Same-sex “marriage” is unacceptable

The Catholic community in Canada must help defeat the proposed Martin- Cotler legislation to remove the legal status of traditional marriage and to replace it with a new invention. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled on December 9 last that this man-made construction is constitutional; the real issue is whether it is moral.

First, individual homosexual actions are “intrinsically disordered” and “in no case to be approved of ” (Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith [CDF], 1975, No. 3; 1992, No. 1). In ordinary language this means that a homosexual act, willfully and freely committed, is a mortal sin. Mortal sins cut a person off from the lifegiving grace of God (“destroy charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God’s law”)—Catechism of the Catholic Church (#1855).

The condition of the person which is often associated with these intrinsically evil acts is itself “objectively disordered” (CDF, 1986). The person must strive to overcome this particular inclination while it should evoke the moral and pastoral concern of others, “lest the person is led to believe that living out this orientation in homosexual activity is a morally acceptable option. It is not,” (CDF 1992, No. 2). Violence against homosexuals is to be deplored and condemned.

While all unjust discrimination is to be rejected, there are areas where just discrimination is necessary such as, “for example, in the placement of children for adoption or foster care, in employment of teachers or athletic coaches, and in military recruitment” (CDF, 1992, #11). While homosexuals, as human persons, have the same rights as everyone else, nevertheless these rights are not absolute (#12). There is no “right” to homosexuality (#13).

The homosexual condition is not comparable to race, gender, ethnicity, age, or colour. As objectively disordered, it can never form the basis for human “rights,” nor for changing civil statutes or laws. The contrary view cannot but have an adverse effect on the correct understanding of the nature and rights of the family (CDF, 1992).

It is inappropriate for Church authorities to endorse or remain neutral toward adverse legislation even if it grants exceptions to Church organizations and institutions (CDF, 1992, #16).

What does the Catholic Church say about the newly-invented same-sex “marriages"?

On July 30, 2003, the CDF published the June 3 letter “Considerations regarding…unions between homosexual persons” (Toronto Star, “Ban gay marriages: Pope,” August 1). It includes these points:

“Marriage is not just any relationship between human beings. It is established by the Creator, with its own nature, essential properties, and purpose.” “The approval or legitimization of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil.” “Civil law cannot contradict right reason without losing its binding force on conscience.” “Allowing children to be adopted” [within homosexual unions] “is gravely immoral.” “The Catholic lawmaker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favour … is gravely immoral.”

One year later, on June 14, 2004, CDF Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger published a letter entitled “Worthiness to receive Holy Communion” (text, Catholic Insight, Sept. 2004, p. 23). In it, he states: “When a person’s formal cooperation” [regarding grave sins] “becomes manifest (understood, in the case of a Catholic politician, as his constantly campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws” [Editor: and today also, without a doubt, same-sex “marriage”], his pastor should meet with him, “informing him that he is not to present himself for Holy Communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin, and warning him that he will otherwise be denied the Eucharist” (#5).

In section #4, the Cardinal had noted already that “the minister of Holy Communion may find himself in the situation where he must refuse to distribute Holy Communion to someone, such as in cases of declared excommunication, a declared interdict, or an obstinate persistence in manifest sin (cf. Canon 915) (emphasis mine).

Dec. 28, 2003: “Marriage is a human and divine gift that must be defended,” especially today against “a misunderstood sense of rights.” Feb. 28, 2004: “Lawmakers and Catholic legislators may never vote in favour of laws attacking life or attacking the family.” Marriage “is the pillar of society … the union of man and woman, open to life, which gives rise to the natural institution of the family.” June 4, 2004: “Rights” are at times derived from [nothing but] self-centered demands … prostitution and pornography in the name of adult choice; the acceptance of abortion in the name of women’s rights; the approval of same-sex unions in the name of homosexual rights. June 17, 2004: Warns Catholics and, in particular, pastors of the Church, that failure to proclaim the truth about marriage and the family is a “grave omission.” “It is necessary to proclaim with firmness, as a real service to society, the truth on marriage and the family established by God” (Zenit). Sept. 6, 2004 (to Canada’s new ambassador): “Established by the Creator with its own nature and purpose, and preserved in natural moral law, the institution of marriage necessarily entails the complementarity of husbands and wives who participate in God’s creative activity through the raising of children. Spouses thereby ensure the survival of society and culture, and rightly deserve specific and categorical legal recognition by the state.” “Any attempts to change the meaning of the word ‘spouse’ contradict right reason: legal guarantees, analogous to those granted to marriage, cannot be applied to unions between persons of the same sex without creating a false understanding of the nature of marriage.” Dec. 18, 2004: In discussion with the ambassador from Hungary the Holy Father condemned same-sex “marriage” as an attack on the fabric of society and called on Catholics to combat “the aggressive attempt to legally undermine the family.” “Attacks on marriage and the family, from an ideological and legal aspect, are becoming stronger and more radical every day” (Reuters). Jan. 10, 2005: The Pope used his annual message to diplomats accredited to the Holy See (174 countries) to “deliver an unequivocal condemnation of gay marriage” (New York Times, Jan. 11). “Today the family is often threatened by social and cultural pressures which tend to undermine its stability; but in some countries the family is also threatened by legislation which — at times directly — challenge its natural structure, which is and must necessarily be that of a union between a man and a woman founded on marriage.”

Family, he said, “must never be undermined by laws based on a narrow and unnatural vision of man” (also Toronto Star, “Pope targets gay marriage,” Jan. 11).

The Church’s teaching is clear: same-sex “marriage” is unacceptable; Catholics may neither promote it nor vote for it, on pain of being cut off from the sacraments when they (obstinately) continue to publicly support it.

