It does not say couples may be blessed as a gay union.....
20.
One who asks for a blessing show himself to be in need of God’s saving presence in his life and
one who asks for a blessing from the Church recognizes the latter as a sacrament of the salvation that God offers. To seek a blessing in the Church is to acknowledge that the life of the Church springs from the womb of God’s mercy and helps us to move forward, to live better, and to respond to the Lord’s will.
21. In order to help us understand the value of a more pastoral approach to blessings, Pope Francis urges us to contemplate, with an attitude of faith and fatherly mercy, the fact that “
when one asks for a blessing, one is expressing a petition for God’s assistance, a plea to live better, and confidence in a Father who can help us live better.”
[12] This request should, in every way
, be valued, accompanied, and received with gratitude.
People who come spontaneously to ask for a blessing show by this request their sincere openness to transcendence, the confidence of their hearts that they do not trust in their own strength alone, their need for God, and their desire to break out of the narrow confines of this world, enclosed in its limitations.
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26. In this perspective, the Holy Father’s
Respuestas aid in expanding the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 2021 pronouncement from a pastoral point of view. For, the
Respuestas invite discernment concerning the possibility of “forms of blessing, requested by one or more persons, that do not convey an erroneous conception of marriage”[17] and, in situations that are morally unacceptable from an objective point of view, account for the fact that “pastoral charity requires us not to treat simply as ‘sinners’ those whose guilt or responsibility may be attenuated by various factors affecting subjective imputability.”
[18]
27. In the catechesis cited at the beginning of this Declaration, Pope Francis proposed a description of this kind of blessing that is offered to all without requiring anything. It is worth reading these words with an open heart, for they help us grasp the pastoral meaning of blessings offered without preconditions: “It is God who blesses. In the first pages of the Bible, there is a continual repetition of blessings. God blesses, but humans also give blessings, and soon it turns out that the blessing possesses a special power, which accompanies those who receive it throughout their lives, and disposes man’s heart to be changed by God. [...] So we are more important to God than all the sins we can commit because he is father, he is mother, he is pure love, he has blessed us forever. And he will never stop blessing us. It is a powerful experience to read these biblical texts of blessing in a prison or in a rehabilitation group. To make those people feel that they are still blessed, notwithstanding their serious mistakes, that their heavenly Father continues to will their good and to hope that they will ultimately open themselves to the good. Even if their closest relatives have abandoned them, because they now judge them to be irredeemable, God always sees them as his children.”
[19]
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AS I read it, I do not read it as the Pope is pro-gay unions and now they can be blessed.
His writings convey that spontaneously the Lord calls sinners who seek blessings and again, the clergy must ascertain the nature of the blessings.
And blessing a union for the sake of the union itself to be blessed is not allowed.
But the individuals who seek change and doing God's will ought to be blessed.
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30. The popular understanding of blessings, however, also values the importance of descending blessings. While “it is not appropriate for a Diocese, a Bishops’ Conference, or any other ecclesial structure to constantly and officially establish procedures or rituals for all kinds of matters,”
[21] pastoral prudence and wisdom—
avoiding all serious forms of scandal and confusion among the faithful—may suggest that the ordained minister join in the prayer of those persons who, although in a union that cannot be compared in any way to a marriage, desire to entrust themselves to the Lord and his mercy, to invoke his help, and to be guided to a greater understanding of his plan of love and of truth.
III. Blessings of Couples in Irregular Situations and of Couples of the Same Sex
31. Within the horizon outlined here appears the possibility of blessings for couples in irregular situations and for couples of the same sex, the form of which should not be fixed ritually by ecclesial authorities to avoid producing confusion with the blessing proper to the Sacrament of Marriage. In such cases, a blessing may be imparted that not only has an ascending value but also involves the invocation of a blessing that descends from God upon those who—
recognizing themselves to be destitute and in need of his help—do not claim a legitimation of their own status, but who beg that all that is true, good, and humanly valid in their lives and their relationships be enriched, healed, and elevated by the presence of the Holy Spirit. These forms of blessing express a supplication that God may grant those aids that come from the impulses of his Spirit—what classical theology calls “actual grace”—
so that human relationships may mature and grow in fidelity to the Gospel, that they may be freed from their imperfections and frailties, and that they may express themselves in the ever-increasing dimension of the divine love.
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As I said before he is suggesting that the people be in the right form for '
changing' away from the lifestyle and not blessing an irregular union.
I do not see the problem of what he is trying to get done.
I do see the problem of the pastoral 'wisdom' which is divided and divisive to suggest he is strongly speaking in either direction away from teaching.
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