Bishop Domenico Sigalini of Palestrina, Italy, presented a clear explanation of the Church's teaching on conjugal love, the expression of sexuality as instituted by God, and marriage in an exclusive interview with LifeSiteNews from the Vatican this week.
“As regards the mentality of the Church which comes from the teachings of Holy Scriptures and all the teachings of the magisterium of the Church, we say that sexuality in man is an important aspect. But the objective of sexuality is to continue life,” said Sigalini, president of Italy’s Episcopal Commission of Laity in Italy.
The bishop said that while couples can decide how many children they will have, they have to be careful not to use sexuality as an end in itself.
“All the acts between husband and wife should be open to life,” he stated.
“As regards homosexuality,” Bishop Sigalini noted that, even leaving biblical imperatives aside, natural anthropology shows that “men and women are constituted differently and in their union of love with sexual gestures are oriented towards children.”
“Masculine sexuality is made to encounter feminine sexuality to give origin to life,” he said, “but if sexuality is used in a non-natural way, as happens between two men or two women, then we have to say it is not in keeping with the teaching of God and with human nature.”
Bishop Sigalini compared the indissolubility of sacramental marriage between a man and a woman to the “concrete image of the love of God for humanity” which, he said, “cannot be an image that ends, that is made of infidelity, made of ruptures.”
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“We have to educate ourselves towards this,” he urged. “We can be understanding of failures, but we do not reduce reality based on the failures of our humanity. The truth is larger than us and is always a destination. So no one permits themselves to condemn, but we help each other to be faithful to this project.”
Touching on the widespread condemnation by secular society of those who espouse Christian moral principles on marriage and sexuality, Bishop Sigalini said that “to be a believer … demands the courage to go against the current.”
“The Gospel is not a spontaneous way to live that allows anyone to make any decisions we wish,” he said. “It is an order of love that is very serious and very precise. Therefore opposition makes us reflect more on the search for true motivations but does not make us desist from understanding that there is a truth there that makes us happy and saves us.”
“There is a great objective before us that is the love of God that gives us the strength to go forward,” the bishop concluded. “If there are mistakes you repent, confess, and you go back. No one is amazed that errors happen, but what counts is that we have followed the truth that Jesus told us.”