News
Featured Image
Malta Archbishop Charles Jude Scicluna | Real marriage ad.

MALTA, May 24, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — Catholic faithful in Malta have published a full page add in a widely read paper defending real marriage against “unnatural” homosexual “marriage” in the lead-up to the country’s June 3 general election. 

The country’s bishops, however, have criticized the ad as “propaganda.” 

The ad, published in the May 21 edition of MaltaToday by “Maltese Catholics United for the Faith,” states that the sanctity of marriage must be respected. 

“We respect everyone, be they teachers, nuns, gays, immigrants, or self-employed…Respect is at the heart of it all. But the sanctity of marriage, between husband and wife, doesn’t grant a right to everyone to marry anyone,” the ad states. 

The group's ad criticizes the country’s two political parties vying for leadership for “incrementally beef[ing] up their standing at the ballot box by promising or enacting gay marriage laws for the 1%.”

“Same-sex marriage is unnatural. It runs against natural law as designed by God and handed down to us through every generation in our Maltese history,” states the ad. 

“This is why we take a stand for marriage as a union between husband and wife. If we don't take a public stand about what marriage is, our political parties will corrupt its meaning and enforce what it shouldn’t be. The main electoral programs are glorifying sin, and no sin should be placed in the spotlight and glorified,” the group states in the ad. 

The Archdiocese of Malta, run by Archbishop Charles Scicluna, took issue with the ad.

“The Archdiocese of Malta categorically states that, while respecting the right of freedom of expression of every person or any other entity, it is not in any way involved with the propaganda by the Maltese Catholics United for the Faith,” the archdiocese stated on its website May 23.

Archbishop Scicluna did not respond to LifeSiteNews' request for comment by press time.

It remains illegal in the predominantly Catholic country of Malta for two people of the same-sex to “marry,” although same-sex civil unions have been recognized since 2014. The Catholic Church, following the Bible, teaches that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered” and that the homosexual inclination itself is “objectively disordered.” 

The group behind the ad is urging Catholics to “defend the sanctity of marriage” by not voting for homosexual “marriage,” “even if it means not voting at all.”

“Instead, take a stand for traditional marriage. Don’t compromise your faith at the altar of a diabolical political system. Call the Devil for what he truly is and embrace God instead,” the ad states. 

“Our corrupt politicians think they are free to live as they choose, but they are not free to redefine Marriage for the rest of us,” it adds. 

Ad as it appeared in the May 21, 2017 edition of Malta Today.

 

The country’s bishops, however, in a recent Pastoral Letter are asking Catholics to vote “according to our conscience, which means that in front of God we recognize what is right and true, and therefore choose what is truly beneficial for the common good and for a just society.”

“Our vote is an answer to this question: what kind of society do we want for ourselves and for future generations? It is a responsibility that demands that we choose people of wisdom and integrity, who treasure and embrace the ethical values that we believe in,” the bishops state in their letter. 

Earlier this year the Malta bishops issued guidelines interpreting Pope Francis' exhortation Amoris Laetitia to allow civilly-divorced-and-remarried Catholics living in adultery to receive Holy Communion if they are “at peace with God.” 

Two weeks after the guidelines were issued, a different group of Maltese Catholics published a full-page newspaper ad that rebuked the guidelines and called upon the bishops to rescind them.

“You have permitted the Most Holy Body and Blood of Our Lord and Master to be crucified and tortured once again in the mouths and hearts of filthy, impenitent adulterers and fornicators!” states the ad authored by a group identifying itself as “members of Veri Catholici.”

“For those who do such things shall not, as the Apostle teaches, enter into the Kingdom of God,” the ad stated. 

***

Full text of the Malta Catholics' ad

IT'S GAY. BUT NOT MARRIAGE.

All relationships matter. But not all relationships are Marriage.

We respect everyone, be they teachers, nuns, gays, immigrants, or self-employed. We cherish our children dearly. We are grateful to mother nature and enjoy our pets' companionship. Respect is at the heart of it all. But the sanctity of marriage, between husband and wife, doesn’t grant a right to everyone to marry anyone.

Nor does it grant a right to cynical political leaders to incrementally beef up their standing at the ballot box by promising or enacting gay marriage laws for the 1%. Same-sex marriage is unnatural. It runs against natural law as designed by God and handed down to us through every generation in our Maltese history.

This is why we take a stand for marriage as a union between husband and wife. If we don't take a public stand about what marriage is, our political parties will corrupt its meaning and enforce what it shouldn’t be. The main electoral programs are glorifying sin, and no sin should be placed in the spotlight and glorified.

God has a plan for your life. The political class has a plan for your life too. Be ready for both. Just be wise enough to know which one to battle and which one to embrace.

Increasingly our political class treats the nation's treasury as a cookie jar in which it plunges its hands with wanton selfishness. Million euro payments to party law firms, contracts for cooked-up energy futures, and fake loan repayments in secretive banks are the order of the day. The authorities see nothing, do nothing. It’s daylight rape against our families' meager fortunes and precarious future.

“As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live,” said St John Paul II.

Let us join together for the courage and grace to defend the sanctity of marriage in the midst of a corrupt political class.
Don’t vote for gay marriage even if it means not voting at all. Instead, take a stand for traditional marriage. Don’t compromise your faith at the altar of a diabolical political system. Call the Devil for what he truly is and embrace God instead.

Our corrupt politicians think they are free to live as they choose, but they are NOT free to redefine Marriage for the rest of us.

Find. Another. Word. Authorised by Maltese Catholics United for the Faith Standing for Faith and Family.