SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA (Catholic Online) - On Sunday, June 17, 2012, Priests in Sydney Australia were asked to read a well written Pastoral Letter from Archbishop Pell and his auxiliary Bishops entitled "Marriage: One Man and One Woman in a Covenant of Love and Life" at every Mass. 
The full letter can be read here  A copy of the text which was placed on a bookmark distributed to every person who attended Mass, containg frequently asked questions, can be read here.

The homosexual equivalency activists who want to redefine the institution of marriage are hard at work in Australia. Two pieces of legislation have been advanced in an effort to to bring about a Cultural Revolution. The Bishops Pastoral letter deserves the full attention of our readers around the globe. The Catholic faithful of that beautiful Nation deserve our prayer and solidarity.  

The language of the Cultural Revolution has been adopted by a complicit main stream press.  There are very few news reports using the word marriage for what it is, ontologically, the lifelong union between one man and one woman ordered toward love, the conception and rearing of children and the formation of family, which is the foundation of society because it is its first vital cell.

Using the distinction between so called "traditional" Marriage and all other "marriage" is a serious mistake for anyone defending marriage. It makes it sound like those who defend true marriage want to turn the clock back and live in the past. It paints us as opposed to progress, as though we oppose a new advance in social and cultural evolution which will lead to greater freedom and cultural sensitivity. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Those who seek to redefine the word marriage are the ones who want to turn back progress! They are promoting, knowingly or unwittingly, a return to a pagan practice. They are unleashing moral and legal anarchy. They have been joined by eager collaborators in the Judiciary and elected officials who believe they are some kind of new "liberators".

In my writing over the years I warned against ever using the word "marriage" when referring to homosexual partnerships. This warning did not come from some personal hostility toward homosexual persons, but out of honesty and verbal integrity. Homosexual relationships simply cannot constitute a marriage.

As a lawyer working for authentic human rights and freedom I learned that in the battle to change culture, the softening of the language is the most effective early action before a wholesale assault waged in the courtrooms, the legislatures and the media. Such language softens the vigilance of those who are caught unaware of its ruthless and corrosive effect on the long term struggle.

There is an accelerating effort to make homosexual partnerships the legal equivalent of marriage in the positive law and to then use the Police Power of the State to enforce such a restructuring on the rest of civil society. The recent letter from the Australian Bishops only confirms that the movement is global.

When sexual behavior between two men or two women is viewed as the foundation of some "right" to marry and those who oppose this equivalency movement are characterized as being against the "freedom" to marry and "equal rights", the common good is placed at risk. True marriage is the preeminent and the most fundamental of all human social institutions. It is a relationship defined by nature itself and protected by the natural law that binds all men and women. It finds its foundation in the order of creation.

Civil institutions do not create marriage nor can they create a "right" to marry for those who are incapable of marriage. The institutions of government should, when acting properly, defend marriage against those who would redefine it. Government has long regulated marriage for the common good. For example, the ban on polygamy and age requirements were enforced in order to ensure that there was a mature decision at the basis of the Marriage contract. Heterosexual marriage, procreation, and the nurturing of children form the foundation for the family. The family forms the foundation of civil society and is its first vital cell .

To limit marriage to heterosexual couples is not discriminatory now, nor has it ever been. Homosexual couples cannot bring into existence what marriage intends by its very definition. To now "confer" the benefits that have been conferred in the past only to stable married couples and families to homosexual paramours is bad public policy.

The situation we face as Christians is not an unfamiliar one. We need to see it in the context of Christian history. I do not care ...