Every now and then...

...I reproduce on this Blog an extract from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This is because I want to make a statement about human freedom - specifically, the freedom to state truths that are important and currently unfashionable.

I started doing this because a little while ago some one quoted the Catechism during a conversation about same-sex unions, and was immediately told:"You can't say that!". And I have been told on various occasions that the Catechism "should be banned" or " should be burned".

So:

"Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity. Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life. The harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the complementarity, needs, and mutual support between the sexes are lived out.

2334 "In creating men 'male and female,' God gives man and woman an equal personal dignity." "Man is a person, man and woman equally so, since both were created in the image and likeness of the personal God."

2335 Each of the two sexes is an image of the power and tenderness of God, with equal dignity though in a different way. The union of man and woman in marriage is a way of imitating in the flesh the Creator's generosity and fecundity: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh." All human generations proceed from this union.