Pope stresses on the 'truth of marriage'

(Jan. 27, 2007) Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday reiterated his defence of the traditional family, saying real marriage is only between man and woman and that such a union is indissoluble. Speaking to members of the Roman Rota, a tribunal that handles appeals of marriage annulment cases in the Catholic church, the Holy Father, repeated the Catholic Church’s teaching against unmarried couples and same-sex unions saying they were not designed such by the creator. In today’s cultural context, marked by relativism and juridical positivism, the Pope noted, marriage is considered a mere social formality of affective bonds. As a result, marriage is portrayed not only as something optional like human sentiments, but is regarded as a legal superstructure that human will can manipulate as it pleases, even depriving it of its heterosexual nature. “Each marriage is certainly the fruit of free consent between man and woman,” the pope said. Then he added: “The union occurs because of the design by God, who has created them male and female and gives them the power to unite those natural and complementary dimensions forever.” The pope went on to say the bond is indissoluble because “it is so in the design of creation.” He said the while handling marriage annulment cases a genuine pastoral sense must prevail without however compromising the truth about marriage. He warned that in certain Church circles there is a conviction that the pastoral welfare of persons in irregular marriage situations would require a sort of canonical regularization, regardless of the validity or invalidity of their marriage, in other words regardless of the ‘truth’ of their personal conditions. This, he said, leads to the denial of the indissolubility of marriage bonds, as if it were an ‘ideal’ to which no normal Christian would be obliged to conform. And marriage annulment is considered a juridical instrument to formalize subjective pretexts, meaning it is being portrayed as a divorce.