Archbishop Dolan, President of the US Bishops Conference, today significantly stepped up his tone and urgency in defending marriage and family against the multipronged attacks of the Obama Administration. In a letter sent to the White House, Abp. Dolan begins:
"I write with a growing sense of urgency about recent actions taken by your Administration that both escalate the threat to marriage and imperil the religious freedom of those who promote and defend marriage ... Unfortunately the only response to date has been the intensification of efforts to undermine DOMA and the institution of marriage.
The Justice Department‟s move [to undermine DOMA], in addition to other troubling federal decisions occurring recently, prompts me yet again to register my grave concerns. The content of this letter reflects the strong sentiment expressed at a recent meeting by more than thirty of my brother Bishops who serve on the Administrative Committee of our episcopal conference. I know they are joined by hundreds of additional Catholic bishops throughout our nation...
The Catholic Bishops stand ready to affirm every positive measure taken by you and your Administration to strengthen marriage and the family. We cannot be silent, however, when federal steps harmful to marriage, the laws defending it, and religious freedom continue apace. Attached you will find an analysis prepared by my staff detailing the various executive activities of late that warrant our increasing apprehension."
The letter continues:
"...it is particularly upsetting, Mr. President, when your Administration, through the various court documents, pronouncements and policies identified in the attached analysis, attributes to those who support DOMA a motivation rooted in prejudice and bias. It is especially wrong and unfair to equate opposition to redefining marriage with either intentional or willfully ignorant racial discrimination, as your Administration insists on doing."
Mr. President, I respectfully urge you to push the reset button on your Administration‟s approach to DOMA. Our federal government should not be presuming ill intent or moral blindness on the part of the overwhelming majority of its citizens, millions of whom have gone to the polls to directly support DOMAs in their states and have thereby endorsed marriage as the union of man and woman."
And this towards the end:
"The Administration‟s failure to change course on this matter will, as the attached analysis indicates, precipitate a national conflict between Church and State of enormous proportions and to the detriment of both institutions."
The letter concludes with a 3-page analysis of federal threats to marriage covering April to August of this year.
28 Comments
"It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins."
Benjamin Franklin
Obama willfully undermined the defense of DOMA under the guise of defending it.
Having already been threatened with disbarment for misrepresentation while in private practice you would think Obama would have learned his lesson by now.
Wish I knew the Catholic Churches true motivations on this. They will lose this fight. If not this decade, the following. NOM is doing a good job of keeping fingers in the dam but the ocean keeps rising and more holes develope.
Anyone know the name of the guy that Rosa Parks wouldn't give up her seat for? I suspect Maggie name will be remembered.
Maggie, How was the Prop 8 play?
Rover, what you need to understand is that the catholic bishops joust put Obama on notice that he will lose the election ink 2012 if he pushes the marriage corruption agenda.
Now you may not have been hip to the tone of that letter, but as a Catholic who watched in frustration as the bishops allowed Obama to split the catholic vote in 2010. let me make a suggestion.
Go do some homework on who would have won in 2010, had the Catholic vote gone 10 points in the other direction.
It is you marriage corruption advocates who are going to be running out of fingers to stick in the dike.....very very soon.
See you in 2012.
Rover, are you ready for President Perry? Have you read his book on how he will put and end to religious discrimination and by making our legal system accountable to the people?
Agreed, lets talk after the 2012 election.
M Jones, you honestly believe Perry is going to be our next president? Most republicans would rather see Obama have a second term than Perry in office. He has zero appeal outside of Christians.
Tyler wrote:
"He has zero appeal outside of Christians."
You do realize that 80% of the population of the U.S. consider themselves Christians don't you?
So if Perry only manages support from Christians then Perry will only win the election by a 60 point margin of victory; shame on him.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with same-sex marriage. Let people love who they want to love and let them express that love through marriage. It will not harm anyone in any way. People are taking their lives because of hate and discrimination like this so they only harm is being caused by you people.
Redefining marriage to that of a neutered public union, which divorces assumption of paternity, is way above the President's pay grade.
Mary: You sound hateful and discriminatory.
But then, you knew that
"Let people love who they want to love and let them express that love through marriage. It will not harm anyone in any way."
It won't harm anyone? Poor Mary's been living on Mars.
Mary, a great many of us are doing all we can to help young people make healthier lifestyle choices.
Mary,there is absolutely no point in marriage existing unless it is exclusively opposite-sex.Calling wrongdoing wrongdoing and treating those prone to it as capable of admitting their desires are wrong is not hate or discrimination.
Rover Serton: When we need predictions/guesses, we'll call you. Honest.
