The Catholic Church defends marriage as the permanent bond of a man and a woman because matrimony corresponds to human nature and to God's divine plan, Pope Benedict XVI said.

When a man and a woman enter into a Catholic marriage, their commitment to each other surpasses their feelings at the moment and becomes a commitment to maintaining the bond God has created between them, the pope said Jan. 27 in his annual meeting with members of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota, a Vatican court dealing mainly with marriage.

Despite a society that often considers "marriage simply as a social formalization of affective ties" and a contract that should end if the affection weakens, Pope Benedict said the church continues to insist that matrimony is more than a public pronouncement that two people love each other at that moment.

When a man and woman decide to marry, he said, "the union occurs by virtue of the plan of God himself who created them male and female and gave them the ability to unite forever the natural and complementary dimensions of their persons."

Pope Benedict told the Vatican court judges that their task was one of "service of the truth in justice," not only for the good of a couple seeking an annulment, but also for the defense of the sacrament of matrimony through which God ensures the good and fulfillment of each of the spouses.

The pope said the court provides a pastoral service to the church when it defends the church's traditional teaching on marriage, despite the fact that many people in the church seem to think that a lifelong marriage is an ideal most couples cannot live up to or that annulments are simply a bureaucratic procedure needed to enable access to the Eucharist for couples who have or want to contract a second marriage.

Bishop Antoni Stankiewicz, dean of the Rota, told the pope that the Rota, which mainly hears appeals of marriage sentences issued by diocesan or regional tribunals, had 687 cases from Europe awaiting its decision, 413 from North, Central and South America, 64 from Asia, 12 from Africa and five from Australia and New Zealand.

Over the course of 2005, the Rota issued 126 definitive statements, of which 69 upheld earlier tribunal declarations of nullity.

---CNS