Confirmation in Confusion: The Gio Benítez Case and the Crisis of Sacramental Discipline
A Public Confirmation, a Public Question
The public confirmation of ABC News anchor Gio Benítez on 10 November 2025 at the Church of St Paul the Apostle in Manhattan has become a clarifying moment in the unfolding crisis of Catholic sacramental discipline. The parish is nationally known for its explicitly “LGBTQ+ affirming” ethos and its long-established Out at St Paul ministry, which promotes LGBT visibility within parish life, organises pride-themed events, and partners with groups widely associated with dissent from Catholic moral teaching. This pastoral environment is not one that calls those it accompanies to conversion. Unlike Courage International, whose entire spiritual method is built on chastity, sacramental confession, accountability, and fidelity to the Church’s teaching, the LGBT outreach structures at St Paul’s offer affirmation without repentance, companionship without moral direction, and community without conversion. Even groups historically in dissent, such as Dignity, have openly debated Catholic moral teaching; by contrast, at St Paul’s the moral law is simply set aside.
It was within this context that Benítez – civilly married since 2016 to another man, Tommy DiDario – received Confirmation, with his spouse acting as sponsor.¹ The liturgy was presided over by priests well known for their alignment with the parish’s LGBT ministries, including Fr James Martin, S.J., whose public activism has consistently avoided any summons to chastity, continence, or amendment of life. Fr Martin’s pastoral method is universally framed around affirmation rather than conversion: inclusion without the Cross, accompaniment without moral clarity, belonging without the discipline of the Gospel. His presence at this sacramental moment gave the entire event the character of a public signal rather than a private pastoral judgment.
The Unavoidable Fact of Civil Marriage
The civil marriage of Benítez and DiDario is a matter of public record, widely covered by contemporary media at the time of their 2016 wedding in Miami.² Both men publicly refer to each other as “husband,” and DiDario expressed pride in standing beside his spouse at the Confirmation. Far from being a case of quiet pastoral discernment, this was a public liturgy shared by the parish itself, photographed, widely circulated, and celebrated online.
Catholic teaching draws an essential distinction between private moral struggle and public states of life that explicitly contradict the Gospel. A same-sex civil marriage is not a private wound seeking healing; it is a publicly affirmed, legally ratified state incompatible with the moral teaching of the Church. In such cases the Church must either call the person to repentance and conversion or refrain from acting in a way that appears to endorse the status quo. To proceed otherwise is to harm both the soul of the recipient and the integrity of the sacrament itself.
Canonical and Doctrinal Fault Lines
Canon law requires that a candidate for Confirmation be properly disposed. The law states that, outside the danger of death, a person must be “suitably instructed, properly disposed, and able to renew the baptismal promises.”³ This disposition includes not only catechetical preparation but repentance from grave sin and a firm intention not to persist in it. A publicly recognised same-sex civil union is, by its nature, incompatible with the disposition required for the licit reception of the sacrament, since it represents an ongoing and publicly affirmed contradiction of Catholic moral teaching.
A sponsor must also “fulfil the conditions mentioned in canon 874,”⁴ which include the requirement that he or she be “a Catholic… who leads a life of faith in keeping with the function to be taken on.”⁵ A same-sex civil spouse cannot meet this requirement, not out of personal animus but because the public state itself contradicts the moral life the Church teaches and expects of those who act as ecclesial models of faith for the newly confirmed.
The Church’s doctrinal teaching reinforces the canonical framework. The Magisterium has declared: “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,”⁶ and that Catholics must offer “clear and emphatic opposition” when such unions are publicly recognised.⁷
In this light, the Confirmation of a man publicly living in a same-sex civil marriage, and the appointment of his civil spouse as sponsor, cannot be reconciled with the canonical requirements or the doctrinal teaching they express. To proceed in such circumstances is not merely a lapse in prudential judgment; it undermines the coherence of sacramental discipline and creates a counter-sign to the truth the sacrament is meant to seal.
The Theology of Unconditional Mercy
The phrase “God’s loving mercy is unconditional” has become a slogan of our age, repeated with such frequency that few stop to consider what it actually implies. In contemporary discourse it functions less as a theological affirmation and more as a therapeutic assurance that God accepts every person precisely as they are, without any demand for conversion. Mercy becomes indistinguishable from indulgence. Divine love is reimagined as passive tolerance. Repentance is relegated to an optional extra for the spiritually enthusiastic.
