The following comes from a February 15 press release from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, and Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, chairman of the bishops’ Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, spoke Feb. 15 about a new Department of Defense policy on “same-sex domestic partners” and about related comments made by President Obama in his State of the Union address.
Archbishop Broglio questioned how the department could set a policy that undermines the federal Defense of Marriage Act and said the new policy could threaten conscience rights of members of the military. Forcing an officer “to violate his conscience would not be fair,” he said.
Archbishop Cordileone highlighted the policy’s potential effect on children.
“Children, who are our future, have a right to be raised by their mother and father together,” he said. “For the sake of our nation, and especially for the sake of our children, marriage should be promoted and protected at every opportunity, never undermined.”
The DOD policy allocates marriage-like benefits to persons in same-sex relationships. In an apparent reference to the new policy, President Obama said, “We will ensure equal treatment for all service members, and equal benefits for their families – gay and straight.”
In response to the President’s remarks and the new policy, Archbishop Broglio said, “This new policy under the guise of ‘equal benefits’ undermines marriage as the union of one man and one woman because it treats two persons of the same sex as spouses. Can the Secretary of Defense establish a policy that undermines federal law as established by [the Defense of Marriage Act]?” Noting the possible negative effects on religious liberty, Archbishop Broglio asked, “Could a JAG officer choose, out of religious or moral convictions, not to give legal advice on marital and family issues to same-sex ‘partners’ without being subject to discipline? Forcing the officer to violate his conscience would not be fair.”
Archbishop Cordileone also expressed concern over the new policy. “For one thing, it undermines the Defense of Marriage Act, which is the law of the land,” he said. He added: “There is no question that all service members should be treated equally, but it is not discrimination to treat different things differently. Only a man and a woman can bring children into the world, and so marriage, as the foundation of the family, by its very nature can only be between a man and a woman. In fact, by singling out two people of the same sex in a sexual relationship for special consideration, the policy excludes other possible types of relationships between two adults, thus treating the same thing differently. Actually, then, it is rather this policy that discriminates….”
The new Department of Defense policy memorandum was issued by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta earlier this week. The policy entitled “Extending Benefits to Same-Sex Domestic Partners of Military Members” must be implemented by the military services no later than October 1, 2013. Under the new policy, all that is required for a “domestic partnership” is a committed relationship between two adults of the same sex who are not in a marriage, civil union, or domestic partnership with anyone else. In many respects, “same-sex domestic partners” of military members will be treated like spouses. For instance, the “partner” of the military member will be entitled to a dependent military ID card, legal assistance from the military, and base exchange and commissary privileges. If both “partners” are in the military, they would be eligible for a joint duty assignment – what was customarily referred to as a joint spouse assignment.
To read the entire release, click here.
Why would normal Americans ever support a sodomitic military, if push ever came to shove?
Skai, I think that upon reflection, they would. There is a quiet underlying resentment that we heterosexuals have been “carrying the burden” of military service for a long time, and most homosexuals have been able to avoid military service by acting in a manner that is upsetting and off-putting to military people. I know many have “gotten through” and served all the same, especially after the “don’t ask/don’t tell” policy went into effect, and more so today. However, I think most Americans will think “it is about time for them to carry their own weight,” and wouldn’t mind if the entire military became gay. Some people think we send out young men to military service because they are in their primes physically at 18+, are full of bluster and bravado and competitiveness, believe they are invincible, believe they are superior to others of their own sort, and don’t usually have wives and families that will suffer if they are lost. Sounds to me like they are describing a stereotypical gay guy. I hate to admit it, but I also think lots of people dislike gays enough to think it would be okay if we lost a few of them on the battlefield, in part to make up for all the years they were excused from battle and heterosexual men fought and died in their place while they stayed home and fussed over ladies’ fine fashions. So yes, I think Americans would find a “sodomitic military,” as you put it, just absolutely fabulous, darling.
