The appointment means that when Bishop Malone is installed as the new Bishop of the Diocese of Buffalo, he remains the Administrator of the Diocese of Portland until a new diocesan bishop is named by the Holy Father.

As author of the pastoral letter on marriage, Marriage: Yesterday—Today—Always, Bishop Malone says he accepted the responsibility in light of the need to continue the Church’s educational leadership as the referendum approaches which attempts to redefine marriage. This appointment also means there will be one less transition for the Diocese of Portland.

Judy Harrison of the Bangor Daily News recently interviewed Bishop Malone, who talked about the continuing effort to promote the Church’s teaching on marriage:

It is necessary to clear up some confusion about the nature of marriage as a vocation, specifically in relation to celibacy and the priesthood as such. From my experience as a Catholic priest and university chaplain, this is the fundamental misunderstanding most young people encounter while considering a vocation. This confusion can have some serious effects on the ability to properly discern it, be it to priesthood or to marriage.

The word “vocation”has its roots in the Latin word vocare, which means “to call”. A vocation is a calling. The Second Vatican Council clearly stated that we all have a call to holiness. But within that universal call to holiness, there are two main “states of life”—marriage and celibacy for the kingdom. (The main call to celibacy can be further divided into priesthood and consecrated or religious life.) We rightfully say that both states of life are vocations since both calls ultimately find their origin and their end in God. However, though they both come from and lead to God, there is a fundamental difference in how the word ‘vocation’ is applied and understood properly, regarding marriage and celibacy.

What does this mean? Marriage, as a vocation, is written into our human nature, into our very being. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, “The vocation to marriage is written into the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator” (§1603). According to the Church, everyone is called to marriage because they are humans who have been created as either male or female. All men and women ought to have a natural desire for marriage and a natural desire to be a mother or father. This natural vocation to marriage is manifested in these natural human desires.

Yes, every priest and nun, even the Pope, is called to marriage, insofar as they are human beings. Theologically, this can best be understood in what Blessed John Paul II called the “spousal meaning of the body.” This means that the ensouled body, the person, is meant for the gift of self, particularly in marriage. Marriage is something to which every human person is called; it is the “default” vocation for all humans. So marriage, at its most basic level, is a natural vocation, a call written into our very DNA, into the very structure of our being. The married person is called to give himself totally to one person in love, while the celibate is called to give himself to all.

With this understanding, we can therefore say that it is not necessary to “discern” a vocation to marriage per se. As long as you are a man or a woman, you are called to marriage, as a result of the spousal meaning of the body. I often hear young people say they need to date in order to discern if they are called to marriage. This is simply incorrect. You may need to date to see whom exactly you should marry, but not to know if you are called to marriage as a vocation. You know this by the fact that you are a human being, that is, a man or a woman. Marriage is never a vocation that can be eliminated since it is written into our very nature.

Christians believe that Christ took the natural vocation of marriage and elevated it to the level of a sacrament. Vatican II explains that “authentic married love is caught up in divine love” and transformed. In that supernatural reality, man and woman come to represent the love shared between Christ and his Bride, the Church. But this still does not change the fact that one does not need to discern a vocation to marriage. It is presumed that a baptized Catholic will enter into a sacramental marriage. For the Catholic, natural and sacramental marriage ought to exist together. The sacramental marriage builds upon the natural vocation to marriage.

This understanding, that marriage is a vocation written into our human nature, helps us to comprehend how it differs from celibacy as a vocation. Unlike the call to marriage, which is internal, the call to celibacy is external; it comes from outside of our nature. The vocation to celibacy has a purely supernatural basis since it invites us to renounce the natural vocation to marriage for the sake of the kingdom. In addition, Scripture is clear that celibacy must be received and lived as a supernatural grace (cf. Mt 19:11-12). Without this gift, one cannot properly live the vocation of celibacy for the kingdom.

Here is the crucial point. Individuals called to celibacy will experience both calls at the same time: the desire for marriage, written into their nature, and the inclination to renounce marriage, which comes as a supernatural grace. They should also feel the natural desire to be a mother or father. I’ve talked to many young people who have thought that if they were called to celibacy, they wouldn’t feel the desire for marriage and children. Exactly the opposite! The person called to celibacy feels both at the same time, and then is called to renounce the desire for marriage. In fact, if a young man does not have a desire for marriage or the desire to be a father, then he should think twice about becoming a candidate for the priesthood. If he does not desire to be an earthly father, then he cannot become a spiritual father. The existence of such desires is healthy and natural and in no way precludes a possible vocation to celibacy.

