But the promulgation indicates several times that such blessings should be “spontaneous” rather than scheduled by appointment.
“People who come spontaneously to ask for a blessing show by this request their sincere openness to transcendence, the confidence of their hearts that they do not trust in their own strength alone, their need for God, and their desire to break out of the narrow confines of this world, enclosed in its limitations,” Fiducia Supplicans says.
The “pastoral sensibility” of ministers should “be formed to perform blessings spontaneously,” the declaration states, stating that they are to be “non-ritualized.”
The document says such blessings “should never be imparted in concurrence with the ceremonies of a civil union, and not even in connection with them,” nor should they be “performed with any clothing, gestures, or words that are proper to a wedding.”
The blessings allowed by the document should offer “no intention to legitimize anything,” it says, “but rather to open one’s life to God, to ask for his help to live better, and also to invoke the Holy Spirit so that the values of the Gospel may be lived with greater faithfulness.”
In its declaration, the Vatican said that Fiducia Supplicans is “sufficient to guide the prudent and fatherly discernment of ordained ministers” on the matter of irregular blessings, and that “no further responses should be expected about possible ways to regulate details or practicalities regarding blessings of this type.”
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