Bishop Barron's statement on same sex marriages

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Rau said:
What position does your local church/Minister take on SSM?
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Not entirely certain how to answer this. The ELCC leaves SSM blessings up to the pastors, in consultation with the congregation. I don’t think it’s ever been brought up officially in either of the churches I’ve attended in the past 10 years. The pastor that confirmed me was an old Anglican minister who was thoroughly anti-SSM. Subsequent pastors seemed to be more pragmatic and tended to avoid bringing up the issue. It is a very divisive topic within the ELCC and I know several congregation members who left the church for the LCMS as a result of the decision to leave it up to individual churches.
Peter J:
You may be right. Let’s face it, people can be pretty reactionary … and what better way to react to not getting what you want than wanting something even less reasonable? (Sarcasm.)
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Unfortunately such “doubling down” seems to be the common tactic of everyone in politics these days. What better way to stoke the fires of partisanship? 🤷

I guess the other option would have been to simply make all government “marriages” civil unions, and leave marriage to the churches. But I imagine there would be plenty of opposition to such a move.
 
chloride said:
…I guess the other option would have been to simply make all government “marriages” civil unions, and leave marriage to the churches. But I imagine there would be plenty of opposition to such a move.
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That would be a meaningless act unless the meaning of “civil union” was entirely distinct from marriage. To create a meaningful distinction would require - for starters - that civil unions carry no implication of a sexual relationship.

Regardless, marriages would need to be registered in some fashion given the legal framework is useful.
 
Faithdancer said:
Very true. No matter how many secular governments try to legitimize it, it’ll still be a chimera and a parody.
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In fact, entering into a civil marriage (whether heterosexual or homosexual) is itself a serious sin by Catholic standards.

I know a devote and pious Catholic who has a homosexual son. She adamantly opposes same-sex marriage. When I pointed out that at least civil marriages would give a homosexual couple various material and emotional benefits, such as getting the partner on a health insurance policy or allowing hospital visits (when they are restricted to only family members), she agreed with me that civil marriages are a serious sin. She went on to say that they are already committing a sin by their homosexual union and she wouldn’t want them to have the additional sin of having a civil marriage.

In fact it seems to me civil marriage (which is more willfully done against the Church and against God) is a greater sin than homosexuality (which seems more done out of sexual compulsion).

OTOH, if the persons do not know civil marriages are a serious sin, then I’m thinking they would not be culpable of that sin.

I’m sort of with Fr. Barron on this; it may do more harm than good to go on a crusade against same-sex marriages (we always have to think, “What would Jesus do?”). What we can do is alert people to the fact that having a civil marriage is a serious sin, which might resonate better with Catholics than non-Catholics. If they ignore that and enter into one, then it is on them, not on us for failing to alert them.
 
lynnvinc said:
In fact, entering into a civil marriage (whether heterosexual or homosexual) is itself a serious sin by Catholic standards.
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I would certainly agree with you that even a heterosexual civil marriage is not equal to a Catholic marriage, but I don’t know that I would describe it as a sin. I would prefer to say that it does not legitimize sexual relations between them, since only a true marriage could do that.

In any case, many Catholic parents would prefer to see their children civilly (heterosexually) married than living in sin without any sort of marriage. (Granted that does not prove anything.)
 
Peter_J said:
I would certainly agree with you that even a heterosexual civil marriage is not equal to a Catholic marriage, but I don’t know that I would describe it as a sin. I would prefer to say that it does not legitimize sexual relations between them, since only a true marriage could do that.

In any case, many Catholic parents would prefer to see their children civilly (heterosexually) married than living in sin without any sort of marriage. (Granted that does not prove anything.)
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Well, I was a Protestant marrying a Catholic in 1969, and bec we wanted to have our Church marriage when & where his parents were present (we thought within a year), we went ahead and had a civil marriage first.

It turned out to be some 4 years before we could visit his parents, and I was champing at the bit to become a Catholic. When I went to the priest to arrange for our Church marriage and to become Catholic (get my 1st Communion), he was livid that we had been in a civil marriage and said it was wrong and that it would take me many years to become a Catholic, and they didn’t just accept anyone. I said I suspected it was maybe a venial sin and that actually my Protestant parents had only ever had a civil marriage, but he emphatically said it was a serious sin.
 
Rau said:
This seems to be an inappropriate behaviour for a priest to exhibit in such circumstances.
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He was very young, assistant pastor.

My husband’s uncle who was a priest, when he was quite elderly told me how he had lost his temper over a person’s sin as a young priest, and how very wrong that was.
 
lynnvinc said:
Well, I was a Protestant marrying a Catholic in 1969, and bec we wanted to have our Church marriage when & where his parents were present (we thought within a year), we went ahead and had a civil marriage first.

It turned out to be some 4 years before we could visit his parents, and I was champing at the bit to become a Catholic. When I went to the priest to arrange for our Church marriage and to become Catholic (get my 1st Communion), he was livid that we had been in a civil marriage and said it was wrong and that it would take me many years to become a Catholic, and they didn’t just accept anyone. I said I suspected it was maybe a venial sin and that actually my Protestant parents had only ever had a civil marriage, but he emphatically said it was a serious sin.
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I would at least say that it could be misleading, I.e. make it appear as though being civilly married is worse than cohabiting without any kind of marriage.
 
Peter_J said:
I would at least say that it could be misleading, I.e. make it appear as though being civilly married is worse than cohabiting without any kind of marriage.
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Well ask some priest and get back with me.

The way the priest explained it was that marrying civilly is a turning away from God. Cohabiting (without marriage) may also be a turning away from God. So I don’t really know which is worse.
 
SSM is a diabolical lie, no doubt. And those who uphold it are either self delusional or deluded by the devil, or both.

Any church that celebrates same sex “marriage” is no longer a Christian church. Period.
 
To answer the OP’s original question about Bp. Barron’s comments, which, I think it is useful to see the video of the interview with Dave Rubin in which he said this (you can find it here: youtube.com/results?search_query=dave+rubin+bishop+barron),I would simply say that His Excellency is aware that fighting for the repeal of the Obergefell decision is losing issue, and only the most deluded culture warriors think otherwise. More important right now is fighting for religious freedom of Christians and others who do not believe in same sex marriage. His Excellency is very clear that same-sex marriage contradicts biblical (and thus Catholic) teaching. It’s just that at a political level, the issue is lost.

Look, anyone that’s followed me on this forum knows that I’m very conservative theologically, but the fact that anyone can be scandalized by what His Excellency is insane. This is a completely manufactured controversy (a “manufactroversy”).

Benedicat Deus,
Latinitas
 
Latinitas said:
Look, anyone that’s followed me on this forum knows that I’m very conservative theologically, but the fact that anyone can be scandalized by what His Excellency is insane. This is a completely manufactured controversy (a “manufactroversy”).
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Yes. Unfortunately, such insanity doesn’t surprise me any more.
 
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