Mary: You say "There is absolutely nothing wrong with same-sex marriage." You must mean religious marriage, because you used the word "wrong". If you mean "illegal", it is a matter of the State legislatures, but that is civil marriage. Sure, let people love and have friendships; but that doesn't mean the governments see a Public Interest in sponsoring friendships. Read the letter to Obama, and you will get the drift. No one is against friendship. NOM is not. But the government has no reason to sponsor friendships, and it has ample reasons to sponsor marriage (man/woman). If it were just friendships, the Governments would not be involved in "marriage". Didn't you have a mother? Do you hate your mother?
Barb:
"It won't harm anyone? Poor Mary's been living on Mars."
Who will it harm, then? And how will it harm them?
"Who will it harm, then? And how will it harm them?"
The SSM issue includes LGBT indoctrination in classrooms (WITHOUT the prior permission of the parents), the loss of government support for faith-based adoption agencies, the loss of religious freedom, and the loss of free speech.
For example, the case of a Florida teacher who expressed, on his PRIVATE Facebook page, his upset at the legalization of SSM in New York State. He was then suspended from his job and had to hire a lawyer and go to court to get reinstated.
My god... this site and its comments need to be broadcast around the United States. Everyone needs to see, and judge, for themselves, the opinions expressed here.
David Brider,social accommodation of a homosexual's decision to be in a same-sex sexual relationship is like telling an alcoholic to get drunk as he wishes.Every homosexual allowed to believe that same-sex sex is unobjectionable IS BEING HURT.We must insist on the thankless task of telling them what they NEED to hear instead of what they WANT to hear.
"David Brider,social accommodation of a homosexual's decision to be in a same-sex sexual relationship is like telling an alcoholic to get drunk as he wishes."
The two things aren't the same at all. There's hard, irrefutable data that alcoholism greatly inhibits a person's ability to function. Homosexualtiy is simply part of the range of normal human behaivour.
Bruce: Since your neighbors emphatically do not agree with your last sentence above, we shall have to decide the matter politically.
You will lose.
"There is absolutely nothing wrong with same-sex marriage. Let people love who they want to love and let them express that love through marriage. It will not harm anyone in any way."
Does that extend to same-sex siblings, or a mother/daughter or father/son loving "couple?" Will that also extend to recognizing group relationships? Exactly what will the lines of eligibility be? Is it really all about love?
From Alveda King, niece of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:
"Homosexuality is NOT a civil right."
And I was all but ready to throw out the baby with the bath water regarding the Catholic Church after watching the video "Deliver us from evil' a tragic story about the priest O'Grady and his tormenting of children but this article gives me more confidence in the Catholic church. Thank you for sharing it.
You must read this article and congratulate Bishop for his stand! I will rethink my current remarks on the Catholic church and will continue to monitor its efforts to protect families, woman and children by first protecting the institution set in place by G-d our Father to protect families. G-d bless their efforts! Im most impressed. G-d bless NOM!!
Bruce,there are human behaviors that should be deplored,all the more because of their frequency,and sexual activity between individuals of the same sex is one of them.
David asks:
"Who will it harm, then?"
>> Every human person.
"And how will it harm them?"
>> By destroying, as a matter of law, the truth that society depends for its future upon the fostering of stable, long term unions between man and woman. It is from such unions that children commonly proceed, and it is within such unions that they are best nurtured.
By the way- any adult who doesn't already understand this has imbibed a truly awful sort of menticidal Kool-Aid, which has rendered them incapable, apparently, even of noticing that each and every child does, in fact, result from the union of exactly one man and exactly one woman.
Once one is prepared to ignore or deny this truth, then all the rest of the marriage corruption lunacy follows relatively easily.
The good news is, it were impossible for the majority of citizens to buy into this madness once the matter has been fully aired in a free election campaign.
Our advantage, David, lies in the fact that pseudo-marriage is not merely wrong.
It is demonstrably insane.
The arguments against same-sex civil marriage, or civil unions with the same benefits as marriage, are statistical. Statistical. Statistical arguments cannot be understood by the uninitiated in Statistics. Worse, they will get angry because they cannot understand the arguments. Couples of homosexual persuasion could organize themselves as a religion of sorts, but instead they continue to try to force their religion on the entire USA population, using paid advocates. Since they don't spend engendering the next generation, they have extra money to donate for their political cause - a lot more than couples who engender the next generation providing a mother AND father to each child. Actually, it is a man's world, once again. Women got the vote, but men can pick and chose from divorced women who still want to follow their instincts... Men, in general are not going to try to change the status quo, because it leaves women unprotected, and sets up a male-dominated sexual market.
I'm with the Catholic Bishops 100%. The president will ignore this letter at his own peril. Homosexuals are setting themselves up for a major disappointment in the very near future.
Deb,treating someone as capable of realizing his desires are wrong is not "hate"...it's tough,but true,love where telling him to do as he pleases is not.