[As the regular readers to Catholicism Anew know, this blog, with few exceptions is the material from the Brazil based Catholic community Canção Nova. This commentary is a Brazilian Catholic perspective of the US Supreme Court decision.–ed.]
The US Supreme Court on 26.06.2015, approved the conjugal union of persons of the same sex.Unfortunately, this decision was not surprising. St. Paul said that “the god of this century blind the minds of those who do not believe” (2 Cor 4,4). The same court had already approved abortion for over forty years.Gradually the law of Christ is being trampled by men, more and more.
According to media reports, “New York celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision in Gay Pride Day history, and the crowd raised flags in the rainbow colors during Gay Pride in NY”.
In the wake of the repercussions of this decision, Mark Zuckerberg, a founder of Facebook, announced it would do in this social network a tribute to the event, a tool based on a feature that would transform the main profile photo on a rainbow. Conclusion, about 26 million people used the little program and colored;and in one way or another, they approved, then this way of socially express their support in favor of same-sex marriage. Even many Catholics “in solidarity” to this mentality which advocates call “because of free love”, also adhering to this “tribute” in their profiles on Facebook, set their profile pictures with rainbow colors, brand LGBT movement’s. Now this is worrying!
We also note the support for this anti-Christian extent on the President of Brazil, the press and culture. And the consequences will be large and negative.
First of all, it all, is a warning to those in Brazil, let us join our forces, Catholics and evangelicals, 95% of the Brazilian people, not to allow this to happen to us. No ideology or Supreme Court, human, has the authority to redefine marriage between man and woman, as God instituted. Benedict XVI said that “no ideology can erase from the human spirit the certainty that marriage exists only between two people of different sexes, who by mutual personal gift, to them own exclusive, tend toward the communion of their persons.” Paul VI He said the man and the woman, united in God, are the source of life.
Paul says that “God is not mocked” (Gal 6,7) and the Prophet Isaiah warned, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, that make what is bitter sweet, bitter and what is sweet! “(Isaiah 5:20).
Unfortunately, our Western Christian culture gives way to practical atheism and moral relativism, increasingly, while Christians are not mobilized sufficiently to prevent it. Pope John Paul II had said that “it is the family that will decide the future of humanity.” This is where it will catch the fight! Marriage and the family are the battlefield where God’s enemies seek to destroy Christian civilization.
St. Paul, in the first chapter of the Letter to the Romans shows God’s action to disapprove sexual and homosexual immorality: “Therefore God gave them up to the desires of their hearts to impurity, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves … Therefore God gave them over to shameful passions: their women did change the natural use into relations against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in a desire for others, men with men committing what is shameful to, and receiving in themselves the wages due to their error. “(Rom 1.24 to 27 ).
A catechist told me: “If one of my parents was homosexual and wedding adept with people of the same sex, of course, I would not have come into the world.” One natural couple, heterosexual, are able to do more than all the other same-sex couples together: bear children.
Let us love our brothers who carry the homosexual tendency, which is not a sin, and pray for them in order to live in chastity as the Church requests, and to come to Christian perfection (cf. Catechism §2357-8).
Do not be afraid to firmly proclaim the truth of God’s steadfast way in Christ.
It is fallacious to claim that on marriages between persons of the same sex, those who are against it are driven by prejudice or religious fundamentalism, for marriage consists of one man and one woman is not only a religious order, but natural. So, the desire to exclude the Christians from of this debate is pure discrimation secular and hurting the legal order of society.
When the Church defends the moral against what is unnatural, she does not do this by dogmas but by fidelity to reason. Benedict in his speech to the German Parliament said: “Christianity has never imposed on the state and society a revealed law, a legal system derived from a revelation. But she appealed to the nature and reason as the true sources of law “.
Our body is not only an instrument to be used at will, but is an intrinsic part of our personal identity. And marriage, as John Paul II said, the unity of man and woman is derives especially through sexual act. This union forms a single body; and this is only possible by radical sexual difference of man and woman. The sexual organs are, by nature, suitable for this union: “You shall be one flesh.”
Do not accuse the Church of wanting to deprive homosexuals of a civil right or marginalize them; just question the ideologies that want to destroy the true family, countering the false. Approving the person of same-sex unions opens the door to all kinds of union as today it is spread dangerously.
Whatever the decision of the world’s parliaments, the Church and its faithful children, continue to defend the dignity of unique and sacred family that left the heart of God as the basis of society, “patrimony of humanity”, “domestic church”, ” sanctuary of life. “(John Paul II).
Let us live then, as St. Paul exhorts the letter to the Romans: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is a coming power of God for salvation to every one that believeth … For therein is revealed the righteousness of God, which It is obtained by faith and leads to faith; as it is written, The just shall live by faith (Hab 2,4) “(Rom 1,16-17). It is our duty to strengthen the family and witness the Gospel without fear of the “martyrdom of ridicule,” as Benedict XVI asked.
Prof. Felipe Aquino