I have had no shortage of emails from readers asking my opinion on gay marriage and how I see it relating to the pro-life movement. I’ve begged off of that question for months, knowing that my response will anger people on both sides of the debate. In prayerfully discerning the issue, I’ve decided to throw in my two cents, which is probably more than it’s worth.
First, I have castigated the gay community over Act-Up’s desecration of the Eucharist, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and their unholy war of narcissistic rage against Cardinal O’Connor in a series entitled Of Cardinals, Cathedrals, Condoms and Cretins. Also, an article entitled Act Up and Narcissism as Art.
Next, I stand with the authentic Magisterium on marriage being between a man and woman. That said, our marriages are in a horrible state of repair, and Regina and I had some rocky, rocky road that almost claimed ours as well. It has been a long, grace-filled walk back from the edge. That we have states with marriage laws on the books is not exclusively, or even predominantly the fault of gays and lesbians.
It’s ours.
Where we are today is arguing over a piece of paper and a name. The heterosexual community has systematically given away all of the goods and privileges of marriage to cohabiting heterosexuals and homosexuals alike. If we are outraged today at the thought that gays or lesbians could arrogate marriage to themselves, then I have some hard questions for heterosexuals:
Where were we when civil unions were legalized?
Where were we when gay adoptions were legalized?
Where were we when shared employee benefits for gays were legalized?
Where were we when sodomy laws were struck down?
Where were we when a host of other statutes on various rights were legalized?
The truth is that we have systematically given away all of the rights and privileges that society reserved for men and women who committed the rest of their lives to one another in an institution that predates the state which seeks to regulate it. In other words, we have given gays and lesbians marriage in everything but name only.
My question for heterosexuals opposed to gay marriage is this:
Are we willing to work to reclaim all of the goods of marriage and reserve them to heterosexually married people?
If we are not, then this is a nomenclature issue at this point, and nothing more.
Thoughts?
I’ll reserve the application to the pro-life movement, pending feedback.
Coming Home 
I have been saying the essentially the same thing for years. When you look at the state of marriage & level of cohabitation, who are we to tell gays that their desires / actions are “wrong”.
I say that rhetorically of course, but your point about reclaiming all the goods of marriage is well taken. We are really in no position to be lecturing them as a whole until we put our own house in order.
You say your marriage went up to the brink, well mine went over the edge and in hindsight I can directly attribute it to the contraceptive mentality that began before we were even married that set us both on a path of selfishness until there was nothing left to save. I will also say in hindsight that my wife’s feminine nature was fighting it, especially in the early years, but the barnacles continue to build to the point that the ship sunk.
I was out of the Church for 25 years. The Sunday I returned the Gospel reading was The Prodigal Son. That sums up my life in a nutshell.
AMEN!
I applaud your description of the current situation. What I find the most interesting about these discussions is the point you made about the amount of time marriage has been an institution. You rightfully point out that the institution is older than the states that try to regulate it. Marriage has existed longer than formalized religion. The fact of the matter is, even in societies that condoned homosexual behavior, which I will limit for these purposes to Greece, and later Rome, there was no right of marriage for a homosexual couple. This is to reserve judgement, but to also look at facts of the situation. The reason for this, is that in all these societies even predating the two I mention, Marriage has been looked at as a union which was meant to produce offspring. These offspring would be the insurance of their parents that they would be taken care of in old age. For this reason, in a world that depended, and cared for offspring, for children, and would raise their children themselves, the married couple was the school and the upbringing of their children.
This is why heterosexual marriage, otherwise and here within will be referred to as marriage, must maintain and hold pride and primacy of place. This does not go to say that a couple willing to have children together, who are open to the will of God, even if incapable of having children because of sterility, or other disorder that if they are man and woman, should not be married, because the openness is the mark. A homosexual couple simply cannot enter into the marital embrace.
Here is how I see pro-life and the marriage question coming together. We currently have a culture that does not value the rearing of children. If we doubt that just watch prime-time tv. Look at all of the adds for birth control where they show a beautiful happy baby, where they have dancing pill cases and the like. Just read through postings about abortion clinics. Even when man and woman come together, they are less and less likely to be open to having children. The reason marriage, in the traditional millennias old sense is dying is because we are sacrificing our children at the feet of the idol of a right to privacy, and right to personal freedom, and over all because we are closed to the miracle of self giving love.
A pro-abort society is not going to value marriage, because it doesn’t even value the most basic right which is life.
I think you get this point across quite well in your article, if the union between individuals is about narcissistic, self seeking, sexual activity, and self serving companionship without an openness to a third player, namely the child, then marriage is nothing worth claiming to defend. If this is the case Marriage and all relationships be damned, because in this case of selfishness, and closedness to God’s will we are only bringing each other deeper into sin.
God Bless,
John
I am one of those folks who thinks the government should get out of the marriage business all together and leave it to religious institutions to regulate. Then, forcing churches to marry someone they don’t want becomes a true freedom of religion issue, and no one can say anyone has any more rights than anyone else, and no one can legitimately force someone else to accept their “values.” It ends the argument at the door of the Church, which is where it needs to be ended.
I agree with Ann Margaret: it would be best if the government got out of the marriage “business” altogether. That seems pretty unlikely, though. As long as the government is going to provide civil benefits for committed couples, I believe that it should do so on an equal basis. I don’t care if they call it a marriage, a civil union, or a supercalifragilisticexpialidotious.
I have never understood how extending civil marriage benefits to gays and lesbians would harm straight marriages. Certainly any harm that could be caused pales in comparison to what we heterosexuals have already brought upon ourselves: Vegas-style quickie marriages, no-fault divorce, etc.
