Russia's Orthodox church has backed the mid-March declaration by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, barring the blessing of same-sex unions.
“We cannot in any way or under any form accept same-sex cohabitation as a marriage union. Accordingly, no wedding or blessing can be performed”, said Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, the Russian church's foreign relations director. “People of homosexual orientation also come to our Orthodox churches, and if they go to the priest to receive a blessing, the priest cannot deny this. But if such a person says, ‘Father, bless me for my same-sex cohabitation,’ then of course the priest will refuse.”
The 54-year-old Orthodox leader was responding to questions about the CDF's Responsum ad dubium, which said it was “not licit to impart a blessing on relationships or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage”.
He said the declaration showed “complete agreement” on the issue between Orthodox and Catholic churches, both of which viewed same-sex cohabitation as “unacceptable and sinful”.
“As far as I could understand the meaning of this document, the point is that people in same-sex unions cannot receive the church's blessing”, the Oxford-educated metropolitan told the Rossiya-24 TV channel on Sunday. “This doesn't prevent each receiving a blessing individually, since no priest will reject people for committing sins. But if two men or two women come to a priest, whether Orthodox or Catholic, and ask for some form of blessing for cohabitation, this blessing will not be given. We tell him that if they want to be saved, they must give up their sinful way of life”.
The 1200-word CDF declaration said proposals to bless same-sex unions sometimes reflected “a sincere desire to welcome and accompany homosexual persons”, as they sought “to understand and fully carry out God's will in their lives”.
However, it added that blessing ceremonies, as “sacred signs that resemble the sacraments”, could not be conducted on homosexual unions since they could “approve and encourage a choice and way of life that cannot be recognised as objectively ordered to the revealed plans of God”.
“God Himself never ceases to bless each of His pilgrim children in this world, because for Him 'we are more important to God than all the sins we can commit'. But he does not and cannot bless sin”, said the declaration, which has been criticised as insensitive and high-handed by some Catholic bishops in Western Europe and the United States.
No formal consensus on LGBT issues exists among the world's 14 main Orthodox churches, together making up around 220 million Christians, although church leaderships from Greece to the US define homosexual acts, alongside adultery and abortion, as immoral and “condemned by scripture”.
July 2020 constitutional amendments in Russia were praised by Orthodox leaders for enshrining marriage “as a union of man and woman” and declaring protection for “traditional family values”. In a statement last week, the Orthodox church in Serbia condemned a draft law on same-sex unions, warning its provisions contradicted “the Gospel of Christ and the church's overall experience and practice.
“The church respects the freedom God has given us and understands the human aspiration to express this freedom in different ways”, the church's governing Holy Synod said in a statement. “There is a need to exercise certain personal, property and other rights, as dealt with in this draft law. But these can be exercised entirely administratively within the legal order, without interfering with marriage and family legislation.”
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