News Item: : Cardinal Gaudenico Rosales - Even if 99% Favour Divorce, What is Wrong is Wrong
(Category: Torch of The Faith News)
Posted by admin
Friday 27 March 2015 - 20:20:13

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Zenit News reports that Cardinal Gaudenico Rosales, Archbishop Emeritus of Manila in the Philippines, has given a strong public defence of the indissolubility of marriage.

His Eminence was responding to surveys which suggest that the majority of people in the Philippines now favour the legalization of divorce. According to a survey by Social Weather Stations, 60% of the 1,800 respondents agreed that couples in 'irreparable marriages' should be allowed to divorce, so that they can legally get married again to someone else. Only 29% of respondents disagreed.

Cardinal Rosales responded: ''Even if it is 99% surveyed favour divorce, what is wrong is wrong.''

Reading His Eminence's words reminded us of the clear teaching found in Evangelium Vitae, which recalls the fact that democracy must not be idolized to the point of making it a substitute for morality or even a panacea for immorality. 

EV 70 explains that the basis of authentic values, 'cannot be provisional and changeable ''majority'' opinions, but only the acknowledgement of an objective moral law which, as the ''natural law'' written in the human heart, is the obligatory point of reference for civil law itself.' 

In his defence of marriage, Cardinal Rosales has also pointed out that those who argue that the Church should somehow change its teaching on divorce and 're-marriage' are ignoring the Sacred Scriptures and attempting to get the institution to overrule God.

These teachings are a helpful corrective to some of those involved in the Synod, who have given the false impression that doctrine is something that can be manufactured, or tailored to the tenor of the times, by majority vote. In reality the dogmas and doctrines of the Church are expressions of the divine revelation to us.

Let us conclude with a short quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

'There is an organic connection between our spiritual life and the dogmas. Dogmas are lights along the path of faith; they illuminate it and make it secure. Conversely, if our life is upright, our intellect and heart will be open to welcome the light shed by the dogmas of faith' (John 8:31-32/ CCC 89).


This news item is from Torch of The Faith
( http://www.torchofthefaith.com/news.php?extend.914 )