I am saying that your argument entails this absurd consequence. If you are going to depend on a premise which dissociates "coupleship" from sexual activity, then you have to answer my counterargument which shows the strange consequences of such a move. If the pre-sexual same-sex couple is not engaging in sexual acts, then on your view there is nothing disordered in their coupleship.
Suppose you don't point at anyone, but just say, "Hey John, look at that couple." Both sets of two people are in plain sight. Which people will John look at? (Note that all you keep doing is denying the definition of "couple" that you provided from Merriam-Webster.)
Then the document should have been written about blessing friendships, as I already noted. If their sex were "tangential" then the document would not have spoken specifically of their sex. To speak about "a same-sex couple" is to speak about a sexed couple.
Yes, it is ludicrous because the document is about blessing those who are sexually active in extramarital relationships. That is why the document is about both heterosexual couples in irregular situations, and same-sex couples. You seem to have missed this entirely, early on. The whole reason the blessing is controversial and the document is so careful is because the object of the blessing has, up to now, been illicit. That is why it is an "innovation." That is why a new theology of blessing is being proposed. It is illicit because of the connection of the coupleship with sinful sexual acts.
(I use the neologism "coupleship" to prescind from the couple vs. union question)
Yes, because no one thinks blessing individuals is a problem. If the document wanted to do this it could have said, "As you already know, you can bless sinful individuals as long as you are not blessing their sins." That would have avoided all of the controversy. But it wouldn't have helped the German situation.
I suggest reading it again. The subject is consistently the two as a single unit, as a single couple ("themselves," "their own status," "their lives," "their relationships," etc.). There is no indication at all that separated individuals are being blessed. In fact there is perhaps no way, using common language, to further emphasize that the two being blessed are united.
Correct, but the exact same logic applies to blessing the couple (and that is how I stated it earlier in the thread). If the blessing succeeds then apparently the couple that is being blessed will no longer be a couple. It is precisely the same logic.
Note well that saying, "It can't be
X because then the document would be self-contradictory," is not even a relevant response to our charge that the document is self-contradictory. In logical terms this is the informal fallacy of begging the question. Instead you are required to show, organically, that the document does not contradict itself. You can't just assume that it doesn't contradict itself and then redefine the literal sense of the words and clauses to fit your pre-determined conclusion.
Sure: the blessing of a married couple that I cited earlier would be an example of a relationship receiving an actual grace.
Okay, fair enough.
Fair enough.
I haven't read or watched much outside of the document itself, but I did read the article about Cardinal Fernández' clarifications on Pillar Catholic. It was almost as evasive as the document itself, but there he takes a different tack than you do. He basically says that the non-sexual parts of the relationship are being blessed. He also speaks of "blessing irregular couples," which is useful and transparent, explicating precisely what I have been saying about the extramarital nature of both sorts of relationships.
Yes, this is correct and incisive. But for me (and for Thomists) a "union" is not reified, nor does it mean "civil union." A union is simply that which unites the couple (or any group of people). So to bless brothers is to bless a union; to bless a married couple is to bless a union; to bless friends is to bless a union, etc. A union when it comes to a couple is more or less the same as the relationship, with some slight philosophical differences. What is at stake is the nature of the union in question.
So I would interpret Fernández as intending to bless the non-sinful aspects of the union, and my objection would be that the union of a
couple, according to Merriam-Webster, is ordered to engagement, marriage, and the sort of romance that attends those realities (
sexual romance). Now there are non-sexual aspects to the sort of union which unites a couple (i.e. romantic union), but if Merriam-Webster is right, then to bless these non-sexual aspects of the union without blessing the romantic essence of the union, would be like blessing a tree without blessing the roots, trunk, branches, leaves, sap, or bark. Or blessing a car without blessing the engine.
At a deeper root are abstruse debates about the legitimacy of non-sexual, same-sex, "romantic" relationships. But these debates are so obscure and infrequent that I would be surprised if the document is referencing them, much less taking a strong stand on such an underdeveloped theological question. Honestly, I think the document is painfully imprecise, underdeveloped, imprudent, and premature. And I think there is every reason to believe it is incoherent/self-contradictory, even though there are tiny possibilities that it is not.
More basically, here is a comment I posted to Trent Horn's YouTube video, which I skimmed:
"Can Horn defend his claim that there is a relevant difference between a couple and the union that unites them, such that one could bless the couple qua couple without blessing the union that constitutes their pairing? Such an idea strikes me as dubious."