The Catholic tradition, however, has always taught that while the offer of mercy is unconditional, its reception requires repentance. God “wills all men to be saved,”⁸ but He does not impose salvation on the unwilling. As St Augustine says, “God created you without you; He will not justify you without you.”⁹ Grace does not confirm the sinner in sin; it calls him out of sin. Divine mercy is not sentimental approval but the ardent desire of God to purify the human heart and restore it to holiness.
Christ’s words and actions make this unmistakably clear. He receives sinners with tenderness, yet His mercy always contains a command. He forgives the paralytic but adds, “Sin no more.”¹⁰ He defends the adulterous woman but charges her, “Go, and sin no more.” His first proclamation is not affirmation but “Repent, and believe the Gospel.”¹¹ Zacchaeus, encountering mercy, responds with restitution and conversion.
The Fathers echo this unity. St John Chrysostom calls repentance the “renewal of Baptism.” St Cyril of Jerusalem describes it as the “second plank after shipwreck.” True mercy, as John Paul II taught, is “the most profound source of justice,” because it reveals sin for what it is and heals the wound it inflicts. Divine love is not permissive; it is transformative. It is the fire of God that purifies the soul.
The pastoral ethos at St Paul’s, shaped by years of activism and affirmation-based ministry, offers a mercy stripped of conversion, emptied of repentance, and detached from the demands of the Gospel. This is not Catholic mercy but its counterfeit. It changes the sacraments from instruments of sanctification into performances of emotional inclusion. Under its influence, Confirmation becomes empowerment without discipleship, Eucharist becomes nourishment without discernment, and Reconciliation becomes presumption rather than absolution.
Such a mercy does not save. It deceives. It leaves the sinner enslaved to his passions while applauding his imprisonment. True mercy must always call the sinner to conversion, or it ceases to be the mercy of Christ.
Burden on the Faithful: A Sense of Injustice
The burden placed upon faithful Catholics by events such as the Benítez confirmation cannot be overstated. It is not an abstract discomfort nor an intellectual unease, but a profound wound experienced in the moral centre of one’s discipleship.
Consider the divorced and civilly remarried who have embraced the loneliness of continence for the sake of receiving Holy Communion worthily. Many have separated from partners, navigated the painful complexity of annulment processes, or quietly endured social misunderstanding—all because the Church, their Mother, taught them that discipleship requires obedience even when it hurts.
Consider those living with same-sex attraction who, moved by grace, have embraced the Church’s teaching on chastity. They have endured ridicule, isolation, and interior struggle. They have chosen the narrow path in order to follow Christ faithfully. Their fidelity is profound and often heroic.
Consider converts who have left behind irregular unions or sinful relationships at great personal cost. They trusted that the Church’s teaching was salvific, and that the Cross they embraced was the price of eternal life.
All these look upon the Confirmation at St Paul’s and see their sacrifices mocked by ecclesial inconsistency. They see others publicly affirmed in precisely those states of life they were told they must renounce. They see clergy celebrating what they themselves were instructed to abandon. They feel a deep injustice: their fidelity appears to count for nothing.
This erosion of trust is devastating. When a bishop or priest signals that the moral law can be ignored for some, the faithful who have suffered for obedience feel betrayed. Their sacrifices seem pointless. Their fidelity seems naïve. Their suffering appears needless. And the credibility of the Church’s teaching is undermined, not by critics, but by the Church’s own ministers.
A Bishop Speaks: Strickland’s Intervention with the USCCB
During the most recent meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Bishop Joseph E. Strickland did what so few prelates dare to do today: he spoke plainly. He raised the scandal not as an isolated irregularity but as a public wound inflicted upon the People of God. He named the fact that a public figure, living openly in a same-sex civil “marriage,” had been confirmed and communicated in a parish already known for promoting LGBT ideology, with priests whose activism is documented and celebrated.
Strickland’s intervention was ultimately pastoral. He asked the bishops to address the basic question: does the Church still mean what she teaches? If so, the sacramental irregularity must be acknowledged and corrected. If not, the faithful deserve to know what has changed. His appeal was not confrontational but honest. It was the voice of a shepherd defending his flock.
The response to Bishop Strickland’s intervention was silence. No debate. No clarification. No promise of guidance. The matter dissolved into procedural stillness.
This silence wounds deeply. When bishops rapidly issue statements on political and social matters, yet fall mute when sacramental integrity is at stake, the faithful draw their own conclusions about priorities. Silence in the face of public sacramental abuse communicates not restraint but acquiescence. It signals to activists that no correction will come. It signals to priests that upholding doctrine may isolate them. It signals to laity that their sacrifices may be quietly disregarded.
For the faithful who have striven to follow the Church’s teaching at great personal cost, this silence feels not like prudence but abandonment.
