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded: “In recent years, and even more so after the murderous attack on October 7, Hamas strives to expand its operational capabilities around the world—and in Europe in particular—in order to realize its ambitions to hit Israeli, Jewish, and Western targets at any cost.”

A British columnist, citing the rise of antisemitism after the October 7 invasion, warns: “If recent protests are anything to go by, then we may be uniquely vulnerable to this terrorist threat. If calls for ‘jihad’ are taken literally, with young men believing they should fight a holy war on our streets, then we may face the worst terrorist threat since al-Qaeda or ISIS.”

Hamas is ramping up its propaganda war to inculcate antisemitism among young people in the larger Muslim world; for example, #freepalestine is now found on thirty-nine times more Facebook posts than #standwithisrael. If the terrorist group’s hatred of Jews spreads across the West, the October 7 atrocities may be the beginning of a larger genocidal movement against the Jewish people and everyone who supports them.

A terrorist tunnel beneath a baby’s crib

“War is hell,” as Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman said after the Civil War. His description is especially proving true in Gaza, where the Israeli army’s death toll is already almost twice as high as during a ground offensive in 2014, more than seventeen thousand Palestinians have died, and more than one hundred hostages are still being held by Hamas.

The IDF’s killing of three Israeli hostages they mistakenly identified as a threat sparked massive rallies over the weekend calling for a pause in the fighting to allow more hostages to be released. However, as Israel mourns the three young men and grieves for the rest of the hostages, Hamas continues to use them—and Palestinian civilians in Gaza—as human shields and leverage.

For example, IDF soldiers uncovered a Hamas tunnel hidden beneath a baby’s crib in Gaza yesterday.

The terrorists have made clear their intentions to eradicate all Jews, whom they consider to be the enemies of humankind. Such dehumanizing is always the first step toward the genocide of a people. For Islamic jihadists, it is born in a worldview that sees Jews as “enemies of Allah” and subhuman descendants of “apes” and “swine.”

But antisemitism also has roots in the Western world that are less obvious but no less dangerous to us all.

Did we come from “primitive slime”?

On this day in 1912, the “Piltdown Man” fossil was discovered. Originally claimed to be a “missing link” ancestor of humans, the remains were later found to be a hoax. However, the view that humans are the product of chance rather than creation persists across our culture. Forbes recently announced, for example, that scientists have a new theory for how life’s “building blocks” arrived on our planet, claiming that comets could have delivered amino acids and proteins to Earth and other planets as well.

One researcher writes in Smithsonian magazine: “Scientists agree on the basics of how life began, perhaps four billion years ago. Inorganic materials in the depths of the sea—subjected to favorable chemical conditions—most likely came to form a primitive slime over a long period of time. That slime eventually gave rise to bacteria, or perhaps blue-green algae” that led to life as we know it.

If humans are no different from anything else that evolved in this way, a utilitarian pragmatism that uses people as a means to larger ends is inevitable. If we commercialize and trade swine, why not hostages viewed as their descendants by their captors—or so Hamas might say.

Once we abandon the biblical truth that all people are created in God’s image and thus sacred from the moment of conception (Genesis 1:27), any human can be the subject of those strong enough to subjugate them in an evolutionary “survival of the fittest” contest for supremacy. We see such dehumanizing when preborn babies are aborted for financial reasons and the elderly infirm are euthanatized, girls and boys are sex trafficked and forced into prostitution, and racial prejudice fuels systemic injustice.

And we see it when Jews are villainized for their race and religion.

Decorating 22 homes and creating 400 snowmen

This is the Advent week of joy. Paradoxically, biblical joy is a consequence, not a goal. It is a “fruit” of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22) that we experience when we seek the Lord with intimacy and can pray with David, “In your presence there is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11). And it is a gift we experience most fully when we share it with others.

My first pastor used to say that JOY is an acronym for Jesus, Others, and Yourself. When we love others in response to God’s love for us, we want to pay forward the grace we have received and their joy enhances our own.

I’m thinking of an Oklahoma man who decorated twenty-two homes on his street for Christmas and the Wyoming woman who created nearly four hundred personalized snowmen for the people of her town. My guess is that they are experiencing a more joyful Christmas along with those whose holidays they enriched.

Henri Nouwen is right:

When you know yourself as fully loved, you will be able to give according to the other’s capacity to receive, and you will be able to receive according to the other’s capacity to give. You will be grateful for what is given to you without clinging to it, and joyful for what you can give without bragging about it. You will be a free person, free to love.

Will you be “free to love” today?

Denison Forum