HUMAN LIFE INTERNATIONAL
SUBMISSION
P.O.Box 15
Cape Town
8000
8 June 2006,
Dear Honourable Member of
Parliament,
We are aware that Parliament will
soon be considering legislation to legalise same-sex marriage.
We are a Catholic group with a deep concern for issues
of morality and life and see them as the prophetic test for a meaningful, moral
reordering of our society, a concern which we know many of you share. Thus we
write to encourage you to pursue an unabashedly moral course in your
deliberations for the good of our society.
We
draw our inspirations largely from the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church,
which we think offers clear guidance in such matters. In the light of this we
attach a statement, which reflects our thinking, and which we hope will inspire
you and trigger further reflections as you deal with this weighty issue.
Pope Benedict XVI commented
recently that Marriage between a man and a woman is something that contributes
to the good of society as a whole. He said “Avoiding confusion with other kinds of union based on a weak
form of love is, today, particularly urgent.
Only the rock of complete and irrevocable love between man and woman
is capable of acting as a foundation for a society that can be home to all
human beings.”
The Catholic Bishops of South
Africa point out that “The institution of marriage has a very important
relationship to the continuation of the human race, to the total development of
the human person, and to the dignity, stability, peace, and prosperity of the
family and of society”.
We urge you to consider this
standpoint, which enjoys wide popular support. Family life and the protection
of marriage, as a union between man and woman, are vitally important to South
Africans.
We
also want to assure you of our desire to cooperate with you and to avail
further resources to you for your consideration, which ultimately might also
further inform your contributions to this important issue.
Sincerely,
Sally Hall
Human Life International
Media Release 7 December 2005
The Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference
reiterates the Church's teaching as laid out in the Catechism of the Catholic
Church #2357 :
'Homosexuality
refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or
predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex.
It has taken a great variety of forms through
the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains
largely unexplained.
Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which
presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always
declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered." They
are contrary to the natural law. They
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’.
To summarize, all homosexual acts are declared to be
intrinsically disordered. Therefore they cannot under any circumstance be
approved.
The reasons why they are said to be
intrinsically disordered are:
1) they are contrary to the natural law,
2) they close the sexual act to the gift of life and,
3) they do not proceed from a genuine affective and
sexual complementarity.
Scripture passages that the Church uses for its
teaching include this passage from St Paul's Letter to the Romans: ‘For this
reason, God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural
intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural
intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men
committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due
penalty for their error.’ (Rom 1: 26).
Relevant Questions:
Among the questions being asked about the Church's
reaction to the Constitutional Court's rulings are the following:
1.
Can the Church impose its values on society?
The answer depends on a number of considerations:
a) If human beings do not have a Creator, in other
words, if human beings have total knowledge, wisdom and power to create
themselves, then the answer is No. The Church cannot impose its values on
anyone, because the Church takes its authority from the infinite God.
b) If the Church and Society believe and accept as a
given that there is an all holy, all knowing and all powerful God, who created
everything including human beings, and created them to exist and live according
to His Will and Laws, then the Church
not only can, but also must proclaim and work for the acceptance and submission
to the values that God has revealed to us.
2.
The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, so how can the Catholic Church
take issue with it?
It is true that the Constitution is the supreme law of
the land, but in order to be binding on the consciences of its citizens it must
conform to the Law of God. And in this case it clearly does not.
Indeed if the S.A. Constitution is being made to
supersede the revealed will of God then South Africa is morally doomed. For no
one can go against God's Will and come away unscathed. The fact that same sex
marriages are approved by the Constitutional Court, does not make them morally
right.
The Church has the prophetic duty to point out where
the Constitution runs counter to the Commandments of God, our Maker's
Instructions which determine how human beings are to live good and moral lives.
3.
What is the Church going to do about this situation?
a) Taking our lead from the Scriptures our first
action is Prayer, prayer for a change of heart on the part of all who are
responsible for flaunting God's Law.
b) Second we will continue teaching and preaching the
truth revealed by God's Word about human sexuality and its proper use in
marriage.
c) Thirdly we will mobilize the Faithful and all
people of goodwill to work together to save our nation and country from the
disasters that befall any people that turns its back on its God.
The legalizing of same sex marriages is doomed to have
a morally deleterious effect on the institution of the family, traditionally
defined as the permanent union between husband and wife.
+ Wilfrid Cardinal Napier,
OFM, President of the Southern
African Catholic Bishops' Conference