Pope Benedict XVI, in an annual address to the Roman Rota, the highest appellate tribunal of the Roman Catholic Church, Saturday told them that no one has a God-given right to marriage. Saying, “No one can make a claim to the right to a nuptial ceremony,” the Pope went on to complain, as he often does, about the great number of annulments granted by the Rota. (You’ll remember one year ago the Pope had singled-out the United States which has had more annulment cases than in the rest of the world — combined.)
Via NPR:
Benedict acknowledged that the problems that would allow for a marriage to be annulled cannot always be identified beforehand. But he said better pre-marriage counseling, which the Catholic Church requires of the faithful, could help avoid a “vicious circle” of invalid marriages.
Last year, he urged the tribunal to work harder to encourage couples to stay together and not confuse “pastoral charity” with the need to uphold church law.
On Saturday, Benedict said priests had an important pastoral job to discern whether would-be spouses are prepared and able to enter into a valid marriage.
“The church and society at large place too much importance on the good of marriage and the family founded on it to not make a profound commitment to it pastorally,” Benedict said.
Of course, as the Pope has decreed that “no one can make a claim to the right to a nuptial ceremony,” and marriage is therefore not a God-given right, surely therefore it can be said to be a secular right, as the Supreme Court has, and therefore also, same-sex marriage is a secular right. Right?
Earlier this month, Pope Benedict XVI said that gay marriage penalizes traditional couples and distorts the true nature of the family.
It’s important to remember also that this is the Pope who said in an end-of-year message to his Cardinals that “In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,†and added that paedophilia wasn’t even considered an “absolute evil.†Benedict XVI has declared that laws which legalize same-sex marriage “contribute to the weakening of the principles of natural law,†and to “confusion about society’s values,†and claimed that same-sex marriage “attacks†the “endangered species†that is mankind. Even before he was elected Pope, he knew of the pedophile priest sex abuse scandal, yet did not act.
This is also the same pope presiding over a Vatican that has said the Vatican was being treated like Holocaust victims, and blamed homosexuality and Jews on the Catholic Church’s international pedophilia scandal.