The president of the German Bishops' Conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing, has criticized the upcoming Catholic-backed initiative saying blessings should not be used as a political statement.

The blessing service initiative was organised immediately after the Vatican formally said no to same-sex blessings.

Several lay and ordained Catholic leaders in Germany organised the initiative, calling it: "Love wins, blessing service for lovers."

The national day set for May 10 will consist of blessing services for same-sex couples being held throughout the country.

A statement on the event's website says that in response to the Vatican's 'no' to same-sex blessings:

"We will continue to accompany people who enter into a binding partnership in the future and bless their relationship.

"We do not refuse a blessing ceremony. We do this in our responsibility as pastors, who promise people at important moments in their lives the blessings that God alone gives. We respect and value their love, and we also believe that God's blessings are on them."

The initiative's organizers have condemned what they said is "an exclusive and outdated sexual morality" which is being "carried out on the backs of people" and which "undermines our work in pastoral care."

Bätzing, however, says the blessing ceremonies are not "a helpful sign and a further path," for same-sex couples.

In a statement on 28 April, he explained, for the Church blessings hold spiritual significance and therefore should never be used for political ends or as a means of protest.

Blessing ceremonies "have their own theological dignity and pastoral significance" and are therefore "not suitable as an instrument for church political manifestations or protest actions," he said.

At the same time, he stressed that homosexuals - whether individuals or partners - have a place in the Church. "You are welcome to us," he said.

The Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which issued the decree banning same-sex blessings justified its position, saying:

"God does not bless sin."

This thumbs down from the Vatican immediately had Catholic faithful and hierarchy divided about whether the response was fair.

Much of that backlash was felt in Germany.

Outside Germany, however, as a direct result of the Vatican decree, 700 - mainly young people - formally left the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Antwerp.

Bishop of Antwerp, Johan Bonny, says the "dramatic" backlash has come from "mainly straight people" who saw the Vatican ruling Responsum as "a step too far".

Furthermore, as many as 2,000 people cancelled their baptismal registrations in the Flemish dioceses in Belgium.

Bonny also hit out at Vatican document's "theological weakness" and failure to reflect the developments in biblical theology, sacramental theology and moral theology.

"It's as if it was written in the time of Pius XII," he said.

But the practical cost of this, is the loss to the faith of Church members, he said.

"That is our responsibility in front of God our Father."

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On the basis of its understanding, the CDF concluded that the Church cannot officially bless people in same-gender unions that approximate marriage.

The Magisterium teaches that homosexuality is a ‘disordered nature' and classifies homosexual lovemaking as ‘intrinsically disordered' [CCC:2357].

In the Catechism, ordered nature reflects God's creation of male and female human beings who are made for each other.

This principle could be described as exclusively heterosexual.

The magisterial understanding of sexuality is derived from this principle. Sexuality ‘concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate', creating the ‘aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others' [CCC:2332] and is ‘ordered to the conjugal love of a man and a woman' [CCC:2360].

The Magisterium's understanding of creation and sexuality is heavily criticised for being binary and considered outdated.

Many suggest that sexuality differentiates itself between sexual attraction, physical attraction, and emotional attraction and is not essentially related to procreation or the capacity to love.

The strongest critics of the Responsum accuse the CDF of ignoring the last 100 -plus years of research into human sexuality. They argue that maintaining the theology of ‘disordered nature' on the assumption that the ‘psychological genesis [of homosexuality] remains largely unexplained' [CCC: 2357] is incorrect.

Critics argue that a necessary distinction between sexual orientations and sexualities is required and that one should see sexuality as given, diverse and personal.

The desire to bless same-sex unions challenges the Magisterium's binary view of creation and sexuality and reveals the essential question; on what basis can one say that a person's nature is ‘intrinsically disordered', their lovemaking a ‘grave depravity', and still bring them into union with Christ?

Asking if the Church can bless same-sex unions puts into question the CDF's use of the primary sources on which the magisterial teaching is built; its interpretation of scripture and the presumption that the "natural law" is fully known and not itself subject to growth in understanding.

This starting point is critical for how we understand a blessing given to a couple sharing the same gender.