Very well said, Gerry.
mmm…….okay, so on paper women use birth control while in a relationship. Right? Except that every married woman I know doesn’t use birth control after a few years. That, to me, sounds like a pragmatic testing- will the marriage last? Nobody is using “the church is right, ergo I don’t use bc” but rather ” I wanted to lose weight…….the latex started to bother me….I had visual disturbances related to stroke…….my IUD fell out and I didn’t bother to get it back in……” There are all sorts of difficulties with consistent birth control usage. Single women use birth control. Married women, after a couple of years, don’t. Not based on the magisterium, based on it is awkward and inconvenient and uncomfortable. Which it is, basically. We don’t ask kids to strap on two casts, to run a race. So, I’m not seeing an argument framed by a priest, or by a sexual health counsellor, but I am seeing a daily life framing that is more -open-
The second bit on a gay marriage is the test. If you have dinner at other people’s houses, or invite people over, do you invite the gay couple? or not? Is it an abstract approval, or does it affect your life and behavior? And, well, is it a matter of exposure? My dad brought home clients, so I’m sort of used to having breakfast with transvestite hookers. But I remember being appalled when he joined the firm, and these really odd- looking people- strange proportions and odd, mid-ranged voices and affected mannerisms- started showing up. These were not the police and military people who had come around before. Our neighbors for five years were a couple. I was neighborly, but my children flat would not play with them, even when they were bored playing with each other. When they went off to school, they brought home as friends extremely conservative, sheltered, religiously devout and active little kids- preacher’s kids, of extremely conservative churches. So, their natural bent is towards propriety. How much of our cultural easing occurs from TV? At between 1-3% of the population, how many of us work around gay people all the time, enough to be socially easy?
Also, stability? Will the union last? I know everyone cites the 50% marital failure rate, but it’s not true, except for one cohort, in the seventies. People who lived through that are really hard-core about making their marriage work, even if it is unhappy. I’ve seen men say ” I am unhappy, let’s get a divorce.” and the woman says ” You can’t. We are raising a child. She is perfect and happy and you don’t get to mess her up.” I know my spouse and I are in a rough patch right now- but nobody is walking away. Of the gay couples I know, one says ” I am unhappy” and that’s the end of it, even with kids. It’s really odd. It’s like the last forty years of relationship repair kits aren’t available to them. So, what sort of union are we celebrating? A stable one? I know, we have received wedding invitations, but have only taken the effort to attend and celebrate the unions we thought would last. Spouse’s judgment. All my friends married young. And, we do pray over them, even after. We promised we would, in the ceremony. I know, for others, I’ve heard ” Oh, we missed this wedding. She’ll have another in five years. We didn’t miss much.”
I am of the opinion of wheat and tares. God will work with whatever we can give him. so I think a gay marriag can be a gift of grace, in ways I don’t understand. I don’t have to say the wheat are tares, though. I can say it is wrong, and awkward and awful, but it can be sanctified.
And, while I’m at it, nobody has ever said this would not happen. First off, I am in Texas, which had sodomy laws on the books until 2007. People were appalled when these laws were struck down.
Okay, so a wealthy gay man owns a company. He marries his significant male other- a much younger man. The older man dies, the young man inherits the company. No taxes. The younger man runs the company until he is an old man. Then he marries a young spouse, who inherits the company. No taxes. This young manager grows into the role, manages the company. At some point, the owner is going to want to marry, to pass the company on, a company that has not paid any ownership transfer taxes in a century. If he chooses a straight man, who has a female companion…….what happens? Does the straight guy “marry” and inherit. Does he write a companionship contract with his female companion, who would otherwise have been his wife? And, why are these gay conglomerations privileged over straight companies?
We know stuff like this happened, in the Middle Ages. We know that when you have gay liaisons, you also have concubines. You have sterile, focussed groups getting privileges over family concerns- farms taxed at a high rate, peasants scorned for their ambitions regarding their children-straight people forced into catering to powerful gays with unboundaried appetites……
I’ve run the corporation scenario by lawyers, and not one has ever said it won’t happen. I know at least two wealthy supporters of gay marriage go on record as scorning the “bourgeouis” concerns about fidelity and children, but want the inheritance rights for their companion….so I don’t think I’m thinking wild, paranoid thoughts. If they are on record for only wanting to pass their fortune on, untaxed……..
Like I said, even by gay- positive writers, we know that there was a complicated, messy legal situation re: inheritance, education, appetite boundaries- at around 1100. And that people familiar with gay couples, and gays teaching children, and unusual love arrangements- out in the open, concubines, the works- decided that they’d rather have a monogamous, family oriented culture. This was done, by law, torture, shaming, every sort of way- by 1300- 1400. So, I wonder what makes a gay – positive culture so heinous to other people? I don’t know. I know that every place that is gay positive, right now, is losing population, mainly children. what makes it unsustainable, as a majority, accepted culture?
Married couples who practice NFP have a 4% divorce rate. There is understanding in this fact related to this blog article for those who are open to it.
Everyone ought to familiarize themselves with the CDF’s Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons. One thing you will notice is it is very similar in language to Evangelium Vitae on abortion. Especially this part:
“In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. One must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws and, as far as possible, from material cooperation on the level of their application.”
Also notice that it doesn’t get into the shell game of whether it is called a marriage or a union. The upshot is just as the State has no authority to legalize abortion, it also has no authority to sanction homosexual arrangements with traditional marriage-like rights and features.
Dr. Nadal’s point is well taken that heterosexual fornication, divorce, contraception, etc. have caused huge damage to the family that it is a fair question of “Who are we to say”? But it is one thing thing to acknowledge that lack of vigilance has brought the enemies of chastity battering the last remaining gate of the keep and quite another to fling open the gate, invite them in and hand them the keys. Like abortion, opposition to same-sex unions is one of those hills Catholics must be prepared to die on.
Where were we in 1969 when then Gov Reagan signed in the first ‘irreconcilable differences’ law into being (later regretting it), and in Aug, 1973 when Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act (UMDA) was passed? Where were we when each state began to make divorce unilateral, forced by one party, giving the respondent no due process? The seeds of this issue go deep, and we missed the planting (discerning which seeds to plant).
Very good article, Gerard.
