The Archbishop of Sydney has reaffirmed the Church’s teaching on marriage.
During the Archdiocese’s Annual Marriage Mass with Renewal of Vows on July 12, Archbishop Anthony Fisher said authentic marriages are special because “they bring together for life people of opposite sex, of complementary sexuality, as ‘man and wife’, hopefully to found a family, the fundamental cell of Church and society, and to give their all to that end, exclusively and for life,” reported Vatican Radio.
During the annual Mass, in which the Australian Archdiocese’s Life, Marriage and Family Centre plays a great role, many couples participated. Those married for between 50 to 65 years were presented certificates by the archbishop and were accompanied by family and friends.
In his homily, the Archbishop acknowledged, there are “voices in our culture that no longer think marriage need be for life, or be open to children, or be exclusive, or be between man and wife.”
“They write off as benighted and bigoted those who stand by marriage as traditionally understood,” he said.
This, Archbishop Fisher pointed out, can create “an uncomfortable position,” for some powerful forces in politics, business, and culture who “are determined to silence any alternative to the politically correct position in this matter; to bully us all into accepting the deconstruction and redefinition of a fundamental institution; and to relegate questions of what marriage is and is for as secondary to an homogenizing ‘equality’.”
True marriage, Archbishop Fisher stressed, is “a form of preaching and therapy,” which “wordlessly bears witness to the Christian understanding of the human person and society, of our God-given mission to love not just with a self-serving, romantic, heart-shaped Valentine’s Day sort of love, but with a self-giving, redemptive, cross-shaped Easter Day sort of love.” (D.C.L.)
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On the NET:
For more on the Annual Mass of Renewal of Vows (including Full Homily): http://www.sydneycatholic.org/people/archbishop/homilies/2015/2015712_34.shtml