Consequently, the person who is discerning a possible vocation should not make a decision according to the relative intensity of his feelings and desires for marriage versus for priesthood or religious life. Again, the simple existence of the desire for marriage or children does not mean he is necessarily called to marriage. They are things everyone should experience. We shouldn’t base such important decisions on the vacillating intensity of our emotions and desires. This is particularly true for a young man whose natural desires for marriage (and sexual union) are normally quite intense in the late teens and early twenties; the very age most young men discern a possible call to celibacy and the priesthood. It’s not that we ignore our feelings, but the process of discernment is a bit more nuanced.

Celibates are not asexual. They do not renounce their sexuality—they remain fully male or female with the normal desires and inclinations that come with being human. This is a renunciation that must be constantly renewed during one’s lifetime, since the desire for marriage never departs, since it is written into our human nature, and since we can never abandon our human nature. This renunciation certainly constitutes part of the cross that the celibate is called to joyfully carry with the help of the grace of Christ.

However, the truth is that the celibate is “married.” We say that the priest is married to the Church. His Bride is the people whom he is called to serve, and to whom he gives himself. The female celibate is married to Christ. In fact, this nuptial theme is prevalent throughout the entire vow or consecration ceremony. This is how the spousal meaning of “body” is fulfilled in celibacy—the total gift of self to Christ and his Church. And through this gift of self, the celibate finds a spiritual fruitfulness. The priest becomes the spiritual father to those whom he serves, and the consecrated woman becomes a mother to her spiritual children. So there is a real sense of fulfillment that comes with authentically living out a call to celibacy.

We know that we are all called to marriage; we don’t discern it, we presume it. Practically, what needs to be discerned is the possibility of a call to celibacy. I normally suggest to those who have signs that they might be called to the priesthood or religious life to focus primarily on the call to celibacy. I encourage them not to ignore their inclinations and desires for marriage and a family, but also to not focus upon them. Over time, if the individuals have discerned properly, and we can be morally certain that they are not called to celibacy, we can safely eliminate that option and encourage them to pursue the vocation of marriage. It can’t be the other way around because we can never eliminate marriage as a vocation since it is written into our nature.

Fr. Bryce Sibley is a priest of the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana. Originally published in the Homiletic and Pastoral Review. Reprinted with permission.

The “Defending Marriage in the Public Square” session was co-sponsored by the Office for the Promotion & Defense of Marriage and the Office of Lifelong Faith Formation of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland in Maine.

Same-sex marriage and related claims, such as adoption of children, are fast becoming flavor of the month among western politicians. Irish pollies are among the latest, so the family-oriented Iona Institute has prepared an excellent, short, briefing paper on the subject.

Iona’s director, David Quinn, introduces the brief, noting that “even people who are instinctively uneasy about the matter ask themselves, ‘what harm would it do?’” He continues:

This is to imply that unless a change to the institution of marriage directly harms your marriage, there is nothing to worry about. Of course, it could equally be asked what direct harm it would do your marriage if your Muslim neighbor (say) could have more than one wife?

But the harm it would do is to the institution of marriage itself and to its chief purpose which is to commit men and women to one another and to their children. Permitting same-sex marriage would say this is no longer the purpose of marriage at all.

The purpose would be transformed into something else, namely recognizing adult sexual love first and foremost (of whatever kind). Sexual complementarity and the children only it can produce would no longer be seen as in any way connected to the core purpose of marriage.

In other words, we would no longer have any institution that aims to bind (insofar as this is possible) mothers and fathers to their children. Redefining marriage would be a declaration that this is no longer a goal of either  marriage or of society.

This is the harm same-sex marriage will do; it will utterly transform the most pro-child of all social institutions into something else.

The Iona Institute has prepared this very short, easily digestible briefing note on the subject. We urge you to read it and share it. Unless we take the attempt to redefine marriage seriously enough and know how to argue against it, the battle will be lost before it begins.
I recommend following this advice.

Carolyn Moynihan is deputy editor of MercatorNet.  Originally published on MercatorNet.com under a Creative Commons License.  Reprinted with permission.

“I thought it would be so easy to arrive, state the obvious that children need their fathers, and everyone would be like, oh my God, thank you for reminding us!” she said in the documentary “Anonymous Father’s Day.” “But there is a huge monster of money and people desperate for children, who don’t want me to make it harder for them to buy and sell children.”

