Cardinal Archbishop Ouellet Primate of Canada to Defend Marriage Before Senate Committee
Jul 15, 2005
A July 10 Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops release states that Canadian Catholic Prelate, Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Quebec City, will defend the traditional definition of marriage before a Senate committee deliberating over same-sex “marriage”Bill C-38.
OTTAWA, July 11, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, chaired by Liberal Senator Ms. Lise Bacon, will hear the Cardinal along with Ms. Hélène Aubé, a lawyer and mother from Gatineau, Wednesday July 13.
On February 17, the day Canada’s parliament began debating Bill C-38, Cardinal Ouellet warned that Canada was toying with basic religious freedom and was falling into ‘juridical chaos’ in the determination to impose same sex ‘marriage.’ He said that the civil foundation of Canadian society was being undermined by ‘subjectivism,’ the idea that rights are not based on objective, external reality, but upon personal desires.
The basic fact of marriage, said Ouellet, is “that a man is a man and a woman is a woman, and their union is marriage.” He said, “If you take (conjugality) out, you don’t have marriage. You have something else. You have a generic sort of union, but you don't have marriage.”
Ouellet added a warning for religious freedom for Canadians. “It will divide the country deeply and for a long time, and it will put religious freedom under attack in the very near future,” he said. The law also makes no provision for lay religious citizens or groups that might fall afoul of the gay hate crime law as well. The Quebec Cardinal added, “There is a sort of abusive interpretation of discrimination and the fundamental right to marriage.”
“If they bring me to the court because I am teaching against homosexuality as part of the doctrine of the Catholic Church, I will be accused of homophobia,” the Cardinal said in comments made to the US bishops’ Catholic News Service. “Those things are very serious, and it's on the way. We are very concerned, very concerned with the future,” he said.
In an open letter to all Canadians in January, Cardinal Ouellet said that the proposed legislation to redefine marriage to include gay couples “is offensive to the moral and religious sensibility of a great number of citizens, both Catholic and non-Catholic.” The letter states that not only marriage, but also “the union of persons of the same sex”, is “morally unacceptable” to “many Christians and adherents of other religious traditions.”
Cardinal Archbishop Ouellet Primate of Canada to Defend Marriage Before Senate Committee