«Today the assault is indirect,» the archbishop was to say in a homily at a feast day Mass for Glasgow’s patron saint, Mungo (died 603). «Today the assault is indirect; the attack is on the moral order which is the heritage of all Christians, and which enshrines values shared by those of other faiths within our midst.»
The homily echoed the concern shared by all eight Catholic bishops of Scotland about recent changes in legislation surrounding marriage and family life.
«The bishops are concerned at the way in which the institution of marriage is undermined,» according to Archbishop Conti. «Recent legislation to introduce civil partnerships dangerously weakens the uniqueness of marriage as a time-honored, legally recognized and protected social reality and a fiscally privileged entity.
«It also implicitly places homosexual acts on a plane of moral equivalence to marital love. … All of this flies in the face of the Christian Catholic view of sexuality and marriage, and stems from the basic mistake of separating the unitive and procreative aspects of marital love.»