She said that she has often met with ridicule and vitriol from people who tell her to “just go the beach and get a puppy and run around and have fun, and just get over it,” and even recounted the horrifying words directed at a colleague, who was told, “too bad you weren’t the load your Dad flushed down the toilet.”

“People are extremely vicious,” she said…

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From Wednesday to Friday of this week, all of the bishops in the United States have been meeting together in Atlanta for their biannual general assembly. During this time, a number of bishops present oral reports on the work of their respective committee or subcommittee. Bishop Salvatore J. Cordileone, chairman of the Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, presented Thursday June 14, to the full body of bishops about the Subcommittee’s work. Below is his talk in full, with hyperlinks added.

Introduction

 Thank you, Your Eminence. Good morning/afternoon, Brother Bishops.

Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, during his homily at the closing Mass of the recent Seventh World Meeting of Families in Milan, spoke about the fruitfulness of married love. A husband and a wife, the Holy Father noted, give their “whole lives” to one another. Their love is fruitful for themselves, fruitful in their generous and responsible procreation of children, and fruitful for society, particularly since “family life is the first and irreplaceable school of social virtues.” The Holy Father’s words remind us that the love of husband and wife is a decisive gift for the world, and it calls for stewardship and responsibility.

As I begin my report to you today, I would like to thank in a special way, for their stewardship of the gift of marriage, Bishop Burbidge and Bishop Jugis in North Carolina, Bishop Malone in Maine (soon to be in Buffalo), Cardinal O’Brien, Archbishop Lori, Cardinal Wuerl, Bishop Malooly, and the bishops of Maryland, Archbishop Neinstedt and the bishops of Minnesota, and Archbishop Sartain and the bishops of Washington state. Thank you for your teaching and steadfast witness to the beauty of marriage. Our prayers remain with you and with the many who are working to preserve the unique meaning of marriage in your states’ laws.

***

Brother Bishops, I am grateful for this time to update you on the work of the Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage. Today I will speak briefly about the Subcommittee’s ongoing catechetical work and the legal landscape before us, and then I will close by highlighting initial findings from a new study on family structures, released just a few days ago.

Catechetical Update

In its catechetical work, the Subcommittee continues to advance its initiative, Marriage: Unique for a Reason. The current project underway is the Spanish-language video entitled “El matrimonio: Hecho para el amor y la vida” (Marriage: Made for Love and Life). The video, envisioned to be fifteen minutes long, will use a telenovela-style format and will present a story based on a 50^th wedding anniversary. The story will introduce all four themes of the Subcommittee’s catechetical messaging: sexual difference, the good of children, the common good, and religious liberty. Additional time and focus groups have been utilized in this video’s development to ensure a culturally effective presentation. We anticipate the video’s completion by the end of this year.

Following the release of the Spanish-language video, the Subcommittee plans to complete the Marriage: Unique for a Reason project with the production of two additional English videos, the first on marriage and the common good and the second on marriage and religious liberty.

The video on the common good will aim to introduce the broader social context and meaning of marriage, grounded in an authentic anthropology. With the help of the witness of young adults, it will also seek to address arguments that falsely employ the language of equality, rights, fairness, non-discrimination, and the like. These arguments can and need to be reframed. The core issue is the meaning of marriage and its significance for the rights and best interests of children and for the common good.

The video on religious liberty will be developed in close collaboration with the ongoing efforts of the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty. As described in last January’s open letter signed by various religious leaders, marriage and religious liberty stand or fall together.

Lastly, since last November’s launch of the new website marriageuniqueforareason.org, staff continues to monitor and develop the website to improve its effectiveness. Various resources are available on the site, and more resources will continue to be developed based on current needs.

Legal Landscape

Moving now to the legal landscape, the urgency around the protection of marriage has not abated.

At the state level, this year is a significant one. The recent victory in North Carolina, 61% to 39% in support of the constitutional amendment protecting the definition of marriage, is a great encouragement. Also encouraging is the outstanding number of signatures being collected in Maryland and Washington State to place their respective referendum on the ballot. Both are reporting breaking state records in the amount of signatures collected. The redefinition of marriage in the law is not, and never will be, inevitable. But ongoing vigilance and effort are needed. Maine, Minnesota, Maryland and Washington State are poised to have crucial votes in November. Also, in Illinois, a lawsuit was recently introduced challenging the current law around civil unions as discriminatory and calling for the full redefinition of marriage. The State Attorney General, who is charged to defend the law of the state, is officially supporting the lawsuit.