In Canada, Vancouver’s Archbishop Raymond Roussin has reminded Catholic lawmakers that they have a moral duty to clearly oppose the legislation and that voting in favour of a law so harmful to the common good is “gravely immoral” (Lifesite, Dec. 9). In the East, the Bishop of St. John, NB, Faber MacDonald, has said the same: “Catholic lawmakers must make themselves aware of the Church’s teaching because they have a moral duty to clearly oppose such “legislation” [as the redefinition of marriage] (New Freeman, Dec. 24, 2004).

For those interested -some links to Catholic documents and some excerpts:

The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality - Guidelines for Education within the Family

104. A particular problem that can appear during the process of sexual maturation is homosexuality, which is also spreading more and more in urbanized societies. This phenomenon must be presented with balanced judgement, in the light of the documents of the Church. Young people need to be helped to distinguish between the concepts of what is normal and abnormal, between subjective guilt and objective disorder, avoiding what would arouse hostility. On the other hand, the structural and complementary orientation of sexuality must be well clarified in relation to marriage, procreation and Christian chastity. "Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained". A distinction must be made between a tendency that can be innate and acts of homosexuality that "are intrinsically disordered" and contrary to Natural Law.
Especially when the practice of homosexual acts has not become a habit, many cases can benefit from appropriate therapy. In any case, persons in this situation must be accepted with respect, dignity and delicacy, and all forms of unjust discrimination must be avoided. If parents notice the appearance of this tendency or of related behaviour in their children, during childhood or adolescence, they should seek help from expert qualified persons in order to obtain all possible assistance.
For most homosexual persons, this condition constitutes a trial. "They must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfil God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition". "Homosexual persons are called to chastity".
Persona Humana - Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics

VIII At the present time there are those who, basing themselves on observations in the psychological order, have begun to judge indulgently, and even to excuse completely, homosexual relations between certain people. This they do in opposition to the constant teaching of the Magisterium and to the moral sense of the Christian people.
A distinction is drawn, and it seems with some reason, between homosexuals whose tendency comes from a false education, from a lack of normal sexual development, from habit, from bad example, or from other similar causes, and is transitory or at least not incurable; and homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable.
In regard to this second category of subjects, some people conclude that their tendency is so natural that it justifies in their case homosexual relations within a sincere communion of life and love analogous to marriage, in so far as such homosexuals feel incapable of enduring a solitary life.
In the pastoral field, these homosexuals must certainly be treated with understanding and sustained in the hope of overcoming their personal difficulties and their inability to fit into society. Their culpability will be judged with prudence. But no pastoral method can be employed which would give moral justification to these acts on the grounds that they would be consonant with the condition of such people. For according to the objective moral order, homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality. In Sacred Scripture they are condemned as a serious depravity and even presented as the sad consequence of rejecting God. This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of.
Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons

10. It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church's pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.
But the proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered. When such a claim is made and when homosexual activity is consequently condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase.
11. It has been argued that the homosexual orientation in certain cases is not the result of deliberate choice; and so the homosexual person would then have no choice but to behave in a homosexual fashion. Lacking freedom, such a person, even if engaged in homosexual activity, would not be culpable.
Here, the Church's wise moral tradition is necessary since it warns against generalizations in judging individual cases. In fact, circumstances may exist, or may have existed in the past, which would reduce or remove the culpability of the individual in a given instance; or other circumstances may increase it. What is at all costs to be avoided is the unfounded and demeaning assumption that the sexual behaviour of homosexual persons is always and totally compulsive and therefore inculpable. What is essential is that the fundamental liberty which characterizes the human person and gives him his dignity be recognized as belonging to the homosexual person as well. As in every conversion from evil, the abandonment of homosexual activity will require a profound collaboration of the individual with God's liberating grace.
Some Considerations Concerning the Response to Legislative Proposals on Non-discrimination of Homosexual Persons

II. Applications
10. "Sexual orientation" does not constitute a quality comparable to race, ethnic background, etc. in respect to non-discrimination. Unlike these, homosexual orientation is an objective disorder (cf. "Letter," No. 3) and evokes moral concern.
11. There are areas in which it is not unjust discrimination to take sexual orientation into account, for example, in the placement of children for adoption or foster care, in employment of teachers or athletic coaches, and in military recruitment.
13. Including "homosexual orientation" among the considerations on the basis of which it is illegal to discriminate can easily lead to regarding homosexuality as a positive source of human rights, for example, in respect to so-called affirmative action or preferential treatment in hiring practices. This is all the more deleterious since there is no right to homosexuality (cf. No. 10) which therefore should not form the basis for judicial claims. The passage from the recognition of homosexuality as a factor on which basis it is illegal to discriminate can easily lead, if not automatically, to the legislative protection and promotion of homosexuality. A person's homosexuality would be invoked in opposition to alleged discrimination, and thus the exercise of rights would be defended precisely via the affirmation of the homosexual condition instead of in terms of a violation of basic human rights.
Considerations Regarding Proposals To Give Legal Recognition To Unions Between Homosexual Persons

4. 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. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. Homosexual acts “close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved”.
7. Homosexual unions are totally lacking in the biological and anthropological elements of marriage and family which would be the basis, on the level of reason, for granting them legal recognition. Such unions are not able to contribute in a proper way to the procreation and survival of the human race. The possibility of using recently discovered methods of artificial reproduction, beyond involv- ing a grave lack of respect for human dignity, does nothing to alter this inadequacy.
Homosexual unions are also totally lacking in the conjugal dimension, which represents the human and ordered form of sexuality. Sexual relations are human when and insofar as they express and promote the mutual assistance of the sexes in marriage and are open to the transmission of new life.
As experience has shown, the absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons. They would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood. Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development. This is gravely immoral and in open contradiction to the principle, recognized also in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, that the best interests of the child, as the weaker and more vulnerable party, are to be the paramount consideration in every case.

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