(PS Notice those dates. The fight for legalizing abortion and no fault divorce were raging at the same time. Roe v Wade was decided in Jan 1973, Doe v Bolton also, and DOMA in Aug 1973. Not coincidental. )
A lot of really thoughtful comments here. I think many of us struggle with this issue.
Three things:
1. Defense of the definition of the word “marriage” is still important. I’ve spent about half an hour trying to track down the exact quote, in vain, so this rough paraphrase will have to do: Tyrants must first change the meaning of words before they can enslave you.
Call gay relationships “marriage” and you’ll be met at the Church door by a lot of people demanding that the Church “marry” them… even though the Church’s sacramental understanding of marriage recognizes procreation and the raising of children as the primary reason for it. In Christian marriage, love is not an emotion, but a decision, and a commitment to a higher purpose.
I believe that, at bottom, gays are pushing for *approval* of their homosexuality, not just tolerance. I don’t believe they will stop at the Church door, but try to push on through. This is already happening, as in Canada, Christian pastors have been arrested under “hate crime” laws for saying that homosexual acts are objectively sinful. In Boston, Catholic adoption services were shut down, because they would not consider gay couples looking to adopt.
2. If you’re looking for the pro-life connection, you need to go back to the Episcopalian conference that decided, back in the 1930s, to permit contraception in “some” cases. For Christians, that snapped the first thread of the tie linking the marital embrace, as it used to be known, to procreation. Hardly thirty years later, by the time of Humanae Vitae in the late ’60s, Pope Paul VI was derided by our separated bretheren, and by many Catholics as well, for taking a firm stand against contraception.
Today, marriage has become merely a way to turn sometimes fleeting emotions into a contractual bond for mutual convenience. Why should gays be excluded from that arrangement?
3. My biggest problem with the ‘gay marriage’ platform is that it both goes too far, and not far enough. There are plenty of straight single people who could use the kind of legal consideration they’re pushing for. Spinster sisters living together. Single professionals with elderly parents they’d love to put on their health plans. I was in the single-with-elderly-parent boat when my company rolled out “domestic partnership” benefits. When they announced it, I thought–but didn’t say, because my VPHR was gay–“straight single people, screwed again.”
In the contraceptive-no-kids-to-take-care-of age, what’s the big deal about genital contact? Do I really need, or want to know, what’s happening between someone’s sheets?
If they have no spouse, why can’t people be given the opportunity to select one other person to benefit from their employee health plans? Why can’t they make it clear who they’d like to have as visitors if they’re in the hospital? Why can’t they name one other person as their “preferred heir”? How much of this could be done to give people, of whatever their status, more choice in how they exercise their employment or legal rights?
Instead, it’s all about “recognizing” the “right” of gays to “marry.” Gays do not have a right to force me to approve of their lifestyle. It’s immoral, and a violation of my conscience to try to get me to say it’s anything else. So is, by the way, sex outside of marriage among heterosexuals. As a society, we’ve all but forgotten that. My approval may make the living-in-sin crowd (gay and hetero) feel better about themselves, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s still sinning.
That said, should anyone think I’m now damning everyone to hell… Definitely Not So.
If you’re human, and breathing… and not either Jesus Christ or the Blessed Mother… well then, you’re a sinner. Maybe not with these particular sins, but there are others that are just as bad, and often harder to see.
Since I’m human and breathing and me, I’m definitely going to need the Divine Mercy of Christ to get into Heaven once I stop breathing. Since it’s measured out to you as you measure out to others… ain’t no way I’m going to condemn anyone else to hell lest I pave my own way there.
But in the meantime, I may form a lobby for “Fair Legal Treatment for Single Straight People”!
Your assesment is on target. Christendom has always believed since its inception, that aberrosexualism or biologically aberrant/incorrect sexual behavior is part of the Cult of Death, it is the extermination of the Future, the suicide of Humanity, a hate crime against Nature.
It is a fatal flaw think that those trying to impose aberrosexual (biologically incorrect sexual behavior) pseudo “marriage” on society are interested in finding “common ground” with Conservative or mainstream Americans. They are not, and a cursory review of the aberrosexualist ideological agenda proves it.
Aberrosexualists, or partisans, whether personally aberrosexual or not, of the extremist, anti-Life, anti-Family, anti-ecological, and rabidly anti-Christian Aberrosexualist ideology, are more interested in moving their ideological agenda forward.
Even though some polls may show increased support for aberrosexual pseudo “marriage” when “domestic partnership” clauses are inserted, the partisans of aberrosexualist ideology aren’t interested in such things. They seek the complete annihilation of the Christian understanding of human sexuality, monogamous marriage and the family. Period.
http://www.aberrosexualismo.mex.tl/916571_DEFINITIONS.html
You know, my brother was joking he should do this with his friend, right when civil unions got insurance. He’s not getting married- the right girl would rather take drugs, than clean up, get married and have kids. The other guy is just a thorough-going jerk. They haven’t, b/c I think they have moral qualms, and hope.
Plus, I’m not persuaded. As Mr Sullivan points out- gay men do have sex with women. Gay women have horrendous rates of VD- by having sex with men. It’s privileging an unboundaried appetite. We’ve been here before. It’s what the Jewish and Christian society cleaned up.
And, really, I’m against gays in the military b/c they do have character flaws. Enormous ones. and unboundaried appetites. And I don’t think we won’t, at some point, get fed up with it, and start harshly enforcing UCMJ. Militaries have done it before. Every little show trial of a military brotherhood that was accused of sodomy? The guys died horrid, violent deaths. I’ve read people saying ” it was all made up” But I’ve also read devout atheists saying ” Of course it was true. Why else would a guy join an all male elite bastion and go far away?”
