Fr. Z's Blog

This comes via a comment under another post HERE

QUAERITUR:

Serious question – if a priest were to bless an unholy act, would he be bringing a curse upon himself?

God the Father is very clear in the Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena about this particular sin and the standard to which He holds His priests.

I needed some time to think about this and to consult.

First, the reference to the Dialogue, above. Reminder: I wrote about that HERE. In a nutshell, St. Catherine, Doctor and Patroness of Europe and of Italy, in her her Dialogues (ch 124), writes that the Enemy, demons, incite people to unnatural sins (homosexual acts) but that they don’t stick around to see them happen, because those acts  are too repulsive even for them.   As Christ – concerning priests especially – told St. Catherine:

Not that the evil displeases [demons] because they like anything good, but because their nature was originally angelic, and their angelic nature causes them to loathe the sight of the actual commission of this enormous sin. They truly enough hurl the arrow poisoned with the venom of concupiscence, but when their victim proceeds to the actual commission of the sin, they depart for the reason and in the manner that I have said.

Such acts can result in extraordinary demonic activity like oppression, obsession, possession.  Demons are legalistic.  They claim a right to “attach”, as it were. Their claim has to be broken. Certain sins – including unnatural sex acts – give demons a claim on a person or place. If a priest then blesses a homoerotic couple… what does that imply for the claim of the demons? Could the demons make a claim on the priest for what he did?

Extraordinary demonic activity such as oppression, obsession, possession is morally neutral.  As a matter of fact, not that a person should ever undertake such a route, God forbid!, possession can be the occasion for a person to attain to great holiness.

That said – and this has to be perfectly clear – the commission of even a venial sin is morally worse than being possessed.   Sin is worse than ordinary or extraordinary demonic activity.

Priests (seminarians, religious) are high value targets for the Enemy, who has limited time just as we do.  There is a much higher incidence of extraordinary demonic activity for priests (etc.) who commit sins such as viewing porn as there would be among, say, high school students or your average Joe.   Without denigrating them in the least, the latter are a dime a dozen.  Priests are high value targets.  Hence, anything that might incite extraordinary demonic activity is going to have a far higher risk for priests than most lay people.

The graver the sin, the higher the risk.

A blessing invokes the names of the Most Holy Trinity, naming the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.   Their very names are sacred.  Invoking them to bestow blessings, graces, is decidedly non-trivial.

Think about it: Invoke the Trinity in the blessing of those whom you know intend to be engaging in such acts?  It is sacrilege.

An exorcist I spoke to before posting this called it “horrific”.

The only way in which it would not be sacrilege is if the couple are firmly resolved to cease their homoerotic and unnatural behavior and therefore they are asking for a blessing, to help them in their conversion, not to affirm them in their status quo ante.  In that case, when this is manifest, I think a priest should bless them – in view of their determination not to sin and to change their lives.

Analogy.  At the beginning of a sacramental confession, you have sorrow for sins and a firm purpose of amendment.  In our common English language form of going to confession what do you say?  “Bless me, Father…”.  You are sorry for your sins and you want to amend your life.  You want to make as good a confession as you can, so you ask for the priest’s blessing.  In hearing confessions I silently add a prayer that our holy angel guardians will protect us, keep the penitent from attacks and distractions.

Blessings are non-trivial.

For a priest to bless a homoerotic couple, who show no sign of repentance, no indication of conversion or cessation, but rather gives every indication of continuing in their ways, would be, in light of the invocation of the Most Holy Trinity, a sin of sacrilege.

Since priests are high value targets for the Enemy, it follows that a priest who blesses such an unrepentant couple are in a greater risk extraordinary demonic activity as a result of his own sin and complicity.

We are living in an age when the sense of the sacred has been terribly eroded.   Liturgical worship worthy of the name “sacred” is harder and harder to find.  Music for worship is mostly anything but sacred.  The Most Sacred Body and Blood of Christ and the sacred vessels consecrated to contain them are handled by anyone and everyone without the consecration of their hands for the task.   Communion is regularly received sacrilegiously by those who have not confessed their sins for who knows how long.  Buildings and vestments.  The whole of it.  And there’s teaching in schools, formation in catechism, preaching from pulpits.  We’ve heard more about climate and immigration and covid than we do about transcendence, sacrality and holiness.

The names of the Trinity are sacred.  To bless is a very brief liturgical act.   Think about how most prayers of blessings have always begun (and still do begin even in the post-Conciliar so-called Book of Blessings).  They start with the priest saying “Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini... Our help is in the name of the Lord”, to which those present respond “Qui fecit caelum et terram… Who made Heaven and Earth.”  They go on with “Dominus vobiscum“, etc., and end with affirmation in “Amen” as a response.  If that isn’t liturgical… what is it?

Liturgies are for worship of God, the fulfillment of the virtue of religion, not the implication of that which is most sacred in the ongoing determination to commit terrible sins.

Hence, to tell most people today that the blessing – whatever that is – of a same-sex couple – ’cause love is love, okay? – is a sacrilege is going to be sort of like shouting down a well.

What does sacrilege mean for those who have no idea of what sacrality is?

I’m afraid that, by now, many priests and perhaps even bishops, might have succumbed to the times in this regard.

Objections may come.  “But God is merciful!”  Okay, but God is just and God is not to be mocked.” “You are mean!”  No, I want people to go to Heaven and that might require painful effort.  “The Pope says you have to do it.”  No, I really don’t.   “The Church’s teaching has changed.” No, it really hasn’t.  “You hate gays!”  Not in the least.  I am unwilling to lie to them.

Finally, something more to contemplate from the Jewish, rabbinic tradition.

At the top, I mentioned the Dialogues of St. Catherine of Siena.  In the passage I cited, Christ says:

[The sin of sodomy] does indeed displease Me so much and I hold it in such abomination that for it alone I buried five cities by a Divine judgment, My Divine justice being no longer able to endure it.

Turning to the rabbinic tradition, Rabbi Huna (Talmudist +297) said that

“The generation of the Flood was not wiped out until they wrote marriage documents or contracts for the union of a man to a male or to an animal.” – Genesis Rabbah 26:5 (Genesis 6:2) (cf. also Leviticus Rabbah 23:9 (Leviticus 18:2-4)

Get that?  God did not bring on the Flood because men were committing unnatural acts.  He brought the Flood because they codified same-sex unions.  They gave them approval.  As it were, they blessed them.

Hmmm… Save The Liturgy… Save The World.

Fathers!  I am praying for you.   Do not commit sacrilege.

I pray that God will protect you from spiritual and temporal harm. 

I pray for you to invoke your Confirmed character so as to be strong when you are tried. 

I pray that Mary, Queen of Priests, will place her mantle over you. 

I pray that St. Joseph, Terror of Demons, will guard you. 

I pray that Sts. Michael and Gabriel and Raphael will fight beside you, inspire you, and heal you.