Pope grants priests permission to bless same-sex couples

Pushback from the LGBTQ community

For those who do not delve deeper into the Vatican’s announcement, a ‘blessing’ for gay couples looking to gay married may seem like a positive development or a step in the right direction.

However, LGBTQ Catholics looking to get married in the church may well find that the announcement is little besides a meaningless PR move.

For example, the announcement stated, ‘Those seeking a blessing should not be required to have prior moral perfection,’ which is a way of reinforcing that homosexuality is still viewed as a sin in the Catholic Church’s collective eye.

In reference to the marriage itself, it continued: ‘There is no intention to legitimise anything, but rather to open one’s life to God, to ask for his help to live better, and also to invoke the Holy Spirit so that the values of the Gospel may be lived with greater faithfulness.’

In other words, we recognise that members of the LGBTQ community exist within the Catholic Church, and although we wish you well, you still aren’t recognised as an ‘official’ married couple.

Many LGBTQ advocacy groups and couples have taken this announcement as confirmation that the church continues to view gay couples as less legitimate than heterosexual partnerships.

Perhaps more of a half-step forward, then.

The Pope is trying

Though the Catholic Church’s strict rules were established centuries ago, society has transformed since then.

Pope Francis is clearly not oblivious to this, surprising the public when he responded ‘Who am I to judge?’ which asked for his thoughts on a gay priest running a a church back in 2013.

Last year, he also said that being homosexual is ‘not a crime,’ further distancing himself from popes of the past who took on a more traditional interpretation of Roman Catholic values.

Whether or not the latest blessings towards same-sex couples make any real difference to the church’s rules, you have to hand it to the pope.

He is slowly chipping away at social barriers like no other religious figurehead before him – and that’s not an easy thing to do in an insitution that is more than 2,000 years old.