Catholic Church Weighs in on California’s Gay Marriage Ruling
May 23rd, 2008 at 06:32am Mark Noonan
The news story:
In a pastoral letter responding to the California Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage, Bishop of Oakland Allen Vingeron said that Catholics must respond to this “profoundly significant” issue by bringing a proper understanding of marriage into public life. The failure to do so, he said, would result in a difficult situation where Christianity becomes a counter-cultural way of life.
Writing in a May 16 letter, Bishop Vingeron said the “most fundamental point” is that “marriage is a reality authored by God in his very act of creating the human race.” A marital relationship is only possible between one man and one woman for the purposes of “mutual loving support” between them and for their “loving service of life” by bringing children into the world.
All Catholics implicitly affirm this conviction when they profess to share the Church‘s faith in their baptismal promises, the bishop said.
However, he said, this conviction about marriage can be known from reason. Therefore, its position in society is not an ideological imposition but an aspect of the common good.
“This wisdom about the nature of marriage is not a form of discrimination, but undergirds our freedom to live according to God’s plan for us,” Bishop Vigneron said. “No government has the power to change the order which God has inscribed in our nature.”
Bishop Vigneron said future challenges related to same-sex unions can be divided into short term and long term categories.
In the short term, Catholics are called to bring marriage laws into conformity with their knowledge about the nature of marriage.
In Catholic teaching, a marriage is until death do they part - while modern realities have forced the Church to make some practical adjustments, it is still Church teaching that divorce is not allowed. An annullment of a marriage is something which states, in effect, that the marriage never took place - there are varied grounds for such a thing (as a for-instance: if a man pressures his intended into signing a pre-nuptial agreement, it means that he is marrying her under false pretences - a marriage must be a 100% giving of the self to the spouse, nothing held back - and thus the marriage never existed), but divorce - the breaking of a valid marriage - is against Catholic teaching. What the bishop is stating is that the first step - or, at least, one of the first steps - is to bring marriage, as an institution, back into accord with Christian teaching. And, yes, this means we must work for an end to divorce.
When the concept of divorce was first brought into the public square, it was asserted that such a thing was only for the extreme cases - the hard exceptions to the rule. After all, who could say that a woman mercilessly beaten by her husband should not be able to divorce him? The trouble was - and the Church pointed this out right at the start, and was called foolish and old fashioned for so doing - that the exception becomes the rule. Back in the day, the rare bad marriage had to stay together because nothing happening in it invalidated the marriage, itself…in the modern world, all sorts of marriages are terminated for the most trivial of reasons, even for something as meaningless as “irreconcilable differences”, which really means “we don’t want to reconcile our differences becase that might be hard and we’re moderns, and don’t like hard things”. It it way past time that we recognise divorce as a complete failure, and get rid of it.
If we were to do so, we’d probably end the entire gay marriage debate right there - and that is why the bishop brings it up now. You see, as long as society is just playing make-believe about marriage, then everyone wants a piece of it…but if marriage becomes the very real thing it used to be - a shared, life long sacrifice one to the other, and to any resultant children - then I’ll bet that most homosexuals, most of the time, will eschew the very idea. It is in the full restoration of marriage that we’ll make the institution not only strong again, but make it impervious to those who wish to use it merely as a means of advancing a particular political agenda.
Entry Filed under: Justice System, Life Issues, Popular Culture, Religion
21 Comments
1. Aztec | May 23rd, 2008 at 10:09 am
This is exactly why seperation of church and state is so important. This is what the catholics believe and that is just fine. Other religions believe differently and that is fine too. No one religion should expect the government to enforce their beliefs contrary to others.
2. french student | May 23rd, 2008 at 10:14 am
Problem is, there are two things called marriage.
One is a spiritual covenant between you, your spouse and the deity of your choice.
The other is a temporal contract between you, your spouse and the state, that changes the amount of taxes you pay, and gives you certain right and duties towards said state.
While every single church has a right to define marriage as it sees fit, this only applies to the spiritual marriage. In this light, the catholic, spiritual marriage is, indeed, monogamous, heterosexual, and “till death does them part”.
