Our Holy Fathers have been very consistent in their instruction to the faithful about how they should view same-sex marriage regardless of whether or not it is legalized by the state - and they all agree that it is to be emphatically opposed.

CNSNews.com is reporting on the writings of Popes St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI in which they inform Catholics that they are “obliged to oppose the legal recognition of homosexual unions”. Where these unions are given the same legal status and rights belonging to traditional marriage, “clear and emphatic opposition is a duty.”

These statements, taken from a March 2003 document entitled, Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Union Between Homosexual Persons, is a document all Catholics should take the time to read now that gay marriage is the law of the land. In it, the pope explains what’s wrong with same-sex marriage and any law that attempts to legitimatize it.

“The common good requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society,” St. Pope John Paul II says in the document, which was issued by the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

“Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behavior, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity. The Church cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself.”

Calling homosexuality a “troubling moral and social phenomenon” particularly when it involves the adoption and raising of children, it states that “No ideology can erase from the human spirit the certainty that marriage exists solely between a man and a woman.”

Men and women are equal as persons and complementary as male and female,” it goes on to explain, adding that through marriage, a man and woman use the “sexual faculty” to become one flesh and potentially produce children.

“That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24), reads the letter, adding that God “blessed the man and the woman with the words ‘Be fruitful and multiply’ (Gen 1:28). Therefore, in the Creator's plan, sexual complementarity and fruitfulness belong to the very nature of marriage.”

Because of the natural complementarity between man and woman and the procreative potential of their union through marriage “[t]here are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family.”

“Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law,” the letter states. “Homosexual acts ‘close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.’”

Because of these biological facts, reason alone dictates that gay marriage cannot be given legal recognition.

“Such unions are not able to contribute in a proper way to the procreation and survival of the human race,” the letter states, adding that “Society owes its continued survival to the family, founded on marriage.”

Therefore, for “those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty.”

The faithful are advised to “refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws and, as far as possible, from material cooperation on the level of their application,” they said. “In this area, everyone can exercise the right to conscientious objection.”

Our current pontiff, Pope Francis, has also balked at the notion of legalizing same-sex marriage. In 2010, while still serving as Archbishop of Buenos Aires in Argentina, condemned proposals to legalize the unions in that country as being “destructive of the plan of God” and called these efforts “a move of the Father of Lies who wishes to confuse and deceive the children of God.”

While Church teaching requires the faithful to treat persons with same-sex attraction with respect and dignity, they are obliged to emphatically oppose gay marriage just as they are to do in regard to abortion, regardless of whether or not it has been legalized.

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