Blessings

This is a big deal in Catholic land.

Pope Francis has taken one of the most concrete steps in his efforts to make the Roman Catholic Church more welcoming to L.G.B.T.Q. Catholics by allowing priests to bless couples in same-sex relationships, the Vatican announced on Monday.

Priests have long blessed a wide variety of people, offering a prayer asking for God’s help and presence. The Vatican had long said it could not bless same-sex couples because it would undermine church doctrine that marriage is only between a man and a woman.

The new rule was issued in a declaration by the church’s office on doctrine and introduced by its prefect, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, who said that the declaration did not amend “the traditional doctrine of the church about marriage,” because it allowed no liturgical rite that could be confused with the sacrament of marriage.

“It is precisely in this context,” Cardinal Fernández wrote, “that one can understand the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage.”

Obviously the Catholic Church is never going to be a frontrunner for social justice on, well, anything. But Francis’ attempt to pull the Church into the twenty-first century has only grown as he has aged. His increasing inpatient with American right-wing Catholics has finally led to concrete action. This is also a moment to observe, and I am far from the only person to note this, that hard right American Catholics are basically Protestants who want a weird cult of formality and ritual around their politics. They think that the Church is only true if it happens to hold the same politics as the Republican Party obsession of the day. That’s pure Protestantism right there. This is what Francis fights against and I hope he stays alive long enough to continue to force out the craziest of the crazies.