Synodality and Blessing People

The Vatican document Fiducia Supplicans on the blessing of persons in same-sex unions has provoked a lot of controversy. As usual this is along of the lines of liberal vs conservative, for or against Pope Francis, etc. 

John's Allen's article follows the usual press line and suggests that conservatives who want an alternative to Francis may have one in the Cardinal who basically said that gay unions would not be blessed in Africa. Below I have reprinted the basic data about what happened,  you can read the full article to learn more about Cardinal Ambongo of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Congo's Emerging Papal Candidate

One principal consequence of the controversy surrounding the document, ironically enough, would appear to be to have given conservative critics of the pope a chance to kick the tires on possible candidates in a future conclave, meaning contenders who might steer the church in a different direction.

Right now, perhaps no one’s stock as a papabile, or candidate to become pope, has risen as much during the furor over Fiducia as Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who also serves as the elected leader of the African bishops as president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM).

A recent headline in the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero, atop a piece by veteran Vatican correspondent Franca Giansoldati, says it all: “The profile of Cardinal Ambongo advances among the future papabili: He led the African blockade of the blessing of gay couples.”

The reference is to the fact that the 64-year-old Ambongo was the prime mover in a Jan. 11 statement from SECAM which declared Fiducia Supplicans a dead letter on the continent. African prelates, it said, “do not consider it appropriate for Africa to bless homosexual unions or same-sex couples because, in our context, this would cause confusion and would be in direct contradiction to the cultural ethos of African communities.”

To begin with, it marks the first time the bishops of an entire continent have said that a Vatican edict will not be applied on their territory. Given how difficult it generally is to get an unwieldy body of bishops to agree on anything, the compact and rapid fashion in which SECAM responded is, inter alia, a testament to Ambongo’s leadership.

Moreover, the SECAM statement is also striking for the manner in which it was worked out in concert with the pope and his top advisors.

Ambongo has told the story in a conversation with a French Catholic blog. After soliciting the responses of the African bishops’ conferences to Fiducia, he flew to Rome to share them with the pope. Francis asked him to work with Argentine Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which Ambongo did, consulting the pontiff along the way, so that when the SECAM statement appeared, it carried a de facto seal of papal approval.

In other words, Ambongo found a way for the Africans to have their cassava and eat it too – opposing the pope, at least indirectly, but without seeming disloyal. That’s one of the most difficult needles to thread in Catholic life, and the artful fashion in which Ambongo pulled it off has turned heads.

He obviously enjoys the favor of Pope Francis, having been named a member of the pontiff’s Council of Cardinals in 2020, taking the place of Monsengwo, and then being confirmed in that position in 2023. He also hosted a successful papal trip to Congo last February

If we look at the events in terms of Synodality, this seems to me to be a victory for process of synodality as likely understood by Francis.

In the last session of the synod, there was great disagreement on how to deal with gay people, even over whether to refer to them as LGBTQ+ 

The Vatican document Fiducia Supplicans could be seen as attempting to resolve the controversy by a Vatican intervention. Note that while approved by Pope Francis, it is really the work of the CDF which in the 'new way" of doing things is supposed to facilitate the work both of the Pope and the Bishops. 

Was the intervention successful. No, if that means that everyone was happy about the intervention.  Yes, if it means that we are on our way toward a resolution of the situation which says that we bless both saints and sinners, and that we bless interpersonal relationships (e.g. marriages, families, households, friendships) even while there is a mixture of good and bad in all those relationships. 

Yes, if it means that the standard for public blessing is more lenient than the standards for Baptism, Communion, Confirmation, Marriage and Holy Orders. Yes, if this ultimately allows clergy to bless households without inquiring deeply into the moral life of those living together. If the persons involved are caring for one another, and forming a community of caring people around them, then we should affirm all these positives.  Indeed, these household relationships may be more positive that sacramental marriages full of anger, deceit, cheating with other lovers, and spousal abuse, 

If we are headed toward an understanding of "blessing" that enables the Germans to support gay households because people perceive their net worth in Germany and the African to not support gay households because their societies do not perceive their net worth, then we have done something which the Anglicans have failed to do, and which has greatly damaged their communion. 

We are still early in the process, but it seems that our process may be working, that we are listening to one another not ignoring one another.   If that process means that both Pope Francis and a possible future Pope with a very different life experience are learning how to facilitate the process rather than dominating it, we may be heading toward the holy grail of church unity. Christianity has usually split along ethnic and geographical lines more than ideological lines.