Madrid, Spain, Oct 9, 2006 / 22:00 pm

The Archbishop of Toledo, Cardinal Antonio Cañizares, defended marriage and “faithful and permanent conjugal love,” this week, calling for such a defense of marriage amid the “terrible plague of divorce,” which is seriously affecting Spain.

In a homily given at the Cathedral of Toledo, Cardinal Cañizares also denounced the trend of “express divorces” calling them, “a very harsh reality that cannot be maintained any longer.”

Marriage is “a good written in the very nature of the human being,” the Cardinal said.  He indicated that the institution of marriage belongs “to the common good and to the patrimony of humanity and that cannot be destroyed with such casualness as is happening today.”
 
The cardinal underscored the indissolubility of marriage and noted that the words of Jesus are “very clear” and “leave no room for doubt or distortion.” 

“The demand of fidelity and stability that human reason itself discovers in marriage clearly appears in the words of Jesus Christ,” the Cardinal said.

He denounced the “current forms of dissolving marriage,” such as civil unions “and even pseudo-marriage between people of the same sex,” which he called expressions of anarchy that some want to put forth as the true liberation of mankind.

“That pseudo freedom is based on a trivialization of the body that inevitably includes the trivialization of man. It is based on the supposition that man can do with himself what he pleases,” and therefore, he added, “we find ourselves faced with a great challenge: that of presenting, defending, living, and spreading the gospel of the family, to which belongs the truth of marriage and its indissolubility.”

Cardinal Cañizares noted that when a man and a woman contract marriage, they establish a permanent bond between themselves, “and although they were free to contract it, they are not free to break the bond that was born of their mutual consent.” 

“This is the way things are, even though, because of the hardness of our heart, we have grown accustomed to divorce.  The Church knows she is going against the tide when she proclaims the indissolubility of the marriage bond, and we should not be surprised that this teaching is not followed by all,” the cardinal said.