Cardinal Fernández defends Fiducia Supplicans, says Pope Francis ‘has expanded our understanding’
Cardinal Fernández said Pope Francis has the ‘right’ to endorse homosexual ‘blessings’ in contradiction to Catholic teaching and that the matter is ‘close to the Pope’s heart.’
L-R: Mgr Armando
Matteo, doctrinal secretary in the CDF. Cardinal Victor Fernández. Prof Paola
Scarcella. Matteo Bruni, Holy See Press Office directorMichael Haynes
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VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Víctor Manuel Cardinal Fernández has defended Fiducia Supplicans, which endorses “blessing” homosexual “couples,” saying that “Pope Francis has expanded our understanding of blessings” and “he has the right to do so.”
Speaking at the April 8 press conference presenting Dignitas Infinita – the latest document published by Fernández’s Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith – the cardinal began by defending his December 18 declaration Fiducia Supplicans, which proposed “blessings” for homosexual “couples.”
READ: Cdl Fernández’s Dignitas Infinita condemns abortion, gender theory but is silent on homosexuality
“Pope Francis has expanded our understanding of blessings,” began Fernández, appointed to lead the DDF as prefect by the Pope last summer.
“These are the kinds of blessings which do not meet the requirements of as those in liturgical context,” claimed the Argentinian cardinal, though Catholic prelates and scholars have strongly rebuked that line of argumentation.
READ: Leading Vatican theologian says Fiducia Supplicans is not part of the ‘authentic Magisterium’
Continuing his critique of the international opposition to Fiducia Supplicans, Fernández stated that those opposing the text “think that everything which is blessed must be in accordance with the will of God.”
“Pope Francis does not agree,” said Fernández, “and he has expanded our understanding and he has the right to do so.”
However, the Catholic Church teaches that the pope does not have authority to contradict the Word of God, which definitively condemns homosexual relationships, or to “make known some new doctrine,” according to the First Vatican Council.
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The cardinal added that the issue of “blessing” homosexual “couples” was “not an important matter” but one which “is still close to the Pope’s heart.”
He defended the change by appealing to Pope Francis’ controversial declaration that the death penalty is “contrary to the Gospel,” a statement the pope has since often repeated, even changing the Catechism of the Catholic Church to state that the death penalty is “inadmissible,” despite Catholic teaching and Sacred Scripture affirming the moral permissibility of the death penalty.
“This is an example of how the Church’s understanding of truth can change,” claimed Fernández about the death penalty controversy.
“Sometimes it seems that the Church is questioning us in ways that may be surprising,” he added.
Fiducia Supplicans caused an instant and global outrage from Catholics of all ranks, from laity through to Vatican cardinals such as Cardinals Gerhard Müller and Robert Sarah.
The widespread opposition has continued unabated, and earlier this year, a group of clerics and scholars petitioned the pope to withdraw the beleaguered text.
Both Fernández and Francis embarked on a campaign to regain favorable media coverage, and shortly afterwards, Fernández largely disappeared from public view. His absence was a marked change after having issued numerous documents through last autumn.
Today marks the first appearance at a press conference since he left Argentina to become a cardinal, and the first widely advertised event at which he might be questioned since December 18.
But his citation of Francis’ change to the death penalty teaching is also controversial, by nature of the death penalty question itself.
The pope made his groundbreaking changes to Pope John Paul II’s and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s Catechism in 2018, declaring that the death penalty “is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” Less than a year later, Francis redoubled his personal attacks on the death penalty, sending a video message to the 7th World Congress Against the Death Penalty calling it “a serious violation of the right to life that every person has.”
Since 2018, it has become a recurring talking point for the Pope.
But in changing the text of the Catechism, scholars charged that Francis went against the consistent teaching of “Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium of the Church,” which “for 2,000 years have upheld the intrinsic legitimacy of the death penalty for grave crimes against the common good of Church or State.”
READ: Pope’s change to Catechism contradicts natural law and the deposit of Faith
The legitimacy of the death penalty is defended in the writings, teaching, and statements of theologians, saints, and the magisterium throughout the history of the Church, as scholars, such as Edward Feser and Joseph Bessette, joint authors of By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment, have extensively pointed out.
Pope Francis’ position on the death penalty is against the words of Scripture, for in the book of Genesis, capital punishment is permitted precisely because murder violates man’s dignity as being made in the image of God: “whosever shall shed man’s blood, his blood shall be shed: for man was made to the image of God.” (Gen 9:6)
This teaching is further proposed by St. Thomas Aquinas, who drew from Scripture himself to teach that the common good is protected and justice preserved by observing the death penalty. (Summa Theologiae, 2a 2ae, q64, a2 & a3).
Avery Cardinal Dulles stated in 2004 that “the reversal of a doctrine as well established as the legitimacy of capital punishment would raise serious problems regarding the credibility of the magisterium… the previous teaching had been discarded, doubt would be cast on the current teaching as well.”
Notwithstanding such teaching, the Pope’s revolutionary attempted overturning of the licit nature of the death penalty has already been cited on increasing occasions by high-ranking members of the Vatican curia and the Church, including Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia and Cardinal Christoph Schönborn.
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- Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández
- Catholic
- Catholic Church
- Catholic Teaching
- Cdf
- Congregation For The Doctrine Of The Faith
- Curia
- Death Penalty
- Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith
- Fiducia Supplicans
- homosexual 'blessings'
- Homosexuality
- Pope
- Pope Francis
- same-sex blessings
- Vatican
- Víctor Manuel Fernández
