Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp, Belgium, suggested that homosexual
couples, divorced and remarried Catholics, and cohabiting pairs should
be given some sort of Church blessing as part of a “diversity of
rituals” that would recognize the “exclusiveness and stability” of their
unions.
Since the two Synods on the Family and the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia,
this is probably one of the most radical viewpoints to have been
expressed to date in the name of “pastoral care” and “mercy” by a
Catholic prelate.
Bishop Bonny offers his thoughts in a book to be published October 11 by Flemish editor Lannoo under the title May I? Thank you. Sorry, an obvious quote from Pope Francis’ frequent talks to married couples.
While Bonny offers an open dialogue about relationships, marriage and
family, his most shocking proposals in the book have already been
presented to the Dutch-speaking public by the Catholic Church’s official
weekly in Flanders, Kerk & Leven. The magazine’s
editor-in-chief, Luc Vanmaercke, described the book as a response to the
Pope’s call during the two Synods for the Church to take a more
contemporary view of society.
The book is a presentation of conversations between Bishop Bonny and
Belgian moral theologian Roger Burgraeve, who favors recognition of
homosexual identity and unions, as well as Kerk & Leven journalist Ilse Van Halst.
That the book is promoting what amounts to formal recognition of
unmarried, remarried, and even homosexual couples should come as no
surprise. Vanmaercke hailed the legalization of same-sex “marriage” by
governments and parliaments as proof that they do not “consider marriage
as an outdated institution, but as still having value, and in which
they are prepared to invest … Good news for all those who appreciate
marriage.”
If the Catholic Church in Belgium was prepared to name an
editor-in-chief such as Vanmaercke for its official weekly, Bishop
Bonny’s suggestions appear to be all but mainstream by Flemish standards
instead of the lone ramblings of a progressive dreamer.
His “thought experiment” – as the Belgian press calls it – feels
uncomfortably close to a fully-fledged proposition that would only
require a bit of implementation to become common practice in the Belgian
Church. Bishop Bonny uses firm language to put forth his idea:
“There is no way we can continue to claim that there can be no other
forms of love than heterosexual marriage. We find the same kind of love
between a man and woman who live together, in homo-pairs and lesbian
couples,” Bonny writes.
“The question is: Should we try to squeeze everything into one and
the same model?” he asks elsewhere in the book. “Should we not evolve
towards a diversity of rituals in which we can recognize the loving
relationship between homosexuals, even from the perspective of the
Church and of the faith?”
Bonny recognizes that same-sex couples cannot express the deeply
symbolic link between sexual alterity and fruitfulness, which means, he
explains, that they cannot attain a true sacramental union. But having
said same-sex marriage cannot exist, he goes on to destroy the teaching
of the Church on sexual morality by insisting that any type of “love
relationship” can be intent on achieving an “exclusive and lasting
relationship” that deserves recognition.
Is that what his interlocutor Burgraeve calls a “smaller good” that
correctly expresses the identity of a given person in a given situation?
Burgraeve writes elsewhere that if the Catechism calls homosexuality
“intrinsically disordered,” that is because it can only be said to be so
in an abstract way, in words that can never be applied to concrete and
personal circumstances.
Bonny’s words echo that viewpoint.
So he asks hypothetical questions to which he has long found an
answer. “Can I, as a bishop, provide a ritual that is akin to the little
sign of cross that parents trace on a child’s forehead, but then to
believers who live together and who wish each other all the best, in the
light of God’s presence? A sign of the cross is not a sacrament, but it
does belong to the order of ‘holy signs and gestures.’ Cannot we, in
the Church, create different shades between the ‘nothing’ for unmarried
cohabiting couples and the ‘all’ of sacramental marriage, that clearly
recognize what is ‘already’ there, and at the same time let see what is
‘not yet’ there?”
For divorced and “remarried” couples, Bishop Bonny appeals to the
same sort of reasoning in a way that echoes the recent proposals made to
the bishops of greater Buenos Aires, Argentina: “The question of
communion for the divorced and remarried should be carefully weighed. It
is not a question of a general ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ but of an evaluation. You
have to judge on the basis of the individual situation of the persons
involved. Or, better said, they can and must participate in that judging
in the light of certain criteria.”
This leads him to say the Church should, in some cases, bless a
second relationship. “From ancient times, the Orthodox Church has known
the confirmation of a new relationship for reasons of mercy, where as a
couple you get a new place in the community. This new blessing is
however not a repetition or a replacement of the first sacramental
marriage. That was and is unique.”
Clearly, this means that Bishop Bonny is in favor of “separating what God has put together” and blessing what God has forbidden.
In all the cases he quotes, all the relationships he contends would
in some cases at least justify “new rituals” and special blessings, it
is not the living together as a community or a friendly relationship
that he wants to have the Church endorse. The aim is to bless sexual
relationships outside of marriage and even against the law of human
nature as good and valid expressions of human love, and therefore as
good and valid images of divine Love, albeit in a more imperfect form
than “heterosexual marriage.”
To Catholic standards, this is crazy if not downright blasphemous.
But there is method in the madness. It twistedly takes into account the
fact that sexual activity outside marriage is wrong — a grave sin that
prevents the sinner from receiving communion without confession and that
prevents him or her from receiving absolution in confession when in a
public and lasting sinful relationship he or she has no intention of
breaking off.
By moving the cursor from legitimate marriage to a stable and
exclusive relationship of whatever kind, a Church blessing would
“legitimize” any sexual activity within that relationship, thus lifting
restrictions to participation in the life of the Church.
Will Bishop Bonny be officially disavowed by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church?