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The hierarchical ordering of creation is part of the plan of God our Creator, with human beings 'higher' than fish and animals. Man and woman are equally important in God's sight, and designed to come together for a life-long union and the creation of children in a union properly called marriage.
It is plain that human beings should look after their families according to God's laws, which are the laws of their own nature. A man and woman are designed to come together in love, to produce children. The life-long faithful union of such a couple is the union properly called 'marriage'.
It is God's plan that man and woman marry, and have children, since He said "Be fruitful". A person who claims that a woman can 'marry' a woman, or a man 'marry' a man, are looking at life as if through distorted glasses.
When spouses are obedient to God's plan for marriage, they want to be faithful to one another, and if it is possible the wife seeks to care for the children as only a mother can, the father wants to support the whole family, and the children are happy, well looked after and secure.
The new road being made represents the road never-before trodden by the couple who have now become a married couple joined by God. Yet their road joins up with a great highway which leads to Heaven, and represents God the Father's plan for the human race. It is His will that families move forwards together, each man and woman with their children, living close to other families who also live in peace and goodness, remaining aware of their Heavenly destination.
When a man and a woman are about to make their marriage vows in a Catholic church, Christ is there with all His Saints, to witness the marriage, which is a sacrament of the Church. The saints will celebrate the union, and after the vows, will pray to the Father for the couple; and the Angels also pray.
As I praised the Father for the Mother of Christ, who acted to help a couple on their wedding day, I saw Christ reach out and lead His Mother down a little so that she could accept the honour I paid her, and hear my prayers - so great is His delight at seeing His Mother treated with honour and gratitude.
There are some acts which are intrinsically wrong. Even if people act from ignorance, and are less blameworthy in God's sight, He does not want anyone (especially priests) to encourage people in such acts, but to invite them to abandon such behaviour, to pursue holiness. It is never right to use contraceptives, to attempt a re-marriage which is adulterous, or to have a forbidden sexual relationship such as incest.
God has designed a man and a woman for a joyful union in marriage which can result in the gift of life: the gift of a child. Where they take pleasure in one another yet at the same time exclude the possibility of receiving God's gift, they are like those before them who have called out to God, saying, 'I will not serve'.
The Blessed Virgin Mary accepted God's Will, which was that she carry a child in her womb. She bore the gaze of amazed villagers, for love of God, unlike married people who refuse to do God's Will, as they deliberately make their married union sterile, by contraceptive use, and refuse the gift of life.
A child who has a mother and a father who are married to one another, in a stable marriage, has an admirable start in life. There is 'imprinted' in the child the idea of family life, as God Wills it; and it is therefore easier for the child to appreciate the Will of God for society - and related teachings of the Church.
There are people apparently respectable who look lustfully at other people and so sin against God and break their marriage vows. All who commit adultery, and who persevere in it, without repenting before they die, will be in danger of hell-fire - as Christ told us.
Part of the purpose of marriage is for spouses to help one another to become holy. This cannot be done if one who is hurt turns away. It is important to speak the truth with love to one another rather than to grow silent and resentful.
Bishops and priests who fail to teach the Faith in its fullness, rarely or never speaking against contraception or abortion, send a wrong message not just to Catholics but also to other Christians who notice what they say, and conclude that these are matters of little importance. Such things, objectively, (such as contraception, abortion, so-called 're-marriage' and other practices) are serious sins.
Our upbringing affects our marriages. We cannot make ourselves holy by our own efforts, or reach Heaven by will-power. By co-operating with the grace of God, given to us through Jesus Christ His Son, we can conquer our faults, and so even stop the evil influences that we might have had upon other people, especially family members, by our bad example: and on society.
The Lord wants us to look at the reality behind all the new procedures by which some people fertilize human eggs outside the body, and manipulate human embryos in all sorts of ways. At every such conception, a miniature human person is created into whom God infuses an immortal soul, even though it is God's intention the babies be conceived through the marriage act, and not in laboratories; nor should tiny babies be thrown away.
It is God's intention that babies be conceived in the marriage act: in a lifelong union of love of a man and a woman. The baby is meant to be the 'fruit' of their loving union. It is not God's Will that tiny babies be created as the result of laboratory procedures, outside the womb; furthermore, each little person, however created, deserves to live and not to be thrown away as 'surplus' or 'imperfect'
It is true that groups of Christians outside the visible unity of the Catholic Church join in Christ's saving work by baptising their members. But it is tragic that those young Christians are often taught mistaken things about faith and morals, and so encouraged to sin - even if their instructors thought they were right, in approving of contraception, divorce and remarriage, even abortion and other evils.
It is a tragedy, that the legislation of abortion has led to an ever-dimishing sense of responsibility, amongst young people, for their behaviour. A woman can assure a man: "If I forget to take my pill, I can always have an abortion" - and so sex is seen merely as a leisure activity, and not as the intimacy at the heart of marriage.
People used to hear a married woman announce her pregnancy; and they replied with "Congratulations". When legal abortion had been introduced, it became necessary to be cautious, knowing that women can find doctors to destroy their unborn babies, even without the approval or consent of the husband, the child's father.
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