Debate Preview: Hillary’s VP choice Tim Kaine slammed by his own Catholic Bishop

Although Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine, a liberal Catholic, said he believes the Catholic Church will change its teaching on marriage and embrace homosexual “marriage,” his bishop, the Most Rev. Francis X. DiLorenzo stated this week that the Church’s “2,000-year-old teaching to the truth about what constitutes marriage remains unchanged and resolute.”Bishop DiLorenzo, who heads the diocese of Richmond where Kaine resides, added that the Church’s teaching on marriage “is a matter of justice and fidelity to our Creator’s original design,” and therefore cannot change.

“More than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage, and despite recent statements from the campaign trail, the Catholic church’s 2,000-year-old teaching to the truth about what constitutes marriage remains unchanged and resolute,” said Bishop DiLorenzo in a Sept. 13 statement.

“As Catholics, we believe all humans warrant dignity and deserve love and respect, and unjust discrimination is always wrong,” said the bishop. “Our understanding of marriage, however, is a matter of justice and fidelity to our Creator’s original design. Marriage is the only institution uniting one man and one woman with each other and with any child who comes from their union.”

“Redefining marriage furthers no one’s rights, least of all those of children, who should not purposely be deprived of the right to be nurtured and loved by a mother and a father,” said the bishop.

In conclusion, he said, “We call on Catholics and all those concerned for preserving this sacred union to unite in prayer, to live and speak out with compassion and charity about the true nature of marriage — the heart of family life.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, based on its 2,000-year-old teaching explains that marriage between a man and a woman for life “was established by God Himself” and “the Church does not have the power” to alter “divine wisdom.”

As paragraph 1640 of the Catechism states, “Thus the marriage bond has been established by God himself in such a way that a marriage concluded and consummated between baptized persons can never be dissolved. This bond, which results from the free human act of the spouses and their consummation of the marriage, is a reality, henceforth irrevocable, and gives rise to a covenant guaranteed by God’s fidelity. The Church does not have the power to contravene this disposition of divine wisdom.”

Further, the Church teaches that homosexual behavior cannot be approved under any circumstances. As paragraph 2357 of the Catechism explains, “Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained.

“Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”