Sen. Tim Kaine’s, D-Va., bishop threw cold water this week on the Democratic vice presidential candidate’s prediction that the Catholic Church would soon amend its position on same-sex marriage.
“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 2000-year-old teaching to the truth about what constitutes marriage remains unchanged and resolute,” Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo of Richmond, Va., said in a statement this week.
“As Catholics, we believe, all humans warrant dignity and deserve love and respect, and unjust discrimination is always wrong. Our understanding of marriage, however, is a matter of justice and fidelity to our Creator’s original design,” the statement added. “Marriage is the only institution uniting one man and one woman with each other and with any child who comes from their union.”
Though DiLorenzo’s statement didn’t mention the Virginia lawmaker by name, it comes almost immediately after Kaine, himself a Roman Catholic, suggested this weekend that the Catholic Church would soon become pro-gay marriage.
“I think it’s going to change,” Kaine said during a speech delivered at the Human Rights Campaign’s annual gala. “Because my church also teaches me about a creator who, in the first chapter of Genesis, surveyed the entire world, including mankind, and said, ‘It is very good.'”
Kaine’s support for same-sex marriage is a recent development.
“Like Clinton, Kaine has only relatively recently become an ardent supporter of same-sex marriage. He did not announce that he officially supported the legal rights of gay couples who wanted to marry until 2013,” CNN reported.
The Catholic Church holds that marriage is a sacrament, and that it is between one man and one women.
Bishop DiLorenzo reaffirmed that teaching this week in an none-too-subtle response to Kaine’s comments from this weekend.
“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,” the bishop’s statement 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,” it said.
