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Although recent polls on Catholics supporting same-sex “marriage” are viewed as less disheartening than they appear, the results sparked a call for education on the beauty and truth of Church teaching. Tim Roder, associate director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, said that Catholic belief in marriage is about “remaining faithful to Jesus and his teaching.” He cited Christ's words about married couples in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10: “from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”“We cannot be driven by polls,” Roder told EWTN News March 7.Surveys indicating some Catholics' rejection of Catholic teaching show “there is still much work to be done, particularly in educating the faithful on the beauty of marriage as the unique union of one man and one woman.” The U.S. Spanish-language television network Univision's recent global poll of Catholics about their views indicated that about 54 percent of U.S. Catholic respondents support “gay marriage.” Among this subset, fifty-nine percent of respondents agreed that the Church should not perform “gay marriages,” but 35 percent said the Church should. Among the 12 countries polled, only Spanish Catholics showed more support than Americans for these ceremonies in Catholic churches.Roeder said it was a positive sign that even among supporters of same-sex “marriage,” most rejected such unions being performed in Catholic churches.Roder noted, though, that only one-third of Catholics who attended Mass weekly or more supported Church recognition of same-sex “marriages.”He said that the survey results help show that changing the legal definition of marriage “can indeed have a cultural impact swaying more to support it. The law teaches for good and ill,” Roder said. “When it teaches something false many just accept it and this increases the profound cultural crisis in marriage and family that Pope Francis spoke about in 'Evangelii Gaudium.'”Roder said marriage is “a question of definition, not expanding rights.” It is “impossible” for the Church to perform same-sex weddings.“The body matters. Sexual difference between man and woman is essential to marriage,” he said. “The Church cannot affirm something that is not true or real. Only a man and a woman can enter a conjugal union open to the possibility of children.”

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