Los Angeles, Calif., Nov 11, 2008 / 21:50 pm
Archbishop of Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony has issued a statement following the electoral victory of Proposition 8, a California ballot measure which restored the legal definition of marriage to be a union between a man and a woman. Its passage, he said, resulted from an “unprecedented coalition” of people who understood the importance of “the bedrock of marriage” as it has been lived out through recorded history.
“I am grateful to the Catholic Community of Los Angeles for your commitment to the institution of marriage as fashioned by God and to work with such energy to enshrine this divine plan into our State’s Constitution,” he wrote in a November 5 statement.
The cardinal then explained “God’s plan for the human family,” referring to the Book of Genesis’ account of God’s creation of man and woman.
Efforts in support of Proposition 8, Cardinal Mahony explained, centered solely on “preserving God’s plan that marriage between one man and one woman is to be that unchanging reality.” Their mutual love becomes fruitful through “bringing forth children to continue the human family,” and these children’s formation and maturation is “destined by God to take place within a traditional family of one father and one mother.”