VALENCIA, July 4, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Agustin Garcia-Gasco, Archbishop of Valencia, Spain, has come out swinging with a spirited defence of the reality of marriage in his weekly letter.

Gasco denounced the “controlled demolition of marriage from within by the laws reforming the Civil Code,” and he warned that “the State has no right to dynamite marriage from within…disfiguring an institution that contributes to security and emotional stability to the people and the children.”

Last week’s passage of legislation giving recognition to homosexual partnerings also shortened the waiting period for divorce from a year to three months. Archbishop Garcia called the legislation “an atrocity” and a “rash and unjust decision.”

The Archbishop’s comments appeared in his weekly pastoral letter. “Marriage,” he wrote, “is a relationship between one man and one woman that merits the recognition and appreciation of all societies, for the survival of the human race depends on it”.

“If everything is marriage, nothing is marriage,” he noted, adding, “If the marriage simply stops being the union between the man and the woman to being the union between ‘two people,’ then ‘marriage for all’ is not obtained, but what prevails is ‘marriage for none.’”

Archbishop Gasco reserved some of his strongest language for the relaxing of restrictions on divorce. He said that the introduction of three-month unilateral “no-fault” divorce leaves marriage open to being “destroyed by the momentary, fleeting and unilateral whim of one of the spouses.”

“As a shepherd, I know that all the marriages can undergo bumps and difficult moments that, in many cases, time and mutual generosity will surpass taking (spouses to) a deeper personal and conjugal growth. ‘To throw the towel’ at the first problems is not the solution and (the relaxing of the divorce law) creates a deep wound in the people.”

The Archbishop also denounced efforts by homosexual and leftist activists to silence opposition by labeling it ‘homophobia.” He called the broad opposition to the change from many levels of Spanish society an exercise of “common sense and the established thing in all the civilized nations,” whether those nations have Christian roots or not.

Forum for the Family has announced another demonstration in support of marriage scheduled for July 18. Ignacio Garcia Julia told the Italian Catholic daily Avvenire, “We have decided to go ahead with our protest, despite the parliament’s definitive approval of the changes to Spain’s Civil Code on Thursday. We will continue to mobilise against gay marriages.”

Archbishop Garcia concluded his letter, “To destroy marriage is a barbarism,” and said that only time would show all the possible consequences of this “unjust legislation.”

Read the Archbishop’s letter (in Spanish):
http://www.archivalencia.org/

HW