Plus, what happens when a gay commanding officer lays his appetite down on another man? That man–there ISN”T any safety net for his emotional distress. There’s barely one for women in the military getting harassed and abused. Even if they catch the rapist on the first offense- that’s another man’s life destroyed. We don’t let self- confessed drug addicts or murderers into the military. We don’t even let guys who’ve cleaned up in. One of my brother’s closest friends- a guy who had opened his home in high school to my brother- was raped. And there was literally no place for him to go for healing, and further, he wasn’t able to be helped- he couldn’t be in closed spaces. He was voluntarily homeless for a few years, as he coped with PTSD- he saw things, he had to sleep outside- with all that entailed- he was living on handouts- -just broken. He still mostly pays attention to healing. He was an artist- and now he’s not. I’m not seeing this as a plus for men who are invested in being good men. Plus, why now? The military has become more religious, more family -oriented, more thoughtfully patriotic ( shake out the volunteers who didn’t want to be there) they stopped their drug epidemic of the 70’s. How is this a good environment for a gay lifestyle? Why are the people who have such cluelessness and contempt for military families trying to remake it into a broken version of the 1970’s/ 1980’s new york?
ari
I learned something here, as always. This time it was the term “Contraceptive Mentality.” The idea has quite a history, I discovered through the internet. For example: “As time went on, a variety of thinkers sensed the gradual unfolding of the “contraceptive mentality” and voiced their own criticisms of it. Among these thinkers were such diverse personalities as the humanist philosopher-sociologist Max Horkeimer, founder of the Frankfurt School in Germany6 and the Catholic Cardinal Suenens of Belgium who confidently declared that ‘the instability of family life and the disturbing increase of divorces can, of course, be traced back to the corrosive and shattering effect of contraception.'”
But what these great thinkers see as obvious, my small brain can’t fully grasp. What is the sequence by which the “contraceptive mentality” hurts so many marriages? It’s not that I doubt it — I don’t. I just don’t fully understand it. Sorry for asking a dumb question, but if anyone has a clue please let me know.
Paul,
It’s a great question, and I’ll try to take a stab at it. The Catholic Church has always maintained that marital sex has two interwoven dimensions/functions:
1. Unitive. Spouses are united in ever-deepening bonds of love for one another. (At a physiological level, we now know that there is a neurological component that is oxytocin-mediated) In the unitive dimension, this goes way beyond the recreational, “whoopie” factor. It is a primary means of channeling into concrete form the communication of one’s estimation and regard for the other.
2. Procreative. The love between spouses seeks life-giving expression beyond the diad of husband and wife. The baby is both the product and object of the parents’ love (at least until they turn two).
The Encyclical Letter, Humanae Vitae does a masterful job at detailing Catholicism and contraception, and is well worth the read.
What happens in marriage when the contraceptive mentality takes hold is often a very bad thing. First, contraceptive use artificially separates the unitive from the procreative dimensions of a singular act and experience. Often what ensues is the collapse of the unitive, which necessarily effects a corrosion in intimacy, and of course the questions are: How and Why? At this point it’s gonna get graphic, so the reader is forewarned to bow out now if that’s an issue.
For guys, sex with a condom is kinda like taking a shower wearing a raincoat. What’s the point? Dry sex becomes more of a mechanical release than anything. The sensations are bound up in all that a woman has to offer. The use of lubricants to enhance sensation tells the wife that she’s being replaced by Johnson & Johnson (making it pretty crowded in bed). Condoms throw up a barrier to that, and it diminishes the affective dimensionality of intercourse when the wife’s lubricants are rejected in favor of jelly because the husband’s secretions are unwanted. There’s a lot of unwantedness, barrier, and replacement that begins to take place.
That’s the good news in contraception. It’s all downhill from there.
The pill, as we both know, has caused breast cancer and a riot of other disease states-especially in its older, higher dose formulations. In a good number of women it reduces libido (sometimes altogether). In many women it thins vaginal secretions, making intercourse painful. While this is happening, there is the expectation on the part of husbands that sex should be more frequent as the ‘problem’ of fertility is off the table. For a great many men, this expectation crosses the line into emotional abusiveness.
All of this subtly catalyzes the breakdown in the unitive function of sex. It begins in a place of rejecting the fertility of one’s spouse and leads to mechanical and chemical barriers that impinge upon desire itself as well as on sensation. And through it all is an undercurrent of fear, which also breaks down the unitive. Often, contraception fails. What happens next in many couples is heartbreaking.
Having begun in a place that says, “No more children,” or, “None at all,” many married couples resort to abortion. Contraception, and all that it involves, has taken them one long step down that road. It makes the product of the marital embrace an enemy rather than an expression of their love. When the enemy is inside the gates, they kill it.
Others certainly welcome the new baby with trepidation and do just fine with the child. Others, not so well. A blame game ensues.
At the heart of it all is a disposition, a mentality. The contraceptive mentality is often fear-based and not rooted in faith. It gets marital sex derailed and on an ever-widening course deflection. It becomes most pronounced after the early years of marriage when the fuel tank of early love runs dry. That’s when a more mature expression is supposed to kick in and animate the unitive dimension in a reciprocal manner. If the unitive dimension has been corroded by a fear-based contraceptive mentality (Of which NFP can be a part if used solely for this purpose), sexual urge runs into less-than-optimal means of unitive expressiveness leaving folks feeling release, but not satisfaction or affirmation.
This is hardly exhaustive, and really meant to start the ball rolling in discussing your question. Does any of it ring true?
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We lost the war when we stopped openly disapproving of homosexual behaviour.
I sense that a lot of people just accepted it to get along.
And this is besides the issue of the contraceptive mentality.
I believe your post is spot on and well said!
Marriage has had its problems for quite some time now.
For example, in British society (among others) there was a thriving culture and acceptance of “the mistress” among the upper class.
Many couples were forced to marry to secure business or family alliances or to marry within their class.
Both men and women strayed.
I really believe this behavior had a trickle down effect as class distinctions broke down.
The gradual acceptance of divorce and contraception also weaken marriage.
Contraception helped with the extra-marital affairs and whether most people admit it or not, contraception does not make for happy marriages.
