'A step forward' or 'contradictory'? Catholic reactions to approval of blessings for LGBT couples

Cardinal Gerhard Muller

Cardinal Gerhard Muller, who formerly served as the prefect of the Vatican's Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, condemned the declaration in a lengthy rebuttal published in The Pillar on Dec. 21.

He took particular issue with its "self-invented but misleading signs and words that God is not so demanding about sin," which he maintains hides the "fact that sin in thought, word and deed distances us from God."

Muller described the document as "self-contradictory" because, on the one hand, "one can only accept that it is good to bless these unions, even in a pastoral way, if one believes that such unions are not objectively contrary to the law of God" while on the other hand, "as long as Pope Francis continues to affirm that homosexual unions are always contrary to God's law, he is implicitly affirming that such blessings cannot be given." 

"In the Bible, a blessing has to do with the order that God has created and that he has declared to be good. This order is based on the sexual difference of male and female, called to be one flesh. Blessing a reality that is contrary to creation is not only impossible; it is blasphemy."