Ottawa, Canada, Jun 29, 2005 / 22:00 pm
The redefinition of marriage in Canada to include homosexual couples has reduced marriage to “a mere sexual relationship,” says Fr. Raymond de Souza in a column published in the National Post yesterday. The chaplain at Newman House at Queen’s University in Kingston is a regular contributor to the national paper.
Civil marriage in Canada at this point “is simply the conferring of legal recognition and benefits upon a conjugal relationship, with no reference in principle to permanence, progeny or public benefit,” he writes.
And he attributes this to the liberalization of divorce laws in Canada in 1967 with then-justice minister Pierre Trudeau’s Omnibus Bill.
The Omnibus Bill made divorce easier, he explains. This eventually led to no-fault divorce, “which renders marriage the only contract unilaterally breakable by either party, at any time, for any reason,” he says. Soon after common-law marriages were legislated, granting marital benefits without the marital commitment.