Many people will argue on blogs how contraception has benefitted their marriage but if you talk to counsellors and priests I am certain they will not be of that opinion.
Even among acquaintances and co-workers I hear stories all the time about how one spouse goes ahead and gets themselves “fixed” (as the saying goes) usually without the other spouse/partner’s knowledge or agreement.
Many of my peers now say they wished they had had more children.
When one spouse is not very open to having children, this creates a great deal of resentment in the other.
No fault divorce is terrible. It is, as far as I know, the only legal situation where the defendent has no due process.
To strengthen marriage we need to repeal divorce laws and outlaw contraception.
These are not the solutions to the problems that they pretend to fix.
What a great answer to Paul.
I never knew some of what you wrote. Thank you.
While I agree in the main with Gerard’s writing, I do have a few points.
Let us be clear, firstly, that definitions do matter. I do not have to be a post modernist to accept that words can change their meanings, and that that will affect how people think. There was a time when the word marriage meant the same thing to everyone, it was a life long commitment of a man and a woman. If you asked children about marriage that is what they will say. Now, I’m not so sure. From the moment that divorce was legalised we started to erode the meaning of marriage as an Identifier for a certain strand of morality. Indeed, perhaps Catholics need a new word now that identifies a marriage that rejects divorce as a possible endpoint, so that when I describe myself as “married” I accurately characterise the nature of my union.
Now, it may seem that this is a small issue of semantics, and in the intellectual sense it is. The problem is that people use marriage as a cultural identifier for relationships in general. There is a huge aspiration to be “married” and so the sense in which people use this word will naturally come to affect ones moral outlook. People have always lived in various sinful unions, and if we look at the common case of people having mistresses, it is very clear historically that discarding a mistress, or your children by a mistress, was seen as much worse than having a mistress. This is because it was expected that your relationship with a mistress would be patterned after an ideal marriage. After all, marriage is the ideal relationship for fostering happiness, and why enter into any relationship without the aim of being happy.
Now people have come to see marriage as orientated towards an individuals happiness, and free of absolute rights or duties, and this has fed into other relationships. If wives can be discarded, how much more easily can girlfriends be discarded?
I think then, that we should stress that for Catholics marriage means no divorce, and perhaps we should discard the word marriage and use a new word in order to stress precisely what we mean by marriage. I would say that the meaning of marriage has drifted far enough from what we understand by marriage that by using that word unqualified we are supporting a cultural norm that we explicitly oppose.
Secondly, there are genuine areas of injustice in same sex relationships. Of course, as pointed out above, these often also apply to other. However, it should be a priority for the prolife lobby to attack these injustices in their own right, because this will destroy a valuable handle that people use to bring people on board. In the UK the classic one was visitors rights for people in ICU. In particular, friends do not get visiting rights, on legally recognised spouses and immeadeate family members. It seems a clear injustice that non family members who cohabit (even in a non sexual sense) should have visiting rights. In practice, of course, it has been the practice of doctors and such like to look the other way whenever it seemed clear that people have a legitimate relationship with the patient.
A similar position seems to apply to inheritance tax. It seems to me that if two people jointly own a house, (at least a primary residence) and one of them dies, they should be able to transfer it into the name of the other without the penatly of inheritance tax. There was a case in britian where twin sisters had lived together for nearly their whole lives after their husbands were both killed in the WW2, and when one of them died the other was effectively thrown out of the hosue they shared because she could nor afford the inhertance tax on the 50% of the house that belonged to the other sister. We should, of course, be opposed to such injustices in principle, but we should also use some foresight and see how they might be used by our opposition to further their political aims. We are both a grass roots movement and a political entity, and we should have a strategy in both parts of our movement.
Finally, I think that we should not underestimate how dangerous the “cult of the individual” really is. This change in viewpoint from life as a series of duties, to life as an exercise in maximising pleasure, is really at the heart of this. Christianity, at its purest and fundamental level, is the absolute rejection of pleasure as a measure of an individual.
Christopher Hitchen’s attack on Mother Teresa/ saints in general, epitomises this view. That sainthood is not morally praiseworthy because one is simply doing what makes one happy. An excellent example of a smart man missing the point.
We are to love and Serve God. The earliest Christians lived this rejection by giving up all of their property to the poor. I am not sure that this is our Calling in the modern life, but surely we can find a way to witness our rejection of this doctrine. To find lives of service. If we can win this battle, then will will have shifted the terms of debate so far that the abortion debate will be one my default.
To my mind, all of the central battles of the culture war are about the consequences of these two diametrically opposed views of humanity. This then should be the strategy of our grass roots movement. To become ourselves disciples. To be living examples of service as the proper aim of life. A living breathing counter example to modern culture.
Phil,
Your comments are well made and well taken. I don’t think that we need to jettison the word marriage because of those who abuse it. I think we need to stress (in the Catholic Church) that marriage is covenantal and sacramental. I always say “Sacramental Marriage” to stress the distinction between what we have and the vulgar secular caricature.
Covenant is a big dimension. As Dr. Scott Hahn of Franciscan University says, “Covenants are written in blood and establish families.” Seen from that perspective, I think we see all of contraceptive’s warts, and the ignorance of covenant and sacrament that lead people to unwittingly embrace the mentality and technology that corrode their unity.
It does ring true. Thank you. And now this good explanation is on the web. I’d imagine that someone searching for an answer to this or a similar question will be directed to your blog.
One of my former professors once said, more than a quarter century ago: “You’re still a virgin until you’ve made love to create a child.” I wonder if he inherently understood what you are now saying.
“Indeed, perhaps Catholics need a new word now that identifies a marriage that rejects divorce as a possible endpoint, so that when I describe myself as “married” I accurately characterise the nature of my union.”
I could not disagree more!
Why should we change what we KNOW and believe and has been a tradition for thousands of years – marriage to mean the mutually exclusive permanent relationship of one man and one woman.
