Tenth anniversary of landmark Catholic document on homosexual unions

St Charles Lwanga and Companions

This month marks the tenth anniversary of the promulgation of Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual Persons by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The document was published on the Feast of St Charles Lwanga and Companions who were martyred in 1886 at the command of King Mwanga II of Uganda. Mwanga had launched a brutal persecution of Catholics and Anglicans which was provoked in part by the refusal of Christians to engage in homosexual acts with him. The CDF clearly chose this date in order to emphasise the threat of intolerance and persecution faced by those who conscientiously object to such unjust actions of the state as the legalisation of civil partnerships and so-called 'same-sex marriage.'

The freedom of the pro-life movement, as well as that of ordinary men and women up and down the country, to express normative opinions about marriage and the family is being severely threatened by the intolerance of the ‘LGBT lobby.’ It is increasingly considered ‘homophobic’ simply to express beliefs that were accepted everywhere just a few years ago. This new totalitarianism is a threat to all of us but no group is more at risk than the unborn child. The family founded on the marriage of one man and one woman is the ‘natural habitat’ in which children are conceived and brought up. In the United Kingdom infants conceived outside of marriage are four to five times more likely to be aborted than those conceived within marriage. It is clear therefore that anything that undermines the traditional understanding of marriage will put unborn children at risk. This is because when the link between marriage and procreation is broken the child is more likely to be seen not as the natural and expected result of the sexual act but as a ‘problem’ to be resolved through abortion.

Since this document was published by the CDF we have seen ever increasing attacks on the traditional understanding of marriage, which, let it be said clearly and unambiguously, is the only understanding of marriage which accords with both right reason and the experience of men and women down the centuries. It will be helpful to remind ourselves of the insights contained in this document, which “since this question relates to the natural moral law…. [is] addressed not only to those who believe in Christ, but to all persons committed to promoting and defending the common good of society.” A selection of quotes from the document, under our own headings, are included below.

Marriage is only between one man and one woman

“The Church's teaching on marriage and on the complementarity of the sexes reiterates a truth that is evident to right reason and recognized as such by all the major cultures of the world. Marriage is not just any relationship between human beings. It was established by the Creator with its own nature, essential properties and purpose. No ideology can erase from the human spirit the certainty that marriage exists solely between a man and a woman, who by mutual personal gift, proper and exclusive to themselves, tend toward the communion of their persons. In this way, they mutually perfect each other, in order to cooperate with God in the procreation and upbringing of new human lives.”

Homosexual unions are in no way comparable to marriage

“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”.

Sacred Scripture condemns homosexual acts “as a serious depravity... (cf. Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:10; 1 Tim 1:10). 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”. This same moral judgment is found in many Christian writers of the first centuries and is unanimously accepted by Catholic Tradition”

Homesexual unions must be opposed

“In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. One must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws and, as far as possible, from material cooperation on the level of their application. In this area, everyone can exercise the right to conscientious objection.”

Civil laws must conform to right reason or they do not bind in conscience

“…civil law cannot contradict right reason without losing its binding force on conscience. Every humanly-created law is legitimate insofar as it is consistent with the natural moral law, recognized by right reason, and insofar as it respects the inalienable rights of every person. Laws in favour of homosexual unions are contrary to right reason because they confer legal guarantees, analogous to those granted to marriage, to unions between persons of the same sex. Given the values at stake in this question, the State could not grant legal standing to such unions without failing in its duty to promote and defend marriage as an institution essential to the common good.

…

Civil laws are structuring principles of man's life in society, for good or for ill. They “play a very important and sometimes decisive role in influencing patterns of thought and behaviour”. Lifestyles and the underlying presuppositions these express not only externally shape the life of society, but also tend to modify the younger generation's perception and evaluation of forms of behaviour. Legal recognition of homosexual unions would obscure certain basic moral values and cause a devaluation of the

institution of marriage.”

Homosexual unions lack the biological complementary present in marriage

“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 involving 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.”

Adoption of children by homosexual couples is gravely immoral

“…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.”

Politicians who vote for homosexual unions commit grave sin

“When legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for the first time in a legislative assembly, the Catholic law-maker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favour of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral.

When legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is already in force, the Catholic politician must oppose it in the ways that are possible for him and make his opposition known; it is his duty to witness to the truth.”

Conclusion

“The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions. The common good requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society. Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity. The Church cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself."

Missionaries to society

On the 25 May 2012 The Daily Telegraph reported that the Home Secretary Teresa May said "homosexuals will be missionaries to the wider society and make it stronger." She made this comment in relation to government plans to legalise same-sex marriage. 

In the same vein pro-abortion voices say they defend abortion because they take motherhood so seriously. Similarly, self-described pro-choice advocates present abortion as a means of exercising free choice and ensuring women's equality. 

What we have is a moral inversion - bad is called good. That which causes harm is called enhancing. 

What our society continually and urgently needs is for pro-lifers, those who believe in the dignity of the human person from conception, and the institution of heterosexual marriage as best for children born and unborn, to be missionaries to the wider society, and make it stronger. We can and should go to talks and conferences, read articles, and learn the arguments, but if we do not take the message to others we are not being effective. We end up creating a pro-life cottage industry where we talk to ourselves about what we already know and agree upon.

