“We Have Moved On”: Cardinal Radcliffe and the Mass That Betrayed Fiducia Supplicans
The transcript of the Mass at Holy Apostles, Pimlico, removes any plausible ambiguity about what occurred. The principal celebrant announced that the congregation had assembled to “celebrate the love of two men”; the intercessions described “all loving relationships” as signs of divine love; and the final blessing expressly marked the fiftieth anniversary of “their relationship”. Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe did not merely attend. His homily supplied the ceremony with its theological justification, placing the partnership within a language of holy friendship, Trinitarian communion and Eucharistic self-gift. His active participation magnifies the doctrinal, moral, liturgical and canonical scandal and requires investigation at the highest level of the Church.
On 13 June 2026, more than 150 people gathered at the Church of the Holy Apostles in Pimlico for a “Mass of Thanksgiving for 50 Years of Friendship, Partnership, and Commitment in the Pursuit of Justice”. The anniversary being celebrated was that of Julian Filochowski and Martin Pendergast, two men publicly presented by the organisers, participating clergy and supporting media as a couple who had shared a relationship since 1976.
Father Jim O’Keefe was the principal celebrant. Bishop John Crowley, Bishop Emeritus of Middlesbrough, Bishop John Rawsthorne, Bishop Emeritus of Hallam, and Canon Chris Vipers, parish priest of Holy Apostles, concelebrated. Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe OP preached. After Holy Communion, a commitment associated with the men’s partnership was made. At the conclusion of the Mass, the clergy gathered around them and imparted a blessing composed specifically for the fiftieth anniversary of “their relationship”.¹
The published report was already sufficient to raise grave doctrinal, liturgical and canonical questions. The transcript of the complete Mass removes any remaining possibility that the event has been misunderstood or unfairly reconstructed by its critics. The relationship was not an incidental biographical detail surrounding an otherwise ordinary Eucharistic celebration. It supplied the occasion, subject, language, symbolism and theological message of the entire liturgy.²
Although the Mass was also offered for the repose of Canon Alan McLean, who had died the previous day, Father O’Keefe stated the wider ceremonial purpose without equivocation: “We’re here to celebrate, obviously, Martin and Julian’s fiftieth anniversary of friendship, partnership, and commitment to the pursuit of justice.”
The word “obviously” is significant. The celebrant did not regard the anniversary as an interpretation imposed upon the event by hostile observers. He regarded it as the manifest reason for the gathering.
The couple’s introductory remarks presented the occasion as evidence that the Catholic Church had undergone a moral and institutional transformation. They recalled that bishops had been prevented from participating in their twenty-fifth-anniversary Mass in 2001 and that they had been unable to celebrate a Mass of thanksgiving for their civil partnership in 2006. They contrasted those interventions with the climate created under Pope Francis and with the subsequent possibility of blessings for same-sex couples.
“How times have changed,” the congregation was told.
The remark was not merely an observation about improved pastoral courtesy. It introduced a narrative of ecclesiastical progress: what authority had formerly restricted could now be celebrated openly with the participation of a cardinal, two bishops and several priests.
Father O’Keefe immediately confirmed that interpretation. Welcoming the emeritus bishops, he praised the courage and friendship that had made it possible for the congregation “to celebrate the love of two men who are honourably Catholic and honourably gay”.
That sentence is decisive. The principal celebrant did not say merely that the Church had gathered to pray for two Catholic men, to thank God for their charitable works or to seek grace for their continuing Christian lives. He declared that the purpose was “to celebrate the love of two men”.
He then explained the objections raised twenty-five years earlier almost entirely as products of fear: “Fear of difference, fear of love, fear of two men loving each other.”
He placed such objections alongside fears arising from race, culture, opportunity, possessions and gender. The effect was to exclude Catholic moral reasoning from the range of legitimate explanations. Those who objected were not defending the nature of marriage, the virtue of chastity or the integrity of sacramental signs. They were simply afraid of difference and love.
This is a familiar rhetorical device. A disputed moral judgement is redescribed as an emotional pathology. Once criticism has been attributed to fear, prejudice or exclusion, the substance of the criticism no longer needs to be answered.
Catholic teaching does not object to affection, friendship, loyalty or mutual support between two men. Nor does it deny that persons in morally irregular situations may perform generous acts, care for one another in adversity and contribute to the common good. The objective question is whether a same-sex partnership, publicly presented as the enduring relationship of a couple, can itself be celebrated, theologised and blessed by the Church.