I would submit that it is homosexuals who should come up with another term. But they dont and haven’t. Why? Because this taking and remaking of the word “marriage” is part of gaining them acceptance.
“Why should we change what we KNOW and believe and has been a tradition for thousands of years – marriage to mean the mutually exclusive permanent relationship of one man and one woman.”
Christians have a long tradition of changing whatever did not fit into a Christian life. Why stop now? If it works, use it. If it does not work change it. We may be able to rescue the meaning of marriage as we understand it, but fighting for it when so much has been surrendered already should be a calculated investment of energy, not a gut reaction. Sometimes you have to win the Game, sometimes you have to change the Game. 🙂
Consider this thought experiment. What if government officially recognised two forms of marriage, one that allowed no fault divorce, and one that did not. This could be sold as “pro-choice”, since why should marriage mean the same to everybody? To respect my “right” to define existence as I see fit[1], I must be allowed to enter into a legally binding contraction that excludes the possibility of divorce. Further, it would change the nature of the debate completely, for surely people would think that the lifelong commitment is more serious than a contract either party can walk away from, which, cf my earlier post, would surely put lifelong commitment back as the ideal. It would also force people to discuss more about the nature of marriage before they got married, which can only be a good thing. Too often people put of discussion of the big issues until after their married, and then realise that they and their partner have major issues over children etc.[2][3]
This could be a viable political strategy for getting our message across. Its hard to see how the opposition could oppose “more choice” without revealing the weakness of their argument on the life issues.
Phil
[1] – I forget the exact words now but it was intended to be a reference to the Preamble of Roe vs Wade.
[2] I intentionally couched this in the language of a marital “contract” as that is a way in which many non-christians seem to view marriage. This was a deliberate and bears no resemblance to my own (sacramental) view on the importance of marriage.
[3] It would probably also make it easier for religious ministers who oppose divorce to educate people who wish to get married in their church, as they could offer only one kind, or both kinds, of marriage. But this was really just a side benefit.
Phil
I consider the game was lost about 70 years ago.
I don’t think this is something we can now win simply by changing a word.
I simply believe that a more drastic solution will be needed than renaming marriage, pregnancy, fetus, child etc.
A word is defined by what it entails: in this case one man and one woman together for life. Since this is not what the majority of people experience today it is no longer “marriage”. It is something else. It is just cohabiting or in most cases, serial cohabitation.
But, marriage is still held to be a strong, worthy good. People who aren’t married aren’t sure they can sustain this wildly expensive, dangerous activity. They don’t know they can commit for their life. They don’t know they can afford a wedding ceremony. It’s a high bridge, in some really basic ways.
I live one block off a housing project, in a small house, in a mixed neighborhood. I live three doors down from a young man who lives with his girlfriend, their three year old daughter, and her parents. He has a steady job, he’s gotten promotions. They are happy. But he literally did not know how to get married- go get a certificate, hire a judge, find a priest- rent a suit, buy a ring, serve cake and punch……..he thought if he didn’t do the whole MTV extravaganza- honestly, he thought wedding dresses were $30K. And that each day counts- after three years of fidelity, he’s still afraid. He hasn’t a clue how much more respect he’ll get on the job, with a ring on his finger. And then, right next door, an eighteen year old boy married his high school sweetheart, and they now have a child. Again, living with parents, while they get on their feet. For what ever reason, he had the mental furniture- as did she.
I have no idea how to explain the basic steps and how- tos, and why- fors to anyone. I guess it’s like me and cars. My dad rode the bus, but collected car magazines. I thought all cars were $60,000, and only extremely wealthy people bought them- and then bought multiples. Kias- chevrolets- none of that was in my mental furniture.
I’d be really comfortable with a preacher laying out the how tos and why fors of marriage, in really basic details. B/c they aren’t being advertised on TV, for sure. Say, Kramer on Seinfeld- she’s there, she asks about your day- as if caring were the worst thing in the world. Or the splashy divorces in magazines…..it makes cheating look like more fun that hanging out with the wife and kids…..even, the stars get dressed up for their cheating pictures, and dress shabby for their times out with the kids……
It’s not that people don’t respect it, it’s that they can’t imagine, at all, themselves going through with it. It’s like hang- gliding, or vacationing in Hawaii- simple and exhilarating if you’ve done it, a faraway, exotic thing on tv, like vampires or supermodels- if you haven’t.
Phil,
I like your idea of having two kinds of marriage defined by law. Then it would be obvious to everyone which kind of marriage is real marriage, and which kind is just cohabitation using another name. Of course, this is precisely why our secular society would never accept the implementation of such an idea.
Phil & Dan,
I understand where you are coming from, but the confusion stems not from the idea of marriage, but by non-married people wanting to co-opt the title for their own particular living arrangements, or wanting the goods of marriage for their own living arrangements. In other words, we have a perectly acceptable nomenclature from the perspective of married people.
Marriage= one man and one woman who vow fidelity to one another for life and accept all of the duties and responsibilities of that state together with all of the rights and privileges society reserves to that state.
Fornication= All other sexual activity outside of marriage.
Cohabitation= Living arrangements involving non-married adults.
These have worked quite well through the years. The non-married persons have decided that they do not want the stigma of the descriptive titles, and so they seek the label marriage. The challenge before society is how we define various states of living, or whether we make moral distinctions anymore. Should we change the name of marriage to distinguish it from the other realities, they will only chase down the new nomenclature in an endless game of the dog chasing its tail.
@ ari —
I like your concept of “mental furniture”… you’ve really touched on how the popular secular culture has stripped most people’s minds of the basic furniture of a successful life. How sad that some people, like the young man living for three years with his girlfriend, have come so close–and yet remain so far.
— Ann
Gerard: I complete agree with your comment.
“…we have a perfectly acceptable nomenclature from the perspective of married people.”
Absolutely. I think we need to take back our language.
The words marriage, gay, choice are just a few that have been hijacked for the secular humanist agenda.
