Pope Benedict Condemns Same Sex Marriage
Posted January 27, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Pope Benedict reiterated his defence of the traditional family Saturday, saying real marriage can only exist between a man and a woman.
The comments, made to a Vatican tribunal, were the latest in the pontiff’s campaign against unmarried couples and same-sex unions.
Benedict warned against what he called a “cultural context marked by relativism” and against viewing marriage as a legal union “that human will could manipulate as it pleases, even depriving it of its heterosexual nature.”
“Each marriage is certainly the fruit of free consent between man and woman,” the Pope said.
“The union occurs because of the design by God, who has created them male and female and gives them the power to unite those natural and complementary dimensions forever,” he added.
The Vatican opposes divorce, though it does allow annulments in which the Church effectively declares a marriage never took place.
But in his comments Saturday, the Pope appealed with the annulment tribunal not to grant them too easily.
Current circumstances for granting annulments include refusal by a husband or a wife to have children, or the psychological incapability of one of the spouses to contract a valid marriage.
Benedict has long condemned same-sex unions as anarchic “pseudo-matrimony,” and criticized movements in Italy and other countries callong for legal rights to unmarried couples.
In 2006, the Pontifical Council for the Family issued a statement in which it declared that the traditional family has never been so threatened as it is today.
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