Father O’Keefe then supplied the governing maxim of the day: “Then was then, and now is now.” After quoting a letter from Pope Francis praying that the men might experience the Lord’s loving presence “in accordance with the teachings of the Gospel”, the celebrant announced: “We have moved on.”
The qualification in the papal letter should have recalled the congregation to the objective moral content of the Gospel. Instead, it was absorbed into a narrative in which the Church had supposedly progressed beyond her former judgement.
The congregation was then reassured: “I invite you to relax. It’s all sorted. Nothing to worry about. We come here to affirm, to pray, to give thanks.”
This was therefore an act of affirmation by its own declared intention. It was not an unexpected pastoral encounter in which two people spontaneously approached a priest and asked for divine help. The congregation had been assembled, an order of service prepared, music commissioned, senior clergy invited and the Eucharistic celebration structured in order to affirm the men’s relationship and its endurance.
The same message appeared throughout the public prayer of the Mass. One intercession asked that the Church might “cherish all loving relationships as signs of God’s love among us”. The prayer over the offerings looked towards a world in which “friendship and commitment is celebrated”. After Communion, those present were told:
“We have gathered for this celebration to celebrate faithful partnership in the joy of love and the pursuit of justice.” The partnership was then said to point “prophetically to a vision of reconciled relationships, a new heaven and new earth”.
These were not informal remarks made later at the reception. They were introduced into the public worship of the Church.
The phrase “all loving relationships” is theologically indefensible unless the word “loving” has first been defined according to truth, virtue and the commandments of God. Affection, sincerity, loyalty and duration do not render every relationship morally good. An adulterous relationship may include real emotional attachment, financial support and care during sickness. An objectively illicit union may endure for many years. Those positive elements do not make the relationship itself rightly ordered or capable of functioning as an ecclesiastical sign of divine love.
Catholic moral theology distinguishes the good elements found within a situation from the moral character of the situation considered as a whole. Particular acts of kindness should be acknowledged. They cannot alter the moral species of the relationship in which they occur.
Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches that the morality of a human act is determined principally by its object. Intention and circumstances may increase or diminish merit and culpability, but they cannot convert an intrinsically disordered object into a good one.³ A person may act generously in one part of his life and wrongly in another. Good works do not confer moral legitimacy upon every relationship with which the person is associated.
The post-Communion language went considerably further than acknowledging positive elements. The partnership was described as “faithful”, healing and prophetic. It was presented as pointing towards the reconciliation of creation and the new heaven and new earth. The ceremony therefore attributed positive theological and eschatological significance to the partnership itself.
Canon Chris Vipers, the parish priest, endorsed the occasion in equally unambiguous terms. Addressing the congregation before the final blessing, he called it a “really wonderful and momentous occasion”. Turning to the two men, he said: “I’m just so privileged that you’ve chosen here for your celebration today.”
Holy Apostles was therefore not a neutral venue made available without ecclesiastical endorsement. Its parish priest publicly described the celebration as wonderful, momentous and a privilege for his church.
The final blessing completed the ritual progression:
“Giving thanks that the Church offers blessing to those who seek it in spirit and in truth, we ask, O God of love, that your grace come down upon Julian and Martin as they mark the fiftieth anniversary of their relationship. May their love continue to be generous, ever attentive to the needs of others, and deepen all that unites them.”
The object being commemorated was expressly “their relationship”. The prayer did not ask merely that each man receive health, peace, wisdom, repentance or help in following the Gospel. It asked that “their love” should continue and that everything uniting them should be deepened.
No meaningful distinction between blessing persons and blessing their union can survive the wording and structure of this ceremony. The men were blessed precisely while marking the anniversary of their relationship, following a Mass constructed around that anniversary and after a public commitment associated with the partnership.
The blessing cannot be isolated from the liturgical whole. It was the culmination of an extended sequence in which the relationship had been described as loving, faithful, healing, prophetic and worthy of ecclesiastical celebration.
Cardinal Radcliffe’s Theology of the Partnership
Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe’s homily supplied the theological justification for what the liturgy enacted. Its central method was to classify the partnership under the category of friendship and then apply to that friendship the highest language of Trinitarian, ecclesial and Eucharistic communion.
