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Published: November 20, 2009
“Multifaceted threat to the very fabric of society”
U.S. bishops issue pastoral letter on contraception, divorce, cohabitation and same-sex marriage
 At their fall general assembly in Baltimore, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops approved by a vote of 180-45 a pastoral letter entitled, “Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan.” The letter, approved on Nov. 17, describes artificial contraception as “objectively wrong" and "essentially opposed to God's plan for marriage and proper human development." In addition, the bishops said cohabitation before sacramental marriage “involves the serious sin of fornication. It does not conform to God's plan for marriage and is always wrong and objectively sinful."
The letter also addresses divorce, saying it is contrary to "God's plan for marriage," but encourages divorced Catholics to "participate in parish life and attend the Sunday Eucharist, even though they cannot ordinarily receive Holy Communion." (The ban on Communion applies to divorced Catholics who have remarried without an annulment, unless they are celibate. A divorced person who has not remarried is also permitted to receive Holy Communion.)
In addition, the bishops remain steadfast in their opposition to same-sex marriage, describing it as "a multifaceted threat to the very fabric of society.” Said the bishops, "To promote and protect marriage as the union of one man and one woman is itself a matter of justice. In fact, it would be a grave injustice if the state ignored the unique and proper place of husbands and wives, the place of mothers and fathers and the rights of children, who deserve from society clear guidance as they grow to sexual maturity."
To read the entire 60-page pastoral letter, Click Here.
Posted Friday, November 20, 2009 5:18 AM By AC Mansfield
There is a HUGE error in the above article. The above-referenced letter from the bishops encourages divorced Catholics who have remarried civilly to attend Sunday Eucharist even though they cannot receive Holy Communion. A divorced person who has not remarried civilly has ALWAYS been able to receive Holy Communion. The way you have reported this matter, you are implying that all divorced Catholics cannot receive Holy Communion. This is not true. Again, a divorced Catholic who has not remarried civilly may receive Holy Communion.
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Posted Friday, November 20, 2009 5:57 AM By DC
AWESOME! 'bout time US Bishops made a definitive statement against contraception....thanks be to God, the tide is beginning to turn.
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Posted Friday, November 20, 2009 7:16 AM By Liz
Finally . . .where have the Bishops been these past 40 years. I would like to know the names of the 45 Bishops not supporting this pastoral letter. Shame . . . Perhaps they don't deserve the title "Bishop" and all it represents.
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Posted Friday, November 20, 2009 8:09 AM By Peggy
45 bishops voted against this??
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Posted Friday, November 20, 2009 8:19 AM By Ray
Who is the person sitting in the middle of the botton row in the picture? He is dressed in ordinary street clothes. Is he a bishop?
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Posted Friday, November 20, 2009 9:56 AM By Dan
With Peggy, I am disturbed that 45 bishops voted against traditional Catholic/Christian morality. With what new teaching would they like to replace traditional ethics? I for one would like to have these straying princes of the Church explain themselves to me -- and to His Holiness-- before offering their resignations.
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Posted Friday, November 20, 2009 1:28 PM By betty
Glad you asked, Peggy. It's what a lot of us want to know.
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Posted Friday, November 20, 2009 2:31 PM By Tony de New York
I would like to know the names of those 45 bishops who voted agaisnt!
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Posted Saturday, November 21, 2009 7:36 AM By Abeca Christian
Tony de New York yes I too would like to know who are those bishops who voted against.
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Posted Monday, November 23, 2009 3:42 PM By John F. Maguire
Resignations, Dan? Whoa! For doing the right thing? ~ Dan, I write here to explain as best I can why a No vote on this UCSSB working-committee document in question is the correct vote, given certain objectionable passages in this 60-page memo on marriage, many other excellent passages in these 60 pages notwithstanding. I do not mean to say, however, that each one of these 45 episcopal No votes was properly motivated -- how could I know such a thing? Still, as T. S. Eliot wrote in _Murder in the Cathedral_: "Now is the way clear, now is the meaning plain: Temptation shall not come in this kind again. The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right thing for the wrong reason." Dan, voting against the promulgation of this document, I submit, is the right thing; but I wouldn't put it passed certain bishops that their No vote was cast for the wrong reason: e.g., occult opposition to the Church's teaching against contraception. At any rate, let me state some reasons why a No vote would be indicated.