The Wider Crisis Taking Shape
The Benítez confirmation exposes a deeper structural crisis: the rise of a parallel magisterium of activism based on the tactic of accomplished fact. For decades, progressive clergy have learned that if they simply perform an irregular act publicly—blessing same-sex couples, hosting pride liturgies, admitting those in manifest sin to Communion—disciplinary response will be minimal or nonexistent.
The pattern is predictable. A controversial act is staged and photographed. The emotional narrative is amplified. Bishops, fearing backlash, choose silence. Silence is then cited as tacit approval. Tacit approval becomes precedent. Precedent becomes practice. And practice, repeated often enough without correction, becomes the new de facto norm.
This dynamic erodes doctrinal clarity. It encourages ecclesial disobedience. It demoralises the faithful. And it fosters a culture in which activists govern the Church by initiative, while bishops govern by hesitation.
What is most destructive is that this creates an ecclesiological paralysis: bishops fear acting, clergy fear correction, laity fear the collapse of truth. In this vacuum, activism—not faith—sets the tone of pastoral life.
Conclusion
The Confirmation at St Paul the Apostle must be understood within the broader failures of the contemporary Catholic hierarchy. It unfolds in a Church already destabilised by the ambiguities of Fiducia Supplicans, which activists immediately weaponised to promote the normalisation of same-sex unions. Although subsequent clarifications attempted to restrict these abuses, Rome has issued no corrections, no disciplinary measures, and no clear repudiation of those who distort the document. Instead, a pattern of tacit approval has emerged.
Under Pope Francis, Fr James Martin received repeated, widely publicised papal audiences. Under Pope Leo XIV, the pattern has continued. Rome has done nothing to dispel the impression of approval. Likewise, the widely publicised LGBT+ “Jubilee Door” pilgrimage was received without objection. The optics communicated ecclesial favour. Silence in such matters is not neutrality; it is consent.
In this context, Bishop Strickland’s intervention appears prophetic. Yet it was met with silence—revealing a hierarchy increasingly unwilling to confront dissent, reluctant to defend doctrine, and comfortable with pastoral ambiguity. This is a sorrowful reflection on the modern hierarchy. Public dissent receives favour and publicity; fidelity receives indifference. Doctrine remains unchanged, yet practice is allowed to contradict it. The faithful are left confused, wounded, and discouraged.
But truth does not depend on episcopal courage. Doctrine does not evaporate because of silence. Christ remains faithful. The faithful now look not for novelty but for courage, not for accommodation but for clarity, not for ambiguity but for the apostolic voice that once guided the Church with fire.
The Church deserves better. Christ commands more. And the faithful can endure nothing less than the restoration of truth, discipline, and apostolic conviction in those entrusted with the care of souls.
- Public reporting confirms Gio Benítez and Tommy DiDario contracted a civil marriage in 2016.
- Coverage in mainstream media confirms their wedding and civil marital status.
- CIC 889 §2: “Outside the danger of death, to receive Confirmation licitly a person who has the use of reason must be suitably instructed, properly disposed, and able to renew the baptismal promises.”
- CIC 893 §1.
- CIC 874 §1, 3º: “Leads a life of faith in keeping with the function to be taken on.”
- Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons (2003), n. 4.
- Ibid., n. 5.
- 1 Timothy 2:4.
- St Augustine, Sermo 169.
- John 5:14.
- Mark 1:15.
Nota Bene
The Church longs for every sinner to encounter the transforming mercy of Christ, and moments such as a public Confirmation can become luminous testimonies of grace when they arise from genuine repentance and conversion. In this case, a sincere renunciation of a publicly known same-sex civil union, accompanied by a firm commitment to live in accordance with the Gospel—whether through separation or chaste living—could have opened the door to a profound and compelling witness. The Church does not demand perfection, only the humble disposition of a penitent heart ready to begin anew.
Likewise, had a sponsor been chosen who visibly embodied the life of faith the Church requires, the celebration could have offered the wider Catholic community a model of how truth and charity walk together. Thoughtful catechesis, clear moral guidance, and authentic pastoral accompaniment—affirming personal dignity while calling both men to the freedom of conversion—might have transformed this moment into a sign of hope for countless others who struggle faithfully to live the Church’s teaching in difficult circumstances.
Instead, the absence of these essential steps has turned what could have been a radiant testimony of God’s grace into a source of confusion and sorrow for many of the faithful. It was a missed opportunity—one that could have proclaimed boldly that Christ both welcomes the sinner and calls him to new life. Let us pray that future moments of pastoral care will seize such opportunities with courage, clarity, and love, so that the sacraments may again shine forth as encounters with the liberating truth of the Gospel.
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