It brings us back to the larger perspective:

• what is the nature and place of homosexuality and homosexual lovemaking in the order of creation?
• how does homosexuality and lovemaking participate in the "blessing of God? and
• if sexuality a blessing of God, then how it is defined, and by whom it is defined is critical.

The Blessing

The debate concerning the blessing is, by comparison, a sidebar.

It is important only because the theological pathway from blessing to ecclesial act and sacramental—that resembles a sacrament—is full of potholes.

To make this clearer I will distinguish between a blessing and a benediction.

A blessing (noun) is a request to God to care for someone or something, it is also an act to make someone, or oneself, happy.

A benediction (noun) combines the Latin words bene meaning well and dicere to say Benedicere: to wish well and is to say something good to another as a prayer, invocation, or dedication.

According to the Catechism [1078ff], blessing is in the nature of God; the whole of God's work is blessing and while everything and everyone who exists is also a blessing of God, the whole of the created order needs salvation because it is fallen.

The Catechism states that the dignity of each individual person is rooted in his, or her creation in the image and likeness of God (1700, 1702).

Blessing, as we commonly use it, is a prayer for God's favour or the dedication of an individual or object and parents bless their heterosexual and homosexual children all the time, long before any heterosexual or homosexual tendencies become manifest, and priests bless water, oil, and wedding rings.

However, there has to be more to a blessing to turn it from natural water into holy water.

That "more" is the power of the ordained who makes the benediction; this is the basis of resemblance.

The additional "power" of the priest's benediction is seen where parishioners ask Father to bless their candles, dogs, and cars, because his benediction is recognised as qualitatively different from their own.

What makes one a blessing and other a benediction is

• the nature of reciprocity—who has the capacity to give and receive a blessing;
• the priest acting with the power of ordination in the name of the Church; and
• the intention of the blessing and its resemblance to a sacrament.

Some suggest parents blessing their homosexual child on their child's wedding day is possible.

While laypeople may preside at some blessings ‘the more a blessing concerns ecclesial and sacramental life, the more is its administration reserved to the ordained ministry (bishops, priests or deacons)' [CCC1669].

A benediction is a sacramental when it is received by a person who has the capacity to receive it—reciprocity—or when it is given to an object that will be used in sacred rites, such as a baptismal font.

When an ordained man gives a benediction, the benediction is implicitly reliant on the power of the priesthood.

The Responsum acknowledges that a benediction for an individual with homosexual inclinations remains licit as for example in a religious profession, which affirms a woman or man in their non-sacramental chosen lifestyle.

However, a benediction is not permitted for two people (hetero - or homosexual) entering a "marriage-like state" because the state resembles the sacrament of matrimony and the benediction would resemble the nuptial blessing.

According to the Responsum's explanatory note, a benediction cannot be given to people whose relationship is not ‘objectively and positively ordered to receive and express grace according to the designs of God inscribed in creation and fully revealed by Christ the Lord'.

To do this is to ‘bless sin'.

At this level there is no distinction between couples on the basis of their sexual preference; neither can be given a benediction.

The issue for the same-sex couple is not their singularity as gay people but the nature of their relationship, and within it, their lovemaking.

Because their loving making is considered ‘intrinsically disordered' their relationship is seriously at fault.

At this point we return, again, to consider the theological reciprocity between nature, sexuality, and acts of lovemaking.

The CDF concludes that when a sacramental resembles a sacrament a benediction cannot be given by the Church's minister because the blessing moves from being "just" a blessing to an ‘ecclesial liturgical action', or an act of the Church, that invokes the priesthood of Christ, and God—in Christ—can not bless sin.

Sacramentals are ‘sacred signs that bear a resemblance to the sacraments [because] they signify effects, particularly of a spiritual nature, which are obtained through the intercession of the Church' for people who are ‘disposed to receive the chief effects of the sacraments' (Sacrosanctum Concilium 60).

This definition draws together the connections between the recipient's disposition, the church's prayer, and the Church's minister.

Together, these form a single unit that brings a sacramental into the orbit of a sacrament.

Critically, the Catechism [1670] states: ‘sacramentals do not confer the grace of the Holy Spirit in the way that the sacraments do' but through them, believers are prepared through the Church's prayer ‘to received grace' and disposed ‘to cooperate with' grace.

