More from the Catholic Bishops’ letter on marriage, called Love and Life in the Divine Plan.
“Our pastoral letter presents those beliefs and teachings of the Catholic Church–informed by human reason and enlightened by Divine Revelation– that summarize and express God’s plan for marriage. This divine plan, like the gift of marriage itself, is something we receive, not something we construct or change to fit our purposes. (5-6)”
This paragraph expresses distinctly Catholic attitudes and sensibilities:
- Revelation and reason work together, not at cross-purposes. If faith and reason seem to contradict one another, you’ve either misinterpreted the revelation, or reasoned incorrectly.
- There are truths that are given to us, that are beyond our power to alter. We have a responsibility to bear witness to those truths and to hand them down to the next generation. We must conform ourselves to reality , rather than demand that reality conform itself to us.
The bishops continue:
Our pastoral letter is an invitation to discover, or perhaps rediscover, the blessing given when God first established marriage as a natural institution and when Christ restored and elevated it as a sacramental sign of salvation. (6)
This is the essence of the pastoral posture, and one which Jesus expressed to his disciples: “Come and see….”
Read the whole letter here.