New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan has slammed the Democrat-sponsored Respect for Marriage Act as an assault on religious freedom and on all those who believe in traditional marriage.
“The Respect for Marriage Act seeks to shunt our idea of marriage aside,” Cardinal Dolan asserted in an essay Tuesday posted on the website of the U.S. Bishops’ Conference. “We who hold to these time-honored convictions would be voices in the wilderness, increasingly marginalized and dismissed in the face of Congress’s endorsement of same-sex civil marriages as the national norm.”
If passed, the bill would make freedom of speech and religion “second-class rights,” the cardinal warned. “The bill will be a new arrow in the quiver of those who wish to deny religious organizations’ liberty to freely exercise their religious duties, strip them of their tax exemptions, or exclude them from full participation in the public arena.”
Same-sex couples already have the right to enter into civil marriages in the U.S., the cardinal noted, but “many seek to go a step further and force private parties—religious organizations, individuals of faith—to approve and support those relationships by our own words and conduct.”
“We must bake the wedding cake, design the wedding website, rent the halls, and arrange the flowers—and afterwards, pay spousal benefits, place foster and adoptive children—even if it violates our deepest convictions about marriage and family,” he declared.
Dolan underscored the importance of freedom of speech and freedom of religion as one of “the geniuses of our great nation,” but one that is now under attack.
Things are already hard enough for people of faith and religious believers, he stated, but the misnamed Respect for Marriage Act would end up “suppressing faithful witness to longstanding beliefs about marriage and the family,” he noted.
For its part, the Catholic Church witnesses to beautiful, timeless truths about marriage, rooted in both faith and reason, he said, namely that “men and women are complementary; every child deserves a mother and a father; and marriage is a permanent and exclusive union, open to the transmission of human life, and an exercise in loving sacrifice that transcends the mere self.”
The institution of marriage, “properly understood as naturally ordered towards bearing and caring for children, is unique for a reason,” he contended. “It has special suitability to foster stability and the success of each new generation, all of which warrants special recognition.”
The failure “to afford space in the public square for those who offer an authentic witness about marriage dishonors the best of American traditions,” he declared.
It is time to redouble our commitment to the American ideal that “citizens in profound disagreement can exist in a harmony sustained by a law and culture that cherishes tolerance and compromise,” he insisted.
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