What about adhering to Catholic Social Teaching principles? The duty of government? We had a Catholic Prime Minister a few years ago (who I voted for, due to the fact he was a Catholic), who then abandoned his principles for the principles of party politics. When his former Jesuit school wrote to him asking why he had done so, he replied that he “doesn’t bring his faith into parliament”. I thought that a person’s Christian beliefs should define their whole character, and that a person shouldn’t just abandon them to serve Mamon.
I don’t disagree about the threats of Islamic philosophy and “gender theory”. They started teaching “gender theory” in our school-system until recently, when saner heads prevailed.
Two of the principles of Catholic Social Teaching are the dignity of the human person and the dignity of work and of the rights of workers. Marriage could be classed under “dignity of the human person”. The homosexuals shout “what about OUR dignity”? Well, according to the Catechism, they can be dignified by remaining chaste. We must show our solidarity (which is also a principle of Catholic Social Teaching) with homosexuals, by showing them how they can live with dignity as single men and women.
You’re right, especially with the last sentence. This focus on sexual identity or gender identity is an attack against common sense, which is not so common in the West, at least when one sees and hears how heavily the media supports alternative lifestyles.
"5. Faced with the fact of homosexual unions, civil authorities adopt different positions. At times they simply tolerate the phenomenon; at other times they advocate legal recognition of such unions, under the pretext of avoiding, with regard to certain rights, discrimination against persons who live with someone of the same sex. In other cases, they favour giving homosexual unions legal equivalence to marriage properly so-called, along with the legal possibility of adopting children.
"Where the government’s policy is de facto tolerance and there is no explicit legal recognition of homosexual unions, it is necessary to distinguish carefully the various aspects of the problem. Moral conscience requires that, in every occasion, Christians give witness to the whole moral truth, which is contradicted both by approval of homosexual acts and unjust discrimination against homosexual persons. Therefore, discreet and prudent actions can be effective; these might involve: unmasking the way in which such tolerance might be exploited or used in the service of ideology; stating clearly the immoral nature of these unions; reminding the government of the need to contain the phenomenon within certain limits so as to safeguard public morality and, above all, to avoid exposing young people to erroneous ideas about sexuality and marriage that would deprive them of their necessary defences and contribute to the spread of the phenomenon. Those who would move from tolerance to the legitimization of specific rights for cohabiting homosexual persons need to be reminded that the approval or legalization of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil.
“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.”
Full document:
vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20030731_homosexual-unions_en.html
As far as worker’s rights, I know little in this case.
Ed
