Don't give me that "who am I to judge" or that "Jesus never mentioned homosexuality" line.
Read this; and if you are Catholic and hold a different position, well then; you're a mis-informed Catholic and need to change your position or get out of the Church.
It is really that simple.
CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH
CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING PROPOSALS
TO GIVE LEGAL RECOGNITION
TO UNIONS
BETWEEN HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS
INTRODUCTION
1. In recent years, various questions relating
to homosexuality have been addressed with some frequency by Pope John Paul II
and by the relevant Dicasteries of the Holy See.(1) Homosexuality is a
troubling moral and social phenomenon, even in those countries where it does
not present significant legal issues. It gives rise to greater concern in those
countries that have granted or intend to grant – legal recognition to
homosexual unions, which may include the possibility of adopting children. The
present Considerations do not contain new doctrinal elements; they seek rather
to reiterate the essential points on this question and provide arguments drawn
from reason which could be used by Bishops in preparing more specific
interventions, appropriate to the different situations throughout the world,
aimed at protecting and promoting the dignity of marriage, the foundation of
the family, and the stability of society, of which this institution is a
constitutive element. The present Considerations are also intended to give
direction to Catholic politicians by indicating the approaches to proposed
legislation in this area which would be consistent with Christian
conscience.(2) Since this question relates to the natural moral law, the
arguments that follow are addressed not only to those who believe in Christ,
but to all persons committed to promoting and defending the common good of
society.
I. THE NATURE OF MARRIAGE
AND ITS INALIENABLE CHARACTERISTICS
2. 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.(3) 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.
3. The natural truth about marriage was
confirmed by the Revelation contained in the biblical accounts of creation, an
expression also of the original human wisdom, in which the voice of nature
itself is heard. There are three fundamental elements of the Creator's plan for
marriage, as narrated in the Book of Genesis.
In the first place, man, the image of God, was
created “male and female” (Gen 1:27). Men and women are equal as persons and
complementary as male and female. Sexuality is something that pertains to the
physical-biological realm and has also been raised to a new level – the
personal level – where nature and spirit are united.
Marriage is instituted by the Creator as a form
of life in which a communion of persons is realized involving the use of the
sexual faculty. “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to
his wife and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24).
Third, God has willed to give the union of man
and woman a special participation in his work of creation. Thus, he blessed the
man and the woman with the words “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28).
Therefore, in the Creator's plan, sexual complementarity and fruitfulness
belong to the very nature of marriage.
Furthermore, the marital union of man and woman
has been elevated by Christ to the dignity of a sacrament. The Church teaches
that Christian marriage is an efficacious sign of the covenant between Christ
and the Church (cf. Eph 5:32). This Christian meaning of marriage, far from
diminishing the profoundly human value of the marital union between man and
woman, confirms and strengthens it (cf. Mt 19:3-12; Mk 10:6-9).
4. 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”.(4)
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”.(5) This same moral
judgment is found in many Christian writers of the first centuries(6) and is
unanimously accepted by Catholic Tradition.
Nonetheless, according to the teaching of the
Church, men and women with homosexual tendencies “must be accepted with
respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in
their regard should be avoided”.(7) They are called, like other Christians, to
live the virtue of chastity.(8) The homosexual inclination is however
“objectively disordered”(9) and homosexual practices are “sins gravely contrary
to chastity”.(10)
II. POSITIONS ON THE PROBLEM
OF HOMOSEXUAL UNIONS
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.
III. ARGUMENTS FROM REASON AGAINST LEGAL
RECOGNITION OF HOMOSEXUAL UNIONS
6. To understand why it is necessary to oppose
legal recognition of homosexual unions, ethical considerations of different
orders need to be taken into consideration.
From the order of right reason
The scope of the civil law is certainly more
limited than that of the moral law,(11) but civil law cannot contradict right
reason without losing its binding force on conscience.(12) 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.(13) 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.