At the federal level, recent negative court decisions concerning both the federal Defense of Marriage Act as well as California’s Proposition 8 now open the door for both DOMA and Prop 8 to go before the Supreme Court. The “Roe v. Wade Moment” for marriage that Archbishop Kurtz indicated to this body in November 2010 is ever closer.

And as we learned last month, President Obama has now voiced his official support for the redefinition of marriage in the law.

Cardinal Dolan, we are grateful for your strong words expressing disappointment with the President’s recent comments. You remind us well of the ongoing need to pray for the President and for all our leaders entrusted with the common good.

The Subcommittee continues to monitor all these areas and to seek opportunities to educate our people, advocate for the truth of marriage, and collaborate with ecumenical and interreligious leaders.

Findings from New Family Structures Study

Lastly, I would like to call your attention to an important new social-science study whose initial findings were just released a few days ago. The study, entitled “New Family Structures Study,” was conducted at the University of Texas at Austin. The study has surveyed a very large, nationally-representative, and random sample of American young adults (ages 18 to 39) who were raised in different family or home environments, including homes with a parent in a same-sex relationship, as well as single-parent families, step-families, adoptive families and families where the children were raised by their biological parents married to each other.

In an article recently published in the July issue of the peer-reviewed journal Social Science Research, the study’s principal investigator, Dr. Mark Regnerus, presented initial findings that should serve as significant points for future public discourse. The findings indicate several significant statistical differences when comparing young adults who were raised in an intact home with their married, biological parents and young adults raised in other home environments. The measurable outcomes of the study cover a range of information, including social and economic well-being, psychological and physical health, sexual identity, sexual behavior, and other areas. Twenty-five (25) of the forty (40) areas measured showed significant difference, and in no area were children better off in an alternative arrangement. The differences in outcomes illustrate, as the article notes, “that children appear most apt to succeed well as adults—on multiple counts and across a variety of domains—when they spend their entire childhood with their married mother and father, and especially when the parents remain married to the present day.”

Promising to be a benchmark for further studies and findings, this study has been noted to empirically call into question other studies with smaller and more restrictive sample sizes that have purported to show that there are no differences between father-mother parenting and other arrangements. Another paper by sociologist Dr. Loren Marks, also published this month in Social Science Research, reviewed fifty-nine (59) previous studies cited by the American Psychological Association (APA). He found these studies to have various limitations, including being based on small, non-random, non-representative, and self-selecting samples, and he concluded that the studies were “insufficient to support a strong generalized claim either way.”

In other words, this New Family Structures Study is being acknowledged as one of the first studies on this topic to have a comprehensive and scientifically respectable approach—so much so that some social science researchers with views supportive of new or so-called alternative family structures have acknowledged the scientific validity of the study. The study itself was developed and conducted by a team of researchers who disagree among themselves about the topic of family structures but agreed to lead an objective study. A website has now been set up to present the study’s findings, which can be accessed at: www.familystructurestudies.com. Although it is not the job of social science to protect the meaning of marriage, nor can correlation be taken as equivalent to causation, social science has an important role to play in the public conversation. In this instance, a well-respected study is attesting to something very basic: fathers and mothers matter, and married fathers and mothers matter for children.

Unfortunately, we have come to a point in Western society where the meaning of marriage is being largely eclipsed by a counterfeit version, by a false idea that marriage is just a matter of adult interests and can be manipulated as a product of arbitrary invention. However, I believe many of our young people, who have experienced firsthand the difficulties of broken families and the absence of a father or a mother, know intuitively that such an understanding of marriage cannot stand the test of time and can only lead to further disappointment and hardships.

As this new study indicates, social science continues to affirm that children thrive and do best with their mother and father in an intact home. The protection of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is a work of justice and is foundational to the good of all, especially for those most vulnerable among us, our children. It is the way of true compassion—love in truth and truth in love. Our young people are hungry for this truth and are in a position to witness to it in a uniquely powerful way.

The Subcommittee is grateful to all those who, in charity, hope, and truth, are working to shed light on the true meaning of marriage and to strengthen and protect it.  In a special way, Brother Bishops, I thank each one of you for your stewardship of the gift of marriage and family and for all the time and work in your dioceses and eparchies dedicated to strengthening marriage. As always, the Subcommittee seeks to assist you and continues to benefit from your guidance and feedback. On behalf of the Subcommittee as well as Bishop Rhoades and the Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, thank you again for this opportunity to update you today.