The Cardinal began by referring to the commitment that would follow Communion to “celebrate and value our bonds of friendship as gifts of God”. Turning directly to the two men, he added:
“So, in your case, Martin and Julian, fifty years.”
He continued: “Friendship is a way that God works in our lives to transform us.… We could say that these two hands are the Son who is the friend and the Spirit who is the friendship. So every good, wholesome, holy, well-lived friendship is a sharing in the life of God.”
The qualifying adjectives—“good”, “wholesome”, “holy” and “well-lived”—are necessary in any Catholic theology of friendship. Not every association is a true friendship and not every friendship is virtuous. Within this homily, however, those adjectives were plainly being applied to the relationship celebrated before him.
The moral conclusion had been inserted into the premise. The partnership was treated as holy and therefore as sharing in the life of God without any examination of whether its objective form was compatible with the virtue of chastity and the revealed order of human sexuality.
The speculative assertion that “the Son is the friend and the Spirit is the friendship” intensified the effect. It enclosed the relationship within a Trinitarian analogy and surrounded it with the language of divine indwelling. A poetic metaphor was made to accomplish what moral theology could not.
Christian friendship is a sublime natural and supernatural good. Saint Thomas Aquinas describes charity itself as a form of friendship between God and man. Yet friendship is morally good because it is founded upon a shared pursuit of the true good. It cannot be detached from virtue while retaining its Christian character.
Our Lord explicitly binds friendship to obedience: “If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love.” And again: “You are my friends, if you do the things that I command you.”⁴
Christian friendship does not consist in confirming another person in every desire, attachment or self-understanding. It consists in willing his true good, ultimately his eternal good in God. A relationship that encourages either participant away from the moral law cannot be called holy merely because it is affectionate, stable or mutually supportive.
Cardinal Radcliffe’s treatment of the road to Emmaus was even more revealing. He told the congregation: “Jesus doesn’t stand in the way and say, ‘You’re wrong.’ He doesn’t try to force them to open their eyes.… He walks with them even though they seem to be going in the wrong direction. He gives them the space to discover for themselves.”
The Gospel proclaimed only minutes earlier contradicted this selective account. Christ did not merely walk beside the disciples and provide neutral space for self-discovery. He rebuked them: “O foolish, and slow of heart to believe in all things which the prophets have spoken.”
He then interpreted Moses and all the prophets authoritatively, explained the necessity of His Passion and brought their defective understanding under the judgement of divine revelation. Their eyes were opened, and they reversed direction and returned to Jerusalem.
The Cardinal acknowledged that Christ called them foolish but immediately softened the rebuke into the ordinary impatience of friends: “I think every friend has called our close friends fools at some stage.” Christ’s words were not affectionate banter. They were a judgement upon unbelief and a summons to accept revealed truth.
Emmaus is not a paradigm of accompaniment without correction. It is an account of accompaniment ordered towards illumination, conversion and return. Christ walks with those going in the wrong direction so that they may cease going in the wrong direction.
To preserve the walking while suppressing the turning is to remove the conclusion from the Gospel.
Cardinal Radcliffe then quoted Herbert McCabe’s description of love as giving the other person space and “letting the other be”. He added that friendship “treasures them as they are and so lets them be more”.
There is truth in this only when it is placed within the Christian doctrines of creation, sin and redemption. God lets creatures be by giving them definite natures, ends and goods. “Let there be” does not mean that every desire establishes its own moral order.
Divine love respects what God has created and heals what sin has wounded. It does not ratify every condition in which fallen human beings find themselves.
To love a person as he is does not require declaring everything he desires or every relationship he forms rightly ordered. Christ receives sinners as they are, but He commands repentance, restores the moral order and calls them to holiness. He allows them to become more through grace, not merely more fully confirmed in their present attachments.
The Cardinal then moved directly from friendship to the Eucharist: “Their eyes are opened when Jesus took the bread and broke it and gave it to them. That is the primal act of generous friendship.… And this is the Eucharist which we now share too.”
The Eucharist is unquestionably the supreme gift of Christ’s love. Christ Himself calls His disciples friends. Nevertheless, to describe the breaking of bread principally as “the primal act of generous friendship” is radically inadequate in this context.
The Eucharist is the sacramental re-presentation of Calvary, the true Body and Blood of Christ, the memorial of His saving Passion, the sacrament of ecclesial unity and the food of those called to communion in faith, charity, repentance and obedience.
