Scandal or Encounter
What Fiducia Supplicans is teaching the Church
I’m not someone living in an irregular union. I’m also not a priest or deacon giving out blessings. I’m not even currently a lay minister working in a parish. So my experience and reception of Fiducia Supplicans (the new declaration from the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith about blessing same-sex couples) has been as an observer and not someone who feels immediately and personally impacted. But because Fiducia Supplicans is a magisterial teaching of the Church, I still believe it has something to teach me.
I first really encountered the teaching of Pope Francis through his book, The Name of God is Mercy. It was there that I heard about a God who actually likes me, who loves and desires me, even before I make any effort to make myself better or holy. That proclamation about the character of God comforted, scandalized, and compelled me. And it still does. For me, this revelation of God’s character was the interpretative lens through which I read Fiducia Supplicans.
This was highlighted when I read the statement about Fiducia Supplicans from the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy in the USA (an associate of around 500 clerics). In the opening paragraph, the statement said, “Even the appearance of endorsement of any moral evil must be avoided at all cost.”
At all cost.
But is that true? In the Church’s pastoral care, is nothing else more important than avoiding any hint of endorsement of any moral evil?
Certainly, avoiding scandal is important. Jesus speaks to this and so does the Catechism. However, when looking at the Gospels, it seems to me that Jesus was, on the whole, way less concerned about appearing to endorse someone else’s immoral actions than he was about letting the person in front of him know that they are loved and wanted by God. Jesus appears to prioritize encounter over avoiding scandal.
Pope Francis does to. Here are some of his previous teachings (emphasis mine):
The Gospel tells us constantly to run the risk of a face-to-face encounter with others, with their physical presence which challenges us, with their pain and their pleas, with their joy which infects us in our close and continuous interaction. True faith in the incarnate Son of God is inseparable from self-giving, from membership in the community, from service, from reconciliation with others. The Son of God, by becoming flesh, summoned us to the revolution of tenderness (Evangelii Gaudium 88).
We need to help others to realize that the only way is to learn how to encounter others with the right attitude, which is to accept and esteem them as companions along the way, without interior resistance. Better yet, it means learning to find Jesus in the faces of others, in their voices, in their pleas. And learning to suffer in the embrace of the crucified Jesus whenever we are unjustly attacked or meet with ingratitude, never tiring of our decision to live in fraternity (Evangelii Gaudium 91).
God infinitely transcends us; he is full of surprises. We are not the ones to determine when and how we will encounter him; the exact times and places of that encounter are not up to us. Someone who wants everything to be clear and sure presumes to control God’s transcendence Nor can we claim to say where God is not, because God is mysteriously present in the life of every person, in a way that he himself chooses, and we cannot exclude this by our presumed certainties. Even when someone’s life appears completely wrecked, even when we see it devastated by vices or addictions, God is present there. If we let ourselves be guided by the Spirit rather than our own preconceptions, we can and must try to find the Lord in every human life (Gaudete et Exsultate 41-42).
The example of Jesus is a paradigm for the Church…In this way he demonstrated the true meaning of mercy, which entails the restoration of the covenant. This is clear from his conversations with the Samaritan woman and with the woman found in adultery, where the consciousness of sin is awakened by an encounter with Jesus’ gratuitous love (Amoris Laetitia 64).
I encourage the faithful who find themselves in complicated situations to speak confidently with their pastors or with other lay people whose lives are committed to the Lord. They may not always encounter in them a confirmation of their own ideas or desires, but they will surely receive some light to help them better understand their situation and discover a path to personal growth. I also encourage the Church’s pastors to listen to them with sensitivity and serenity, with a sincere desire to understand their plight and their point of view, in order to help them live better lives and to recognize their proper place in the Church (Amoris Laetitia 312).
The technical doctrinal development of liturgical vs non-liturgical blessing in Fiducia Supplicans is interesting. But I think more important is that the declaration puts forward a pious practice (non-liturgical blessings) as a pedagogical tool to help solidify the more essential teaching that everyone—even those still living objectively immoral lives—are loved by God, desired by the Church, have a place in the Church, and have something to offer the Church.
This doesn't always mean full sacramental initiation into the Church. It doesn’t mean anyone has the right to dictate the way the Church should liturgically accommodate their personal values. Nor does it mean that a person should have a position of authority over others in the Church. But it means that, most fundamentally, everyone is wanted. And that the Church is willing to risk appearing to endorse someone else’s immoral actions in order to let the person in front of us know that.
I believe this is the perhaps the real change that Fiducia Supplicans puts forward. It’s pushing for a cultural shift within the Church about our pastoral priorities. It’s challenging me personally to examine my own pastoral priorities and fears.