Character wins battles and wars; sodomy destroys character, and thus loses. The problem today is that sodomy is the punishment, the consequence for sin. The USA’s institutionalized abortion and adultery not to mention the idol worship that kicked these things into gear (entertainment industry) have brought down the punishment, which is sodomy. It can only get worse until the population rejects idols, adultery, and abortion.
Skai, thanks for your comments about idol worship. You’ve put your finger on what has always bothered me about movie stars and athletes, and some politicians (think: Obama) are elevated to some irrational superhuman status that really is nothing less than transforming our fellow human beings into worshipped idols.
It is one thing for the human psyche to be thrilled by a heroic act on the part of a good person, and yet another to make gods out of mere human beings.
Good for you for linking the widespread sins of the postmodern era with idol worship, which I had wrongly thought of as both laughable and well behind us historically. What was I thinking? It is part of the reason we are witnessing the degradation of modern society.
Isn’t it strange how people will denounce Jesus Christ and worship Barack Obama, Lance Armstrong, Angelina Jolie, and a host of other fallible and demonstrably unworthy persons du jour? What are THEY thinking?
Maryanne, I spent years and longer reading and re-reading and studying the whole Bible. The pattern became very clear to me that societies would rise up in virtue, and then get involved in idols and adultery, which caused them to become vulnerable to their enemies and to their own efforts which would fail. One poignant passage that may illustrate why both Jesus and St Paul called the temple rulers “whited walls filled with dead men’s bones” is in Daniel, where he was given a vision of the society leaders in a secret room filled with pornography.
Skai, have you forgotten that the spartans actively encouraged gay relationships between its soldiers based on the idea that soldiers in a sexual relationship with one another were less likely to break formation in the scrum-like battles of the day.
In ancient warfare, to simplify it, you basically had two massed formations slamming into one another, and the first one to break generally got overran. It’s when the formation broke that you suffered the massive casualties, so it was very important for the soldiers to hold formation when they saw people dying around them.
Oh, and btw, the Spartans were generally recognized as the toughest soldiers in the Greek world. If you recall, it was the Spartans who formed the core of the force that held the pass at Thermopylae. (which, btw, did involve more than 300 guys. The 300 were the heavy infantry (hoplites) Spartans that held the pass. There were also Thebans and Thespians in the force that held the pass for around 1,200 or so men. The battle also involved naval forces preventing an amphibious landing behind the Spartan position.)
I learned this as a teenager and had great fun on the football field in HIgh School informing the our primary rivals (a team named the Spartans) about this.
Normal Americans are becoming less and less virtuous.
And the converse: Virtuous Americans are becoming less and less the norm.
For the same reason that these countries do (cannon fodder is cannon fodder):
1.1 Albania
1.2 Argentina
1.3 Australia
1.4 Austria
1.5 Bahamas
1.6 Belgium
1.7 Bermuda
1.8 Brazil
1.9 Canada
1.10 Republic of China
1.11 Colombia
1.12 Croatia
1.13 Czech Republic
1.14 Denmark
1.15 Estonia
1.16 Finland
1.17 France
1.18 Germany
1.19 Greece
1.20 Republic of Ireland
1.21 Israel
1.22 Italy
1.23 Japan
1.24 Lithuania
1.25 Luxembourg
1.26 Malta
1.27 Netherlands
1.28 New Zealand
1.29 Norway
1.30 Peru
1.31 Philippines
1.32 Poland
1.33 Portugal
1.34 Romania
1.35 Russia
1.36 Serbia
1.37 Slovenia
1.38 South Africa
1.39 Spain
1.40 Sweden
1.41 Switzerland
1.42 Thailand
1.43 United Kingdom
1.44 Uruguay
Prior to the USA military championing sodomy, A. its Uniform Code of Military Justice treated sodomy as a vile, grave and terminal crime. B. It won, because a moral character prevails over an immoral character. A nation that loses its moral fiber descends into an also ran nation … history’s dung hill is loaded with such crud.