By reducing the Eucharist rhetorically to friendship, the homily made it possible to map the sacrament onto the relationship being celebrated. The two men had sustained a friendship; Christ’s self-gift was presented as the primal act of friendship; and the Eucharist was being shared in celebration of their friendship.
A sacramental resonance was thus conferred upon the partnership without anyone formally claiming that it was a sacrament.
The Cardinal also praised the men’s commitment to peace, justice and concern for the marginalised. These good works were effectively allowed to confer moral legitimacy upon the relationship through which they were publicly associated.
Catholic moral theology permits no such transfer. A person may be generous to the poor, courageous in public life and loyal to friends while remaining objectively mistaken in another sphere. Social justice cannot substitute for chastity. Public service cannot confer a new moral species upon a private relationship.
More Than Presence: The Complicity of a Cardinal
Cardinal Radcliffe’s role cannot be reduced to that of a distinguished guest who happened to be present.
Mere attendance at a liturgical celebration does not necessarily imply approval of every word spoken or every act performed. A person might be present without knowing what was planned, might remain silent out of uncertainty or might decline to participate in particular elements.
None of those qualifications applies here.
Cardinal Radcliffe accepted the invitation to preach. He knew the occasion was the fiftieth anniversary of the men’s relationship. He addressed them directly. He introduced the commitment that would follow Communion. He described the relationship under the category of holy and well-lived friendship. He connected that friendship to the Son, the Holy Spirit and the Eucharist. He supplied the interpretative theology through which the congregation was invited to understand the entire event.
His involvement was therefore constitutive rather than incidental.
The opening speeches declared that the Church had “moved on”. Father O’Keefe announced that the congregation had gathered to “celebrate the love of two men”. The intercessions asked that “all loving relationships” be cherished as signs of God’s love. The post-Communion text celebrated “faithful partnership”. The blessing asked that the men’s love and everything uniting them be deepened.
Cardinal Radcliffe’s homily joined those elements together and presented the partnership as an instance of friendship sanctified by God.
He was not merely present at an act of affirmation. He provided its theological rationale.
In ordinary moral language, this constitutes public complicity. It does not automatically establish that the Cardinal committed a canonical delict, nor does it determine the precise degree of his subjective culpability. Those questions belong to competent ecclesiastical authority.
Classical moral theology distinguishes formal cooperation, in which a person shares the wrongful intention of the principal agent, from material cooperation, in which he contributes to the act without sharing that intention. No external observer can inspect the Cardinal’s conscience. His public words, however, exclude the suggestion that his involvement was remote, reluctant or accidental.
He knowingly contributed to the affirmative purpose of the ceremony. Indeed, his homily strongly indicates concurrence with its publicly stated object. He did not challenge the interpretation of the partnership being advanced around him. He constructed a theology that supported it.
The relevant question is therefore not simply why a cardinal attended. It is why a cardinal lent his name, office, preaching and ecclesiastical prestige to a liturgical programme whose apparent purpose was to overcome the Church’s moral and disciplinary distinctions.
The gravity is increased by the nature of the homily. A homily at Mass is not a private theological seminar, an after-dinner address or a speculative essay. It forms part of the sacred liturgy and is entrusted to an ordained minister so that the word of God may be explained according to the faith of the Church.
The Church’s Homiletic Directory describes the liturgy as the privileged setting in which God speaks to His people, and the Code identifies the ministry of the word as the means by which sacred ministers arouse and enlighten faith.⁵ The preacher therefore occupies a place of sacred trust between the proclamation of Scripture and the celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice.
The faithful are entitled to expect him to explain the word of God rather than to manipulate it in the service of a conclusion demanded by the occasion.
Cardinal Radcliffe’s treatment of Emmaus is particularly grave for this reason. He diminished the corrective and conversionary movement of the Gospel at precisely the point where that movement challenged the ideology of the celebration. Accompaniment was separated from correction, and the disciples’ return to Jerusalem was subordinated to the language of personal discovery.
His treatment of love followed the same pattern. “Letting the other be” was left without the necessary Catholic qualifications of creation, nature, sin, repentance and sanctifying grace. The result was a theological formula for affirmation rather than transformation.
A theologian may advance incomplete formulations in an academic discussion and be challenged by his peers. A cardinal preaching within Mass carries those formulations into an act performed publicly in the name of the Church.
