Gay marriage threatens my straight marriage? ** COMPLETE AND UTTER NONSENSE**.
Possibly you are unaware that you have just called the Catholic Bishops of the United States, as well as the Vatican, purveyors of
** COMPLETE AND UTTER NONSENSE**.
This is the opposite instruction they have given to the Catholic faithful. Marriage is an institution which affects everyone. And yes, the bad marriage next door and the great marriage down the street both affect your marriage. More importantly, the erosion of an icon affects all of society.
It seems that you need some information about the requirement of Catholics to bring Catholic convictions on settled moral doctrine into the public square and the voting booth.
The bishops and the Vatican are the sources for how a Catholic is to consider these issues in the public square, and they do not agree that marriage is a private matter. This is definitive Church teaching, binding on Catholics.
One of the many documents in which the bishops do not agree with you:
marriageuniqueforareason.org
for Catholics, marriage is also a key public policy issue, in fact one of six raised by the U.S. bishops when they reissued Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, their call to political responsibility. This means marriage is not only something that matters to the doctrine of the Church and the private lives of the people entering into it. It matters to all society.
The reason it matters is because marriage affects the common good. In fact, the two are inseparably intertwined. As the Second Vatican Council put it, **“The well-being of the individual person and of human and Christian society is intimately linked with the healthy condition of that community produced by marriage and the family.” **In fact, because the union of husband and wife is uniquely capable of welcoming new life into the world, the Church describes marriage as the very “condition” for society’s existence.
Because of marriage’s unique contribution to society, all people should be concerned with its well-being. In Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, the bishops write that, in light of the tragic consequences of marriage’s breakdown or disappearance, especially for children, “policies on taxes, work, divorce, immigration, and welfare should help families stay together.” They also advocate for wages that “allow workers to support their families” and for public assistance for struggling families.
In addition to urging policies that strengthen marriages and families, the bishops are deeply concerned with “intensifying efforts” to redefine marriage, namely proposals to remove sexual difference from marriage. This is not “expanding” marriage, as the bishops see it, but rather redefining it and in effect dismantling it. Sexual difference is not an optional component of marriage but rather an essential element, rooted in the nature of the human person created male and female.
Both the bishops of the United States and Pope Benedict XVI have stated that defending marriage as the union of one man and one woman is, as the Pope taught in one ad limina talk, “ultimately a question of justice, since it entails safeguarding the good of the entire human community and the rights of parents and children alike.” Defending marriage does justice to the child by providing him or her with the best possibility of knowing and being loved by both mother and father together. In contrast, redefining marriage asserts that mothers and fathers are interchangeable and denies a child the right to know both a father and a mother. It also obscures the core of marriage, namely the union of husband and wife founded on sexual difference.
USCCB, Pastoral Letter Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan (2009)
The marital vocation is not a private or merely personal affair. Yes, marriage is a deeply personal union and relationship, but it is also for the good of the Church and the entire community” (p. 44).
For an authentic education in the Catholic Church’s teaching on marriage, there is no substitute for the primary, authoritative teaching documents of the Church. On the Church Teachings page, you’ll find links to these main documents: the Catechism, papal encyclicals, Second Vatican Council documents, and more.
usccb.org/issues-and-acti…f-marriage.cfm
