A Widening Gap on Marriage

By Bishop Paul S. Loverde

Monday, October 6, 2014, marked the opening session of Synod on the Family in Rome, a gathering in which Catholic bishops, in communion with the pope, have come together to prayerfully discuss ways to strengthen families, to examine the challenges families face and to provide resources to protect them from cultural threats that weaken them.  In his opening homily to his brother bishops on Sunday, October 5, Pope Francis said, “The Lord asks us to take on ourselves the care of the family, which from its origins is an integral part of [God’s] love for humanity.”

The family is the building block of civilization.  And the building block of the family is marriage – a lifelong, loving and committed union between a man and woman, who in becoming “one flesh,” create children who are the concrete sign of their love.  Pope Francis has consistently articulated what the witness of marriage does – it reflects the faithful love that God has for his sons and daughters and teaches that true love is life-giving.  The Holy Father has said, “As ‘one flesh’, [they] become living icons of God’s love in our world, building up the Church in unity and fidelity.  The image of God is the married couple — not just the man, not just the woman, but both.”

It is striking then, that on the same day as the opening session of the Synod, the Supreme Court of the United States declined to review a ruling in Virginia (and in four other states) that struck down legislation which affirmed the truth that marriage by its very nature is the union of one man and one woman.  The citizens of Virginia had rightly expressed the essence of marriage in the constitutional amendment of 2006.

Our state’s legislation reflected a longstanding tradition which affirmed that marriage not only benefits the individuals who enter a union but society as a whole.  Marriage has numerous positive aspects: it teaches men and women how to relate to one another while providing children the unique gifts that mothers and fathers offer in their development and formation.

The juxtaposition of these two views of marriage – the one in Rome and the other in Washington, DC – causes us to note with increasing alarm the widening gap between an unchanging, fundamental good and shifting cultural preferences.  As Pope Saint John Paul II said, “As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.”  As a teacher of the faith and a citizen who desires the common good, I will continue to affirm the essence of marriage in season and out.