The office of cardinal gives this intervention an additional ecclesiological significance. The cardinalate is not a further degree of the sacrament of Holy Orders, and a cardinal’s individual statements do not constitute acts of the Magisterium. Nevertheless, cardinals form the special college that elects the Roman Pontiff and assists him in the care of the universal Church.
Canon 349 states that cardinals assist the Pope collegially and individually, especially in the daily care of the Church. Canon 356 obliges them to cooperate assiduously with the Roman Pontiff. Canon 351 presumes that those elevated to the cardinalate are particularly distinguished in doctrine, morals, piety and prudence.⁶
A cardinal is therefore not merely a prominent Catholic personality. He is publicly associated with the Roman Church and with the counsel and government of the Pope. His words possess no automatic infallibility, but his rank inevitably gives them ecclesiastical weight in the minds of priests, journalists and ordinary Catholics.
That symbolic authority was plainly part of the meaning of the Pimlico celebration. The repeated declarations that times had changed depended for their force upon the visible participation of senior churchmen. The presence of a cardinal, two bishops and several priests communicated that this was no longer a marginal experiment.
Cardinal Radcliffe’s homily allowed the organisers and their supporters to present the event not simply as the preference of a particular couple or parish but as evidence of movement within the hierarchy itself.
His participation therefore amplified the scandal. What might otherwise have appeared to be an eccentric local ceremony acquired the appearance of Roman respectability. A parish priest’s innovation may be dismissed as local indiscipline. A cardinal’s theological endorsement suggests that the same conclusion possesses influential support close to the centre of ecclesiastical authority.
The distinction between personal opinion and public office cannot absolve him. Cardinal Radcliffe may not have issued a formal doctrinal judgement, but he preached publicly as a cardinal and priest during Mass. The ordinary faithful cannot be expected to suspend the evident meaning of the occasion by applying technical distinctions about magisterial authority.
They saw a cardinal commend the relationship before them as holy friendship sharing in the life of God.
The higher the office, the greater the capacity to mislead. A layman’s theological confusion may influence a few acquaintances. A priest’s ambiguous homily may disturb one congregation. A cardinal’s endorsement can influence clergy across the Church, encourage imitation in other dioceses and persuade the faithful that settled doctrine is undergoing tacit reversal.
His learning and experience increase rather than diminish the seriousness of the matter. He cannot readily be treated as someone unaware of the distinctions between blessing persons and ratifying relationships, between friendship and sexual partnership, or between accompaniment and moral affirmation.
The apparent ambiguities were not peripheral to his argument. They performed its essential work.
There is also an institutional consequence. When a cardinal participates in a ceremony apparently contrary to doctrine and liturgical discipline and no correction follows, silence is interpreted as permission. Other priests conclude that similar celebrations may be held in their churches. Bishops become reluctant to intervene because a cardinal has already provided the theological defence.
What began as one ceremony becomes precedent by imitation.
This is how doctrinal change may be attempted through praxis. No dogma is formally denied. No canon is openly repealed. Instead, the prohibited or restricted act is performed ceremonially, endorsed by senior clergy, publicised approvingly and allowed to stand. The practice is then cited as evidence that teaching has already developed.
Father O’Keefe’s statement—“We have moved on”—was therefore not merely descriptive. It expressed the strategy. The movement was being established by the fact of the celebration itself.
Canon law recognises that dignity and authority may aggravate rather than excuse an offence. Canon 1326 states that, where a delict has been established, a more serious punishment is required when the offender holds a position of dignity or has abused authority or office in committing it.⁷
This canon cannot be applied by a journalist, nor does it prove that Cardinal Radcliffe committed a delict. It does establish an important principle: ecclesiastical rank does not provide mitigation merely because its holder is influential. If authority is used to facilitate an offence, that authority increases the gravity of the act.
The cardinalate is therefore not a shield against accountability. It is a reason why accountability matters more.
Nor does the reservation of cases involving cardinals to the Roman Pontiff amount to immunity. Canon 1405 provides that the Pope alone judges cardinals. It does not place them beyond judgement; it places responsibility for judging them at the highest level of the Church.⁸
The public evidence already establishes that Cardinal Radcliffe was more than present. He knowingly preached to the occasion, addressed the relationship, described it within a theology of holy friendship and connected that friendship with Trinitarian life and the Eucharist.
