With the Church of England now offering blessings to same sex couples as of last Sunday and now the Pope approving of the same, we need to ask what is meant by blessing something or someone.   Some will understandably take this to mean an endorsement of the relationship, while others will take it to mean what both Churches want it to mean (for now): a welcoming of the persons but not the relationship.   Neither the Church of England nor the Vatican has changed the definition of marriage as necessarily that between a man and a woman.   The Catholic Church still calls homosexuality a sin. So, by ‘blessing’ we are supposed to believe that this is not approval.   Obviously, we are in the world of doublespeak.   According to Garner’s Modern English Usage (4th ed.), ‘doublespeak’ is a kind of euphemism that intentionally obscures meaning and aims to misinform.   It ‘is language that pretends to communicate but really doesn't. It is language that makes the bad seem good, the negative

 [Foreword: This is a short, fictional story, written in response to a heretic in the Church of England who recently asserted that God's grace is so radical that no repentance is required.  Her implication is that the Church must not even bring up the subject of sin, no one has any need for repentance (though they may if they like!), and everyone should accept everyone else just as they are.  Most heretics in the Church of England deny that homosexuality is a sin, but this heretic wants to go one step farther in dissolving the category of sin because, she falsely claims, grace simply accepts everyone as they are.  Of course, this is an impossible reading of all the Bible, but it also rids the Church of the need for Jesus' death on a cross for our sins.  John ran into this heretic's forebears when he wrote in response to them, 'If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinne