The catholic bishops in Victoria have sent a letter to all the catholics in Victoria. The document has been written to remind their faithful that they must oppose marriage equality.
Pastoral Letter on the True Meaning of Marriage
from the Catholic Bishops of Victoria
True meaning of marriage? Â Where do you take your definition from?
30 March 2012
Dear Brothers & Sisters
So, the catholics are all one big family of brothers and sister, marrying each other perhaps?
We Australians live in a democracy which rightly places great value on human rights and protecting others from unjust discrimination.
Yeah, it’ s suppose to protect people from abuse as well.
We Catholics also believe deeply that God loves human beings very much. He especially loves those who are wounded and suffering. God loves each of us so much despite the fact that we are all sinners, make mistakes and often do not live up to our responsibilities.
In the context of this letter, are you suggesting that non-heterosexuals are wounded and suffering?
The Church takes seriously that we must live the Gospel itself to be a credible witness to others. Deeply aware of Christ’s mission of compassion and justice – the Church cannot ignore the responsibility to speak the truth in love.
And yet the catholic church in Victoria will not deal with those who claim abuse from it in a just way, nor is there much compassion. Â The church has devised a way to negate their responsibility by making it impossible to take any legal action against it.
Sometimes reminding people about the truth of the human person is one such task for all of us.
Your version of the truth is that unless you are heterosexual you are considered deranged.
Some now seek to alter the very nature of the human person through legislation.
I’m pretty sure that our nature is really difficult to alter by legislation. You guys like to pretend that people are as you want them to be, not as we really are.
Our Australian society is now at a critical turning point where truth is at stake.
Oh, please, you’d think the catholics are the only ones with truth. Â You use the bible as the source of all your ‘truths’ and yet you don’t have one single source document, all you have are partial copies of manuscripts, and yet we are expected to believe that this is truth.
We speak of current debates about the nature of marriage in our public life. Often it seems as if this matter is simply about human rights and the removal of discrimination. But in addition to ‘human rights’ there are also ‘human responsibilities’.
What’s with the quote marks around human rights and human responsibilities? Â And it really is a matter of human rights and the removal of discrimination, it is the responsibility of all humans to treat each other with respect and dignity.
We are all blessed by God with the gift of our sexuality. The design itself comes from the Creator of Life. We all have a responsibility to follow that design.
First of all, you have to believe in god to believe sexuality is a gift. Â That aside, homosexuality, according to this is designed by god, and yet the catholic church considers gay people to be objectively disordered. That’s a great design by your god.
The Church firmly believes that marriage is founded on the wonderful fact of sexual difference and its potential for new life.
To claim that marriage was founded is purely speculative and without basis. Â For all we know this ancient tradition was founded on the exchange of goats between desert dwellers. Â We don’t have sex to have children, we have sex because it feels good, and sometimes that results in children. Â Marriage is less about having kids and more about living your life with someone you love.
Without this there would be no human beings and no future. Bringing new human life into the world is founded on the loving union in difference of male and female.
Oh please, it is not. You don’t need marriage to bring new human life into the world.  You certainly don’t need a loving union, you simply ignore the reality of breeding. Humanity will continue regardless of whether marriages produce children, and guess what, gay people want to have kids too!
Children are best nurtured by a mother and father.
Actually, that’s not right. Â If one of the parents are abusive, the child is probably better off with just one of the parents. Â Children are best nurtured when their parents love them, regardless of the gender of the parents. Â The church again ignores the reality of the world where they live.
As one theologian has put it eloquently: “The God of love can be present in every true love. But ‘gay marriage’ is impossible because it attempts to cut loose marriage from its grounding in our biological life. If we do that, we deny our humanity.â€
Stupid quote that really means nothing. Â Gay marriage is not impossible, it exists around the world. Â Marriage equality works because it is grounded in the biology of human sexuality. And again, you don’t need marriage to have children.
This will be a ’hard saying’ for some. It in no way implies that the Church accepts discrimination against other’s human rights.
No, it’s not implied. Â The church actively discriminates against other’s human rights. Â The church refuses to accept people who are gay as real people. Â Instead it considers them disordered.
Nor does it mean we fail to understand the complex nature of human sexual identity and desire.
But you do fail to understand the nature of sexuality as you consider anyone not heterosexual to be gravely disordered. Â You answer the complexity by simply calling all the homosexuals disordered.
It implies no lack of respect for people who identify as ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’.
No disrespect? Then why do you put quote marks around gay and lesbian as if the words are made up. Â That’s really very disrespectful. In the same way as I mean disrespect when I use a small c for catholic, small g for god and a small j for jesus.
 As Cardinal Francis George of Chicago recently pointed out: ‘… we all have friends or family members who are gay and lesbian… these are people we know and love and are part of our families.’
However as fellow citizens our concern is for the future of our whole society. We ask you to seriously reflect and pray about the ramifications for current and future generations, of legislation which completely redefines marriage.
