Very often Catholic leaders are more succinctly articulate when speaking from a faith perspective on public policy issues than are we Protestants and Evangelicals. A recent example is a response by the Catholic bishops of Virginia to their state’s new liberal attorney general, who’s unilaterally decided not to defend Virginia’s definition of marriage as man and woman.
Bishop Paul S. Loverde of the Diocese of Arlington and Diocese of Richmond Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo said:
Virginia voters put this provision in the Constitution, and no politician should be able to reverse the people’s decision. We call on the Attorney General to do the job he was elected to perform, which is to defend the state laws he agrees with, as well as those state laws with which he personally disagrees. We will continue to defend marriage between a man and a woman, an institution whose original design predates all governments and religions. The Government of the Commonwealth of Virginia should preserve and defend this original design because the constituent majority that supported the constitutional amendment understands the unique benefit that marriage between a man and a woman provides to individual families and society at large.
Note their phrase that man-woman marriage “predates all governments and religions.” The state did not invent it, nor did the church. It is intrinsic to creation. Liberal religionists and secularists who imagine they can unilaterally recreate reality don’t or won’t comprehend this point. They prefer to bend their notion of reality to the latest desired fashion, rejecting the constants of God and nature.
Last year San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, who chairs the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, in USA TODAY offered more extensive superb arguments for protecting natural marriage. Here’s his concluding quote:
With marriage, we have to consider the harm that will be caused by enshrining in the law the principle that children do not need a mother and a father. The circumstances of our struggles change but the truth does not.
Among Protestants, liberals are wholly on board with deconstructing marriage and family. Some less liberal prelates fancy a laissez faire approach that divorces the state from protecting natural marriage. Many well intentioned traditionalists rely on a few Bible quotes, almost conceding the allegation that natural marriage is strictly a rite of orthodox Christianity. Church leaders of all traditions are called to defend the truth on every front by deploying the full intellectual and spiritual resources available from millennia of Jewish and Christian tradition.
Comment by Reader on February 5, 2014 at 1:34 pm
It probably has something to do with the fact that the Roman church’s historic legacy of state churches in the Old World and, by extension, its theological positions on matters of public policy were largely the position of those in government. Of course, let’s also not forget the Roman church structure is episcopal and doctrinal, whereas most Protestants owe their very existence to a decentralized notion of church governance. Thus, no Protestant leader (exceptions for the Anglicans or Episcopalians, but even then) can claim to be the doctrinaire-in-chief.
Comment by Marco Bell on February 8, 2014 at 12:01 pm
There will be those that marry for reproductive purposes, and there will be as many that wish, and deserve to marry for purely companionship.
There need not be any exclusiveness to the institution, so why do Orthodox Christians feel so threatened by these requests?
Comment by Charles Horton on February 13, 2014 at 4:24 am
We are not threatened by anyone’s request for companionship. People can become companions without having to make requests for it. We just don’t want to live in a society that promotes and condones sin. In the Old Testament homosexuality is named an abomination, and in the New Testament we are told that the practice stirs up the wrath of God. This is not about companionship, it’s about behavior. Jesus mentions that even thieves have love for each other, but their companionship does not justify their thievery. And the same holds true of homosexuals. Their sinful behavior is not justified by their companionship.
The good news is that even though EVERYone is a sinner, whether they are homosexual or heterosexual, salvation and eternity is available to EVERYbody who calls on Jesus’ sacrifice, his blood shed to cover our sins and sinful nature. This we all can rejoice over because while we were living in our sins, Christ died for us and demonstrated his love for us and his desire to have a deep and real personal relationship with us. Orthodox Christians want to see people who practice sinful behavior, whether homosexual or heterosexual sin, know God and his love for them, that he intensely wants to welcome them into his arms as his children who who desire to change and leave their old and former ways behind them. And he promises to help them do exactly that.