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COMMENTARY: This informality puts not only this pope but the papacy and the Church at a number of risks.
Confusion follows confusion. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith sent a press release on Jan. 4 to explain Fiducia Supplicans — the declaration from the curial office that used to be the papacy’s stable doctrinal oversight department — which came as an early Christmas surprise and appeared not only to allow but perhaps to require that priests give blessings to same-sex couples (and others in all manner of “irregular” union).
The Jan. 4 press release was a surprise of its own. Not only had the author of Fiducia Supplicans, DDF prefect Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, insisted in the original document that no further clarification or instruction would be forthcoming. Cardinal Fernández had also given several interviews in which — among other things — he accused those who had balked at the declaration and/or asked for clarification of having misunderstood it either deliberately or as a result of reading it in a fit of bad humor. Mala leche — literally “sour milk” — was the colorful Spanish-language idiom he deployed.
It was a strange line to take — not to say “improbable” — which required that one believe the Latin episcopate across broad swathes of the global south and east, along with the leadership of the world’s largest non-Latin ritual Church sui iuris and a host of others across the whole broad spectrum of opinion and state of life in the Church should have just happened to pick up Fiducia Supplicans when they were ill disposed.
No matter.
To hear Cardinal Fernández tell it in his press release, everything remains as it was the day before Fiducia Supplicans appeared, with priests who are of a mind to not shy away from making the Sign of the Cross on people who ask for it, as already happened before.
It goes without saying — or ought to — that there are problems if this sign of the cross, made informally and briefly as an expression of God’s grace, becomes a public act complete with a photographer in tow or celebratory tweets of the “history was made” type. In these cases, the DDF’s sandcastle crumbles because there is no longer good faith, no longer the search for grace but for media attention.
Continued below.
www.ncregister.com
Confusion follows confusion. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith sent a press release on Jan. 4 to explain Fiducia Supplicans — the declaration from the curial office that used to be the papacy’s stable doctrinal oversight department — which came as an early Christmas surprise and appeared not only to allow but perhaps to require that priests give blessings to same-sex couples (and others in all manner of “irregular” union).
The Jan. 4 press release was a surprise of its own. Not only had the author of Fiducia Supplicans, DDF prefect Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, insisted in the original document that no further clarification or instruction would be forthcoming. Cardinal Fernández had also given several interviews in which — among other things — he accused those who had balked at the declaration and/or asked for clarification of having misunderstood it either deliberately or as a result of reading it in a fit of bad humor. Mala leche — literally “sour milk” — was the colorful Spanish-language idiom he deployed.
It was a strange line to take — not to say “improbable” — which required that one believe the Latin episcopate across broad swathes of the global south and east, along with the leadership of the world’s largest non-Latin ritual Church sui iuris and a host of others across the whole broad spectrum of opinion and state of life in the Church should have just happened to pick up Fiducia Supplicans when they were ill disposed.
No matter.
To hear Cardinal Fernández tell it in his press release, everything remains as it was the day before Fiducia Supplicans appeared, with priests who are of a mind to not shy away from making the Sign of the Cross on people who ask for it, as already happened before.
It goes without saying — or ought to — that there are problems if this sign of the cross, made informally and briefly as an expression of God’s grace, becomes a public act complete with a photographer in tow or celebratory tweets of the “history was made” type. In these cases, the DDF’s sandcastle crumbles because there is no longer good faith, no longer the search for grace but for media attention.
Continued below.
Pope Francis’ Informality as a System
COMMENTARY: This informality puts not only this pope but the papacy and the Church at a number of risks.
