Shining marriage pastoral letter

The Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, and his auxiliary bishops, issued a pastoral letter on marriage yesterday. At least to me, the letter concisely ventilated the central issues in the 'same-sex marriage' debate, with a focus on children and the role of chastity. I also found it comforting and uplifting to have a pastoral letter read out, as opposed to being made available for collection on the way out of Mass.  In essence the letter said 'we are Catholics and these are the reasons (which were then summarised) why we Catholics oppose the idea that there can be such a thing as same sex marriage'.

Given that anything 'gay' attracts massive levels of media attention, seemingly on demand, the usual opposition was rolled out, and probably in the belief that balanced coverage was being provided. 

As is to be expected, the ABC led the charge.  Its website ran several stories referring to the letter and similar letters read to other Christian churches.  For a rather atheistic institution, you'd be forgiven for thinking that they honestly believed that the letter had been drafted by the devil himself. 

Today's lead ran with the headline: "Pastor slams anti-gay marriage campaign", and rather ironically given the headline, accused the Church of scaremongering.   The 'pastor' referred to was a Baptist minister from Sydney who is a common go-to man when a pro gay marriage line is needed from a Christian, and he faithfully delivered.  He was concerned that Catholics could not think for themselves.

Of course, there can rarely be a gay 'marriage' story without a contribution from the Greens, who in the same ABC story took the view that it was all scaremongering because (now get this) the proposed laws would not force Catholics to perform same-sex 'marriages'. (I'm not sure whether the Greens or the ABC actually read the letter they were commenting upon.)

Similarly themed stories were run in the Sydney Morning Herald who wheeled out Penny Wong with a 'gay marriage is inevitable' line. News Limited, and it must be said somewhat originally, went to the trouble of finding a comment from the pop singer from Savage Garden, who it turned out was quite upset by it all. 

The only thing missing in the thousands and thousands of words devoted to the event was coverage of what the letter actually said, why Catholics and other Christians had concerns, what those concerns were, and how the 'gay groups' (and, I suppose, the Baptist minister) responded to these positions. For instance, I could not find a link to the letter on any news piece. 

Now, it is not uncommon to refer to all of this as a debate, but there does not seem to be much debating going on.