Whether his conduct constitutes a canonical delict remains to be judged. That it constituted active public and ecclesiastical complicity in the affirmation of the partnership is difficult to deny.
Beyond the Limits of Fiducia supplicans
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 2021 Responsum stated that positive elements may be present within same-sex relationships, but that these elements cannot justify the relationships or make them legitimate objects of ecclesiastical blessing. Persons may be blessed and assisted towards fidelity to God’s will; the Church cannot bless a union that cannot be recognised as ordered to the Creator’s plan.⁹
Fiducia supplicans subsequently authorised spontaneous, non-liturgical pastoral blessings of couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples while continuing to insist that such blessings must not validate their status or create confusion with marriage.
Whatever serious theological objections remain concerning that Declaration, it does not authorise what occurred at Holy Apostles.
The Declaration says that pastoral blessings are to remain external to the Eucharist and other sacraments. It excludes fixed ritual forms and anything resembling a liturgical blessing that might create confusion with marriage. The Dicastery’s subsequent clarification described short and simple blessings lasting only a few seconds, without an approved ritual or book of blessings. Such a prayer is to ask for peace, health, assistance and fidelity to the Gospel, without approving or ratifying the couple’s situation.¹⁰
At Pimlico, almost every safeguard was reversed.
The blessing was planned and composed. It concluded a Mass organised around the fiftieth anniversary. It followed a public commitment. It referred expressly to “their relationship” and “their love”. It asked that the bond uniting them be deepened. The wider liturgy had already described the partnership as faithful, healing, holy and prophetic.
This was not a spontaneous pastoral blessing that happened to occur after Mass. It was the culmination of an anniversary rite embedded within the Eucharistic celebration.
The transcript also raises serious questions about the liturgical texts employed. The prayer over the offerings included language about celebrating “friendship and commitment”. The post-Communion material announced that the assembly had gathered to celebrate “faithful partnership”. A commitment exercise followed the reception of Holy Communion.
Competent authority must establish which texts came from approved liturgical books, which were adapted and which were composed specifically for the occasion.
Canon 846 §1 requires the approved liturgical books to be observed faithfully and forbids anyone from adding, omitting or altering anything upon his own authority. Canon 834 defines the liturgy as public worship carried out in the name of the Church through acts approved by ecclesiastical authority. Canon 837 stresses that liturgical actions are not private acts but celebrations of the Church herself.¹¹
The sacred liturgy is therefore not the property of the celebrant, congregation, anniversary couple or activist movement. It is an act of Christ and His Church. Neither pastoral enthusiasm nor ideological conviction authorises ministers to refashion it into a vehicle for moral claims the Church herself has not approved.
The New Ways Ministry report further states that Sister Jeannine Gramick, James Alison, Pat Jones and Anne Smith participated in a “dialogue proclamation” of the Gospel. The transcript records the Gospel but does not identify the individual voices. That report must therefore be verified through examination of the video and order of service rather than treated as established solely by the transcript.
If lay persons did participate in proclaiming the Gospel during Mass, a further express liturgical norm was violated. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal reserves the Gospel proclamation to a deacon or priest.¹²
The broader scandal, however, is not merely rubrical. Scandal in Catholic theology does not mean simple offence, embarrassment or controversy. It means words or actions that lead others into moral or doctrinal error.
The unmistakable message of this Mass was that a same-sex partnership may be celebrated within the Eucharist, interpreted as holy friendship sharing in the life of God, described as prophetic, affirmed by bishops and blessed in its endurance.
Catholics who experience same-sex attraction and strive faithfully to live chastely are entitled to ask what this ceremony says about their sacrifices. The Catechism teaches that persons experiencing such inclinations are called to chastity and may advance towards Christian perfection through self-mastery, disinterested friendship, prayer and sacramental grace.¹³
What message do they receive when a cardinal, bishops and priests instead celebrate an enduring same-sex partnership as a holy friendship sharing in the life of God?
Married couples are also entitled to clarity. Marriage is not merely one example among many of committed companionship. It is the exclusive, stable and indissoluble union of one man and one woman, naturally ordered towards the generation and education of children and elevated by Christ between the baptised to the dignity of a sacrament.
The Church obscures that truth when she constructs parallel ceremonies using anniversaries, commitments, senior ecclesiastical witnesses, commissioned prayers, blessings and the language of enduring love for relationships that cannot possess the form of marriage.