It is the prerogative of any pastor, priest or rabbi to deny the spiritual marriage to people who are divorced, just as it is the right of the latter saints to celebrate a polygamous marriage.
However, the temporal contract between the state and a couple is in no way bound to the authority of said priest, rabbi, imam or latter saint. It is bound to the law of the land, that recognises (in my opinion, realistically) that sometimes things do not turn out as well as it was hoped.
If a contract is written that does not include a procedure to leave it in case things do not work out ( even if said procedure is expensive and painful ), it is a very poorly written one. I know I personaly would not dream of marrying anyone without signing an ironclad pre-nup.
Since the contract is not bound to religious authority, the question is simple: If two of the three members (the couple) are willing to enter the contract, is the third one (the third) willing to extend the same rights and demand the same duties from gay couples as from heterosexual ones?
In my opinion, it should. A marriage (the secular contract) is not null if a couple does not have kids. In every other respect, a comitted gay couple is just the same as a comitted hetero couple.
All this to explain my position, which is, after all, very simple.
No-one should try to force any priest of any religion to celebtrate a marriage it does not want to.
No religious marriage should have any legal meaning. It is a spiritual matter, and no business of the state.
No religious argument should ever limit the scope of the legal marriage, nor the clauses of the temporal contract that it is. Since a gay couple is, in all legal matter, exactly tghe same as a barren hetero couple, I see no legal reason to ben gay marriage (as in the temporal contract)
As for divorce, I personnaly believe that it is a good thing that the option is available. The tradition of marrying for life date back to when the life expectancy was around 40 years, and life is way more complex now than it was then, let alone longer. As I said, I would refuse to marry without signing a pre-nup that covers the event of divorce.
However, I would not dream of forcing a priest to recognise that divorce exists, and if I ever get married for the second time, I certainly will not complain if no priest is present at the ceremony (now that I think of it, I won’t miss one the first time either)
3. french student | May 23rd, 2008 at 10:17 am
Should have been he/she, not it. Sorry, typo.
4. Pain | May 23rd, 2008 at 10:36 am
And yet the rate of divorce among Catholics is what today? Close to 22%? And among Americans as a group well over 50%. We, Ourselves think this had far more to do with people being unprepared for life long commitment than any failing of any religion. Still, We cannot see the reason that two adults who love each other cannot profess their love for each other in the sight of the Almighty, He Who Created All.
For man to place a burden upon such display We feel is egotistical and shabby as well as unreasonable and bigoted.
5. Just Another Taxpayer | May 23rd, 2008 at 10:49 am
Deleted - off topic.
6. Mark Noonan | May 23rd, 2008 at 12:28 pm
French,
1. Marriage has never been and never will be a purely secular enterprise.
2. When life expectancy was 40 you are aware that this meant 50% would die before 40, 50% after, right? Seventy years has ever been considered the normal human life span (you might note that at the beginning of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” he speaks about being midway through the path of life…ie, about 35 years old).
You might want to learn a bit about your civlization and its history before you make comments on such weighty matters.
7. Mark Noonan | May 23rd, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Aztec,
But we should expect government to enforce the belief of secular humanists and their religious views, right?
Nonsense - we have a right to make laws via our constitution and we can modify our constitution to say whatever we please…difficult process, but you can’t ever say that something can never be done.
8. french student | May 23rd, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Mark
1) Well no, it should not be a purely secular entreprise…. except if you want it to be.
Otherwise, you are saying that atheists cannot marry. Care to write a law to that effect?
I am saying marriage has two sides, the secular and the temporal, and that they should be dissociated.
2 )and now the same measure has life expectancy at 70 years old. Your point?
Plus, I was referring to, I don’t know, biblical times? Dante wrote his inferno in 1300. Medicine by burnt offerings had stopped by then, even is bleeding patiens wasn’t much better, and death by savage animals was maybe a little less frequent
9. french student | May 23rd, 2008 at 12:47 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Life_expectancy_1950-2005.svg
As late as 1950, life expectancy was still 40 years in some parts of the globe.