But as we hurtle along in our social experiments, allaying our fears that children may not be getting the best deal in the new domestic arrangements, let’s pause for a moment and pay heed to the many children who, as adults, have come forward to say something about that older, accepted, and more or less “settled” issue: divorce.

Elizabeth Marquardt, author of Between Two Worlds (2005), Stephanie Staal, The Love They Lost (2000), Andrew Root, Children of Divorce (2010) and Susan Gregory Thomas, In Spite of Everything (2011), all have in common is a willingness to fully and honestly examine the perspective of an entire generation of children who experienced their parents’ divorce and have conducted their own hard-won research. Their forthright, painful stories challenge the entrenched doctrine that it is better for children to have a “good divorce” than a bad marriage.

Living in the trenches, between two separated households, these authors have been able to put their fingers on what is essentially bad about divorce no matter how much their parents adhered to the norms of the “good” one — avoiding any public conflict, parting “amicably” and sharing the kids equally.

They were exposed. They had been brought into the world by two worlds coming together; and now they were “left hanging,” so to speak, “between two worlds.” And notwithstanding all of their measurable successes (good grades, high college enrollment rates, and well-paying jobs), the divorce of their parents had inflicted a wound at the depths of their being. For this wound, there was no remedial “social capital.”

The unraveling of this “settled” question has led the newly formed Center for Cultural and Pastoral Research, at The Catholic University of America to hold a conference, “Recovering Origins: Adult Children of Divorce.” Panelists at the conference examined the experience of children of divorce, and then reflected on what those old wounds revealed about the inalienable link between the human being and his or her origins in a “unity of two.”

The conference offered a rich assembly of social commentators and social scientists who documented the struggles of a generation brought up in the horizon of an origin split in two.

Marquardt, based at the Institute for American Values in New York City, is largely responsible for breaking the silence on divorce. Marquardt brought to light its most basic problem: the sense of “homelessness” that divorce generates in the child. At the conference Marguardt and fellow researchers, including University of Virginia’s Brad Wilcox,, and David Blankenhorn, author of The Future of Marriage, described the destructive impact his experience of “homelessness” has wrought on this  generation.

Researches speak of an all-pervasive tentativeness in love that stifles the desire for making a home by marrying and beginning a family.

During an election-year marked by the intense politicization of social issues — from contraception to same-sex “marriage” — that draw attention away from the fundamental issues of human dignity, freedom and responsibility — it’s worth noting that the conference was designed to provide an opportunity to focus attention.

Maggie Gallagher, who leads the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, together with the psychiatrist Marcella Colbert and the canon lawyer Sister Maximillia Um, asked: “Does divorce make us happier?” In the wake of no-fault divorce, that question was rarely been asked, and struggling married couples were more likely to believe that divorce would cure their unhappiness.

Panelist Nathan Schlueter of Hillsdale College challenged that assumption and suggested it was time for couples in difficult marriages to consider a possibility: happiness through fidelity.

Parents who balk at the notion of adhering to marriage vows in tough times, might contemplate the tribulations their children will experience once divorce papers are filed.

Then there is the lingering question that divorce injects into the consciousness of the surviving progeny: “Who am I now that the two people who together made up my origin have gone their separate ways?” — as one conference participant put it.

This painful preoccupation underscores the inseparable link between the child’s identity, and the “unity of the two” that gave rise to it. But it also opens up a profoundly religious question: What is the deepest origin, the wellspring for my parental origins?

Father Antonio Lopez, the dean of the John Paul II Institute for Studies in Marriage and the Family, and Lisa Lickona, a homemaker, farmer and author, reflected on the link between the human image and the divine origin, which draws every child ultimately back to God the Father.

This link is the reason divorce is so pernicious. By severing the child from his or her origins in love, divorce puts   the child’s “filial” identity into question, and together with it, the goodness of his or her existence, said Father Lopez.

Yet despite the gravity of divorce, and the toll it takes on the lives of innocent children, divorce is not ultimately tragic.

Lickona concluded that “in the end, even though one’s parents are charged with radiating God’s eternal and perfect love, they are not that eternal and perfect love. And in the face of the abyss, there is an Other who will respond. ‘Abyss calls upon abyss.’” We are not, in the end, our parents’ children, simply.

If it is true that children are a litmus test of current practices, the conference proceedings reveal that the children of divorce are a ‘voice crying in the wilderness’ amid a culture that would cancel out its deepest memory, the memory of God.

