So You Want To Cause A Ruckus, And Pray For “Marriage Equality” In The Cathedral? Bishop Paprocki Has A Message For You…

Think again. And if you’re a Catholic who happens to belong to the Rainbow Sash Movement? Roll tape,

Read the press release, if you’d like. This development was reported in the Sun-Times blogs, too.

Did I mention that Bishop Paprocki has a law degree from DePaul University?

Here’s a reminder from the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, on this issue.

228. Connected with de facto unions is the particular problem concerning demands for the legal recognition of unions between homosexual persons, which is increasingly the topic of public debate. Only an anthropology corresponding to the full truth of the human person can give an appropriate response to this problem with its different aspects on both the societal and ecclesial levels[503]. The light of such anthropology reveals “how incongruous is the demand to accord ‘marital’ status to unions between persons of the same sex. It is opposed, first of all, by the objective impossibility of making the partnership fruitful through the transmission of life according to the plan inscribed by God in the very structure of the human being. Another obstacle is the absence of the conditions for that interpersonal complementarity between male and female willed by the Creator at both the physical-biological and the eminently psychological levels. It is only in the union of two sexually different persons that the individual can achieve perfection in a synthesis of unity and mutual psychophysical completion”[504].

Homosexual persons are to be fully respected in their human dignity [505] and encouraged to follow God’s plan with particular attention in the exercise of chastity[506]. This duty calling for respect does not justify the legitimization of behaviour that is not consistent with moral law, even less does it justify the recognition of a right to marriage between persons of the same sex and its being considered equivalent to the family[507].

“If, from the legal standpoint, marriage between a man and a woman were to be considered just one possible form of marriage, the concept of marriage would undergo a radical transformation, with grave detriment to the common good. By putting homosexual unions on a legal plane analogous to that of marriage and the family, the State acts arbitrarily and in contradiction with its duties”[508].

Read more (and follow-up the footnotes).

Related:

The Holy Goalie Fearlessly Skated Across The Thin Ice Of Same-Sex Marriage In Arizona.

More on Marriage from yesterday’s letter from the CDF.