It also states that sacramentals ‘derive from the baptismal priesthood' and ‘every baptised person is called to be a blessing and bless'.

There are three points to note:

• that a benediction is not a sacrament,
• benedictions dispose; and
• benedictions are related to baptism.

What is not made explicit in the Responsum is the role of baptism in the reception of a benediction.

Some theologians argue that when two baptised individuals enter a same-sex union they already possess the theological capacity to receive a benediction just as baptised heterosexual couples receive the nuptial blessing.

Some suggest that because the Church's minister is a witness to the matrimony, and not the minister of it, in a similar way he has the capacity to impart a benediction in the name of the Church on a same-sex couple. This is especially the case if the couple are not intending a sacramental union.

Christian sacraments are sacred signs instituted by Christ to give grace and to save, and the sacrament of baptism is a celebration of God's sanctifying presence, transforming people and human experience.

Baptism is not reliant on, or referent to, a person's sexuality—however, this is understood.

Every baptised person enjoys the purification from sin, new birth in the Holy Spirit and incorporation into the Body of Christ.

All baptised persons receive a sacramental character that consecrates them for Christian worship, enabling them to participate in the sacred liturgy, to serve God and ‘to exercise their baptismal priesthood by witness of holy lives and practical charity [Lumen Gentium 10].

Proponents of benedictions for same-gender couples argue that baptism is the legitimate basis for the blessing of baptised same-gender partners.

They point out that the nature, purpose, intention, and use of any benediction must correspond to the nature and effects of baptism.

They argue that because a person with homosexual tendencies, created in God's image and likeness, can be baptised—receiving the effects and grace of the sacrament and incorporation into the Body of Christ—that person possesses the theological capacity to receive the Church's benediction in virtue of their baptism, and not in virtue of the power of an ordained minister.

Where this argument is accepted, refusing two baptised people of the same-sex, who live lives of faith, a benediction when they are choosing and intending a life-long relationship, that is not intended to be sacramental matrimony, is not possible, it is required.

At this point the argument for a benediction of same-sex union moves in a pastoral direction, suggesting that if the Church were to bless same-sex unions then it would remove the pain and suffering from the lives of some of its own members.

It is argued that the Church, by openly acknowledging and blessing such unions, would be seen to affirm the baptismal call of its members to live—in public—stable relationships of mutual and lasting fidelity.

Those who disagree see here the first step towards extending the sacrament of matrimony to same-sex couples. This concern cannot be avoided.

The sacramental character of matrimony and the resemblance of a civil union to it is an inaccurate use of resemblance.

The resemblance of a sacramental benediction to a sacrament seems to imply a resemblance to either the character of the sacrament or to its Eucharistic Prayer, however, this is not outlined in the Responsum but is, nonetheless, critical to the debate.

Relying on the theological character of matrimony as the basis for denying benedictions to same-gender couples is risky given this sacrament's history and unique sacramental character.

In matrimony, the couple are both the ministers and the recipients of the sacrament—based on their baptism—and the church's minister is the witnesses.

Similarly, the concern with ‘a certain imitation or analogue of the nuptial blessing' is also problematic given that blessing's history and liturgical purpose.

The nuptial blessing's context is the Mass, coming after the Our Father and before the couple receives communion together.

The structure of the blessing is clearly a benediction and not a Eucharist Prayer—it does not confer the sacrament—because ‘it is ordinarily understood that the spouses, as ministers of Christ's grace, mutually confer upon each other the sacrament of Matrimony by expressing their consent before the Church' [CCC:1623].

The Church's minister ‘assists' at the marriage and receives the spousal consent and blesses in the name of the Church, thus making it (matrimony) an ecclesial act.

On the basis of this understanding, many conclude that the denial of a benediction for a baptised couple who share the same gender, based on the benediction's resemblance to the nuptial benediction in the liturgy of matrimony, is unwarranted.

Lastly, the Responsum states that ‘the Church does not have, and cannot have, the power to bless unions of persons of the same sex in the sense intended' but, Sacrosanctum Concilium 79—a higher teaching authority—suggests this might not be the whole story.

"The sacramentals are to undergo a revision which takes into account the primary principle of enabling the faithful to participate intelligently, actively, and easily; the circumstances of our own days must also be considered.

