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Home Page > News > Vatican takes strong stance against gay marriage after US election

Vatican takes strong stance against gay marriage after US election

Tough response to three US states deciding to accept Gay Marriage

DARA KELLY,

IrishCentral Staff Writer

Published Monday, November 12, 2012, 7:15 AM

Updated Monday, November 12, 2012, 9:12 AM

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Pope Benedict XVI addresses the crowd at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican

Photo by Google Images

The Vatican had vowed that it will never stop insisting that marriage can only be between a man and a woman.

Just days after three US states approved same-sex marriage by popular vote in the recent election, the Vatican has taken a stance against gay marriage with a "media blitz" that includes a front-page article in Saturday's Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano.

There was also a Vatican Radio editorial in which the pope's spokesman asked why gay marriage supporters don't also push for legal recognition of polygamous marriages as well.

Along with the US, Spain has also upheld its gay marriage law and France is pushing ahead with legislation that could see same-sex marriage legalized as early as next year.

Catholic teaching holds that homosexuals should be treated with dignity but that homosexual acts are "intrinsically disordered."

According to RTE, L'Osservatore Romano wrote that Catholics were valiantly fighting to uphold church teachings in the face of "politically correct ideologies invading every culture of the world."

Read more news on LGBT issues here

Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said that homosexuals can have their rights protected by means other than through legal marriage.

He added that children should be able to say they have a father and a mother.

"If not, then why not contemplate freely chosen polygamy, and naturally so as to not discriminate, polyandry?" he asked.

Polyandry is when a woman has two or more husbands.

"As a result, don't expect the church to stop insisting that society recognises a specific place for marriage between a man and woman," he said.

The Church has also clashed with the Obama administration over the contraception mandate which exempts houses of worship but applies to faith-affiliated employers.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has said the mandate is a violation of religious freedom.

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eiriamach | Nov 17, 2012, 07:30 PM EST

It's not "guilt by association" with bigots. It's the sin of inciting bigotry. The USCCB condemned "unjust discrimination" in the statement you quoted, Gearoid4. But the bishops' own attempt to exclude gays and lesbians from the legal benefits and status of marriage is a form of "unjust discrimination" by the criteria of Gaudiam et Spes: "Therefore, there must be made available to all men everything necessary for leading a life truly human, such as food, clothing, and shelter; the right to choose a state of life freely and to found a family, the right to education, to employment, to a good reputation, to respect, to appropriate information, to activity in accord with the upright norm of one's own conscience, to protection of privacy and rightful freedom even in matters religious." The bishops surely know that their much-publicized, ungodly war against gays is deepening in Catholics and other fundamentalists a determination to hate, exclude, and discriminate. That's guilt-laden knowledge, especially when they manipulate the bigots they create to fight their political campaigns.

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breandan | Nov 17, 2012, 02:03 PM EST

One way to solve this matter is to keep "marriage" a religious matter. If the Moslems won't sanction gay marriage then you can find another religion. If you can find a religion to sanction your union then you can be married. The state should only be involved creating legally binding unions between individuals as partnerships or corporation with the members granted special rights. Let's keep religion and government separate.

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Gearoid4 | Nov 15, 2012, 05:10 PM EST

Eiriamach, you seem to be projecting "guilt by association" on to those who defend honorably the well-understood version of marriage vis-a-vis bigots who vehemently hate homosexual people. The Church has on numerous occasions spoken out against such a hateful mentality as in letter addressed to homosexual people by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith(1986)..""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." The Admin Committee of the US conference of Catholic bishops in September of 2003 condemned "..all forms of unjust discrimination, harassment or abuse." against gay people. I personally condemn all forms of attacks against anybody, regardless of sexual persuasion. But such attacks should not be used in a calculating way to imply that supporters of the well-understood version of marriage are by extension complicit in such activity, because of the views they hold.

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Joe Kelsall | Nov 15, 2012, 04:43 PM EST

The Vatican opposes, but practises gay marriage.

