Angelus News | January 12, 2024 | Vol. 9 No. 1

Now that we’ve been living with the
new texts for more than a decade, it
seems abundantly clear neither the
best-case nor the nightmare scenarios
have materialized. In fact, the
towering lesson seems to be instead
that translation, while undeniably
important, just isn’t the heart of the
liturgical experience.
Where a worship community is
welcoming, music is stirring and
preaching is gripping, the liturgy will
come alive no matter what translation
is used; conversely, where a community
is cold, music banal and preaching
uninspired, no translation will make
much difference. We argue over translation
because it’s the sort of thing that
can be settled by committee, but the
real difference-makers in the liturgy
are all retail.
To come to Fiducia Supplicans,
there’s a reasonable case to be made
that it’s another case of tremendous
sizzle without a great deal of steak.
To begin with, the document doesn’t
prohibit or require anything. It simply
authorizes priests to make case-bycase
determinations as to whether a
blessing is appropriate in a given set
of circumstances. Bishops and pastors
inclined to say yes probably were
already doing so, albeit perhaps more
quietly and circumspectly, while those
disposed to say “no” aren’t being compelled
to change their tune.
Indeed, Fernández himself has
more or less endorsed the positions of
several African bishops’ conferences
in concluding that such blessings are
inappropriate in their contexts, as long
as such discretion doesn’t imply “a
total or definitive denial” of the document’s
teaching.
It’s also reasonable to wonder how
much pent-up demand for such blessings
there actually is. While there’s
a sizable “LGBT community” in the
Catholic world, a healthy percentage
of those folks don’t go to church.
Many of those who do have already
found a home, often in sympathetic
parishes where the pastor was already
known for finding creative ways to
offer a blessing on their lives well
before Francis, Fernández, or Fiducia
Supplicans came along. In addition, at
least some of those practicing Catholics
who identify as LGBT may not
even want such a blessing, feeling that
despite the best of intentions, it still
falls short of the full marriage equality
they seek from the Church.
In other words, no matter how much
dust it may throw up on social media
and in op/ed pieces, the extent to
which Fiducia Supplicans actually
will change the situation in the
trenches remains to be seen. It may
well be that for most meat-and-potatoes
Catholics, it’ll be another case of
something that caused great consternation
at the time but is actually hard
to remember a year or so after the fact.
In the end, the answer to the question
of how much will really change
is something that only time, and not
repeated explanations from authority,
is likely to make “perfectly clear.”
John L. Allen Jr. is the editor of Crux.