Way to be a Successor

Now this is clear, unapologetic and….right on.

Madison Bishop Robert Morlino defended his opposition to gay marriage, the death penalty and embryonic stem-cell research Monday, saying his views should not be surprising since the Catholic Church “is intensely pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-family.”

Morlino said these public positions are not simply “Catholic” issues.

“These are not tenets of our ‘faith’ which we are defending,” Morlino said in a statement. “They are universal truths, based on reason alone.”

That’s why the banner up there at the top says what it says about the Forum. Because we deal here with issues of the day, ever seeking to appeal to reason.

In Morlino’s statement Monday, which he released as an open letter to Wisconsin residents, he wrote that he knows some people will consider him “arrogant” for “claiming to know the objective truth” on issues such as same-sex marriage.

“This claim is actually an act of humble submission to the Creator – whose truth this is, not mine, and whose existence can be known by reason alone,” he wrote.

Pope John Paul II wrote about that truth in the natural law, ‘written on the human heart.’ But of course, the media look at things like this as ‘taking an approach.’

John Huebscher, executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference, said it’s important to keep in mind the structure of the Catholic Church in analyzing Morlino’s approach to ballot issues. The church is not a democracy – priests and bishops cannot make up their own teachings, Huebscher said. They follow what is handed down by the apostles.

You know, some of the apostles were considered arrogant, too.