Archbishop warns against negative impact of homosexual “marriage”

Barcelona, Spain, Aug 18, 2005 / 22:00 pm

Archbishop Lluis Martinez Sistach of Barcelona warned this week that Spain’s new law granting approval to homosexual “marriage” would alter Spanish society by “modifying the institution of marriage, recognized throughout the world as the union of a man and a woman.”

The archbishop warned that the impact of this law would be “very negative” for Spanish society.  Marriage, he said, “is the basic cell of society, and the good of persons—of spouses, but above all, of children—depends greatly on the health and normality of marriage and the family.”

“We cannot forget that laws are not neutral and that, in the long or short run, they determine how we live together,” the archbishop added in an interview published by the EFE news agency.

Regarding the secularism of today’s society, Archbishop Martinez acknowledged that “it is difficult to explicitly proclaim Jesus Christ, when men and women are living as if God did not exist in a process of increasing relativism and with little or no sense of the transcendent.”  However, the archbishop recalled that “what is impossible for man is possible for God.  We do not evangelize alone.  The Risen Christ works in us, He is the one who takes center stage.”

Lastly, he expressed his hope that Pope Benedict XVI will continue to foster the relationship between the Church and young people, “who are the future of the Church and of humanity.”