Action Speaks Louder
No sooner did the U.S. Supreme Court render its fateful decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide than the U.S. bishops picked up their collective pen and issued statements in defiance of the new law.
Well, perhaps defiance is too strong a term. Rather, they registered their “disappointment” with the Court’s ruling — disappointment being the “operative word” in their reactions, according to LifeSiteNews.com, which posted a helpful compendium (July 14) of several bishops’ statements in response to Obergefell v. Hodges. A few highlights:
– Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), called the ruling “profoundly immoral” and “unjust,” a “tragic error that harms the common good and the most vulnerable among us, especially children.”
– Bishop Robert E. Guglielmone of Charleston, South Carolina, came on strongly, noting that “marriage is a sacrament instituted by God, not by man or by institution, and can only be between one man and one woman.” Therefore, the Supreme Court “has no authority over Holy Matrimony.”
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Not long after the same-sex marriage battles have begun we are beginning to hear promotion of polygamy, three-parent laws, and even talk of legal incest.
If we restore not only orthodoxy but a concern for a genuinely Catholic identity, we can more effectively turn to our task of conveying the Gospel to the world.
The Episcopal Church contorts its theology to conform to the broader culture, but the culture has no real use for a Christianity remade in its image.