Renewed efforts must be made to build strong marriages, which serve as the foundation of any healthy society, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan (pictured) of New York has said.

He said that Catholics believed that “the best way to get a hint of how God loves us now, and in eternity, is to look at how you, married couples, love one another”.

Cardinal Dolan, who serves as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, delivered the keynote address at the Knights of Columbus’ States Dinner in Anaheim, California on Tuesday.

The dinner attracted a crowd of more than 2,000, including dozens of bishops and cardinals from around the world.

Cardinal Dolan said that he was filled with “awe, admiration, and deep appreciation” for the marriages that are “radiantly” lived out as a representation of the love between God and his people.

He explained that the faithful still believe in keeping their wedding vows for life.

In addition, he said, the Church sees married love as a “mirror” of God’s love for us – faithful, fruitful and forever.

Through Christ, married couples are strengthened to overcome “tension, trial, temptation and turmoil,” being filled instead with “tried-and-true-trust,” he said.

Cardinal Dolan stressed that there is a great need to strengthen marriage in the contemporary world.

He said there was a “vocation crisis in the call to the Sacrament of Matrimony”.

A strengthening of marriages will naturally bring about an increase in vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life, helping solve vocation shortages in these areas as well, he said.

But strong marriages are not only important for the Church, he added. Rather, they are necessary for the entire society to be healthy.

Our culture faces threats to “the very definition of marriage as a lifelong, life giving, faithful union of one man and one woman,” Cardinal Dolan cautioned.

He warned of “a well-choreographed, well-oiled crusade to conform marriage to the whims of the day instead of conforming our urges to God’s design.”

This effort must be resisted, he said, because marriage plays a “singularly pivotal, irreplaceable role” in the “civilisation of love” that recent popes have emphasised.

It is not simply religious authorities who recognise “marriage and family as the central, love-promoting cell of the human project,” the cardinal said. Rather, “historians, sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists” also acknowledge this truth.

Social science shows us that when strong marriages are the norm, the areas of industry, finance, culture and government can be better directed towards virtue and responsibility, he noted. In contrast, when the basic cell of society is weak, the civilisation gives in to “the primitive lust and selfishness” that have historically been shown to destroy societies.

We must realise that the preservation of marriage and family is the “most effective guarantee” of love, life and solidarity in a culture, he said, adding, “When that goes, we all go.”

Cardinal Dolan encouraged the Knights of Columbus and their families to continue working to defend and strengthen marriage as the sacramental union that God intended it to be.

In doing so, he said, they are promoting “the very relationship between one man, one woman, united in lifelong, life-giving, faithful love, that dates back to the Garden of Eden itself.”