By: By CNS, with Catholic Post staff

SPRINGFIELD — The Catholic Conference of Illinois, which represents the state’s bishops on public policy matters, said it regretted passage of a bill legalizing civil unions for same-sex couples.

The legislation, approved by the House Nov. 30 and the Senate Dec. 1, provides spousal rights to same-sex partners in a civil union and grants them legal rights in surrogate decision-making for medical treatment, survivorship, adoptions, and accident and health insurance.

Gov. Pat Quinn, a supporter of the measure, has said he will sign it into law early next year.

The Catholic conference said the measure will “explicitly grant these unions the same status as marriage in state law.”

“Marriage is not just any relationship between human beings. Marriage has been established by our Creator in harmony with the nature of man and woman and with its own essential properties and purpose,” the conference said in a statement, which is reprinted in full on page 20. “The church did not invent marriage and neither has any state.

“No ideology can erase from the human spirit,” it continued, “the certainty that marriage exists solely between a man and a woman, who by personal gift, proper and exclusive to themselves, mutually commit to each other in order to cooperate with God in the procreation and upbringing of new human lives.”

The conference said that besides essentially redefining marriage, the measure also “contains the potential for a serious conflict with religious liberty,” and it urged policymakers to take such concerns seriously and work out “additional conscience protections” in the coming months.

While the bill states that nothing in its wording “should interfere with or regulate the religious practice of any religious body,” the conference said that its language “may offer little protection in the context of litigation religious institutions may soon encounter in relation to charitable services, adoption and foster care.”

SPRINGFIELD BISHOP REACTS
In a separate statement also issued Dec. 1, Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of Springfield took issue with a reported quote from Gov. Quinn, a Catholic, saying that “my religious faith animates me to support this bill.”

“He did not say what religious faith that would be, but it certainly is not the Catholic faith,” said Bishop Paprocki.

“If the Governor wishes to pursue a secular agenda for political purposes, that is his prerogative for which he is accountable to the voters,” continued the Springfield bishop, who was installed June 22. “But if he wishes to speak as a Catholic, then he is accountable to Catholic authority, and the Catholic Church does not support civil unions or other measures that are contrary to the natural moral law.”

Bishop Daniel R. Jenky, CSC, of Peoria said he was in full agreement with both the CCI statement and that of Bishop Paprocki.

WHAT MAY BE AHEAD
In an earlier statement, CCI said that without “explicit protections for religious liberties,” it expected the General Assembly or the courts will soon:

— Require faith-based institutions that provide adoption or foster care services “to place adoptive or foster children with couples who have entered into a same-sex civil union.”

— Compel Catholic parishes or agencies that provide social services (including retreats, religious camps, homeless shelters, senior care centers and community centers) to make those services available to individuals in same-sex civil unions.

— Refuse “to protect small employers who do not wish to extend family benefits to employees in a same-sex civil union.”

During debate on the bill, State Sen. Heather Steans, a Chicago Democrat, told her fellow lawmakers that passing the measure “makes a statement about the justice for which we stand.”

But an opponent of the measure, State Sen. Chris Lauzen, a Republican from Aurora, questioned why lawmakers were focusing on civil unions and not spending their time addressing the state’s high unemployment, home foreclosures, a big state debt and severe problems with its social services system.