And, well, it’s our word. We are arguing about western marriage: a marriage between two grownups, freely chosen, that will presumably bring about children. We aren’t choosing our children’s spouse, we aren’t marrying first cousins, we haven’t put up obstacles to marital satisfaction (fgm, and such.) and we don’t usually marry for property, or access to a trust fund, and then carry on with mistresses. When we violate any of those terms, we, in the usual, middle west, feel entirely revolted. My sposo was disgusted by Oscar Wilde’s play “…Earnest…” b/c the plot didn’t actually involve love. It involved trust funds and first cousins. We think immigrants arranging marriages are backwards, and so on.
So I’m pretty comfortable being chauvinistic about inviting someone into this form of marriage, or not. Nobody gay seems to be rioting for plural, Mormon marriage, or Muslim first cousin marriage, or the SIA- temporary marriage contract, or even an American Indian contract. Everybody is trying to get the goods on a Western marriage. I think that testifies to its extraordinary value and durability.
And, yes, the mental furniture bit drives me nuts. I’ve tried to explain to my neighbors, different neighbors, at different times, how to get married. They have kids. Citing any number of sociological studies- blah blah blah— I don’t understand how it’s not known, or why it’s the extraordinarily expensive hobby of wealthy, older white people, or movie stars. I have a hard time, since right now we aren’t wealthy at all, that somehow, marriage is an engine for this, or that it can be. I don’t get it. Saying the obvious- everyone I know married in a dress made by their mom, or me- and that the rent- a judge- or rent a priest = was the most expensive part–doesn’t translate. That they’ll be happier, and that G*d comes in to help, whether they ask for that help or not– doesn’t get across. I don’t know what will help. I know that saying ” we love each other” is usually followed within months by ‘ and then we started fighting…..” which is such a non sequitor to my committed married friends…….
It has to be a prayer thing, I guess. I mean, Disney sells marriage. If Disney can’t sell it to every little girl and boy…..who can? My sons have an estimate, my daughter has an estimate….their friends with married parents have estimates…….
and, gosh, the people who keep signing manifestoes about marriage….beyond perplexing. they haven’t any clue what goes on in the privacy of someone else’s marriage. No clue. None. nada nada nada. I lost all respect for gloria steinem when she was blathering on about getting married, and getting to keep doing what she wanted, and that her spouse would do dishes……Sha……..my aunt does woodworking and her husband does the best manicures on all the women in his life- he practiced on his mom and sister. And he also hunts and fishes and plays football and raised three boys.
Or what happens in bed. Statistically, those chubby guys in the suburbs in movies- you know, shlubby guys doing barbecue, wearing pastel shirts and envying the single guy? That suburban guy is the most sexually active male in the whole US. He’s catered to, his wife is satisfied, and neither of them have to advertise their wares, b/c nobody else is going to come close to satisfying their appetites. That’s the real statistic. Privacy. and private satisfaction. The single guy? has dry spells, and a girlfriend with low self- esteem and insecurities and no real sexual satisfaction. That takes major advertising and lying, plain lying, to make alluring. Caroline Graglia and Ann Coulter make these points, repeatedly.
I keep wondering when there will be such a big, nasty backlash. Personal, ad hominem attacks, on Margaret Sanger, and the orgone guy, and all of them. People really pointing out what total misfits and freaks they were. And then bringing it up to modernity- the weirdo in the back of the class, or the trampy cheerleader who wanted to cheat on her artist boyfriend.
Or, say, someone pointing out all these people who hook up in college, and then never break up. but they don’t have kids, necessarily, Or how marital culture feels threatened and fierce and punk— like, the families with the “cool babies” in Martha Stewart Living…..at some point, they’ll maybe not want to feel so pioneer in a barren landscape….or the apron project moms……who are “reclaiming riot grrrl style” aprons? and fifties iconography?
or, how life is easier for a guy with a girl married to him, in guy terms. I’m thinking of different guy writers, all of whom are married, but none who really put their wives in the public eye- they say “they are terrific”= but they don’t put her on the weighing block the way a guy will say ” She’s a ten” about his girlfriend. and the guy will mention little ways he’s happier, and it’s always pragmatic, not singing choirs of angels wreathed in roses- but “she’s got my back so I don’t have to worry and I can do my job…..” rather than single guys who are wildly popular but age to horrid and lonely and misogynistic and despairing.
@ Gerard and Dan
I agree about the nomenculture. The point of my thought experiment was to demonstrate how far popular conceptions of marriage have drifted from what we think marriage should be.
My suggestion of changing the nomen culture are merely a to point out that we are in the buisness of defending an idea, a concept of marriage. One that seems lost in todays culture. If a new word helps us make our view distinctive from the morass of relationships that seem to be defined under “marriage”, then we should consider that. Apparently, you already partly agree, since you said yourself you try to use the term “sacramental marriage”. Is this not an implicit agreement that the word “marriage” no longer adequately characterises our relationships.
It is an important question, as anyone who describes themselves as married implicitly supports that structure as a worthwhile one. And this cannot but help to strengthen that idea in the popular consciousness. If we want to support the Catholic Ideal of Marriage, then we need to make it clear that that is how we consider our relationships whenever one introduces our wives. Of course, among those who know you well its never an issue. But it does seem like a key issue of witnessing marriage as an indelible part of our faith.
I make no claim to have a good strategy here, I merely note that it is a problem serious problem.
“…those chubby guys in the suburbs in movies- you know, shlubby guys doing barbecue, wearing pastel shirts and envying the single guy…”
Hey! Let’s not get too personal!
{Paul, You took the words right out of my mouth!! G.N.}
“…we need to make it clear that that is how we consider our relationships whenever one introduces our wives.”
That’s true. I’m going to tell my wife to stop introducing me at parties as “my first husband.”
