Bishop Kevin Vann Fort Worth, Texas

Most Rev. Kevin Vann, S.T.D., is Bishop of Fort Worth, Texas.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I wish to take a moment to write to you about the importance of marriage to our Church and to our society. Though our culture promotes a very different stance toward arrangements that lie clearly outside the Christian tradition – unmarried couples, separation, divorce, infidelity, and “same-sex unions” – we are called as Christians to be models of Christ’s love for His Church and for us. Within our society, His love is most critically reflected in our own families, in our homes.

Marriage is a lifelong commitment and covenant of love pledged between a man and a woman. In marrying, they promise that with the help of God’s grace they will love one another faithfully and fruitfully, with an exclusive and uncompromised love. Which means, among other things, that the possibility of the creation of new human life must be kept open, in accord with the first command God gave human beings.

The covenant of marriage would not be possible to keep were it not for the presence and power of Christ, who blesses, strengthens, and sustains the love between husband and wife. Christian marriage is “the sacrament of the covenant of Christ and the Church,” and the source of its grace is Christ Himself.

The sign of the Sacrament of Matrimony is the exchange of consent and of vows. But the marriage itself is in a real sense also a sacrament, whose sign is the love pledged on the wedding day and lived out in the circumstances of married life. This love is a visible sign of Christ’s unconditional, sacrificial, unending, and fruitful love for the Church. Husbands and wives are called to be living witnesses to the reality and presence of Christ’s love for His Church.

The total union of spouses in Matrimony is created and ordained by God to bear the awesome fruit of new human life, for God seamlessly joined with the total union of spouses in marriage the ability to co-create with Him new human beings. This procreative aspect of marriage is therefore essential. To have a total giving of themselves to one another, the spouses must each not only be open to the fertility of the other, but, more profoundly, be open to the will and creative power of God present in that union. In this regard, the family is indeed the nucleus of our society; and its essential building block.

Marriage is possible only between a man and a woman because it is only between them that the full expression of marital love is possible. In creation there is a unique complementarity between man and woman. Implicated in it is what Pope John Paul II called a “nuptial meaning”---a capacity for mutual self-giving which is total, extending to the depths of each person. The nuptial meaning of the body and of the person does not exist between persons of the same sex---they cannot have intercourse---and therefore a marital communion between them is not possible. It is thus that God’s will for man and woman to come together in a communion of love in marriage is written in the very nature of human beings. Such a union between persons of the same sex is impossible because human nature intrinsically does not allow for it.

Marriage and the family play vital and indispensible roles in building up the mission of the Church. The Second Vatican Council declared that the family is the “domestic church.” Its members exercise “the priesthood of the baptized” through their prayer, their participation in the sacraments and life of the Church, the parents’ education and especially catechesis of the children, the parents’ fostering of vocations to the priesthood and religious life, and all the members’ evangelizing of their various environments. The very health of the Church is dependent upon the spiritual health and integrity of the Christian family.

It is for these reasons that we as Catholics must promote and advance public policies that respect and protect the integrity of marriage and family life. Though a few states now sanction “same-sex unions” under the law, Catholics should resist any attempt to undermine the sacredness of marriage and redefine its nature, instituted by God and confirmed by the natural law as being always between one man and one woman. In a culture in which divorce and adultery are so sadly prevalent, we must encourage at every opportunity perseverance and fidelity to marriage vows. Finally, we must as a Church view procreation as essential to our missionary task. It is through strong families and children who are educated in the Faith that we may proclaim the message of Jesus Christ to our communities, to the nation, and to the world.

Most Rev. Kevin Vann, S.T.D., is Bishop of Fort Worth, Texas. He has written and practiced canon law extensively in the area of marriage.

1 See Genesis 1:28 and Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1604.

2 Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 1617, 1642.

3 See Lumen Gentium, no. 2; Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 1655-1658.

4 Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 1656-1657.