The Holy Apostles celebration created a functional nuptial analogy. It included an anniversary Mass, public commitment, clerical witnesses, prayers directed towards the relationship, a homily interpreting the relationship theologically, a formal blessing and a celebratory reception.
Avoiding the words “marriage”, “husband” and “spouse” did not remove the meaning communicated by the whole ritual.
The Canonical Duty to Investigate
The public and hierarchical nature of the event now requires a public and hierarchical response.
Archbishop Richard Moth, installed as Archbishop of Westminster on 14 February 2026, is responsible for ecclesiastical and liturgical discipline within the archdiocese.¹⁴ He should establish who authorised the celebration, who composed or selected the additional texts, whether diocesan permission was sought, which approved Mass formulary was used, whether the order of service had been reviewed, who participated in the Gospel proclamation, how the commitment after Communion was structured and what the participating clergy understood themselves to be affirming.
Canon 1717 requires an Ordinary who receives information that at least appears true concerning a possible delict to inquire carefully into the facts, circumstances and imputability, unless an investigation would be entirely superfluous. The same canon requires the reputation of those involved to be protected.¹⁵
A preliminary investigation is not a declaration of guilt. It is the canonical means of establishing what occurred, which laws may have been violated, who bears responsibility and whether penal proceedings are warranted.
There is plainly sufficient prima facie information to justify such an inquiry. The celebration was public. The participants have been named. The blessing has been transcribed. The homily, prayers and introductory speeches are available. The anniversary purpose of the Mass was openly declared by the celebrant. The video and order of service should allow the disputed liturgical details to be determined objectively.
It would be inaccurate to claim that the participants automatically incurred excommunication or suspension. No canon attaches a latae sententiae censure simply to the ritualised blessing of a same-sex partnership. Canonical responsibility requires an external violation and sufficient imputability, while canon 1321 presumes innocence until the contrary is proved.¹⁶
The absence of an automatic penalty does not render the matter canonically inconsequential.
Canon 1339 permits an Ordinary to issue warnings and corrections when conduct produces scandal or serious disturbance. It also permits a penal precept specifying precisely what must be done or avoided. Canon 1341 requires the Ordinary to initiate a judicial or administrative penal procedure when pastoral care, fraternal correction, warning or correction cannot adequately restore justice, reform the offender and repair scandal.¹⁷
Depending upon the facts and imputability established, canon 1378 concerning abuse or culpably unlawful exercise of ecclesiastical office, canon 1389 concerning unlawful exercise of priestly office or sacred ministry, and canon 1399 concerning especially grave external violations of divine or canon law may require consideration. Their applicability must be decided by competent authority according to due process, not pronounced conclusively by journalists or campaigners.¹⁸
There is also a question of jurisdiction. Archbishop Moth may investigate what occurred within a church of his archdiocese, secure the relevant documents, examine clergy and officials subject to his authority, correct abuses and forbid their repetition.
Penal cases involving cardinals and bishops, however, are reserved to the Roman Pontiff. Any findings concerning Cardinal Radcliffe, Bishop Crowley or Bishop Rawsthorne would therefore have to be transmitted to Pope Leo XIV and the competent authorities of the Holy See.¹⁹
This reservation does not prevent the Archbishop of Westminster from establishing what occurred in his archdiocese. Nor should it become an excuse for passing responsibility indefinitely between Westminster and Rome.
The principal canonical responsibility lies not with the two men whose anniversary was celebrated but with the ecclesiastical ministers who planned, authorised, hosted and enacted the ceremony. The recipients should not be made scapegoats for decisions taken by cardinals, bishops and priests.
A proportionate initial response would include a formal inquiry, a determination of which liturgical norms were violated, correction of those responsible, an instruction that no comparable ceremony may be repeated and a public reaffirmation of Catholic teaching concerning marriage, chastity, the Eucharist and the legitimate scope of pastoral blessings.
If warnings or corrections were rejected, further canonical measures could then be considered.
Such action would not be vindictive. The Code itself identifies the purposes of ecclesiastical discipline as the restoration of justice, the reform of the offender and the repair of scandal.²⁰ The public nature of the event makes public repair necessary. A private admonition alone cannot correct a message proclaimed through a public Mass, recorded on video and promoted internationally as evidence that Catholic teaching and practice have changed.