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eiriamach | Nov 15, 2012, 10:05 AM EST

To add just one more observation, Gearoid4, you've seen many homophobic and gay-bashing comments written by visitors to the Irish Central articles and blogs. You've also see some atheists and Christians alike criticize the bigots' words. But I've never seen you write a comment that defends LGBTs against such verbal attacks. That bigoted speech works, in turn, to support the pope's and bishops' and evangelicals' political campaigns. If the pope and bishop and RC defenders would speak out forcefully against homophobic speech and action whenever it occurs-- including that of religious leaders like Cardinal Francis George of Chicago--then they might convince people of the sincerity of their commitment to a (mistaken) view of marriage as unchangeable.

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eiriamach | Nov 14, 2012, 10:33 PM EST

I'm speaking of the *consequences* of the hierarchy's words and action, Gearoid4. I do not presume to know their states of soul or emotions. I'm not calling them bigots. I'm saying that their words and actions breed or incite or provide a pretext for bigotry and hate speech and even hate crimes in our society. Parents kick gay children out of their homes to disassociate themselves from what the priest calls "sin," and heterosexual teens think they have a license in the pronouncements of religious leaders to bully gay teens. Such are the dynamics of the situation. And it's all unnecessary because the social and political equality of LGBTs would affect no one else's freedom to live, worship, and follow Christ as he or she chooses to do. The Church's political campaign gratuitously inflicts serious suffering, real harm. It makes victims of LGBTs, it damages social cohesion, and it divides the Body of Christ.

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Gearoid4 | Nov 14, 2012, 07:11 PM EST

Oh please, Eiriamach, you cannot equate genuine homophobia with the heartfelt motivations of people who believe firmly in the well-understood definition of marriage that has served societies so well for well on 2 millennia now. Hatred expressed by homophobes in the form of physical and verbal abuse has to be utterly condemned and the perpetrators jailed. I think that the Vatican's use of language at times in relation to the whole area of homosexuality and marriage, could be expressed in a more refined and sensitive way, but the concept of marriage is non-negotiable in terms of it's constituent core. The Christian opposition to the latest legislative attempts to re-define marriage is not based on any hatred for anyone, but solely on what religious people understand to be the timeless sanctification of the complementary love between a man and woman which is open to procreation. That is the biblical definition of it and one cannot radically alter it's essence without changing it's whole meaning.

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eiriamach | Nov 14, 2012, 05:51 PM EST

Gearoid, your 4:36 statement echoes the Vatican's statement in Friday's l'Osservatore Romano, as reported by Yahoo online: "'The Church is the only institution to say that, while persecuting homosexuals in undoubtedly unjust, opposing marriage between people of the same sex is a point of view that must be respected,' the Vatican newspaper editorial said." I must disagree with both the Vatican statement and yours. As long as research correlates harm (suicides of gay teens, an astronomically high rate of bullying, harassment, and discrimination against LGBTs) to religious leaders' very public opposition to equal rights for LGBTs, I cannot respect such opposition. Moreover, as I've said several times, such opposition is unChristian; it drives young people and others with open minds from the Christian Churches, and it associates Christianity in the public mind with social/political arch-conservatism and intolerance. For these reasons, I cannot respect your position and am compelled to oppose it as harmful and unChristian intolerance.

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Gearoid4 | Nov 14, 2012, 04:36 PM EST

Where is the "hate" in re-emphasizing the truth about marriage as it has always been understood across different societies down the centuries? The charges of homophobia by some against those who hold on to the vision of marriage between a man and woman which unites them in their complementariness and which is open to procreation, betrays very shallow thinking and a lack of understanding(through ignorance or wilful distortion) of the motivations of others, on their part

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lokionline | Nov 14, 2012, 04:05 PM EST

When the catholic hierarchy makes hateful statements like these it makes clear they and those who agree with them reject the societal values most of us care about (the recent elections and passed ballot initiatives have made these clear). Statements like these are helping the RCC in it's avowed goal of diminishing itself. I guess it makes sense that way and perhaps can be celebrated as a sign of the growing irrelevance of Catholic mores.