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Posted Monday, November 23, 2009 4:27 PM By John F. Maguire
The Catholic Church's definitive teaching on marriage is to be found in CASTI CONNUBII, Encyclical Letter of Pope Pius XI, on CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE [addressed] to the Venerable Brethren, Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops, and other Local Ordinaries Enjoying Peace and Communion with the Apostolic See, given at Rome, St. Peter's, on December 31, 1930. In consequence, and necessarily, the Church's definitive teaching on marriage is not to be found in a document "developed" (this is the term used by Monsignor David J. Malloy, UCSSB General Secretary ) -- developed, in point of fact, by a UCSSB "working committee" (here, by the way, a working committee that bears the name Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth). Recall the strictures of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger to the effect that, apart from a certain concrete functionality, national episcopal conferences such as the USCCB have "no theological basis," never mind an episcopal conference sub-committee having such a basis, even when that committee's work is approved by a vote of the bishops. Cardinal Ratzinger's point remains: Catholic Bishops, in truth and by Apostolic right, are NOT mere mandatories of quasi-parliamentary assembly.
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Posted Monday, November 23, 2009 5:00 PM By John F. Maguire
Now are Pope Pius XI's Encyclical Letter CASTI CONNUBII (1930) and the USCCB's document "Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan" (2009) perfectly congruent one with the other? I think that the answer is No -- this is why I favor the vote against this 2009 USCCB document. Notice that in CASTI CONNUBII, Pope Pius XI teaches clearly that procreation is the primary end of the institution of marriage, in relations to which end "there are also secondary ends, such as mutual aid, the cultivating of mutual love, and the quieting of concupiscence which husband and wife are not forbidden to consider so long as they are subordinated to the primary end and so long as the intrinsic nature of the [conjugal] act is preserved" (59). I've now finally read all 60 pages of the USCCB's document and found no such acknowledgment of procreation as the primary end of marriage, nor indeed have I found even one reference to CASTI CONNUBII, which, as I say, is the locus classicus of the Church's understanding of marriage. Is this lack of acknowledgemnt reason enough to vote against the USCCB's document? Yes.
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Posted Monday, November 23, 2009 5:40 PM By John F. Maguire
On the other hand, doesn't the USCCB's 2009 document on marriage affirm the inseparability of the unitive purpose and procreative purpose of marriage? Doesn't the document affirm that the procreative purpose of marriage requires the unitive purpose of marriage, and that -- reciprocally -- the unitive purpose is ordered to the procreative puprose? Yes, just so. BUT: This mutual and reciprocal ordering of the purposes of marriage nowhere expressly affirms the SUB-ordination of the secondary ends of marriage to marriage's primary end: procreation. By way of contrast, consider Pope Pius XII statement of 1951: "Now, the truth is that matrimony, as an institution of nature, in virtue of the Creator's will, has not, as a primary and ultimate end, the personal perfection of the married couple but the procreation and upbringing of new life. The other ends, inasmuch as they are intended by nature, are NOT EQUALLY PRIMARY [emphasis mine], much less superior to the primary end, but are essentially subordinated to it." Pope Pius XII, _Address to Members of the Congress of the Italian Association of Midwives_ (October 29, 1951). Whence the discrepancy between the Pian tradition and the USCCB's committee document. This discrepancy, I submit, is good reason for voting against the USCCB's 2009 document on marriage.
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Posted Monday, November 23, 2009 9:09 PM By JLS
Maguire, the more egregious error, and the more words you spend trying to justify it. Have you had that bump on your head checked by a doctor yet?
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Posted Tuesday, November 24, 2009 4:51 PM By John F. Maguire
In reply to JLS: I've been quoting the Pian tradition in order to show how this tradition diverges from the USCCB's sub-committee's refusal to recognize EXPRESSLY that procreation is the primary end of marriage -- primary relative to marriage's several secondary ends, which ends are, in all truth, SUBORDINATE to this one and only primary end. I am sorry, JLS, to see that you reject this, the true matrimonial teaching of the Catholic Church. I am sorry, moroever, to see you provide no reason for your rejection. I am sorry to see you impute to me a mild concussion that hypothetically (you seem to suppose) tells against the essential truth of the teaching of Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII on the nature of marriage. This teaching -- I regret to say -- runs against the grain of the text of the USCCB's 2009 Marriage document. The coterie of Catholic bishops that voted against this text -- I mean, on Pian or cognate grounds -- are heroes, and heroes quite completely independent of any human recognition of such heroism.
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Posted Sunday, January 31, 2010 12:12 PM By WP Themes
Good brief and this enter helped me alot in my college assignement. Say thank you for seeking your information.
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