Villegas: Marriage is between man and woman

Archbishop Socrates B. Villegas (CBCP News photo)

MANILA — For Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop and head of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, Socrates Villegas, marriage is only between a man and a woman.

“The Church continues to maintain what it has always taught. Marriage is a permanent union of man and woman, in the complementarity of the sexes and the mutual fulfillment that the union of a man and a woman bring into the loftiness of the matrimonial bond. If there is an undeniable difference between man and woman, there is also an undeniable difference between the permanent union of a man and a woman,” Villegas said in a post on his Facebook account.

“We will continue to teach the sons and daughters of the Church that marriage, transformed by The Lord Jesus and by His Church into a sacrament — a means by which the Risen Lord encounters his people — is an indissoluble bond of man and woman,” he said.

His statement came following the US Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage.

“Fortunately for human persons, there is so much more to us and to our dignity than what the law prescribes. While human positive law is the distillation of human experience of orderly and organized life, it does not exhaust human wisdom, nor does it have room for the wisdom of which God makes us participants,” Villegas said reacting to the ruling.

“We shall study it with assiduousness, and revisit our concepts and presuppositions, always with an eye to being faithful to the Gospel and to the mission of the Church,” Villegas said.

Despite this, Villegas said in a statement on June 27 that the church will continue caring for everyone, regardless of sexual orientation.

“All will continue to find welcome in the Church, while, under the command from the Lord himself, will continue to teach what the Church has unceasingly taught,” he said.

He added that “no bishop, priest, deacon, religious, or lay leader actively serving the Church will ever demand to know of a person his or her orientation before serving the person, as the Lord Jesus commands all his disciples to serve.”