Pope Francis, in 2005 whilst still a cardinal in Argentina, gave a sermon to a group of pro-lifers. His sermon included the following message. Although it will have obvious relevance for Christians, especially Catholics, it's useful for us all in appreciating the spirit we need in order to be missionaries to the wider society:

But it is a road that is full of wolves, and perhaps for that reason they might bring us to the courts, perhaps, for that reason, for caring for life they might kill us.  We should think about the Christian martyrs.  They killed them for preaching this Gospel of life, this Gospel that Jesus brought.  But Jesus gives us the strength.  Go forth!  Don't be fools, remember, a Christian doesn't have the luxury of being foolish, I'm not going to repeat, an idiot, a fool, he can't give himself the luxury.  He has to be clever, he has to be astute, to carry this out.

Society, unborn children and their parents, need you to be a missionary right where you live - whether village, town or city. Taking the pro-life message to the public - leafleting, table displays, prayer vigils, pro-life chains, walks of witness, supporting pro-life pregnancy centres, writing letters to local and national press, calling into radio shows, objecting to BPAS and Marie Stopes abortion adverts in pub and club toilets etc etc - not only brings the message to a wider audience, but also strengthens our resolve to be actively pro-life.

Fr (Blessed) Miguel Pro, Mexican martyr 1927

White Rose movement - student resistance to Nazi atrocities

Greensboro Woolworth restaurant sit-ins 1960

Pakistani politician Shahbaz Bhatti murdered for opposing oppressive sharia laws

Pro-life street display table

Large pro-life prayer vigil

Pro-life display table at a local council festival


SPUC's Anthony Ozimic explaining the nature of marriage on national television

 Young adults March for marriage in Paris

Pro-life tour with the Olympic torch

Post-abortive mothers public witness

Email your name, address, and number of pro-life leaflets you want: danielblackman@spuc.org.uk

Is the true nature of marriage self-evident?

As debate rages over the Government’s plans to redefine marriage as a union between two persons either of the same or of the opposite sex, it is becoming increasingly clear that our society no longer possesses a clear definition of marriage. The defenders of traditional marriage hold that marriage is an exclusive lifelong union of two persons of the opposite sex and regard this as something so clearly manifested in human history and so conformable to reason and experience that it is ‘self-evident’; to suggest that ‘marriage’ can be anything else is simply absurd. Those of us who hold this view have however had to contend with the reality that there are those for whom the proposition ‘Marriage can only be a union of one man and one woman’ is not only not self-evident but is in fact scarcely comprehensible. How has our society come to be divided into two such irreconcilable factions, with one group holding as self-evident something which is now incomprehensible to the other? To help answer this question I wish to consider the matter in the light of the philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas. This is primarily a philosophical question and I hope that the following discussion will be of interest to people of all religious backgrounds and none.

St Thomas Aquinas 1225 - 1274

In the Summa Theologica St Thomas defines a self-evident proposition as a statement of which ‘no one can mentally admit the opposite.’ St Thomas gives the example ‘man is an animal’. There are none of us who can mentally admit the proposition that ‘man is a plant’ or that ‘man is a rock.’ Similarly most people historically, and also today, are unable to admit mentally the proposition ‘marriage can be between two men or two women’; it is something that simply cannot be conceived.

So why are there an increasing number of people who can admit this proposition?

St Thomas explains as follows:

A thing can be self-evident in either of two ways: on the one hand, self-evident in itself, though not to us; on the other, self-evident in itself, and to us. A proposition is self-evident because the predicate is included in the essence of the subject, as "Man is an animal," for animal is contained in the essence of man. If, therefore the essence of the predicate and subject be known to all, the proposition will be self-evident to all; as is clear with regard to the first principles of demonstration, the terms of which are common things that no one is ignorant of, such as being and non-being, whole and part, and such like. If, however, there are some to whom the essence of the predicate and subject is unknown, the proposition will be self-evident in itself, but not to those who do not know the meaning of the predicate and subject of the proposition.

Let us work through this difficult passage step by step.

Aquinas is stating:

1. Something can be ‘self-evident in itself and to us’ - i.e we immediately see that it is self-evident OR it can be ‘self-evident in itself, though not to us’ i.e.-  it is self-evident but it may not be recognised as such in certain circumstances. If then, something which is self-evident cannot always be recognised as such then in what way, we may ask, can it in fact be called self-evident?

2. St Thomas explains that a proposition is self-evident if ‘the predicate is included in the essence of the subject’.  Let us apply this to the proposition ‘man is an animal’. ‘Man’ is the subject of the sentence and ‘is an animal’ is the predicate. Biologically man falls into the category ‘animal’ because he shares the characteristics that are used when defining animals rather than those which are used to define plants, rocks etc. Therefore it is self-evident, in this context, that man is an animal.

3. However if a person did not understand what the word ‘animal’ meant in this context they might be able to mentally conceive the opposite. For example, if a person mistakenly thought that the word ‘animal’ as used in this context implied that man did not have an immortal soul they might assert ‘man is not an animal’ and the contrary proposition would not be self-evident to them. It would however remain self-evident in itself because no-one who truly understood the proposition would be able to mentally conceive the opposite.