History’s dung hill is loaded with crud written by people who don’t know what they are talking about.
The whole idea that empires and nations are built on “moral fiber” is patently and demonstratively ludicrous, and it can only be supported by those who turn a blind eye to the Catholic faith, just war theology, and common sense.
Empires are built by conquest, and that includes the American Empire. North America was already populated by Indians when the settlers came. When the 13 colonies formed the United States, the vast majority of its future territory was held by indian tribes.
Let’s get real, the continental US was created by conquest of the Indians.
How, exactly, is a war of conquest justified in the Catholic theology of just war? Is there a exception that states slaughtering your fellow man and seizing their land is OK as long as you worship Jesus and they don’t?
What great moral crusade was Andrew Jackson waging when he pulled off the Indian Removal Act after an indian tribe found gold on their reservation. The indian tribe WON in the supreme court, (the chief had actually gone to Harvard and earned a law degree) and learned to live under the white-man’s law. But, because the hapless indians discovered gold on their reservation, jackson arbitrarily decided that an internal dissident faction was the “real” government of the tribe and put them in power as long as they agreed to sign a treaty giving up their reservation.
He then booted the tribe off with federal troops (causing many deaths in the move) to a new reservation and seized the land with gold. Yeah, what a moral paragon.
Thus we see that nations and empires are often built by embracing IMMORALITY. Had America been a moral nation built with a genuinely religious population governed by men that honored God’s will, such conquests WOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED.
The story of building the United States based on moral principle would not be about seizing land and Indian wars, but of Indian tribes deciding they’d rather be farmers than hunting/gathering tribes after seeing the example of the colonies. Then after they had built towns, farms, and voluntarily adopted Christianity, they would ask to join the union willingly.
Consequently, the idea that America was built by moral virtue and we are headed for a fall if we lose that moral virtue is a warped idea.
So let’s just be clear here: By asserting that children have a right to be raised by their biological parents, he accuses foster parents of violating that right. Adoptive parents would similarly be violating the rights of the child that they adopt. And by inference, Catholic Charities adoption agencies, violate the rights of the children they place when the biological parents are alive. Will the Archbishop now move to prohibit Catholic Charities from placing children into foster homes or adoptions when the parents are alive?
You know you are being ridiculous by your examples. Children deserve the ideal, but when it is NOT the ideal, then the next best scenario is that there be an attempt to mirror the ideal. Same-sex parenting is not even a mirror of the ideal. Stop being ridiculous. If you believe that same-sex partnership is so great, how about reading up on the stats related to children who are denied the scenario of the ideal family life. They tend to do less well than children reared in traditional family life.
Life Lady – The Archbishop did not say that biological parents are the “ideal” persons to raise a child. He said the child had the “right” to be raised by their biological parents. Therefore ANY other humanly created familial situation deprives the child of its “right”. That’s what the Archbishop says, that’s not what I say.
Your Fellow Catholic, in the past the Catholic Church used to be pro-adoption. Some bishops still are but others do speak of the rights of children to be raised by their biological parents as you state. I remember reading of students at a Catholic school in Minnesota who were upset when a guest speaker spoke out against adoption and also same sex parents.
Where oh where did this spin come from, I see nothing close to what the comment questions in either of the statements by the Archbishops. This must be the writers agenda interpretive not factual.
My favorite part is that you prefaced your nonsense with “let’s just be clear here”
St. Alphonsus Liguori – Doctor of the Church
On The Means Necessary For Salvation
“I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Make straight the way of the Lord” – John 1:23
2. Miserable the man who trusts to himself in the way of God. St. Peter experienced the sad effect of self-confidence. Jesus Christ said to him, “In this night, before cock-crow, thou wilt deny me thrice” (Mat. 26: 34). Trusting in his own strength and in his good will, the Apostle replies: “Yea, though I should die with Thee, I will not deny Thee” (5:35). What was the result? On the night on which Jesus Christ had been taken, Peter was reproached in the court of Caiphas with being one of the disciples of the Savior. The reproach filled him with fear: he thrice denied his Master, and swore that he had never known Him. Humility and distrust in ourselves are so necessary for us, that God permits us sometimes to fall into sin, that, by our fall, we may acquire humility and a knowledge of our own weakness. Through want of humility, David also fell, hence, after his sin, he said, “Before I was humbled, I offended” (Ps. 18:67).
