A leaked draft of the US Catholic Bishops pastoral letter on marriage is set to outline many of the modern threats to the institution, it has been reported.
According to reports, the first section of the draft will focus on the importance of the family, and show how high divorce rates, cohabitation, same-sex unions and contraception are undermining it.
The US Bishops are set to debate and vote on the letter at their upcoming general assembly in Baltimore from November 16-19.
The draft, entitled ‘Love and Life in the Divine Plan,’ is already being praised by Catholic and pro-family leaders as a strong presentation of the Church’s teaching on marriage and a forceful rebuke of cultural attacks on authentic marriage and family life.
The letter, set to be an important component of the USCCB’s National Pastoral Initiative for Marriage, is addressed “first and foremost to the Catholic faithful in the United States,” but is also meant to reach all men and women “in the hope of inspiring them to embrace this teaching.”
The letter also speaks out against the recent attempts to redefine marriage to allow for homosexual ‘marriage’, and speaks out, in union with the Vatican, against any legal recognition of same-sex unions.
Marriage, the letter states, “is the permanent bond between one man and one woman whose two-in-one-flesh communion of persons is an indispensable good at the heart of every family and every society.”
“Same-sex unions,” the draft says, “are incapable of realizing this specific communion of persons. Therefore, redefining marriage to include such relationships empties the term of its meaning, for it excludes the essential complementarity between man and woman, treating sexual difference as if it were irrelevant to what marriage is.”
Further, “it is not unjust to oppose legal recognition of same-sex unions,” they say, “because marriage and same-sex unions are essentially different realities. … The legal recognition of same-sex unions poses a multifaceted threat to the very fabric of society, striking at the source from which society and culture come and which they are meant to serve.”
The letter also insists that “by its very nature, marriage is meant to be a lifelong union.” Quoting the Catechism of the Catholic Church, they write that “divorce, therefore, ‘claims to break the contract, to which the spouses freely consented, to live with each other till death.'”
They recognise, at the same time, that in certain cases legal divorce may be the only possible solution, such as in an abusive home, and they encourage people in such circumstances to “make frequent use of the sacraments.” In such a situation however, the marriage would not be dissolved in the eyes of the Church, rather only from the viewpoint of the law.