We can now begin to understand the problem that we face today. The proposition ‘Marriage can only be a union of one man and one woman’ is self-evident in itself but this self-evidence is only realised by those who understand what the word 'marriage' has always traditionally meant in this context. The reality is that the word ‘marriage’ has been used in an incorrect sense in this country and in others for some time, beginning with the introduction of divorce, which undermined the idea that marriage was a lifelong exclusive union, and then furthered by the widespread use of artificial methods of birth control which has done great damage to the understanding that the institution of marriage is intrinsically ordered to the procreation and raising of children.

The consequence of this is that many people now believe that ‘marriage’ merely signifies a contract between two people who wish some kind of formal recognition for their relationship which they conceive as existing primarily for mutual love and support and for the enjoyment of sexual pleasure. The procreation and raising of children is now often considered an optional extra by couples capable of having children (though marriage of course has always taken place in cases where procreation is not possible due to infertility.) When people accept this new understanding of the word ‘marriage’, the most compelling reason to prevent two men or two women entering such a union is no longer effective. The proposition ‘Marriage is a union of one man and one woman’ is no longer self-evident to them because they do not understand what is signified by the word ‘marriage’ as it has always been applied to this natural human phenomenon . Nonetheless the proposition remains, and will always remain, self-evident in itself.

St Thomas’ understanding of self-evidence is helpful to us because it shows us the importance of raising awareness in people of the true meaning of marriage as a lifelong exclusive union ordered towards the procreation and raising of children and the mutual love and support of the spouses. It is only when the true meaning of marriage is fully understood that it will once again become self-evident to all that two men or two women can never enter into the specific kind of union that marriage involves.

Why SPUC defends traditional marriage

In November 2011 SPUC's National Council resolved that SPUC would campaign against the attempted redefinition of marriage by the present government.

The government is planning to introduce legislation which would allow two men, or two women, to enter into a union that would be legally identical to the authentic marriage of one man and one woman. The position taken by SPUC is that this would undermine the traditional understanding of marriage which in turn would put unborn children at even greater risk of abortion.

The basic building block of society is the family. All human communities, whether they be small villages or large cities, simple tribes or industrialised nations, are made up of interconnected families. The family is our first community and we belong to this community before we belong to any other. The family therefore precedes all political structures and identities. The source and foundation of the family is the bond of marriage. We can define marriage as the lifelong exclusive union of one man and one woman, ordered towards the bringing forth of children and the mutual love and support of the spouses.  These are usually referred to as the ‘procreative’ and the ‘unitive’ ends of marriage and are closely connected.

The marriage bond is thus ideally formed to provide children with the love and security they need to grow and flourish. A family founded on marriage is by far the safest place for children to be conceived and brought up. In the United Kingdom infants conceived outside of marriage are four to five times more likely be aborted than those conceived within marriage. It is clear therefore that anything that undermines the traditional understanding of marriage may put unborn children at risk.

Why does so-called ‘same-sex marriage’ undermine authentic marriage?   

The bond of marriage is founded on the complementarity of the sexes. This complementarity between men and women is emotional, social and intellectual, as well as physical and sexual. The marriage bond is formed when one man and one woman freely commit themselves to a lifelong and exclusive sexual union, which is ordered towards procreation, even if children do not always result. While it is honoured and exalted by most religions, it is in the first place a natural union, fundamental to human existence and recognised in all times and in all places. Until recently this traditional understanding of marriage was an unquestioned part of human life. It is only recently, due to the influence and exertions of a small but powerful group of committed ideologues, that doubts have been planted in the minds of ordinary men and women.

The marriage bond as described above cannot be entered into by two men or two women because they do not possess the necessary complementarity.  By their very nature, sexual acts between members of the same sex cannot bring forth new life, and, indeed, are not acts of sexual intercourse properly so-called. Neither is there the necessary emotional, social or intellectual complementarity. The term ‘marriage’ therefore simply cannot be applied to a relationship so different to that which it is has traditionally defined. The misuse of the word marriage will inevitably lead to further confusion about the nature and purpose of marriage, resulting in a decrease in the number of stable married relationships and an increase in the number of abortions.

The state exists to further the common good of all under its authority, and can and should exercise its authority within its legitimate bounds. However it does not possess the power to create its own reality or alter unchanging truths. Marriage and the family pre-exist all political structures and thus cannot be redefined at will by any government no matter how many laws they pass or how many votes they win. It is in no way ‘discriminatory’ or ‘homophobic’ to state the simple and honest truth that marriage remains, and will always remain, the exclusive lifelong union of one man and one woman. It is in fact essential that we, the next generation of the pro-life movement, are prepared to see the interconnection between attacks on marriage and the family and attacks on nascent human life. By defending the traditional understanding of marriage, we help to defend many generations of unborn children yet to be conceived.

Further Reading

SPUC's Position Paper on Same Sex Marriage (January 2012)

SPUC's Background Paper on Same Sex Marriage (January 2012)