YFC, the word “biological” is not in this statement. You have misquoted the archbishop.
” Only a man and a woman can bring children into the world, and so marriage, as the foundation of the family, by its very nature can only be between a man and a woman.”
The end result of sodomy marriage is to destroy the family and anyone or anything that does not bow down to satanic sodomy.
I have been for some time praying and asking God and His Saints, especially His Mother to give me a good response to those who protest the use of the term “sodomite” and it recently came to me.
Not all who are tempted with this aberration give in to those temptations, so they should be called “tempted” or “homosexual inclined”; however those who give in to those temptations are rightfully called “sodomites” because they are imitating those who caused the destruction of “Sodom and Gomorrah!
Are you sodomites and their supporters listening? The Scriptures in Romans speak not only of those who do those things, but those who support them!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
Thank you, Archbishop Broglio for speaking out on the new Department of Defense policy on “same-sex domestic partners. You said, “Forcing the officer to violate his conscience would not be fair.”
God gave us a free will. Nobody can “force” another to violate his conscience. Are clergy willing to suffer persecution and not compromise? Tell Obama that obeying the same-sex policy is disobeying God. Tell Obama, No!
Obama does not care about the Law or the Constitution. He merely illegally re-writes laws by issuing his own ‘Executive Orders’, and his ‘Democratic’ Senate does nothing about it.
He is a very dangerous man, and so is the majority of the Senate.
Anyone who voted for Obama and most of his Democrats voted for an immoral and illegal society. To his credit Obama was honest prior to the election about his active and strong support for the murder of innocent babies and sodomy marriage.
He leads Souls to Hell, and some Catholics follow.
God bless Archbishops Broglio and Cordileone, and the other good leaders of our Faith.
As I understand, the Defense of Marriage Act is before the Supreme Court on constitutional grounds. In my opinion, if the Supremes uphold the Act, then DOD policy must comply until or unless Congress changes the law. If on the other hand, the Supremes strike the law, DOD policy must comply to that.
Stay tuned. We’ll know by June.
Panetta is a very dangerous and disturbed man that needs to be replaced NOW. He and Obama may think that mocking God and His Will is funny, but, we know that God has the last word in this. WE NEED TO STOP OBAMANISM and all of it’s evils now. +JMJ+
What a nice couple!
A nice couple of sensible argurments, that is — what WERE you guys thinking I meant?!?
If I read the “policy” correctly, that means that two people who are merely roomates can claim benefits as a “couple” and thereby milk that cash cow. Well, if THAT is equality, then those of us who are Catholics, those who are professed religious women in a convent, can claim that “domestic partnership” and apply for those benefits. Does that make any sense?
CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH
CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING PROPOSALS
TO GIVE LEGAL RECOGNITION
TO UNIONS
BETWEEN HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS
17) It should not be forgotten that there is always “a danger that legislation which would make homosexuality a basis for entitlements could actually encourage a person with a homosexual orientation to declare his homosexuality or even to seek a partner in order to exploit the provisions of the law” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Some considerations concerning the response to legislative proposals on the non-discrimination of homosexual persons [July 24, 1992], 14).
Is this saying that people who are open about their sexual orientation should be discriminated against? “It could actually encourage a person with a homosexual orientation to declare his homosexuality.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that homosexual persons should not be discriminated against but it seems like they are hedging here. Do they think it is better for people to lie about their orientation to avoid mistreatment?
