Prominent clergy and scholars sign collective letter requesting Pope to retract Fiducia Supplicans

A collective letter entitled “Filial Appeal” has gained the signatures of around 90 prominent clergymen, intellectuals and authors around the world and has been submitted to the Vatican requesting the retraction of Fiducia Supplicans and its direction on the blessings of same-sex couples.

The letter, originally published on 2 February 2024, addresses senior prelates around the world and implores them to prohibit any blessings of “same-sex couples” as recommended in the recent declaration Fiducia Supplicans. It calls on bishops not to implement Fiducia and on the Pope to rescind it.

Its authors insist that “never in the history of the Catholic Church has a document of the Roman Magisterium experienced such a strong rejection”. The document indicates its signatories believe such blessings would cause scandal and cannot therefore be sanctioned. The Appeal is part of a wider reaction of indignant protest across the Church.

Signatories include Bishop Emeritus Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas; Fr Gerald Murray, Fr Andrew Pinsent (faculty member of Oxford University), Prof Thomas Pink (faculty member at King’s College London), and other academics and priests from Italy, Poland, Germany, Chile, Spain, the Netherlands and Zambia, among others.

While they acknowledge “its explicit reaffirmation of the traditional doctrine of the Church on Marriage”, the signatories’ contention is that “it turns out that the pastoral practice that the document allows is in direct opposition to it”.

They add: “The document effectively attempts to introduce a separation between doctrine and liturgy on the one hand, and pastoral practice on the other. But this is impossible: in fact, pastoral care, like all action, always presupposes a theory and, therefore, if pastoral care performs something that does not correspond to the doctrine, what is actually being proposed is a different doctrine.”

Explaining the mechanism by which the “pastoral” blessing becomes, to them, impermissible, they argue that such blessings would give the impression that the Catholic Church subsequently “has…evolved, and now accepts homosexual unions, and, more generally, extramarital unions”.

This, they contend, would be deceptive and misleading. The concern is that such blessings have the potential to lead onlookers into mortal sins the gravity of which, the Appeal notes, is revealed in natural law. Therefore, culpable knowledge of its evil is accessible to all souls in possession of sound reason.

Their complaint comes in the context of media headlines in the wake of Fiducia in December 2023, such as one published in the Washington Post that wrongly indicated that the Church now approved of same-sex unions. More recently, Chris Christie – former Governor of New York, 2023 Presidential candidate, and a Catholic – suggested that his views had shifted on the issue of gay marriage due to how “even the Church is changing”.

The letter echoes statements made by bishops’ conferences across Africa and also by the conferences of Poland, Ukraine, France, Hungary and the Netherlands in Europe amid mounting opposition.

As the letter acknowledges: “Twenty episcopal conferences, dozens of individual prelates, and even cardinals invested with the highest positions, such as Cardinal Müller and Cardinal Sarah, have expressed an unequivocal condemnatory judgment. So have also the UK, USA, and Australian Confraternities of Catholic Clergy.”

Recently, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former head of the Holy Office under Benedict XVI, denounced Fiducia as a “failed document” which ought to be “rewritten”.

In concluding their address and appeal to Catholics around the world, the authors write:

“Let us remember that the traditional doctrine on the subject must be considered infallible, since it is unequivocally confirmed by Scripture and Tradition, a universal and uninterrupted tradition, ubique et semper [everywhere and always].”

A definitive list of all signatories is due to be published on 17 February 2024.

Photo: Cardinals face Pope Francis as he presides over the celebration of Ash Wednesday Mass on t the Church of Saint Sabina, Rome, Italy, 14 Feb. 2024. (Photo by TIZIANA FABI/AFP via Getty Images.)

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