Blessing a Couple versus Blessing their Union

[Dimmesdale]

I have recently thought about the document the Vatican recently put out and the effect it has had on many of the laity and those in ecclesial authority. It has to do with the blessing of same sex couples, which is now officially being allowed.

I have not gone over the document, Fiducia Supplicans, in-depth, but I definitely plan to, as I want to delve into the intricacies of this new teaching.

But before that, I want to first settle on a distinction which one scholar, in defending the document, has made, and that is the difference between blessing a "couple" as opposed to blessing their "union", the relationship of said couple.

Conservative commentators have latched onto this and have said that it is a meaningless distinction, a form of sophistry, since a couple by definition must be in a union and, therefore, to bless said couple is ipso facto to bless their union. It is a differentiation, in other words, in terms of words only, and not in fact. In fact such a difference is effectively meaningless. Those who criticize the Vatican see this as merely a jugglery of words to obfuscate the fact that priests may now "bless sin."

I am not so sure.

Granted, one may say that to call a couple a couple delineates it in terms of a certain specific relational sphere. Namely, the sphere of romantic love, affection, and so forth. Otherwise, why call such a grouping of two persons as a couple? One may say that a couple, if they are near in proximity to each other, occupy roughly the same space, whether that of the same room, or building, or some other determinant in which their relative space is the prominent feature of their bearing a relation to each other.

But that doesn't say much. At least, not yet. What we all mean when we talk about a couple is not merely the way they are related together physically and therefore localized in some impersonal space, but rather how they relate to each other.

And herein is where things get interesting.

A gay couple seeking a blessing does not have to mean that they want their union affirmed, necessarily. After all, even though "couple" and "union" are intimately related, this does not meld the two terms as one. There is indeed a differentiation, otherwise why would we take the time to parse these things out as separate and have two distinct words for them? No. A couple may be roughly defined as a definitional grouping of two people, perhaps in a relationship or out of it. But a union specifically is the bond, the link, the chain that makes the couple what it is, and not simply by virtue of 'couple'. They are different things, albeit related together as one.

A critic might say: "But, even though they are two things, one implies the other and so they are one in an even higher sense, or synthesis." In other words, the contamination of the union bleeds into the couple aspect. After all, if the couple had no union, then they would not be a couple. There is a certain magnetism here. A certain symbiotic relationship within the relationship.

I still beg to differ. A couple may have a union, but this union may be thought in more multifarious terms than mere 'sin.' It may be sinful to bear a homosexual relationship. But it is not sinful to bear an authentically human relationship. And, if we accept a gay couple in good faith, that they want, somehow, to be delivered away from a faulty union, and led into the light of a greater, more human union free of sin... then that couple may still be related, but in a more purified, more human, and more authentically loving way.... Divorced people may not think much of their exes at times, but they still are humans walking a human path in the world, whatever that may be. We can see each other as comrades, in other words, rather than faulty lovers. And if we want to make that step, however fragile into the light, then we may just may see that things can get better - for all of us - through time.....

That is what I think.