Same-Sex Marriage Seen as "Defeat for Humanity"

L’Osservatore Romano Article Comments on Spanish Law

Share this Entry

VATICAN CITY, JULY 4, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Spain’s new law on homosexual «marriage» is a «defeat for humanity,» says the Vatican’s semiofficial newspaper.

L’Osservatore Romano, in an article signed by Francesco Valiente and published Sunday, said that the Catholic Church’s opposition to this initiative involves, not a «war of religion,» since the family is not something imposed by the Church, but rather the heritage of great cultures.

«The triumphalist tones with which some ‘progressive’ politicians and intellectuals have commented on the law that legalizes homosexual unions, equating them to heterosexual marriage, elicits incredulity and bitterness,» the article states.

«Not only believers, but any person with common sense, free of prejudiced blinkers, cannot but recognize in this act a degrading defeat for humanity,» it adds. «Whether the ‘enlightened’ politicians (and their entourage of obliging ‘maître à penser’) like it or not, the family, based on marriage between a man and a woman is not an invention of Catholics.

«The Christian dignity of marriage, instead of diminishing a profoundly human value, consolidates and reinforces it. For this reason, any attempt to change God’s plan on the family is also an attempt to disfigure the most authentic face of humanity.»

Inscribed in nature

For the author Valiente, «those who today cry victory against ‘the traditional model of the family imposed by the Church,’ forget that a war of religion is not being fought here. The family is the common heritage of the world’s great cultures.»

«It belongs to the whole of humanity because it is inscribed in nature from its beginning. And it has survived, throughout the centuries, the screening of philosophical, scientific, anthropological and social systems.»

«It is singular that a state which proclaims itself ‘secular’ and ‘liberal’ attempts to impose its own ideological system on such a complex reality,» notes the author.

Valiente adds: «To everyone, and not just to believers, corresponds the task to stop this degeneration of humanity by guarding the original ‘vocabulary» of the family, of marriage, of love which for millennia has written the history of generations.»

Share this Entry

ZENIT Staff

Support ZENIT

If you liked this article, support ZENIT now with a donation