"When rituals are revised, as laid down in Art. 63, new sacramentals may also be added as the need for these becomes apparent.

"Reserved blessings shall be very few; reservations shall be in favour of bishops or ordinaries.

"Let provision be made that some sacramentals, at least in special circumstances and at the discretion of the ordinary, may be administered by qualified laypersons."

• Dr Joe Grayland is a theologian and a priest of the Diocese of Palmerston North. His latest book is titled: Catholics. Prayer, Belief and Diversity in a Secular Context (Te Hepara Pai, 2020).

They then let it be known that they can't discuss something with you … because they are locked in a small room. And their justification takes the form: "Can't because we say we can't because we said we can't".

This act of communication is called a "tantrum".

It is not meant to educate you about anything. Other, accidentally, than the self-importance of its perpetrator and their circular grasp of logic.

It is meant to interrupt whatever you were doing, play on your emotions and try to exercise power over you.

It demands the end of the dialogical and the imposition of the absolute. The kind of absolutism we associate with angry infants.

Luckily, as adults know, a tantrum only has the power over you that you give it.

I say this not to insult the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, whose senior members surely know the communication games they are playing with the German Synod.

I say it to offer protection to people who are hurt and scandalised by their responsum to a dubium regarding the blessing of the unions of persons of the same sex.

For when you perceive that something is a tantrum, you are less likely to be hurt by anything said by the tantrum thrower. Less likely to think it has anything to do with you.

More aware that a self-fuelling delusion is at work.

Having said that, the CDF responsum does seem to follow the tantrum model of capricious "educatio interrupta".

It produces a self-provoked question, and gives a self-referential answer. One which it hopes will be an act of power, not an act of dialogue.

Then it justifies itself with circular logic: from an apriori deduction of the presumed intrinsic heterosexuality of all humans, the CDF assumes an objectively disordered tendency and intrinsically evil acts to be at work in both partners in a same-sex relationship, and so reaches the only conclusion that it can.

And it quotes itself extensively to prove it.

And this is their sadness: our brethren (sic) are locked into an account of objectivity which bears passing little relationship to the reality of creation as we are coming to know it and participate in it.

And they will be so locked until either a pope or a council sets them free from running around on this treadwheel, gives them formal permission to move on.

A key question behind moving on from tantrum teaching is this: How is divine wisdom in fact, and in practice, revealing the intelligibility of all created things to us and turning us, by our active and intelligent participation in that creative wisdom, into daughters and sons of God, heirs to creation?

Our learning over the last hundred years or so about the matters we now refer to as LGBT+ serve as a good test case for how we might begin to answer this.

Where frightened morality tries to close things down, wisdom, starting from our rejects, opens up the reality of what is, as we undergo being forgiven for our narrow goodness and hard-heartedness, sifting through our fears and delusions. And so we discover our neighbours as ourselves, and how we are loved.

Only a theological anthropology of learning that accompanies how we do, in fact, learning can help with this. Not one which demands a series of deductions from presumed first principles, and then discards the bits of reality that don't fit.

And so to the matter of blessings given to, received and shared by, same-sex couples: Our Lord teaches us to know a tree by its fruit.

He provokes our learning process. And it leads us to find things to bless, forms of blessedness old and new.

The power and the glory of the Creator do tend to show themselves through our becoming, as we discern what we are for and who we are.

It is a learning which is especially blessed when we find ourselves being forgiven for having categorised groups of people in false ways, and discovering that life is richer and better for all of us when they are encouraged to be who they are.

The CDF, faced with the same tree and its fruit, assures us that because it is the wrong sort of tree, therefore the fruit must be bad.

That is not a learning process.

It is a holding to a restrictive sacred which sets its brandishers free from the need to learn.

I'm very glad that so many Catholics are dodging the tantrum and hewing to Our Lord.

The responsum is unlikely to dissuade us from blessing God as we find God blessing us.

• James Alison is a Catholic theologian, priest and author. He has studied, lived and worked in Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Spain and the United States as well as his native England. James earned his doctorate in theology from the Jesuit Faculty in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in 1994 and is a systematic theologian by training.
• First published in English by The Tablet. Republished with permission of the author.