By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS Staff Journalist The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops approved a new document defining the Church’s position on marriage. While affirming marriage as the foundation of society and a path to holiness, it condemns contraception, divorce, cohabitation, and same-sex marriage. According to a report by LifeSiteNews.com, the bishops approved the document, entitled “Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan” by a vote of 180 to 45 with three abstentions. The vote took place at the bishops annual general assembly which is being held this week in Baltimore. Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, who served on the committee that wrote the document, said it was both “pastorally sensitive” and “pastorally challenging” and that it was designed to "serve as a foundational document as we seek a direction and a strategy to defend marriage over these coming years." The document already caused controversy after a draft version was leaked to the press last month where it was criticized by the liberal Catholic media. However, the bishops changed little in the final version, and continued to affirm the Church’s belief that the two fundamental purposes of marriage are the good of the spouses as well as the procreation of children. “Thus, the Church teaches that marriage is both unitive and procreative, and that it is inseparably both.” Contraception and other activities break this link, the document attests, and have "the potential to damage or destroy marriage." "Conjugal love is diminished whenever the union of a husband and wife is reduced to a means of self-gratification. The procreative capacity of male and female is dehumanized, reduced to a kind of internal biological technology that one masters and controls just like any other technology." The document also addresses divorce and cohabitation and how they violate God’s plan for marriage.   But some of its strongest language is addressed to the issue of same-sex "marriages." "Attempting to redefine marriage to include [same-sex] relationships empties the term of its meaning," it says.  Thus, "It would be a grave injustice if the state ignored the unique and proper place of husbands and wives, the place of mothers and fathers, and especially the rights of children, who deserve from society clear guidance as they grow to sexual maturity." It goes on to say that "without this protection the state would, in effect, intentionally deprive children of the right to a mother and father." Therefore, the document asserts, "the legal recognition of same-sex unions poses a multifaceted threat to the very fabric of society, striking at the source from which society and culture come and which they are meant to serve.” “Such recognition affects all people, married and non-married: not only at the fundamental levels of the good of the spouses, the good of children, the intrinsic dignity of every human person, and the common good, but also at the levels of education, cultural imagination and influence, and religious freedom." "The whole culture, I think, is in a kind of confusion right now," Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien of Baltimore told the Baltimore Sun. “We have to put our face forward, our foot forward and say, 'Here's what we've inherited as to what marriage is, what human life is, and what the context of human life is,' and be proud of it and be willing to be defend it." The document can be found at http://www.usccb.org/laity/LoveandLife/MarriageFINAL.pdf © All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace®  http://www.womenofgrace.com