- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
Pope Francis has formally approved allowing priests to bless same-sex couples, with a new document explaining a radical change in Vatican policy by insisting that people seeking God’s love and mercy shouldn’t be subject to “an exhaustive moral analysis” to receive it.
The document from the Vatican’s doctrine office, released Monday, elaborates on a letter Francis sent to two conservative cardinals that was published in October. In that preliminary response, Francis suggested such blessings could be offered under some circumstances if they didn’t confuse the ritual with the sacrament of marriage.
The new document repeats that rationale and elaborates on it, reaffirming that marriage is a lifelong sacrament between a man and a woman. And it stresses that blessings should not be conferred at the same time as a civil union, using set rituals or even with the clothing and gestures that belong in a wedding.
But it says requests for such blessings should not be denied full stop. It offers an extensive definition of the term “blessing” in Scripture to insist that people seeking a transcendent relationship with God and looking for his love and mercy should not be subject to “an exhaustive moral analysis” as a precondition for receiving it.
This is a straw man. The pope’s decision is about a religious issue, not a legal issue.
Except married couples get legal benefits that actually matter in reality that same-sex couples don’t get. So its not a strawman. It is shit that actually happens to real people.
You don’t get legal beneficts from having a religious marriage. Only for a legal marriage, that is always possible unless your state is a behind hell hole
Furthermore, it has always been possible to get a religious wedding (certain churches only), even before it could be a legal marriage.
Entirely depends on where you live. Where I do, that is illegal to the extent that it simply has no value. You just don’t show as married to the state, and you will get in a burocracy mess if you try to do ANYTHING as a couple
The value would be, that church considers you married in the eyes of God, irrelevant of what human laws say. Not that I believe in any such god, but I remember gay people who got married in their Quaker church, and within their spiritual circle they were treated as married like any other married couple. Of course it didn’t count for anything in the secular world.
Of course meant a civil value. Of course in the religion that marriage has been practiced tp it will have its own spiritual one.
That’s not the case in the UK.
It’s probably not the case where you live either.
One clear legal benefit came up recently for me and my wife. She was in the hospital for several days. As her legal wife I was given certain medical information that would only go to next of kin. Before we got married we were not legal next of kin, and in fact that’s the reason we got married.
You got married? In a religious ceremony in a Christian church? Or you had a civil ceremony and are now in a civil partnership?