Cardinal Fernández’s answer
Some
defenders of Fiducia Supplicans have
suggested that the document intends “couple” to be understood merely as a pair
of individuals, without reference to any special relationship between
them. I explained in my earlier article
why that simply is not plausible, and the cardinal’s remarks in the interview
now decisively rule this interpretation out.
Consider these passages from the interview:
Sometimes they are two very close friends who share good
things, sometimes they had sexual
relations in the past and now what remains is a strong sense of belonging and
mutual help. As a parish priest, I have often met such couples…
[In] a simple blessing, it is still
asked that this friendship be
purified, matured and lived in fidelity to the Gospel. And even if there was some kind of sexual relationship, known or not, the blessing
made in this way does not validate or justify anything.
Actually the same thing
happens whenever individuals are blessed, because that
individual who asks for a blessing… may be a great sinner, but we do not deny a
blessing to him…
When it is a matter of a couple well-known in the place or in
cases where there could be some scandal, the blessing should be given in private,
in a discreet place.
End
quote. So, the “couples” that Fiducia Supplicans has in view include
“friendships” and “two very close friends,” who may have “had sexual relations
in the past” or “some kind of sexual relationship” in the past, who retain “a
strong sense of belonging and mutual help” and may be “well-known in [some]
place” to be a couple. And blessing such
couples is explicitly contrasted with blessing “individuals.” All of this makes it undeniable that what Fiducia Supplicans is referring to by
the word “couple” is not merely two
individuals qua individuals, but two individuals considered as having a close personal relationship of some sort. In other words, the Declaration is using the
term in just the way most people use it when discussing a romantic relationship,
not in some broader sense and not in some technical sense either.
Now, the
cardinal also goes on to say: “Couples are blessed. The union is not blessed.” This confirms that he intends to distinguish “couples” from “unions,” as many defenders
of the Declaration have tried to do.
However, the cardinal says nothing to explain how there can be such a distinction – that is to say, he does not
explain how this distinction is not
merely verbal, a distinction without a difference like the distinction between
“bachelors” and “unmarried men.”
There are
three problems here. First, and again, Cardinal
Fernández’s remarks confirm that by “couple,” what Fiducia Supplicans is referring to are two people considered as
having some close personal relationship, and indeed one that may have had a
sexual component of some sort at least in the past. But that is also just what the term “union”
is typically used to refer to! So, how
can one possibly bless a “couple” without blessing the “union”? It is not enough simply to assert or assume that one can do so.
We still need an explanation of exactly
what it means to bless the one and not the other.
Second, the
cardinal says that in the blessings that Fiducia
Supplicans has in view, “it is… asked
thatthis friendship be purified,
matured and lived in fidelity to the Gospel.” In other words, the blessing is not merely on
the individuals who make up the
couple, but on their friendship itself.
And how can that possibly fail to be a blessing on the “union”? True, it doesn’t follow that it is a blessing
on the sexual aspect of the union,
but that is irrelevant to the point at issue.
It still amounts to a blessing on
the union itself, despite the cardinal’s claim that “the union is not
blessed.”
Third, the
Vatican’s 2021 document on the matter says that while “individual persons” in
irregular relationships can be blessed, it “declares illicit any form of blessing that tends to
acknowledge their unions as such.” Hence,
the older statement says that irregular unions not only cannot be blessed, they cannot so much as be acknowledged. But as Cardinal Fernández’s remarks make
clear, Fiducia Supplicansdoes permit acknowledgement of such
unions. For how can you bless “their
friendship” without acknowledging
it? How can you bless a “couple”
considered as “two very close friends” who may have had “some kind of sexual
relationship” in the past and retain “a strong sense of belonging and mutual
help,” without “acknowledging their union as such”?
Hence, the
cardinal’s remarks in the interview do
not refute, but rather reinforce, the judgment that the 2023 Declaration
contradicts the 2021 statement.
There is yet
another problem. Again, the interview
with Cardinal Fernández confirms that Fiducia
Supplicans uses the word “couple” in the ordinary sense that entails not
merely two individuals, but two individuals considered
as having a personal relationship of a romantic kind, or at least of a kind
that once had a romantic component. Now,
in the past, the Church has explicitly repudiated the contemporary tendency to
expand this ordinary notion of a “couple” so that it includes same-sex and
other irregular relationships. For
example, in Ecclesia
in Europa, Pope St. John Paul II criticized “attempts… to accept
a definition of the couple in which
difference of sex is not considered essential.”
In a
2008 address, Pope Benedict XVI lamented that “so-called ‘de facto
couples’ are proliferating.” Insofar as Fiducia Supplicans uses “couples” to
refer to same-sex and other irregular relationships, then, it accommodates the
usage that these previous popes condemned.
In this way too, the new Declaration conflicts with past teaching.
Mike Lewis’s answer
In a
recent article at Where Peter
Is, Mike Lewis complained that “countless papal critics are acting as if
they can’t understand the difference between a couple and a union” and mocks
their “sudden inability to grasp the difference” as “a case of mass lexical
amnesia.” Oddly, though, his article does not tell us what this
difference is, which should have been easy enough if the distinction really
were, as he insists it is, obvious and long-standing.