If we take the lead of the catholic church we’d still think divorce was a pretty bad idea, we’d still think that women should be at home doing nothing but having babies, people would still think that they could get into heaven by buying papal bulls and bits of dead people. Â Young women who get pregnant would have their babies taken from them, priests would still destroy the lives of innocent boys and girls. Â It’s good that we have moved beyond the control of this beast of an organisation. Â They have no moral authority. Â Marriage equality will not redefine anything at all. Â Society will continue to have men and women breed. Â You know, like it’s always been. Â Gay people will continue to live together and some of them will have children. Â Nothing changes at all.
A grave mistake will be made if such legislation is enacted. The Government cannot redefine the natural institution of marriage, a union between a man and a woman. The Government can regulate marriage, but this natural institution existed long before there were any governments. It cannot be changed at will.
There is nothing natural about marriage.  Where else in our world does it exist?  Even those animals that pair for life have no formal recognition of their relationship by the other animals.  It’s a man made institution, and one that has changed over many hundreds of years.  It’s only right that government should and do regulate and change it as its citizens see fit.
The argument that same sex marriage supports marriage is wrong. The natural institution will not only be changed, it will be re-defined absolutely. It will become something different. Such a re-definition will undermine rather than support marriage.
How?  People will still get married.  People will still get divorced.  People will still have sex with others.  People will still not get married.  The thing that changes is that a section of our community is given respect and dignity .
Catholics, as responsible citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia, have a duty to remind their political representatives that much is at stake for the common good in this debate.
Yes, that’s right. Â We all have a duty to treat all of our citizens equally.
We urge you to exercise that right and  make direct representation to your Members of Parliament.
Stop telling people what to do.
We encourage you to respond to the on-line survey set up by the Federal Government at their website:Â www.aph.gov.au/marriage. The closing date for responses is Friday, 20 April 2012.
I encourage you to respond too – but not the way the bishops want.
The survey contains three statements with which you can agree or disagree.
See – this is them not telling you what to do. Â But, after reading all the rot before, you can pretty well guess what they want from ‘responsible catholics’ who are sinners.
It then asks if you support the proposed changes to the two separate Bills, to which you answer yes or no. If you choose you can simply answer these few questions in less than one minute. The survey also provides space (maximum of 250 words) for you to explain your views. Some points that you might like to consider including are set out at www.cam.org.au/lifemarriagefamily/
Yeah, that website more or less says that anyone who disagrees with the catholic position is uncivilised.
Our Australian society will flourish only if the true meaning of marriage is preserved for future generations.
And there’s the threat. Â The big bang, if you like. Â If we allow the ‘gays’ and ‘lesbians’ to marry then our society will not flourish. It will not be preserved for future generations.
With every blessing.
Most Reverend Denis Hart DD Most Reverend Peter Connors DD
Archbishop of Melbourne Bishop of Ballarat
Most Reverend Christopher Prowse DD Most Reverend Leslie Tomlinson DD
Bishop of Sale Bishop of Sandhurst
Most Reverend Peter Elliott DD Most Reverend Vincent Long DD
Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Melbourne Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Melbourne
I don’t want your fucking blessings. Â You guys run around is bizarre outfits with silly hats, holding silly sticks, pretending to eat the body and blood of a long dead man that you hold up in nothing but a loin cloth, nailed to a cross, dying and drenched in blood, and you want the rest of us to follow you? Â Why?
The catholic church displays it’s contempt for humanity. Â It’s time that those who call themselves catholics told their bishops to take their holy relics and shove them where the sun don’t shine.
DD = Dickhead Douche-bag ???
Hard as it may be to beleive, marriage was invented before people worked out that having sex led to making babies: even the Greeks and Romans didn’t have that one nailed. So the whole ‘marriage was invented so kids would have a mum and dad’ line is just plain wrong.
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If I may respond to Doug Pollard, and mention that I have no affiliation with any organised religion or ideological society – I just get sick thrills from being a contrarian (I know, I need help), I would suggest your proposed argument “marriage was invented before people worked out that having sex led to making babies†isn’t convincing.
Yes, it is true that the ancients had limited knowledge on the mechanics of conception; but why the emphasis on virgin births in myth and legend if not for the knowledge that to fall pregnant one must have sex?
Virgin births have been rampant throughout the myths and legends of humanity as miraculous phenomena – the oldest I can think of is the virgin birth of Horus, member of the ancient Egyptian pantheon. Then there is Greek/Roman, Persian, Hindu, Buddhist, Hebrew, and even Aztec mythology. Cultures extending from the Mediterranean, to the Far East, to the South Americas – all isolated from one another for thousands of years – telling stories of immaculate conceptions.
Then there is six thousand year-old Sumerian creationist poetry depicting the necessity of the creator’s “seed†to bring forth life from the virgin earth (the earth personified as feminine). So there must have been some acknowledgement that ejaculation had something to do with it.
Such accounts were made so profound within these cultures because of how unbelievable it was for a virgin to be with child. The consequences of sex had to have been apparent to them to acknowledge that virgins don’t give birth (without extraordinary intervention); otherwise, the Virgin Mary story would have been met with a casual “so what?”.