Government proposals to grant same-sex couples marriage-like rights constitute “an alarming attack on the fundamental principle of freedom of religion and conscience”, according to the Primate of All Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady.
Speaking in Limerick in St John’s Cathedral, he said the new legislation makes it a crime for a Registrar of Marriage to decline to officiate at same-sex ceremonies, even for reasons of conscience.
The legislation, he added “also leaves the door open for individuals and religious organisations to be sued in a variety of ways for upholding their belief that marriage is an institution exclusively for a man and a woman”.
He went on to point out that the proposed change in the law would “directly challenging the Constitutional recognition that marriage is ‘a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law'”.
The legislation, published earlier in the summer, will give same-sex couples who register for the scheme partnerships which are equal in status to marriage.
These partnerships will be entitled to the same benefits in tax and welfare as married couples – the only difference being the right to adopt children.
The new scheme will also remove ‘marital status’ from key legislation and public documentation and replace it with ‘civil status’.
Christian politicians have a duty to judge Government legislation designed to give same-sex couples marriage-like rights “in the light of Divine Revelation and the natural law”, Cardinal Brady added.
Stressing that whatever “authentically promotes the common good can be proposed in terms that find an echo in every human heart, Cardinal Brady said that, whatever the new legislation stated, “marriage between a man and a woman will always remain the ideal environment in which to raise children”.
“Any government that undermines such an environment could hardly be said to be promoting the common good,” he added.
Cardinal Brady said that, while it was right and proper that people were increasingly giving due weight to the ecology, there were other aspects to the integrity and well-being of creation which people were less willing to acknowledge.
These included respect for human life in all its stages; respect for marriage between man and woman as the natural cradle of life, love and formation in society; and the right of every person to an adequate share in the goods of the earth, he said.
Referring specifically to the issue of embryonic stem cell research, the Cardinal said it showed “just how attractive a morality of the end justifying the means can be”.
The same utilitarian approach to morality underlay the present ecological crisis, he added.
“If we cannot respect our own inherent dignity from the moment of conception, what hope has the rest of creation of receiving our care and respect?” Cardinal Brady asked.
Affording more protection and respect to other forms of life than we do to ourselves demonstrated a complete inversion of our moral priorities, he said.
