Fr Joe Borg (The Sunday Times of Malta, June 2) declared his agreement with the Today Public Policy Institute view that there should be legislation for civil unions. This opinion is diametrically opposed to the teachings of the Catholic Church about the matter.

In 2003 Pope John Paul II approved and ordered the publication of a document issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith named, ‘Considerations regarding proposals to give legal recognition to unions between homosexual persons’. It stated among other things that, “the Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions. The common good requires that laws recognise, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society.

“Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequences of making it a model in present-day society but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity. The Church cannot fail to defend these values for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself.”

Catholics in this country are being faced with a clear choice in their life of faith. They can either follow the teachings of the Church about this and other matters or follow other voices which are increasingly straying far from the Shepherd and His pen.