Concerning the Supreme Court Decision Ruling Same-Sex Marriage Legal Nationwide.

Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades

June 26, 2015 // Statements

Statement from Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades, Bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend

I am saddened, yet unsurprised, by the Supreme Court’s decision to redefine marriage in our country. In our society in recent years, we have seen a cultural shift in which the truth about the meaning and purpose of marriage has been obscured by excluding the essential complementarity of man and woman, treating sexual difference as if it were irrelevant to what marriage is. Making same-sex unions equivalent to marriage disregards the very nature of marriage as naturally ordered toward authentic union and the generation of new life.

I believe that today’s decision is unjust in that it ignores the unique and proper place of husbands and wives and especially the rights of children to a mother and father. It essentially makes equal what are essentially different realities: same-sex unions and marriage.

While we must uphold the human dignity of homosexual persons and their basic human rights, no one has the right to alter the truth about marriage as established by God. The Supreme Court’s mandating of a new definition of marriage that is contrary to the divine and natural law is, as our U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops states, “a tragic error.”

I worry about the consequences of this decision for our religious liberty in teaching, upholding, and acting in accord with the truth about marriage as known by right reason and divine revelation. I call upon our Catholic faithful to continue to proclaim by word and example the true meaning of marriage even in the face of unjust and false accusations of bigotry and discrimination. We must continue to follow our Lord and to act in conformity with our faith, whether popular or unpopular. We must love all our brothers and sisters, including persons with same-sex attraction, while also upholding the true meaning of marriage.