It might be asked how a law can be contrary to
the common good if it does not impose any particular kind of behaviour, but
simply gives legal recognition to a de facto reality which does not seem to
cause injustice to anyone. In this area, one needs first to reflect on the
difference between homosexual behaviour as a private phenomenon and the same
behaviour as a relationship in society, foreseen and approved by the law, to
the point where it becomes one of the institutions in the legal structure. This
second phenomenon is not only more serious, but also assumes a more
wide-reaching and profound influence, and would result in changes to the entire
organization of society, contrary 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”.(14) 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.
From the biological and anthropological order
7. 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 involv- ing a grave lack of respect
for human dignity,(15) 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.
As experience has shown, 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.
From the social order
8. Society owes its continued survival to the
family, founded on marriage. The inevitable consequence of legal recognition of
homosexual unions would be the redefinition of marriage, which would become, in
its legal status, an institution devoid of essential reference to factors
linked to heterosexuality; for example, procreation and raising children. 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.
The principles of respect and
non-discrimination cannot be invoked to support legal recognition of homosexual
unions. Differentiating between persons or refusing social recognition or
benefits is unacceptable only when it is contrary to justice.(16) The denial of
the social and legal status of marriage to forms of cohabitation that are not
and cannot be marital is not opposed to justice; on the contrary, justice
requires it.
Nor can the principle of the proper autonomy of
the individual be reasonably invoked. It is one thing to maintain that
individual citizens may freely engage in those activities that interest them
and that this falls within the common civil right to freedom; it is something
quite different to hold that activities which do not represent a significant or
positive contribution to the development of the human person in society can
receive specific and categorical legal recognition by the State. Not even in a
remote analogous sense do homosexual unions fulfil the purpose for which
marriage and family deserve specific categorical recognition. On the contrary,
there are good reasons for holding that such unions are harmful to the proper
development of human society, especially if their impact on society were to
increase.
From the legal order
9. Because married couples ensure the
succession of generations and are therefore eminently within the public
interest, civil law grants them institutional recognition. Homosexual unions,
on the other hand, do not need specific attention from the legal standpoint
since they do not exercise this function for the common good.
Nor is the argument valid according to which
legal recognition of homosexual unions is necessary to avoid situations in
which cohabiting homosexual persons, simply because they live together, might
be deprived of real recognition of their rights as persons and citizens. In
reality, they can always make use of the provisions of law – like all citizens
from the standpoint of their private autonomy – to protect their rights in matters
of common interest. It would be gravely unjust to sacrifice the common good and
just laws on the family in order to protect personal goods that can and must be
guaranteed in ways that do not harm the body of society.(17)
IV. POSITIONS OF CATHOLIC POLITICIANS
WITH REGARD TO LEGISLATION IN FAVOUR
OF HOMOSEXUAL UNIONS
10. If it is true that all Catholics are
obliged to oppose the legal recognition of homosexual unions, Catholic
politicians are obliged to do so in a particular way, in keeping with their
responsibility as politicians. Faced with legislative proposals in favour of
homosexual unions, Catholic politicians are to take account of the following
ethical indications.
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. If it is not possible to repeal such a law
completely, the Catholic politician, recalling the indications contained in the
Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae, “could licitly support proposals aimed at
limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences
at the level of general opinion and public morality”, on condition that his
“absolute personal opposition” to such laws was clear and well known and that
the danger of scandal was avoided.(18) This does not mean that a more
restrictive law in this area could be considered just or even acceptable;
rather, it is a question of the legitimate and dutiful attempt to obtain at
least the partial repeal of an unjust law when its total abrogation is not
possible at the moment.
CONCLUSION
11. 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.
The Sovereign Pontiff John Paul II, in the
Audience of March 28, 2003, approved the present Considerations, adopted in the
Ordinary Session of this Congregation, and ordered their publication.
Rome, from the Offices of the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith, June 3, 2003, Memorial of Saint Charles Lwanga and
his Companions, Martyrs.
Joseph Card. Ratzinger
Prefect
Angelo Amato, S.D.B.
Titular Archbishop of Sila
Secretary
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