10. Tractatus | May 23rd, 2008 at 12:51 pm
And yet the rate of divorce among Catholics is what today? Close to 22%? And among Americans as a group well over 50%.
Plus, lots of U.S. Catholics (2/3 in this particular poll) believe divorce should be OK. I look forward to Noonan’s purity purge to weed out these cafeteria Catholics.
1. Marriage has never been and never will be a purely secular enterprise.
So you’re saying that marriage has never been, for example, a business agreement? A means of preserving royal heritage/lineage? Really? You sure about that, Armchair Historian?
11. Mark Noonan | May 23rd, 2008 at 1:09 pm
french,
The point is that no one back in 1 AD was thinking, “guess I’ll only live to 40″…people fully expected to live to be 70 or so years old…a lot didn’t, but it was mostly the very high infant mortality which brought down the average life expectancy…once past childbirth and early infancy, it was pretty smooth sailing unless some accident or plague intervened.
Augustus lived to be 77; Aristotle to be 62; Marcus Aurelius to be 79; Juvenal to be 75…that was in ancient times. In the middle ages, Henry II to 66; Alcuin of York to be 69; Eleanor of Aquitaine to 82…
It would be best if you dropped entirely the cartoonish, leftwing view of the world and history and started to learn what really has happened, and what is really going on in the world.
12. Mark Noonan | May 23rd, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Tract,
Do you understand what I mean by “purely secular”? I suggest you look up those two words and get back to me…
And as for a lot of Catholics thinking divorce is ok - sure they do; they have been poorly instructed in the faith, and that is something we Catholics are starting to correct.
13. french student | May 23rd, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Mark
And of course you kow what they believed because?
As for the examples you have cited, I shall remind you that rich, powerful people often live longer than poor ones - or is christianity only for the rich?
And you did not adress my other point : if marriage has to be at least in part a religious enterprise, do you believe atheists should not have the riht to marry?
14. Tractatus | May 23rd, 2008 at 1:31 pm
And as for a lot of Catholics thinking divorce is ok - sure they do; they have been poorly instructed in the faith, and that is something we Catholics are starting to correct.
Let the purity purge begin! Boot out those not-good-enough Catholics, Noonan!
BTW: If a couple gets married by a Justice of the Peace, is that somehow a religious ceremony?
15. Brett Michaels | May 23rd, 2008 at 1:46 pm
I wonder how your current wife thinks of your position on divorce. Did she get her previous marriage annulled?
I love how you guy pass judgement on others.
16. HeyHey | May 23rd, 2008 at 2:05 pm
The will of the people was upheld with this ruling. Way to go!
17. Aztec | May 24th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Mark, if you consider separation of church and state as being enforcement of the views of secular humanists then I guess the answer is yes. My point is if you, as representing the catholic faith, can’t control your flock that’s too bad but don’t expect the government to do it for you.
18. Jeremiah | May 24th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
As usual, the will of the Judges was upheld in this ruling.
We now officially have a ‘Judgeocracy.’
War is coming, I can feel the ol’ steam engine gaining some pressure…..
We’re going to take America back from these incompetent sickos.
19. Tractatus | May 24th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
We’re going to take America back from these incompetent sickos.
Yeah, I look forward to undoing the damage of the Bush administration, too.
20. Pain | May 24th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
To paraphrase Pufendorf
“Nihil ergo aliud restat, quam ut dicamus Americaniam Deocratiae esse irregulare aliquod corpus et monstro simile …”
But the good advantage of those seeking equality where equality should exist there appears to be only one way to create an amendment to the California Constiution by initiative and that is when a law is called into question. When review by the Supreme Court finds rights were infringed upon by a law such as the ban on same sex marriage the Constitution of California cannot be amended to take awy rights that were inherent to all but merely denied to the few.
A full on fleshing out of the legalities can be read, here.
21. Jeremiah | May 24th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Yeah, I look forward to undoing the damage of the Bush administration, too.
Nope, just digging yourself a hole.
What’s done is done, but come what may … Prepare yourself to get buried alive in November.