The Scarlet Does Not Sanctify the Error
No Catholic should object to two men being treated with courtesy, compassion and genuine pastoral solicitude. Every human person possesses dignity and is called to eternal salvation. The Church must reject cruelty, mockery and unjust discrimination.
But Christian mercy does not require the Church to call an objectively disordered relationship holy, prophetic or a participation in Trinitarian life.
The tragedy of Holy Apostles is not that kindness was shown. It is that kindness was detached from truth, friendship from virtue, accompaniment from conversion and the Eucharist from its sacrificial and moral demands.
Father O’Keefe’s declaration—“We have moved on”—captures the real significance of the occasion. The organisers believed that the Church had moved beyond her former moral judgement. Cardinal Radcliffe’s homily supplied a theology for that movement. The liturgy embodied it. The blessing confirmed it.
The Cardinal’s involvement makes the matter more serious, not less. Scarlet does not transform error into development. Ecclesiastical dignity does not turn an unauthorised liturgical innovation into legitimate worship. A cardinal’s presence cannot make a relationship conform to an order of creation that it does not possess.
The purpose of senior office is to guard and transmit the faith, not to use the prestige of office to make contradiction appear respectable.
A Church that blesses ambiguously will soon be understood as teaching ambiguously. A Church that uses the Eucharist to affirm what her doctrine cannot approve will eventually empty both the Eucharist and the doctrine of intelligible meaning.
A Church that permits a cardinal to lend his voice and office to such an act without correction teaches something further: that rank protects the influential from accountability.
That lesson would be disastrous.
The necessary response is not hostility but clarity: respect every person, proclaim the whole Gospel, preserve the sacred liturgy, investigate its public misuse impartially and hold senior prelates to at least the same standards expected of ordinary priests.
The question is no longer merely what happened at Holy Apostles.
It is whether the Church’s highest authorities are willing to hold one of their own accountable for helping it happen.
¹ Francis DeBernardo, “Gay Men’s 50 Years of Partnership Celebrated with Catholic Mass,” New Ways Ministry, 1 July 2026. The report identifies the participants and describes the anniversary, post-Communion commitment, Gospel proclamation and final blessing.
² Transcript of the Mass of Thanksgiving, Holy Apostles, Pimlico, 13 June 2026. Quotations have been punctuated and obvious automated-transcription errors silently corrected without altering their substance. The principal passages occur at 12:03–20:19, 30:46–39:18, 44:55–45:22, 52:26–52:54 and 1:13:43–1:19:33.
³ Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I–II, q. 18, aa. 2–4.
⁴ John 15:10, 14, Douay-Rheims.
⁵ Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Homiletic Directory, 29 June 2014; Code of Canon Law, canon 836. The Directory describes the liturgy as the privileged setting in which God speaks to His people.
⁶ Code of Canon Law, canons 349, 351 and 356. The Code states that cardinals assist the Roman Pontiff in the care of the universal Church and are obliged to cooperate assiduously with him.
⁷ Code of Canon Law, canon 1326 §1, 2°. A position of dignity or the abuse of authority or office constitutes an aggravating circumstance once an offence has been established.
⁸ Code of Canon Law, canon 1405 §1, 2°–3°. Judgement of cardinals and, in penal cases, bishops is reserved to the Roman Pontiff.
⁹ Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Responsum ad dubium regarding the blessing of the unions of persons of the same sex, 22 February 2021.
¹⁰ Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Fiducia supplicans, 18 December 2023, especially nos. 24 and 31; “Press Release concerning the Reception of Fiducia supplicans”, 4 January 2024. The clarification describes short, non-liturgical and non-ritualised blessings that do not approve or ratify a couple’s situation.
¹¹ Code of Canon Law, canons 834, 837 and 846 §1.
¹² General Instruction of the Roman Missal, no. 59.
¹³ Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 2357–2359.
¹⁴ Archbishop Richard Moth was installed as the twelfth Archbishop of Westminster on 14 February 2026.
¹⁵ Code of Canon Law, canon 1717.
¹⁶ Code of Canon Law, canons 1314 and 1321.
¹⁷ Code of Canon Law, canons 1339 and 1341.
¹⁸ Code of Canon Law, canons 1378, 1389 and 1399.
¹⁹ Code of Canon Law, canon 1405 §1.
²⁰ Code of Canon Law, canon 1311 §2.
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