How Pope Francis Has Addressed Marriage Matters| National Catholic Register

The problem of marriage in modern society has been central to Pope Francis’ agenda throughout his pontificate.

The problem of marriage in modern society has been central to Pope Francis’ agenda throughout his pontificate. He has addressed the matter with a characteristic focus on mercy and reform, and in the process he has heightened tensions within the Church.

While celebrating the vocation of marriage and encouraging people to wed at a time when many choose not to do so, the Pope has also sought to address the reality of modern relationships, including the fact that many marriages today end in divorce and that many Catholics live in situations contrary to the teachings of their Church.

Last November, the Pope urged pastoral workers to welcome “those who cohabit, postponing indefinitely their marital commitment,” as well as “divorced-and-remarried people.”

The statement came 10 years after he performed a gesture exemplifying such inclusiveness: He married a group of couples who, in some cases, had cohabited and had children together. Some observers interpreted the ceremony as a harbinger of changes in Church teaching on divorce and remarriage or said that it showed the Pope was playing down tradition. Others insisted that he was merely showing the mercy of a pastor.

Only a few months after his election in 2013, the Pope announced that he would call not one but two synods on the family over the succeeding two years. Those assemblies of bishops took up various controversial issues, including Church teaching on homosexuality, but their most prominent debate was over whether Catholics in irregular relationships — particularly those who had divorced and remarried under civil law without an annulment of the first marriage — should receive Communion.

Previous popes had forbidden this unless the man and woman in the new union abstained from conjugal relations and lived together “as brother and sister.” Pope Francis reopened the question, but at the end of the synodal process, most bishops were still not persuaded to support liberalization. The Pope responded in his closing speech by denouncing “closed hearts that frequently hide even behind the Church’s teachings, in order to sit in the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superiority and superficiality, difficult cases and wounded families.”

The following year, in his apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis wrote that even people in an “objective state of sin” could be eligible to receive the “help of the sacraments.” He later authorized an interpretation of that language that made it possible for some people in irregular unions to receive Communion after a process of discernment with a priest.

A major argument of those who opposed this change was that it would undermine the Church’s teaching that the marital bond is indissoluble, or lifelong. But in how many cases does this bond actually apply? Pope Francis has said that “the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null” because people do not understand the commitment they are making.

To address this problem among others, the Pope approved a proposed “marriage catechumenate” of a year to prepare for the sacrament, followed by pastoral accompaniment for the first two or three years of marriage.

Pope Francis has also made it easier for bishops to grant annulments, in less than two months in some cases, abbreviating a process that can otherwise take years. Critics of the streamlined process have warned that it lacks the necessary quality control, raising the risk of declaring valid marriages null. Some bishops have been slow to take up the option. The Pope has complained several times about such resistance, attributing much of it to a financial interest on the part of canon lawyers who handle marriage cases and don’t want to lose clients.

The Pope’s reforms regarding marriage are, strictly speaking, separate from his conciliatory approach to LGBT issues, including his endorsement of civil unions for same-sex couples. “There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family,” he wrote in Amoris Laetitia.

A 2021 statement by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, published with the assent of Pope Francis, ruled out blessings of same-sex couples in part because such blessings “would constitute a certain imitation or analogue of the nuptial blessing invoked on the man and woman united in the sacrament of matrimony.”

But in December 2023, the doctrinal office stated, with Pope Francis’s approval, that priests could bless same-sex couples after all.

The declaration Fiducia Supplicans cautioned that such blessings must not “be performed with any clothing, gestures, or words that are proper to a wedding,” and the office followed up with a press release stressing that the blessings should be spontaneous, short and simple, “neither liturgical nor ritualized.”

Some progressives have nonetheless taken permission for the blessings as a sign that they can hope for something more.

“It is a step in the right direction that was long overdue,” said Gregor Podschun, leader of the Federation of German Catholic Youth, upon the publication of Fiducia Supplicans. “However, this can only be a first step. … It is not just about blessings but about marriage for all couples.”

Podschun was a prominent participant in the German Synodal Path, an assembly of Catholic bishops and laypeople that in March 2023 voted to approve a formal liturgy for the blessing of same-sex couples.

Nearly two years later, a spokeswoman for the Central Committee of German Catholics said that a collection of suggested prayers for such blessings is expected to be completed in the coming weeks and published soon thereafter.

Whether or not the Vatican responds to that publication, the issues surrounding marriage and family that Pope Francis has raised will continue to challenge the Church’s efforts to apply its teaching to the complexities of modern life.