Secure the Family, Secure the Future
EWTN News
8/8/2010
Archbishop John Nienstedt of the Archdiocese of Minneapolis-Saint Paul expressed his disappointment over U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker's overturning of Proposition 8, which defined marriage as between man and one woman in the state of California.
Responding to the judge's decision earlier this week against the voter-approved measure of 2008, the prelate – in an Aug. 4 in a statement posted on the archdiocesan Catholic Spirit – reminded the faithful, along with “all people of good will,” that traditional marriage is a matter of unchanging and unchangeable natural law.
Archbishop Nienstedt said it was “incomprehensible . . . for the court to deny both the Judeo-Christian and natural law definition” of marriage, as between one man and one woman, “particularly after the people of the State of California had voted as free and responsible citizens to support it.”
According to Archbishop Nienstedt, the federal judge's ruling also shows same-sex “marriage” advocates' willingness to subvert or forgo the legislative process of representative democracy, in order to achieve their aims by other means.
“Having failed to change the definition of marriage at the ballot box,” he explained, “proponents of same-sex 'marriage' have shifted their strategies to using our courts to issue judicial fiats that will do so.”
Citing previous remarks by Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, Archbishop Nienstedt emphasized the Catholic Church's belief that the state has no right to redefine the family, or change the definition of marriage upon which the family is built.
In Archbishop Kurtz's words, which Archbishop Niedstedt quoted Wednesday, “Marriage exists prior to the state,” both according to divine revelation and human reason. Thus, Archbishop Kurtz explained, marriage is “not given to redefinition by the state.”
Archbishop Kurtz's remarks last month, on behalf of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, implied that a redefinition of marriage by the state could lead to broader assertions of government control over the rights and privileges of families.
The proper role of the state, Archbishop Kurtz had explained in July, “is to respect and reinforce marriage,” not to redefine it.
“That means upholding marriage as a union between one man and one woman,” Archbishop Nienstedt emphasized in his remarks on Wednesday.
Although he described the ruling as “extremely disheartening,” the Archbishop of Minneapolis-St. Paul noted it would “not deter the vast majority of us who believe in and cherish marriage.”
All citizens wishing to preserve the fabric of society, he concluded, should renew their efforts “to defend marriage in this country against the efforts of those who seek to redefine it and to thwart its sacred purpose.”
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Laus Deo
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