The family is “the survival network of the future and will remain forever the basis of every society,” Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna told journalists ahead of addressing a conference, “Let’s Talk Family: Let’s Be Family.”
“The Catholic Church is doing whatever it can to strengthen the family, including families often considered non-traditional”, the Cardinal said.
“Favoring the family does not mean disfavoring other forms of life – even those living in a same-sex partnership need their families,” the Cardinal said during his visit to Ireland, which next year hosts the World Meeting of Families.
The Cardinal told the Conference at Mary Immaculate College that people should not be discouraged about the future of the family, despite the many social and economic threats and policies that disregard it.
“Today, everybody can get married,” he said, but acknowledged “so many choose not to get married.”
He suggested that the number of so-called irregular situations had increased enormously because the “framework of society has changed so much.”
“But let us not forget that marriage, as we have it today, is a privilege that was fairly rare in previous centuries, when only a third of the population were able to get married.”
He said his great-grandmother, a wealthy widow who lived in what today is the Czech Republic but then was part of the Austrian empire, had six servants who remained unmarried because of laws against marriage for people of their status. “Marriage was a privilege,” he said.
The Cardinal, a former student of Benedict XVI, also noted that the Pope’s grandmother was the “illegitimate daughter of a maiden, who was not permitted to marry.”
Frankly, having read the Cardinal’s statements a number of times, I still do not have the slightest understanding of or insight into what he is saying.
Why is it that a notable number of Bishops seem to have forgotten or abandoned the Church’s teaching regarding Marriage that for centuries has been based upon the classical understanding of the objective order of the Natural Law?
How can one define the essence of Marriage as the exclusive relationship of one man and one woman ordered to both the salvation of the couple and the procreation of children and, at the same moment, not only recognize but “favor” other forms of marriage which conflict with or contradict that definition?
In proclaiming what Marriage truly is, the Church is also proclaiming what Marriage is not.
This is not the result favoring one relationship over another but simply speaking to the truth of the matter.
Same-sex relationships are not and can never be likened to marriage. Families artificially constituted by convoluted personalist arguments or political policies can never rise to the essence of families whose nature and sanctity flow from the order of the laws of nature and its Creator.
In the desire so prevalent nowadays not to offend anyone’s sensibilities on any topic whatsoever, Cardinal Schonborn and others do the Church and the Christian faithful a disservice by not enunciating the truth of what Marriage and Family truly is.
If the Church abrogates its mission to proclaim the truths of nature and the Will of God expressed in both Scripture and Tradition, the world is deprived of the one resource it requires to discern what life’s meaning and purpose is.
The double-speak of Cardinal Schonborn and so many within the Church today serves no one and certainly neither the Gospel nor the Catholic Faith that offers humanity the one sure hope of redemption.
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