On June 1, the U.S. Embassy to the Vatican in Rome flew the LBGTQ pride flag to celebrate “Pride Month,” prompting backlash online on account of the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church’s positions on homosexuality.
The U.S. Embassy to the Holy See celebrates #PrideMonth with the Pride flag on display during the month of June. The United States respects the dignity and equality of LGBTQI+ people. LGBTQI+ rights are human rights. pic.twitter.com/Xentlnr16E
— U.S. in Holy See (@USinHolySee) June 1, 2021
The U.S. Embassy’s decision was roundly criticized:
A big 🖕 to the Catholic Church from the United States government. https://t.co/q7IZF58XZ1
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) June 1, 2021
Do they have one up in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan? https://t.co/A1foMgNRvG
— David Harsanyi (@davidharsanyi) June 1, 2021
U.S. Embassies should limit themselves to flying the American flag, which unites ALL Americans.
That is the only flag to which we ALL pledge allegiance. https://t.co/sldXFI9mLu
— Thomas D. Williams, PhD (@tdwilliamsrome) June 1, 2021
In March, the Vatican asserted that priests could not bless same-sex unions and that any such blessings were invalid. In a Responsum of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican stated:
In some ecclesial contexts, plans and proposals for blessings of unions of persons of the same sex are being advanced. Such projects are not infrequently motivated by a sincere desire to welcome and accompany homosexual persons, to whom are proposed paths of growth in faith, “so that those who manifest a homosexual orientation can receive the assistance they need to understand and fully carry out God’s will in their lives.” …
Among the liturgical actions of the Church, the sacramentals have a singular importance: “These are sacred signs that resemble the sacraments: they signify effects, particularly of a spiritual kind, which are obtained through the Church’s intercession. By them men are disposed to receive the chief effect of the sacraments, and various occasions of life are sanctified.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church specifies, then, that “sacramentals do not confer the grace of the Holy Spirit in the way that the sacraments do, but by the Church’s prayer, they prepare us to receive grace and dispose us to cooperate with it.”
Blessings belong to the category of the sacramentals, whereby the Church “calls us to praise God, encourages us to implore his protection, and exhorts us to seek his mercy by our holiness of life”[4]. In addition, they “have been established as a kind of imitation of the sacraments, blessings are signs above all of spiritual effects that are achieved through the Church’s intercession.”
Consequently, in order to conform with the nature of sacramentals, when a blessing is invoked on particular human relationships, in addition to the right intention of those who participate, it is necessary that what is blessed be objectively and positively ordered to receive and express grace, according to the designs of God inscribed in creation, and fully revealed by Christ the Lord. Therefore, only those realities which are in themselves ordered to serve those ends are congruent with the essence of the blessing imparted by the Church.
For this reason, it is not licit to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage (i.e., outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman open in itself to the transmission of life), as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex. The presence in such relationships of positive elements, which are in themselves to be valued and appreciated, cannot justify these relationships and render them legitimate objects of an ecclesial blessing, since the positive elements exist within the context of a union not ordered to the Creator’s plan.
Furthermore, since blessings on persons are in relationship with the sacraments, the blessing of homosexual unions cannot be considered licit. This is because they would constitute a certain imitation or analogue of the nuptial blessing. invoked on the man and woman united in the sacrament of Matrimony, while in fact “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.”
In late May, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken authorized U.S. embassies to fly Black Lives Matter (BLM) flags and banners to mark the one-year-anniversary of George Floyd’s death. “The U.S. State Department cable gives chiefs of missions, who head U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide, ‘blanket written authorization’ to display BLM flags and banners as ‘appropriate in light of local conditions,'” Foreign Policy reported. “It stresses the directive is an ‘authorization, not a requirement.'”