I was thinking of Vince Vaughn, and all the movies where Owen Wilson has a sidekick, or the tall guy–Matt Mccounahay- has an advisor in a house. That guy is always the joke, but that’s the thing- he’s the guy who is satisfied. They have to come up with an oddball one in Something About Mary to assert the guy isn’t really happy having a wife who bakes cookies for him.
I was thinking, also, of Tucker Max and Forrest Griffin. Both came out with “fratrire” books at the same time. In between, Forest Griffin got married. And in his book, he now casually mentions prayer, his wife, the cats, working out, and so on. It’s a skewed suburban world. Tucker Max did not get married, and has this dystopian wasteland of awful one night stands. They both started in the same sort of yucky place, and ended up in very different mindsets.
Or even, women’s workouts in magazines- they always mention the happiness and satisfaction of the husband. Never, I shaped up and left. Although, that’s in every men’s porn magazine- she shapes up and leaves. That’s a big ol’ lie. She’s trying to keep him happy, and he’s thinking she’s prepping to leave. I know when I work out, my husband develops odd fears about that. It’s nuts.
With the Tucker Max and Forrest Griffin books, I really really wonder how long the lies will stand. B/c they aren’t coming at it from theory, but from experience, and well, crude bodily-ness, which is the “hallmark of this generation.” And, again, the almost aggressive rescue of the fifties housewife, by mommy bloggers.
just thoughts.
did you know Library of Congress has a whole number devoted to Episcopal Spirituality, California Experience?
ari
Dr. Nadal, I don’t know about your Christian and conservative community, but the people I hang around with opposed _all_ of those things. Two summers ago we pounded the pavement right here in my town against a “gay and transgender rights” local ordinance. A few years before that we pounded the pavement getting a Michigan protection of marriage amendment put onto the state constitution that also made it clear that civil unions and partner benefits to state employees given on the basis of non-married sexual relationship are all against the state constitution.
So, yes, we’ve fought all the way along, and we’re prepared to fight homosexual “marriage,” too.
Moreover, if some people haven’t fought on those things but are prepared now to fight over homosexual “marriage,” don’t discourage them. Rather, let’s try to get them to see that, for example, civil unions are marriage just without the name and should also be opposed. (The terrible case in of the woman who fled Vermont and then had a Vermont judge try to award custody of her child to her former lesbian partner was a civil union case.) Perhaps that’s what you’re trying to do, but setting it up as “upsetting people on both sides” sort of might give people the impression that you’re telling them that if they haven’t heretofore had all these other things right, they might as well just give up at this point.
“Where were we when civil unions were legalized?
Where were we when gay adoptions were legalized?
Where were we when shared employee benefits for gays were legalized?
Where were we when sodomy laws were struck down?
Where were we when a host of other statutes on various rights were legalized?”
Christians were protesting these things but we were maligned as bigots and homophobes
Sodomy laws? Really? You DO know that those apply to heterosexuals as well.
See, that’s the thing- the law is a crystallized discussion amongst lawmakers. It’s supposed to be people- but who lobbies? And, for that matter, who gets brushed off? I know the rep for my district has been very, ahh, not what I would have chosen.
And, well, it’s possible to say “this is good or normal” and then go practice something else. Like, I grew up in the 80’s. which meant I drank the bcp and condoms koolaid. like, going to get condoms at the store was hot and funny- a courtship maneuver- a way of talking about what was to happen. Now, if you’re not of that- you’d talk that way in pre- Cana, right? But the thing is, once everyone I knew got married- out went the birth control. Not b/c anyway knew or cared what the pope thought- but b/c it’s awkward, and uncomfortable, and who needed that public discussion anymore? and nobody is saying ” i support quiverfull” or ” i’m a card-carrying catholic,” In fact, it’s the opposite-what’s said- but what’s done? what’s done is forgetting, or getting off the pill b/c it messes up your hair or your mental state. or foregoing the IUD b/c it hurts really bad once a month, or any of the many, myriad other excuses.
which I think is interesting. we don’t have virginity, except as an odd endurance test, but we have sort of an effectual virginity- girls are scrupulous about b/c with boyfriends, but quit all that when they get married. And well, that still has a value- it’s not a guaranteed thing, anymore. So, like, when virginity was assumed- we had simple wedding dresses, but now? there are these insanely expensive confections. I don’t know who buys them. I made my dress, I made my friends’ dresses, or their mothers made their dresses…..but all of us assumed we’d be having babies, and paying a hospital bill or a down payment on a house vs a confection dress…..plus, well, poverty…….there are websites where girls make elaborate, singular dresses- knit or crocheted. they might live with their boyfriend, but obviously, something is changing. I lived with my husband, but he points out we always had the idea we’d get married. I had to recover from a car accident. And I did lavish all my skills on my dress. and we still have the pictures of the wedding. So something changed. I know my friends had lavish dresses. None of us have custom evening gowns, but all of us have wedding dresses made for us, to fit perfectly- hand-sewn pearls, hand appliqued lace, designer patterns, silk fabric- whatever finery we could afford…..the timing might be different than a girl sheltered at home until she married, but the thoughts are the same, I think.
And, maybe it’s generational. Like, cheating is sold in every Susan Isaacs novel, every “bridges of madison county” laurie colwyn etc etc etc…but not in novels by thirtysomethings, or twentysomethings. It might be an odd artifact of the baby boom. twilight is about the entire opposite of cheating, for instance. it’s very teenager.
Re: the earlier posts of “mental furniture”.
I just saw this today and thought it related.
http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp/news/local/man-grants-wifes-wish-after-65-year-marriage-20110404
From & for more, please visit link at the end: “Yes, unfortunately, people tend to dislike other people whose behavior they consider immoral. But we still should seek the ideal of loving every human being while not viewing that person’s every act as morally acceptable. The Catechism says that homosexual people “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided” (CCC 2358).”-“I only want you to understand that our cultural separation of sex and procreation has been the groundwork for making homosexual acts appear legitimate. In fact, both a willful act of contraception and a willful act of same-sex relations are morally wrong.”
: http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2004/0407sbs.asp