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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   29347 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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Pope Francis already answered a Dubia in a more standard way in 2021:

TO THE QUESTION PROPOSED: Does the Church have the power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex?

RESPONSE: Negative.

Today's response to the Dubia says:

c) For this reason, the Church avoids any type of rite or sacramental that might contradict this conviction and suggest that something that is not marriage is recognized as marriage.

Today's Dubia Response is a total nothingburger, but everyone is reading into it what they want to read.

The ambiguity is the message. He could have just reiterated the clear "no" instead of speaking about pastoral discretion and avoiding "suggestions" that a not-marriage is a marriage.

He's been unambiguous when speaking against traditionalists.

How can I avoid drawing conclusions that he's being strategically ambiguous so as to allow priests to practice his real preference where those preferences happen to align?

Compare the short and straightforward 2021 dubia:

Does the Church have the power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex?

With the Cardnial Burke et.al. dubia -

According to the Divine Revelation, attested in Sacred Scripture, which the Church teaches, “listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit" (Dei Verbum, 10), "In the beginning," God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them, and blessed them to be fruitful (cf. Genesis 1:27-28) and hence, the Apostle Paul teaches that denying sexual difference is the consequence of denying the Creator (Romans 1:24-32). We ask: can the Church deviate from this "principle," considering it, in contrast to what was taught in Veritatis splendor, 103, as a mere ideal, and accept as a "possible good" objectively sinful situations, such as unions with persons of the same sex, without departing from the revealed doctrine?

If you ask a long,nuanced question, you get a long, nuanced response.

You’ll notice I cited in the OP a discussion of trying to overturn that Dubia with the explanation of cardinal Ladaria having gone rogue. Do I think it’s likely to happen? Probably not officially. I think it’ll simply be ignored.

The prior response to the dubia lacked the Pope's inability to get to the point, but presumably it has the same level of authoritativeness as the current leaked dubia (Unless the Pope wants to go on record and declare the first dubia response was not approved by him.)

Pope Francis doesn't want to be mean and make wide sweeping declarations (except when it comes to liturgy, for some reason.) The very thing that keeps him from giving a straight answer to a dubia is the very thing that will keep him from actually changing anything in the Church. He wants to meet each person face to face, to discuss a situation in all its intricacies, but never act as a judge or king.

The 2021 letter was approved by the pope, but technically it was from the CDF. The 2023 letter was from Pope Francis personally, even if it was literally written by Cardinal Fernandez.

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