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Gearoid4 | Nov 14, 2012, 01:41 PM EST

@Eiriamach, I never said that contraception was a direct cause of divorce, but something which contributed to or facilitated acts of infidelity which has been the cause of so much trouble for marriages. This is an indisputable fact. You measure the downside of raising children in terms on monetary value. Is this a valid reason for life-denying contraceptive/abortafacient pills to be ingested by women. While I sympathize with families who have to make decisions concerning spacing out pregnancies in relation to circumstances like financial constraints, this can be achieved by careful family planning in line with observing the natural rhythms of the female body. This also avoids the deliberate act of self-sterilization and the health consequences of the modern contraceptive pill. As regards your take on Jesus' words on marriage as quoted in the gospel of Matthew, the Catholic Church has never taken the Creation story of Adam and Eve literally, but has looked upon it as a figurative/metaphoric story for the coming of humanity on to the Earth as willed by God. Thus one can take Adam and Eve as representing the Creation story of both man and woman without the necessity of explaining the contradictions inherent in a strictly literal reading. In any case, the words of Jesus are pretty clear and are are true for all ages regarding the truth of marriage as consisting of a sacred covenant between one man and one woman. No progressive interpretation of Jesus' words can overturn this.

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eiriamach | Nov 14, 2012, 09:11 AM EST

Gearoid, I just noticed that you quote Matthew 19, which in turn quotes Genesis. Genesis belongs to the genre of creation myth (I do not use the word "myth" to suggest that it is false, only that its truth does not belong to the category of empirical science). It is not the purpose of this genre to impose moral rules. Particularly in the case of Adam and Eve, who had NO human mother or father, it is senseless to suppose that "a man [shall] leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife" commands heterosexual marriage only! On the contrary, that section of Genesis tells us that each generation "creates" anew and that we should not cling to dysfunctional traditions of the past but work with our own generation to renew creation and sanctify it. Progress in political and social equality fulfills that intention of the Creator.

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eiriamach | Nov 13, 2012, 09:18 PM EST

As countless generations of women could inform you, Gearoid, fear of pregnancy is most likely to "break that unique conjugal bond between them" and contraception likely to sustain it. From Bradford Wilson's "The Evolution of Divorce" online, "Raising children is expensive, and has become increasingly so, given rising college and health-care costs. Yet the real value of federal tax deductions for children has fallen considerably since the 1960s. To remedy this state of affairs, ... expanding the current child tax credit from $1,000 to $5,000 and making it fully refundable against both income and payroll taxes .... would provide a significant measure of financial relief to working-class and middle-class families, and would likely strengthen their increasingly fragile marriages" and reduce divorce rates. Nowhere in his article does Wilcox, Director of the National Marriage Project at the U of Virginia and senior fellow at the Institute for American Values, mention birth control as a cause of divorce! Divorce is far more complex than that.

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hollabackgurl | Nov 13, 2012, 08:39 PM EST

Wouldn't it be nice if the Vatican took a strong stance against poverty or child endangerment. You know, or something Jesus actually wanted them to do.

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Gearoid4 | Nov 13, 2012, 07:22 PM EST

Pius was speaking of the obedience due to a husband from his wife as warranted in the bible, but this also mean't a reciprocal respect and love on the part of the husband as stipulated in the marriage contract. The husband was seen by him as the head of the household with his wife, as his life-long mate and companion, united in conjugal love and fidelity. Contraception breaks that unique conjugal bond between them and unnaturally breaks the link between the unitive and procreative aspects of the sexual act. It renders sterile what God has ordained to be fertile and live-giving. The Church has been against birth control since the first apostolic centuries and you are in error stating that official Catholic pronouncements against it are just a recent phenomenon. The early Church Fathers taught that any unnatural acts done to prevent conception within marriage was directly against God's will e.g. Clement of Alexandria, a brilliant 2nd century bishop and theologian, in his famous catechetical work the "Paedagogues" wrote.." To indulge in intercourse without intending children is to outrage nature, whom should take as our instructor" Others like St Jerome and St John Chrysostom preached in the same vein.

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