Wednesday, August 22, 2012

How To Be The Most Hated Person In A Room!

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Are You a Bigot, Homophobic or Un-Christian?

 

by Fr. David Endres:  We live in a strange world. The easiest way to become the most hated person in a room is to even hint at the possibility that you might favor a Biblical understanding of marriage and family life. For automatically you are called backwards, a bigot, homophobic, maybe even un-Christian.

 

Our culture is uncritically accepting “same sex marriage” and those that hesitate to support it are afraid to say anything. We don’t want to offend or seem too radical. And when we don’t say anything, when even the Church and its priests and parishioners are quiet on this issue, we lose an opportunity to teach others about God’s plan for marriage, and family, and ultimately His plan for human happiness.

Deaconmarries

 Deacon witnessing a Sacramental Marriage

I ask you to consider a few points on the Church’s teaching on marriage and family life:

 

  • The Church respects everyone – every human being is a child of God made in His image. We are all sinners; we are all frail; we all have struggles to overcome. And yet we are all made for eternal life with God. The Church believes this about everyone.

 

  • Marriage is from God; after all it’s a sacrament. When God created human persons in his own image and likeness, he created them as male and female, and placed within them a desire to love and to give themselves totally to another person.

 

  • None of us – not a country, not a state, not a mayor – have the right to redefine marriage. A true marriage, even between a man and a woman, must involve fidelity, freedom, and openness to children. It’s the very first commandment in the Bible: “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28).

 

  • Certainly not all human relationships, as good as they can be, are on par with marriage. The word “marriage” isn’t simply a label that can be attached to different types of human relationships.

 

  • Our differences matter; men are different from women and women are different from men. It affects a person at every level of his or her existence: genetically, biologically, emotionally, psychologically, and socially.

 

But as different as we are, there is a complementarity there.  Whether we are created male or female is an essential part of being human. Gender is not an afterthought or a mere social construct. It’s how we are made and it’s the reason man and woman can truly become “one flesh” as it says in the Book of Genesis (2:24).

 

  • The unity of husband and wife is so intimate that from it can come a “third,” or a “fourth” or a “fifth” – children, new lives. No other relationship, no matter how loving or committed, have this unique form of communion that brings forth new life.

 

So why does the Church care about this?

Why should we care?  Because marriage and family is a fundamental good and necessary for our society to flourish. Marriage affects everyone. It is never just a “private” issue; it has public significance and public consequences. Redefining marriage is really a proposal to redefine society, and to redefine the human person itself.

 

We believe that we don’t have the right to redefine what God has already taught us. Jesus reminds us, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate” (Matthew 19:4-6).

 

No matter what opinion polls show, or what federal, state, and local governments decide, marriage can’t be redefined because marriage is of divine origin, a beautiful covenant witnessed to in the Scriptures, celebrated as a sacrament, and a bond which now must be protected by the Church’s members.

 

For more information, see http://www.marriageuniqueforareason.org/

 

Are you willing to be the most hated person in the room?  Will you stand with the bible, the Church and God?  If so, than please share with friends or family.