Human existence is guaranteed by the coming together of a man and a woman to form a union known as ‘marriage’, the basic unit of the society.
By Caleb Ayansina
The family is God’s building block in the Church, the mosque and the world at large. If there will be fullness and fulfillment in our individual lives, it will depend on the love, peace and togetherness in our families.
A healthy relationship in the family is not only beneficial to the immediate members of the family, but also to those directly associated with that family and, by extension, to the society in general.
Obviously, the mutual understanding between parents and their siblings is capable of leading their children and their contemporaries into a lasting relationship with God and enduring progress in life.
In recent times, family, as ordained by God, has been facing serious threats, owing to human activities.
Marriage is under attack from strange doctrines, emanating from the various faiths and beliefs, especially human rights fundamentalists across the world.
The agitation by the activists gave birth to a law to redefine marriage in some countries, including the U.S., as “the lawful union of two persons”, instead of between man and woman.
This development compelled the Catholic Family to take a firm stand that “marriage must be sacred”, saying, “The process of bringing to life is not just a physical thing, it is spiritual”.
The Church warned that “the importance of marriage for children and for society” is under attack in U.S. courts and legislatures and in popular culture and entertainment media, which “often undermine or ignore the essential role of marriage and promote equivalence between marriage and homosexual relationships.”
In 2000, the Dutch Parliament voted to recognize same-sex unions as marriages; the passage forced Pope John Paul II to break his silence and denounced the decision.
The pope said, “No other form of relationship between persons can be considered as an equivalent to this natural relationship between a man and a woman out of whose love children are born.”
