The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement that highlighted the “distinction between liturgical (sacramental) blessings and pastoral blessings” and said: “The Church’s teaching on marriage has not changed, and this declaration affirms that, while also making an effort to accompany people through the imparting of pastoral blessings because each of us needs God’s healing love and mercy in our lives.” Diocesan approaches have varied. Some bishops, like Bishop Andrew Cozzens of the Diocese of Crookston, Minnesota, are emphasizing the Church’s continued prohibition on homosexual activities: “It is impossible for us to bless a same-sex union … [but] we may bless individuals who are not yet living in full accord with the Gospel,” the bishop said. Other bishops, such as Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, suggested the Vatican document was a positive step for the Church.

Catholic bishops around the world are deeply divided on a Vatican declaration that permits nonliturgical blessings of homosexual couples: some bishops are welcoming the news, some are approaching it with caution, while others are outright refusing to implement it.
In some countries, including Austria, Germany, and France, many Church leaders have warmly embraced the new guidelines on blessings. The heads of the bishops’ conferences in both Germany and Austria have suggested that priests cannot refuse to perform blessings for homosexual couples. 
Church leaders in other countries, namely the United States, the Philippines, Ukraine, Ghana, and Kenya, have mostly accepted the declaration but are also urging caution in its implementation. This, they say, is to avoid any confusion that would lead people to incorrectly believe the Church permits homosexual activity.
Alternatively, Church leaders in at least three countries are refusing to implement the declaration entirely: Kazakhstan, Malawi, and Zambia. Two Kazakh bishops have been more critical than others, going as far as admonishing Pope Francis for approving the declaration.
The declaration, titled Fiducia Supplicans, allows “spontaneous” pastoral blessings for “same-sex couples” and other couples in “irregular situations.” It does not allow liturgical blessings for homosexual couples and states the pastoral blessings “should never be imparted in concurrence with the ceremonies of a civil union and not even in connection with them” and cannot “be performed with any clothing, gestures, or words that are proper to a wedding.”
Bishops Embrace Blessing of Homosexual Couples
Some of the most enthusiastic support for the Vatican declaration came from high-ranking Church officials in Austria, Germany, and France. 
Archbishop Franz Lackner, who heads the Austrian Bishops’ Conference, expressed “joy” over the Vatican declaration, according to an interview with Österreichischer Rundfunk, an Austrian public media company.
The archbishop said a relationship between a man and a woman is “ideal,” but “a relationship between two of the same sex is not entirely without truth: love, loyalty, and even hardship are shared with one another.”
Lackner said it is difficult to speak of a “must” in terms of religious life but that “basically, [a priest] can no longer say no” to blessing a homosexual couple.
Austria’s neighbors to the north in Germany are similarly embracing the declaration. 
Bishop Georg Bätzing, who heads the German Bishops’ Conference, said he is “grateful for the pastoral perspective [the declaration] takes,” which he claims “points to the pastoral importance of a blessing that cannot be refused upon personal request.”
The bishop explained that blessings for homosexual couples are different from a marriage. He said that “a simple blessing need not and cannot require the same moral conditions that are required for receiving the sacraments.”
In France, Archbishop Hervé Giraud of the Archdiocese of Sens and Auxerre told the French Catholic news outlet La Croix that the declaration provides “another idea of blessing, a blessing of growth and not a blessing of pure recognition” and suggested that he may bless homosexual couples himself. 
“I myself could give a blessing to a same-sex couple, because I believe it’s based on a beautiful idea of blessing, according to the Gospel and the style of Christ,” Giraud said.
Bishops Taking a More Cautious Approach
Numerous bishops around the world have accepted the declaration from the Vatican but have cautioned against misrepresenting the guidelines in a way that would suggest that the Church condones homosexual behavior. 
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Written by Rev. Dr. Jim Tonkowich |
Friday, December 31, 2021
Mad Hatters and March Hares will be with us until the Second Coming. And until then mad laws will be commonplace. In part, we need to deal with it. In part, we need to avoid making matters worse by our cupidity and stupidity, acting instead with wisdom as we love God and our neighbors.

One hundred years ago it was illegal to kick back with a beer, celebrate with champagne, or sip a martini even in the privacy of your own home. “National prohibition of alcohol (1920–33) — the ‘noble experiment’,” wrote economist Mark Thornton, “was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, reduce the tax burden created by prisons and poorhouses, and improve health and hygiene in America.” In truth, it did none of these things, benefitting only “bootleggers, crime bosses, and the forces of big government.”
So how did we get what was, in retrospect, an insane constitutional amendment? And how did we end up with other outrageous laws?
For example, California demands that by 2045 all trucks and vans will be electric while simultaneously shutting down power plants even as Californians today endure power shortages without adding hundreds of thousands of electric trucks, vans, and eventually cars.
How do things like that happen?
A Lesson from the Mad Hatter and the March Hare
In 1923 as Great Britain toyed with Prohibition, G.K. Chesterton explained it with a little help from Lewis Carroll.
All mad laws proceed, he wrote in How Mad Laws are Made, from collusion between two unlikely allies: the Mad Hatter and the March Hare. That is, from “a compromise between a fad and a vested interest.”
The Hatter is mad, in a quiet way; but he is merely mad on making hats, or rather on making money. He has a huge and prosperous emporium which advertises all possible hats to fit all possible heads; but he certainly nourishes an occult conviction that it is really the duty of the heads to fit the hats. This is his mild madness; in other respects he is a stodgy and rather stupid millionaire.
If money can be made, the Hatter is at the table. Thus Ford, Volkswagen, BMW, and Honda think California’s new rules are just wonderful. Replacing a vast fleet of vehicles will do wonders for their bottom line.
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Perhaps the supreme indication of the deadly seriousness of our depravity is the deadly seriousness of God’s solution. The way that He uses death to defeat death, and not just any death, but the agonizing death of His only beloved Son, the eternal Christ of God, nailed to a Roman cross. If that is the cure for sin, then sin must be is unimaginably serious. 

Back in the 1930s, the poet and dramatist T.S. Eliot wrote a play called The Family Reunion. In it, he tried to describe the depth and extent of human sin.
Sin is portrayed as an old house afflicted by an all-permeating stench that no one can seem to get rid of. Sin is an inconsolable sobbing in the chimney, bumps in the cellar, a rattling of the windows, evil in a dark closet. It is a private, discomfiting puzzle, deeper than cancer.
As Eliot knew, this tireless “evil from within” affects every part of our human nature. We’re in a state that the Scottish pastor Thomas Boston described as “entire depravity.” The eighteenth-century theologian Jonathan Edwards says the same thing when he writes, “All mankind are by nature in a state of total ruin.” What they’re describing is what theologians have called total depravity.
Now, that’s not to say that every part of our nature is as bad as it could possibly be. No; thankfully, by God’s grace, that’s not the case. What the term total depravity describes is the fact that no part of our nature escapes the defilement of sin.
And the reason for that is because sin isn’t some kind of virus that lurks outside us; it’s not a contamination we can somehow isolate or avoid by doing certain things or not doing certain other things—which is the view of every religion apart from Christianity. Sin is already, as T.S. Eliot knew, “inside the gates”; it’s inside each one of us.
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