La Vie Chrétienne: Discussing homosexual marriages

By: FATHER MITCHELL GUIDRY
Pastor Our Lady Queen of All Saints Catholic Church

In Pope Paul VI’s 1968 papal encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae, we find two important truths about marriage and human sexuality. First, they were divinely instituted by God for the good of the spouses and of the human race. Second, both have certain eternal laws that cannot be changed. In our day, however, certain groups have succeeded in pushing governments and churches to recognize homosexual unions as “marriages” and entitle them to the same rights and privileges of the truly married. It is tragic that many lawmakers in our country and around the world and even in some churches have succumbed to pressures of political correctness and are making great strides in attempting to legitimize what can never be declared legitimate.
Aside from Biblical teaching, human reason by itself can determine why we can never consider homosexual acts to be legitimate sexual expression. If the sexual act is the outward expression of an interior union (which is what marriage is, two spouses coming together as one first in a spiritual union of love which is then expressed by physical action) then there must be a complementary way which has a specific purpose for this love to find physical expression. Why do human beings have a need to love and be loved? Love is the source of creation and vitality. The painter, the sculptor, the architect, the poet, the musician and the writer are able to create when each is in love with his or her art. Who would say that Raphael, Michaelangelo, Wright, Frost, Longfellow, Bach or Mozart did not love the work they did to produce such great monuments to human genius? At the same time, each artist will tell of a great struggle or suffering, a friction  that ignited the fire of passion that led him or her to create.
In the animal world, this same instinctual drive to create causes the irrational beasts to breed in order to continue their species. Humans share this instinct, but have the ability to use reason to control their sexual urges and choose one mate with whom he or she will share the love that only human beings can share. This love fosters trust, friendship, loyalty, generosity and a desire for the complete happiness of the other person. The fire of love is ignited from the friction of the physical and emotional difference of man and woman; the human instinct is, like the animal’s, to continue the species but to do so in a way that is ultimately human, to create from the passion that burns deep within a new life that will share in the fruits of married love. The family in this way becomes the seed bed of human civilization. Homosexual intercourse, conversely, is absolutely sterile. A passion may burn, a desire for love, acceptance and all the emotional goods of marriage may be had, but because there is no physical, mental or spiritual complementarity in homosexual unions, the twofold purpose of marriage, unity and procreation, cannot be met. Even heterosexual couples who for whatever natural reason cannot reproduce can still share in the unitive end of marriage in which the two distinct genders become one in body, mind and spirit.
The dispute over homosexual “marriages” will continue for a long time  to come, but any society valuing peace, that is the tranquility that comes from proper order, no other option than to reject it. Marriage between man and woman alone has the potential to fulfill the ideals of human love and create the family, the keystone of a prosperous and civilized world.