KANSAS CITY, February 23, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The U.S. based National Catholic Reporter, which boasts a readership of 120,000 in 96 countries, and a General Excellence Award from the Catholic Press Assoc., has endorsed homosexual ‘marriage’. In its current February 20 edition, the dissident Catholic publication says, “The ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts allowing same-sex civil marriage is a beneficial step along the path of human understanding and human rights.” In contrast, the National Catholic Register, a competing paper with a smaller distribution, has remained faithful to Catholic teaching. LifeSiteNews.com spoke today with Fr. Owen Kearns, Publisher and Editor in Chief of the Register, as well as the paper’s executive editor Tim Hoopes, about the Register’s editorial position on homosexual marriage. Editorials in the paper have warned readers to be prepared to defend traditional marriage. And articles have been published providing reasoned arguments to do so. The National Catholic Register has also backed the use of a federal marriage amendment and has frequently cited the Pope and Vatican on the issue.

True to Catholic form, the paper urges prayer. The November editorial on the subject of protecting marriage closed with a call to prayer saying, “In his apostolic letter on the rosary, Pope John Paul II said he was calling for daily rosaries with two main intentions: for peace and for the family. He said the attacks on the family were ‘menacing … so as to make us fear for the future of this fundamental and indispensable institution and, with it, for the future of society as a whole.'” To subscribe to the National Catholic Register visit: https://www.ncregister.com/subscribe/