BALTIMORE (CNS) — Saying “today is like 1970 for marriage,” Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., urged his fellow bishops Nov. 15 to look at the challenges to traditional marriage as if they could see Roe v. Wade on the horizon.
Speaking on the first day of the bishops’ annual fall meeting in Baltimore, Archbishop Kurtz made the comments as chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage, which was just upgraded to a subcommittee of the bishops’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth.
He updated the bishops on various projects to reinforce the Church’s teaching about the sanctity of marriage, including the release of new multimedia materials and active work in battling legislative efforts to change legal definitions of marriage in order to legalize same-sex marriage.
He likened the situation for laws about marriage to the period just before Roe legalized abortion in 1973. “If you had seen Roe v. Wade coming three years out, what would you have done differently?”
Archbishop Kurtz said 4,500 copies of a DVD “Made for Each Other,” and its accompanying education materials had been distributed around the country, and other materials are in development aimed at teaching children. He also announced that there are plans to hire a full-time staff adviser at the USCCB on marriage and family.
At the end of the report, Cardinal Francis E. George, the outgoing president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, announced that the ad hoc committee would now be a permanent subcommittee of the Committee on Marriage and Family Life.
In a brief period for comments from the floor, Archbishop Roger L. Schwietz of Anchorage, Alaska, said had he notified what is now the subcommittee of his interest in the bishops declaring a Marriage Sunday, much like the annual Respect Life Sunday, observed the first Sunday in October.
Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan of Santa Fe, N.M., said the U.S. Catholic Church should build more bridges to “churches that agree with us on marriage and family life,” particularly evangelical churches. “The mainline churches have abandoned the traditional teaching on marriage and family life,” he said, “But the evangelical communities, along with the Roman Catholics are strong.”
Archbishop Sheehan pointed to the Manhattan Declaration — a joint statement signed in November 2009 by more than 140 Christian leaders, many evangelical and Catholic, pledging renewed zeal in defending the unborn, defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and protecting religious freedom. The document also mentioned the possibility of civil disobedience, if necessary, to defend beliefs.