The Papal Announcement

Over 60 years ago my mother had a miscarriage. It was her third pregnancy in as many years. She lost a lot of blood and required a transfusion. She got hepatitis from the blood transfusion. The disease ruined her liver. She died when I was just over 3 years old.

Back then, you see, there were no liver transplants. The disease killed her.

Back then, the blood screening was largely to verify blood type. The blood killed her.

Back then, good Catholics were not permitted to practice birth control. Religion killed her.

——

My parents tried. I learned my father asked, during confession, if they could use condoms. The answer was no: it was a sin.

Children are blessings, it was a sin to interfere with procreation. If it was meant to be, as many children as they were given would be cherished and raised in the Church.

My mother was devout and I never heard that she disagreed with the Catholic Church’s teaching on anything.

So she got pregnant (me), then pregnant (my brother 11 months later), then pregnant, then sick, then dead.

My father, confessing his sorrow and rage against God months later, in a new church and to a new priest, was told that THIS priest would have given them an exemption.

My father broke that day, I think. An infallible God he understood. God’s all-to fallible and contradictory emissaries, with the power to speak confidently as the wind of opinion swirled? Changing based on the oh so human viewpoint regarding eternal truths? No.

How would things have been different if THAT had been the first priest consulted? We will never know.

What I do know is that, to my parents, the teachings of the Church mattered. They mattered a lot. They were, in the end, the only thing that mattered.

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Yesterday the Pope declared that Roman Catholic priests can now administer blessings to same-sex couples as long as it is not part of regular Church rituals or liturgies.

To be clear: this is not performing same-sex marriages. It IS meant to show that God welcomes all that seek God through a blessing.

Predictably: many people have lost leave of their senses and cool due to this Papal announcement. Let me add my two cents, from personal experience.

_

I am a wedding officiant, among other vocations. I've been writing and performing weddings, baptisms, funerals, house-blessings, handfasting, and baby-naming since 2009. Some of the people I unite have been same-sex couples.

The first same-sex couple had been living together in a committed relationship for almost 30 years when their union had the opportunity to be recognized legally in Michigan. I had been registered on a site for wedding officiants for quite some time and they contacted me to see about a quiet, and secular, ceremony.

"Nothing elaborate" they said. "No rings or candles or anything" they said. Just want to make it legal. Fine with me. I cleaned my house and prepared to do a quick uniting in my living room.

They brought their license as well as their witnesses. I had tied white balloons on my mailbox to mark the right house. As we assembled in my spotless living room/wedding venue, they told me they had just one request.

Would I, they wondered, would I "feel comfortable praying and asking God to bless them? If not, they'd understand, but they thought they'd ask."

Their witnesses, it turned out, were not family. For all of those years family did not recognize their commitment. Their family did not give a blessing. Their family made it clear that God didn't give a blessing either.

But now that the great state of Michigan was giving its blessing, perhaps I would feel free to give a blessing now? Because, you see, a blessing mattered. A blessing meant they were seen. They were recognized.

A blessing was indeed given. (I blessed them as blessed as blessed could possibly be, and did so through my tears.)

And- they both surprised each other, too, by producing a ring. By that point there were tears all around.

_

I'm no Pope. I'm a born-Roman Catholic, Baptized and First Communion-ized. Then spent some time in a Fundamentalist Plymouth Brethren Church where I learned that women had no voice save for the one their husband used on behalf of the family.

Now I am deeply spiritual and not affiliated with a specific Church. Just, hopefully as my action mostly show, affiliated only with God. I am, as Philippians 2:12 states: "working out your (my) own salvation with reverential awe and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for God's good pleasure."

Sometimes that means going to Christmas Eve Midnight Mass with my husband. Sometimes I listen to sermons from Protestant preachers. Sometimes I sing the hymns my Grandmother played on the piano. Most often, I pray: reaching up and out, inward and deep, establishing a connection with the God that loves us. That loves me. And that is what works for me, ritual-wise. That's what matters to me.

Would a blessing, sanctioned by the Pope, matter? Does it matter? Yes.

Had the Pope, way back when, sanctioned the use of condoms, I may not be alive. And my mother may have lived to be at least 25 years old. My father may not have committed suicide at 72. Who knows?

My parents, you see, desired the blessing. The blessing for this life and the next. To obtain it they followed what they were told. They were good Catholics.

Somewhere, everywhere, all over: families have been good Catholics (if not good family) to their LGBTQI+ children. They have refused to recognize their spouses and partners, because the Church has said they don't get, they don't DESERVE (don't get me started on works and grace, people. just don't) a blessing.

Until yesterday. Until, no matter how inadequate the phrasing, the lack of ritual, the words: until now. NOW. Now they can receive a blessing.

Will that matter to everyone? No. Not a chance. But you know what? It will matter to some. Families will be healed. People will be recognized. It will make a difference.

And, to me, that's what faith is for. To zoom above and around mere religion and make a difference in the lives of people.

~

Even if your views differ from mine, your comments are welcomed.

Here's some info about how I started doing weddings: