Keeping it Real: AI, Catholic Answers, and the Vatican, by Christopher R. Altieri
April 27, 2024On Beginnings and Endings, by Regis Martin
April 27, 2024
By Dr. Maike Hickson, LifeSite News, April 26, 2024
Dr. John Haas, Professor of Moral Theology at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia, has raised his voice of opposition to the papally-approved Vatican document Fiducia Supplicans allowing for non-liturgical blessings of homosexual “couples” and heterosexual couples in irregular relationships. The document had been published on December 18, 2023, by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, but was explicitly approved by Pope Francis.
In a statement sent to LifeSite (see full text below), Haas rejects the use of the term “homosexuality” since it is an “abstraction.” Rather, he argues, one need to speak of the “acts” of homosexuals. That is to say, what characterizes a homosexual “couple” is of the following principle: “two individuals in a deep personal relationship which would be worthy of the term ‘couple’ would act as human beings, engaging in activities from which the term couple is derived: copulation.” But such an act, argues Professor Haas, “engender[s] only pseudo-couples,” because it “would not lead to their own good since it would depart from purposes for which their sexuality was created by God.” He also sees a danger to “public health and the social moral order.”
Haas also deals in his statement with the claim Pope Francis had made in the wake of the publication of Fiducia Supplians that such blessings merely deal with “individuals” in relationships. States the theology professor:
The Declaration itself claims that it is dealing with blessings for same-sex couples and those in irregular relationships, but Pope Francis, after its publication, and in the face of significant criticism, claimed that the blessings were to be bestowed on the ‘individuals’ in the relationship, not the relationship itself. Why, then, did the short “Declaration” itself claim nine times that it dealt with blessings for ‘same sex couples’?
