Disputes over marriage ‘use different languages’

The reason why it was proving so difficult for the Church to discuss the hotly debated issue of same-sex marriage was that ­people understood so many different things by the word marriage, Archbishop Heiner Koch, the Archbishop-elect of Berlin, told the German Protestant Press Service EPD.

“In present German society, many different things are understood by the word marriage. That is why the discussions have become so confusing,” Koch explained. Catholics understood marriage as a lifelong bond between a man and a woman, open to procreation, which was very different from a contract for the duration of a love relationship, he pointed out. “I see a danger here as the same word stands for a different content which makes essential dialogue and exchange of opinion more and more difficult”. Christian marriage meant sharing good times and bad in the knowledge that God was also there to call on in difficult times.