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Department of Evangelisation
Diocese of Johannesburg
South Africa |
"Go therefore, and
make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Teach them to carry
out everything I have commanded you. And know that I am with you
always, until the end of the world" (Matthew 28:19-20). |
Department of Evangelization: Catholic Diocese - Gauteng
PO Box 157 Rosettenville Gauteng South Africa 2130
Tel: +27 11 435 0682 Fax: +27 11 435 3946 |
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SOUTH AFRICA: Church Condemns Approval of Same-Sex 'Marriage'
PRETORIA, December 7, 2005 (CISA)
-Catholic Bishops have condemned a recent ruling by the Constitutional
Court that homosexuals have a right to same-sex 'marriage'.
The Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference reiterated the
church's teaching as laid out in the Catechism of the Catholic Church
No. 2357, which describes homosexual acts as being "of grave
depravity" and "intrinsically disordered."
"They are contrary to the natural law. They 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."
The legalizing of same-sex 'marriages' is doomed to have a morally
deleterious effect on the institution of the family, traditionally
defined as the permanent union between husband and wife, the bishops
said.
The fact that same-sex 'marriages' were approved by the Constitutional
Court did not make them morally right. The South African Constitution
flouted the Law of God and was therefore not binding on the
consciences of the citizens, they said.
"Indeed if the SA Constitution is being made to supersede the
revealed will of God, then South Africa is morally doomed. For no one
can go against God's will and come away unscathed."
In a statement signed by Wilfrid Cardinal Napier, OFM, president of
the SACBC, the bishops quoted St Paul's Letter to the Romans 1: 26.
"For this reason, God gave them up to degrading passions. Their
women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way
also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed
with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men
and received in their own persons the due penalty for their
error."
The bishops dismissed claims that the church wanted to impose its
values on society, saying if society accepted the existence of God,
the church had a duty to proclaim and work for submission to the
values that God had revealed.
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