The woman answered and said to him, “I do not have a husband.”
Jesus said to her, “Go call your husband and come back.”
The woman answered and said to him, “I do not have a husband.”
Jesus answered her, “You are right in saying, ‘I do not have a husband.’ For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true.” - John 4
That is what I meant the other day when I said that same sex couples, partners, friends - whatever they call themselves, cannot be married, nor represent themselves as in an 'equivalent marriage':
As I said in another post, it is important to avoid scandal - to give the impression homosexual relationships are equal to marriage. Chaste friendship is not equal to marriage. Even if civil law allows for same sex marriage, same sex friends living together is not a marriage on any level, in truth, in the eyes of God. The dishonesty lies there. That is where the lie is. If the lesbian couple thinks they are somehow married or their particular friendship is equal to marriage, they are mistaken.
Chaste and celibate friends can and do live together under the same roof and receive the sacraments. - TNPeople can and do repent and amend their lives. It is the call of the Gospel. In some circumstances, two friends may agree to share a house and act as supports to one another in order to live in fidelity to Catholic teaching. With good spiritual direction, they can and do return to the sacraments. (After repentance of sin and/or a sinful lifestyle, Catholics are reconciled to God and the Church in and through the sacrament of penance and are thus free to approach Holy Communion.)
Church teaching on Marriage is clear.
To claim homosexual friendship is analogous to marriage is false.
There 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. 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”.
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Not even in a remote analogous sense do homosexual unions fulfil the purpose for which marriage and family deserve specific categorical recognition.
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The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions. The common good requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society. Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, 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.
[...]
Christians give witness to the whole moral truth, which is contradicted both by approval of homosexual acts and unjust discrimination against homosexual persons. Therefore, discreet and prudent actions can be effective; these might involve: unmasking the way in which such tolerance might be exploited or used in the service of ideology; stating clearly the immoral nature of these unions; reminding the government of the need to contain the phenomenon within certain limits so as to safeguard public morality and, above all, to avoid exposing young people to erroneous ideas about sexuality and marriage that would deprive them of their necessary defences and contribute to the spread of the phenomenon. Those who would move from tolerance to the legitimization of specific rights for cohabiting homosexual persons need to be reminded that the approval or legalization of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil. - CDF
This explains why I say that same sex persons cannot be married - and that they are not married - despite what public opinion may be, or civil legislation permits.
Never despair of God's mercy.
It is important for people to understand the Church welcomes sinners, that the mercy of God is always available to them in and through the sacraments. Nothing is impossible with God. If you do not know how to change your lifestyle, or how to return - if you feel there are impossible obstacles - do not despair of God's mercy. Ask him, pray, pray, pray - ask God. He will open a door, he will open a way. Prayer is the trapdoor out of sin. He appeared to the Samaritan woman and she was saved.
Whatever gains I had, these I have come to consider a loss because of Christ. More than that, I even consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have forfeited everything and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having any righteousness of my own based on the law but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God, depending on faith to know him and the power of his resurrection and [the] sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. - Philippians 3
Nothing is impossible with God.
