On Monday, issued a response to a question about whether clergy can bless gay unions.
The answer, though accompanied by a two-page explanation, came down to one word - “negative.”
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The church said priests cannot bless same-sex unions because God “cannot bless sin.”
Bishop David Zubik from the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese told News Radio KDKA's Lynn Hayes-Freeland that he thinks the purpose of the Vatican's statement was to bring come clarity about the church's teachings.
"I think that the statement was a caution against doing any blessing of the same-sex unions," said Zubik. "It goes back to the teaching in the catholic church that marriage is intended to be a sacred union between one man and one woman and I think that people recognize that. They know what the church teaches whether people agree with that or not.
"I think that the second thing was that I think people were saying 'well, maybe it's okay if somehow we do a religious blessing of a union' and I think that the caution that the Vatican indicated by its statement was to say you shouldn't do that because it causes confusion in the church and society in general because it makes it look marriage is a sacrament and to bless a couple in a same-sex union is a sacrament. And then second of all it would cause confusion for people involved in it."
Zubik said he doesn't believe this is different than what Pope Francis has been saying.
He said he believes the Pope continues to reaffirm that God loves all and we should seek to love each other the way God loves us.
The Vatican's statement notes the difference between welcoming and blessing gay people and the blessing of gay unions, saying doing so "would constitute a certain imitation or analogue of the nuptial blessing invoked on the man and woman united in the sacrament of Matrimony, while in fact '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'."