Mark from Pa, no, it does not say that.
Sodomy is so deeply rooted and the associated guilt so profound that gays typically display the “I’m discriminated against” ruse. They are being led by their shame, not their reason.
The best structure of marriage is between one man and one woman but we will likely be living very soon in a world where gay and lesbian couples will be marrying and “having children” through artifical insemination or adoption. The Supreme Court is likely to rule that the states can do whatever they want with marriage laws, as the Constitution is silent on this matter.
P.S. Sometimes children are not best served being kept with their biological parents. Genetics is a poor determinat of mature parenting skills, and the biggest congtribuitor to crime, violence, drug and alchool addiction, and domenstic violence is child abuse in the family unit (including Catholic families). To get children out of abusive homes and into a safe environment should be our highest goal.
Yes, good cause, but even a prison is a safe environment. Children also need affection, care, guidance and nurturing, not merely safety. Believe it or not, those qualities are even more important than safety in bringing up children to avoid the many possible negative outcomes you describe.
A great many outstanding Americans were raised in abusive homes; I am something of an expert on such homes, having grown up in a severely abusive home, and further having studied the lingering effects on abused children as adults. About 30% go on to abuse their own children, though obviously 70% do not. However, the other 70% are sometimes unable to discipline appropriately or at all, thus not fully avoiding the negative legacy that is passed on in an altered version to their own children with different but definitely negative effects.
Most of the founders of our nation were abused children, as were most immigrants and pioneers in our nation’s history; they were escaping into self-sufficiency and were quite toughened, though not always in a good way, however, as any student of the American West will tell you. Child abuse and misuse was rampant in our nation’s past and lives on today.
I am absolutely opposed to violence against children, but must insist that more than mere physical safety is needed to care for our children properly if the parents prove unwilling or unable to parent their children well. A lack of nurturing is harmful even to children who are made safe.
Those reading this who care should consider becoming foster parents, as good foster parents are critically needed these days, now more than ever, I’m very sad to say. Suffer the little children to come unto you. I beg you.
Interesting, Maryanne. But how could frontiers people have surivived and thrived with abusive families being the norm?
Amazing, isn’t it? And many children did not survive, nor did all the adult immigrants and settlers I referred to, of course. But my understanding is that due to a lack of households and farms full of electric household conveniences and push-button tractors, the generations before us worked harder and thus were stronger, and lacking Hollywood fantasies to teach them otherwise, were lots happier with lots less than we are today. They lived shorter lives by far, mainly due to the dangers of childbirth and the lack of medical advancements, but they were a far tougher lot in general and had much more fortitude than we do. Just walking from back east to the Midwest or far West to resettle required spirit and good stamina, but hope of a better life motivated them, as did in many cases, a wish to escape lives of abuse and maltreatment by families, employers, and the vississitudes of untamed Nature.
Maryanne, there should be studies that deal not with accidents but with those who die of natural old age. That would be interesting to study.
What about getting kids from abusive homes into relatives’ homes? Oh I forgot society these days is really short on relatives. Oh well.
“To replace the superior ideal which he has abandoned, man may, for example, place his religion in science or in the cult of social justice or in some human ideal, which finally he considers in a religious manner and even in a mystical manner. Thus he turns away from supreme reality, and there arises a vast number of problems that will be solved only if he returns to the fundamental problem of the intimate relations of the soul with God.” – Fr Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange
So let’s see here…what happens when a nation elevates a single human behavior to protected status right along side immutable conditions like age, gender & race?
Well, It is inherently unfair to all the other human behaviors & misbehaviors who must feel, understandably, slighted.
V.V.
Thank you and God bless you, Archbishop Cordileone and Archbishop Broglio for standing up for every child’s right to have both a mother and a father and for such families as the ideal. God declared marriage to be between one man and one woman. Equality in marriage means one man and one woman. Any other kind of arrangement is unbalanced and unequal.