On Blessings

Can anyone - this isn't simply or merely a gay rights issue - receive a blessing when it's requested, no questions asked? This seems to me the core trouble with the recent document which the Vatican has released, which is being interpreted by many as allowing the blessing of illicit marriage. 

I don't pretend to be the best person to answer that question. Yet that doesn't mean that I, as a lay Catholic, cannot or should not mull over the implications. Indeed I should, and have the right.

Is the blessing of human beings without regard to their personal disposition analogous to priests blessing objects and animals? It strikes me that animals are innocents, so I don't think this applies to them. But I don't see that you can include objects in the same way. Objects often have intent behind them. Should a statue of Baal, or a Nazi flag, or a burning cross upon a lawn, be blessed? I should think not.

This raises an issue with offering a person a blessing no matter what. I don't see how their disposition cannot be a factor. If they ask for a blessing for themselves as they are, with no true intent of changing into a better person through the blessing, what's the point? 'Bless me as I am' appears arrogant in that light. Demanding that blessing seems to me effrontery and insolence. As such, I don't see how the person of whom the blessing is asked cannot consider the overt, and, indeed, the covert, disposition of the asker. 

That's just my two cents. And remember, I think this applies to anyone asking for a particular favor of anyone else, not solely towards the alphabet soup crowd and their loyalists. If you aren't trying to change for the better, there's no point to asking for a blessing. There's no obligation to grant it either.

The Pope and the Atheists

“If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”

That paragraph is the salient passage of Pope Francis I's homily from a recent (May 23rd) Mass. The message is very simple: anyone who does God's work is worthy of God's kingdom. The concept isn't new to Catholic theology. It's been taught for years. It isn't even particularly Catholic, although it likely is primarily Catholic; C. S. Lewis essentially espouses the idea in The Last Battle, the final book of the Narnia series.

It is important to note the Pope's words: he doesn't say that bad atheists are saved. Bad people are not saved, including bad Catholics. He doesn't say that atheists who run around purposefully denigrating Christ, Christianity, or religion and God in general are saved. He doesn't say that atheists who actively and unrepentantly sin are saved. He says that the ones who do good are saved. He is saying it as a recognition that God's mercy goes out to whomever God elects to give it, and that it will go to those who do good and act rightly.

This is not earth shattering news. The only reason that the media and the world see it as such is because they are conditioned to a view of Catholicism which sees it as entirely judgmental against non-Catholics. It is not. Catholicism realizes that God, in His judgment, considers all factors both for and against a person. It acknowledges that, while evil is wholly bad, good is entirely good. It may well overshadow bad so much so that it could, under the right circumstances, obliterate it.

What Pope Francis has done is merely say what Catholics have know for ages: the Church, God, is inclusive. It will, He will, include anyone who truly desires Him. Even if, on the surface, they insist they do not.