Those who would like to follow the CCPR’s interest in the question of divorce as well as other themes tied to the “recovering of origins” (artificial reproductive technologies, same-sex “marriage” and absentee fathers, can peruse the Center’s new on-line journal Humanum.

Margaret Harper McCarthy is an assistant professor of theological anthropology at the John Paul II Institute at The Catholic University of America, and the director of its Center for Cultural and Pastoral Research. She is a wife and mother of three children.

Originally published in the National Catholic Register. Reprinted with permission.

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The mainstream media has been up in arms, panning North Carolinians and presumptive GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, while praising President Obama for his “evolved” view.

The tamer headlines read “North Carolina Voters Ban Gay Marriage,” “Obama Endorses Gay Marriage,” and “On ‘Evolution Day’ Mitt Romney Opposes Gay Marriage.” Newspapers, magazines, and every form of media are covering homosexuality as the issue is pushed into the limelight by the impending cultural and moral firestorm.

Having no affinity for politics, I prefer to take a step back and address a more fundamental problem – that of language. As Catholics, how should we speak about this matter? What language should be used, and why is careful use of language so important?

Language is rarely harmless – it is laden with meaning and assumptions. Further, it teaches and forms individuals and culture. The headline claiming that the people of North Carolina “ban gay marriage” carries with it the assumption that while North Carolina bans “gay marriage” it can and does exist elsewhere. But, the reality is that nothing was banned because “gay marriage” does not exist; it is a non-entity. Saying “gay marriage” is banned is like saying square-circles were banned by Euclid or that unicorns were banned by the San Francisco Zoo. We cannot ban what does not exist. A choice to cherish and uphold a good that exists does not mean that we are banning non-entities.

Instead of banning something, the people of North Carolina chose to uphold something – namely the institution of marriage, the true meaning of which cannot “evolve” with the times. Church teaching is clear: “No ideology can erase from the human spirit the certainty that marriage exists solely between a man and a woman, who by mutual personal gift, proper and exclusive to themselves, tend toward the communion of persons” (emphasis added). There is no equivocation – marriage is not merely a word that can be stamped onto all sorts of relationships. Marriage is a naturally and neatly defined institution, and the word has true meaning independent of ideology. It’s meaning, further, does not wax and wane depending upon what the meaning of is, is.

Adoption of the language of “gay marriage” is a perhaps unwitting collaboration in the “conspiracy against marriage” that exists today. The slogans of “gay marriage” and “marriage equality” are rhetorical attempts to engage in social engineering by way of verbal engineering, with the implicit understanding that to oppose this redefinition is to be against “equality.”

When we adopt the language of “gay marriage,” we weaken our ability to proclaim the truth and allow the culture of death to become the norm. William Brennan and numerous other scholars of all backgrounds have long argued that euphemisms and other verbal gymnastics are used as a tool of manipulation, so that the forces of death can be successful in numbing the moral sensibilities of a people and thus disfigure a culture.

Rather than decrying “gay marriage” we should instead speak of upholding and recognizing the true definition of marriage. We should speak of attempts to “radically redefine marriage” or attempts to “falsely define marriage.” Adopting accurate language is an essential element of Blessed John Paul II’s call to have “the courage to speak the truth clearly, candidly and boldly, but never with hatred or disrespect for persons.”

At the end of the day, our emphasis on promoting and protecting the one definition of marriage as the primary unit of society and basis of the family is about cherishing a great and essential good. Defining marriage properly does not signify hatred, disrespect or unjust discrimination towards a particular group of persons. It is, rather, a faithful response to a clear and emphatic duty, to proclaim the truth with love.

Arland K. Nichols is the National Director of HLI America. He writes for the Truth and Charity Forum. Reprinted with permission.

President Obama’s comments today in support of the redefinition of marriage are deeply saddening. As I stated in my public letter to the President on September 20, 2011, the Catholic Bishops stand ready to affirm every positive measure taken by the President and the Administration to strengthen marriage and the family. However, we cannot be silent in the face of words or actions that would undermine the institution of marriage, the very cornerstone of our society. The people of this country, especially our children, deserve better. Unfortunately, President Obama’s words today are not surprising since they follow upon various actions already taken by his Administration that erode or ignore the unique meaning of marriage. I pray for the President every day, and will continue to pray that he and his Administration act justly to uphold and protect marriage as the union of one man and one woman. May we all work to promote and protect marriage and by so doing serve the true good of all persons.