Rights & Responsibilities

Along with

•The Right to Life & the Dignity of the Human Person
•Call to Family, Community & Participation
•Option for the Poor & Vulnerable
•Dignity of Work & the Rights of Workers
•Solidarity
•Caring for God's Creation

the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops explains that Rights & Responsibilities is one of the seven key themes of Catholic Social Teaching:

“Every human being has a right to life, the fundamental right that makes all other rights possible. Each of us has a right to religious freedom, which enables us to live and act in accord with our God-given dignity, as well as a right to access to those things required for human decency—food and shelter, education and employment, health care and housing. Corresponding to these rights are duties and responsibilities—to one another, to our families, and to the larger society.”

As per Chapter 2 of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, “at play in society are the dignity and rights of the person, and peace in the relationships between persons & between communities of persons….the Church's social doctrine has the task of proclamation, but also of denunciation."

The Defense of Marriage

In a scholarly work, (The Second Annual Index of Family Belonging and Rejection, Marriage and Religion Research Institute, November 17, 2011), Dr. Patrick Fagan and Dr. Nicholas Zill recently confirmed what we can see with our own eyes - MOST teenagers no longer live with both of their biological parents, who are married to each other. When teens do not live with their biological moms & dads, who are married to each other, they are

• 
  
  less likely to graduate from high school,


• more likely to experience poverty, and


• more likely to become unmarried teen parents.

Dr. Fagan and Dr. Zill's findings confirm good old Common Sense. Society has a vested interest in preserving and protecting marriage. Archbishop Chaput has called marriage protection "the issue of our time." Up to this point, however, it has been the rare political figure who has been willing to stand up for this common sense....

The Obama Administration Has Chosen to Discontinue Defending the Federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA):

In a November 2nd letter to the U.S. Senate's Judiciary Committee urging support for DOMA, Bishop Salvatore Cordileone, chairman of the USCCB's Subcommittee for the Promotion & Defense of Marriage, wrote:

• "DOMA is rational, and its repeal would be unjust.... Redefining marriage to mean simply an arrangement of consenting adults violates justice because it interferes with basic human rights. First, changing the institution of marriage by making it indifferent to the absence of one sex or the other denies that children have the fundamental human right to be cared by both their mother and father. Such revision transforms marriage from a child-centered to an adult-centered status to the detriment of children.... Second, redefining marriage also threatens the fundamental human right of religious freedom. Those who refuse on moral and religious grounds to accept or accommodate the redefinition of legal marriage are already being wrongly accused of bigotry and hatred, bias and prejudice.... All persons have a rightful claim to our utmost respect. There is no corresponding duty, however, for society to disregard the meaning of sexual difference and its practical consequences for the common good; to override fundamental rights, such as religious liberty; and to re-define our most basic social institution."

And in Harrisburg....

The Pennsylvania Catholic Conference tells us that "a Marriage Protection Amendment to the Pennsylvania State Constitution may be the only way" to preserve marriage in Pennsylvania. As in Washington, it is the rare Pennsylvania legislator who forthrightly demonstrates an appreciation for marriage:

It is hard to believe that any of our elected officials truly fail to understand that society has a vested interest in preserving and protecting marriage. When politicians (indeed any of us) try to be so slick as to avoid standing up for common sense, they only enhance their cowardice.