| Politics

The Catholic Church will not change its position on the nature of marriage because it cannot. Truth is not up for grabs.

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) – The news is filled with efforts through legislation or the use of the courts to undermine marriage by expanding its definition to somehow include homosexual partnerships. Anyone who questions whether such efforts serve the common good are increasingly dismissed as “homophobic” and intolerant.

However, namecalling will not change our position on this matter nor will it make us go away. At the forefront of the movement to protect marriage are Catholics who believe what the Church teaches. Our insisting that marriage remain what it has always been is adding to our precarious place in the culture these days. However, make no mistake; the Catholic Church will not change its position on the nature of marriage because it cannot. Truth is not up for grabs, no matter what the growing “dictatorship of relativism” throws our way.

Among the clearest summaries of the teaching of our Church on this matter was set forth by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) in the “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons” promulgated in 1986. Here are just a few of the clearly stated insights: “The Church, obedient to the Lord who founded her and gave to her the sacramental life, celebrates the divine plan of the loving and live-giving union of men and women in the sacrament of marriage. It is only in the marital relationship that the use of the sexual faculty can be morally good. A person engaging in homosexual behavior therefore acts immorally.”

“To choose someone of the same sex for one's sexual activity is to annul the rich symbolism and meaning, not to mention the goals, of the Creator's sexual design. Homosexual activity is not a complementary union, able to transmit life; and so it thwarts the call to a life of that form of self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living. This does not mean that homosexual persons are not often generous and giving of themselves; but when they engage in homosexual activity they confirm within themselves a disordered sexual inclination which is essentially self-indulgent”.

“As in every moral disorder, homosexual activity prevents one's own fulfillment and happiness by acting contrary to the creative wisdom of God. The Church, in rejecting erroneous opinions regarding homosexuality, does not limit but rather defends personal freedom and dignity realistically and authentically understood.”

What is clear upon reading this letter, the Sacred Scripture, the Catholic Catechism and the clear, unbroken teaching of the Church is that Catholics who are faithful cannot and will not accept the effort to undermine authentic marriage. Thus, those who follow the teaching of the Church may be on a collision course with the current approach to this matter being embraced by the US Administration.

President Barack Obama has declared June "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month" and issued a Presidential proclamation which all but elevates practicing homosexuals to being given a suspect class classification under Civil Rights law. Among the Presidents comments he noted: “The LGBT rights movement has achieved great progress, but there is more work to be done. LGBT youth should feel safe to learn without the fear of harassment, and LGBT families and seniors should be allowed to live their lives with dignity and respect. My Administration has partnered with the LGBT community to advance a wide range of initiatives. At the international level, I have joined efforts at the United Nations to decriminalize homosexuality around the world. Here at home, I continue to support measures to bring the full spectrum of equal rights to LGBT Americans.” His appointments of openly activist homosexual leaders to significant positions in his administration only further signals where this administration may be headed.

This does not change the truth. Homosexual sexual acts, even if engaged in with one partner for a long time, can never be the equivalent of a marriage, no matter what any court or legislature says. The reason that marriage and the family founded upon it has become the foundation of civil societies across ethnic, geographical, religious and racial communities is because it is an institution revealed by the Natural Law. It is not some social construct which can be discarded, redefined or ever replaced. Efforts of some within the homosexual movement to equate how one engages in non-marital sexual acts with a member of the same sex with being a member of a particular race, or gender and thereby a “protected class” for civil rights purposes is legally and socially dangerous. One is a status; the other involves behavior, a chosen behavior and a lifestyle.

Some maintain that same sex attraction is a genetic predisposition. This is disputed. Even if it were the case, that does not give homosexual activity any ...