It seems
that even some Where Peter Is readers
were unimpressed, which has now led Lewis to try to explain the difference in a
follow-up article. Much of
what he writes essentially just reiterates, at length, that the new Declaration
clearly says that it authorizes only
blessings for couples and not for unions, and that “most reasonably intelligent
Catholics should be able to understand the difference if they read the document
with a spirit of receptivity and an open heart.” Of course, this does not address the question
at all. Everybody already knows what the
Declaration says. The question is how any coherent sense can be made of what it says. In particular, exactly what is the difference between a “couple” and a
“union”? Naturally, to accuse those who
continue to ask this question of lacking “a spirit of receptivity and an open
heart” is not to answer the question.
Lewis does
take a stab at answering it, though. He
writes:
I don’t understand why this is a
difficult concept, obviously a “couple” is two people who are paired
together. A couple might be married,
engaged, or involved in another type of relationship. A union is a type of arrangement or agreement
between two people… The Church can bless two people who are a couple without
sanctioning everything that they do, nor recognizing every agreement they make.
End
quote. I trust that most reasonably
intelligent Catholics who read Lewis with a spirit of receptivity and an open
heart will see that this utterly fails to solve the problem. Start with the last sentence. Yes, one can certainly “bless two people who
are a couple without sanctioning everything that they do, nor recognizing every
agreement they make.” But one can also
bless a union without sanctioning
everything the people in it do or recognizing every agreement they make. So, this does exactly nothing to explain the
difference between blessing a couple and blessing a union.
Consider
next Lewis’s claim that “a ‘couple’ is two people who are paired together.” What does being “paired together” amount
to? Is Lewis saying that just any two individuals, even perfect
strangers, who happen to be standing next to one another counts as a “couple”
in the sense Fiducia Supplicans has
in view? I’ve already explained in my
previous article why that can’t be right, and we just saw above that the
interview with Cardinal Fernández confirms that it is not right. “Couple” in this context means more than
merely two individuals, and connotes a special relationship between them. And Lewis may well acknowledge this, since he
goes on to say that “a couple might be married, engaged, or involved in another
type of relationship.”
But then, we
must ask yet again, how does this differ from a union? Lewis says, first,
that a union “is a type of arrangement.”
I hardly need point out that that is so vague that it is obviously true
of couples no less than of
unions. Couples, such as the married and
engaged couples Lewis gives as examples, are obviously in a kind of
“arrangement.” So, this too does exactly
nothing to clarify the difference between a “couple” and a “union.”
What, then,
of Lewis’s further suggestion that a union involves an “agreement” of some
kind? This is slightly less vague than
“arrangement,” but not enough to help.
Consider two people who decide to go steady, or to become engaged, or to
share bed and board. Any of these
suffices to make them a “couple.” But
these all involve agreements of some
type (as well as arrangements). Hence, by Lewis’s criteria, this also suffices
to make them a “union.” Once again,
then, Lewis has utterly failed to explain the difference between a “couple” and
a “union.”
Later in the
article, Lewis suggests that the blessings the Declaration has in view “are
meant for each of the persons in the
couple, not an attempt to legitimize a union” (emphasis in the original). But what does this mean, exactly? Does it mean that what the Declaration has in
view are blessings on the persons considered only as individuals, rather than as
a couple? But we already saw above,
and at greater length in my previous article, why that is not what the Declaration is saying.
Following a
suggestion from another defender of Fiducia
Supplicans, Lewis suggests:
Fiducia
Supplicans studiously avoids explicitly
focusing on the dichotomy between individuals and relationships... “It does not
so much discuss who or what gets blessed, but what blessings are and for what
purpose.” This suggests that the
fixation of the document’s critics on the word “couple” is entirely misplaced,
and we should turn our attention to why we bless.
End
quote. The problem with this is that it
is simply not true that the Declaration “does not so much discuss who or what
gets blessed.” On the contrary, the whole point of the Declaration is to
go beyond what was already said in the 2021 document and assert that blessings
can now be given to “couples” qua
couples (and not merely to the individuals in the couple, as the 2021 document
allowed). Hence for critics to focus on
the word “couple” is not only not misplaced,
it is precisely to do what the new
Declaration itself does.
In a closing
section so absurd that the unwary reader might wonder whether his article is,
after all, meant merely as a parody
of desperate defenders of Fiducia
Supplicans, Lewis tells us that he consulted ChatGPT to see how it might
explain the difference between “couples” and “unions”! The part of the AI software’s response that
is actually relevant to this question reads as follows:
The Church may view the blessing of individuals in a same-sex relationship as a recognition
of their inherent dignity and worth as persons…Therefore, the Church
might differentiate between blessing a couple (as individuals) and blessing
their union. (Emphasis added)
End
quote. So, the only way ChatGPT is able
to make sense of the difference between blessing a “couple” and blessing a “union”
is to suggest that the individuals in the couple are blessed as individuals, rather than as a
couple. The problem with this, of
course, is that the 2021 document already allowed for that, and that the whole
point of the new Declaration is to authorize the blessing of couples as couples. Once again, I explained at length in my
previous article how that is the case, and Cardinal Fernández has confirmed it
in the Pillar interview.
Explaining the difference between “couples” and “unions” thus eludes the best efforts of man and machine alike.