NCRegister: “A blessing is not compatible with a state of sin: One cannot bless that which breaks, consumes, destroys. To which sacrament, therefore, is the blessing of an irregular couple ordered? It is not true that blessing promotes and justifies nothing, because it implicitly promotes “disordered acts” and a pseudo union…

“In the text of Fiducia Supplicans, the expression “blessings of same-sex couples” recurs explicitly seven times. But when it comes to people of the same sex, there is no such thing as a couple. They are similar, and being similar, they make a pair but not a couple. 

So, there is no such thing as a blessing that is not liturgical, when it is made by an ordained minister, who exercises the munus sanctificandi with and in the sacred liturgy, on behalf of the Church…

“… They are not blessings, and they have no efficacy as blessings, especially if the faithful do not want to leave the state of sin. Even the reference to the Ordo benedictionis infirmorum, found in the Rituale Romanum, in point 2 of the Instruction, concerns “the euchological texts,” that is, the healing prayers contained therein, not the blessing formulas, which instead constitute the sacramentals proper.

Nowhere in the Instruction, in fact, is there any mention of blessings, beyond a single reference to “the blessings of good health.” The Vatican News article, then, incurs a glaring oversight by calling Ratzinger into question… Continue