Changing legal definition of marriage

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ratio1 said:
Now that several countries have changed the legal defintion of marriage to include same sex persons; why can’t the church just redefine marriage itself?
Call it “x” or something (sorry i still can’ think of a good word yet) to denote a “marriage” between man and woman.

well, we can then still teach in schools that x is a holy union and the rest – “marriages” are just secular and civil unions.
bakers can refuse to bake a marriage cake for same sex couples, because they can just say they don’t make marriage cakes at all, they just make x cakes.

If society makes the new “marriage” to mean civil unions, we can just make x to mean the old “marriage” defintion, and renegrate the word marriage to be just civil unions.

I know it’s very difficult to change people’s use of words, but this is the only solution i can think of to counter against this tide of same sex marriage.
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Some canonists are proposing doing exactly that.

The book that replaces the old “Rite of Marriage” is now called the “Order of Celebrating Matrimony.”

It’s not much of a difference, but it is a subtle way of distinguishing between “Matrimony” as a sacrament and “Marriage” as whatever-the-state-says.

The Church really is searching for a way to do exactly what you’re proposing.
 
In the US, kettling is seen as a free speech restriction. We don’t have a “free action” concept. If people are rioting they are generally broken up through other means (tear gas, arrests), not just trapping everyone in a confined space for hours. I have friends in UK who have been kettled during peaceful protests. These are professional people, not student revolutionaries.

I’m sure if you’re used to the practice it looks fine to you. I see it as weird and suppressive. This is likely a cultural difference because US and UK have, historically, very different views about the role of the state and how and how much it should be involved in individuals’ lives.

Richard Spencer is the white supremacist who led the US Charlottesville protest recently and also the meeting in some DC restaurant where a bunch of alleged Trump supporters were filmed giving the Nazi salute.
 
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This is not a good solution. According to various LGBT or LGBTQ or LGBTQI sites, marriage will mean any type of mix and match group of people that can be imagined. The Church will not be changing its mind even though some people want to redefine marriage. Children as young as 5 years old are being taught that a family is whatever people want it to be and that’s OK.
 
I’m not sure why you’re directing this to me. I’m not against everybody coming together in Christ, but I’m not the authority setting the rules for the Catholic Church.
This thread is about the legal use of a word and also free speech / free exercise. Not about how we feel generally about gay marriage.
 
This view is incorrect because LGBTQI sites and the media are creating clearly defined separations. This one is a Lesbian or a Bisexual or Gay or Questioning or Queer or Intersexed. Every time a person who falls into the main LGBT group is promoted to a position of power, then, on LGBT news sites, you see a name, a photo and the “first bisexual woman to be” appointed to some prominent position. The definitions are very clear cut. Heterosexual does not mean something now that it didn’t mean for hundreds of years. I have a nationality I won’t abandon, a cultural heritage I will not abandon, a religion I won’t abandon, a color I cannot change, and so on.

According to the Anarchist singer, Iggy Pop: “I wish life could be anything!” From the song “Five Foot One” on the album “New Values,” released in 1979.
 
We could only recognise the marriage between one man and one woman, before GOD.

You can’t take God out of the equation.
 
You have to admit that “Objectively disordered” beats “morally evil”, and the Church is not going to give in and say gay marriage or gay sex is okay, at least not this week, month, or year. I have to operate in the framework I am given to operate in, both for the Church and for the civil law. I am not interested in leaving the Church so if I stay, I must deal with the rule that exists.

Civil law, I might have more control over since we get a vote. Civil law also has to be fair to both religious and non-religious people. Catholic and non-Catholic people, and gay and straight people. The Church is not compelled to be “fair” in its teachings or beliefs.

I’m sure St. Thomas More and a host of others dealt with these types of complications daily, so if he could do it, so can I.
 
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A woman can be surgically modified to look like a man but that’s it. The Church is well aware. “keeps his ovaries”? A man cannot have ovaries. There is a call to have birth certificates changed to reflect this surgical modification. That is not rational. An employee at the hospital where I worked had the surgery and looked like a man but she will never actually be a man. Her female body shape was readily apparent. And there was no outcry about the whole thing. I sat down with two surgeons who performed the procedure. They gave me a good understanding of it.
 
I must be really really fossilized. I somehow missed the memo. Other than the good @FrDavid96 referring to Holy Matrimony, this term seems to gone out of favor. My recollection of the Baltimore Catechism stored that term as one of the sacraments.

Ahhh, the old timers disease is progressing nicely in me, I guess.

Blessings,
Stephie
 
LumberJack said:
Every kid in the UK learns about him as part of Tudor and Reformation history. He was the fella that burnt people at the stake for reading an English Bible?
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I understand that now in addition to him being a saint of the Romans Catholic Church, he’s also been on the Church of England’s list of Saints and Martyrs of the Reformation since 1980, so the kids in UK must have a good time reconciling that with the lesson you noted above.
 
I will not be forced to justify a wrong perception of reality. That person will have the memories of a man or woman regardless of their outward appearance. I have an acquaintance who transitioned and even though he looked like a woman and told me he planned to marry his boyfriend, I was never told anything about preferred pronouns. We had a nice chat and the memories we shared pre-transition were still there.
 
That’s the reality. The same guy I know only looks like a woman. Our shared memories haven’t changed.
 
LumberJack said:
Once someone transitions be it completely partially or fully …
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No such “transition” exists in reality. It is nothing more than a charade. A man is a man and always will be. A woman is a woman and always will be.

Although a person might finish the surgical procedures of so-called “transitioning” in reality, the process never occurs because it never ends. People who do this to themselves need to take a long list of medications for the rest of their lives exactly because they need to counteract the body’s natural desire to heal itself. Without those medications to obstruct it, the body tries to heal. The body will never stop trying to heal for the rest of that person’s life.

So, in reality, there is no such thing as “post transition” because no such transition ever occurs.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Why would we need to change the word “marriage” when the modifier could be changed instead?
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I’ve not proposed the church change the word. I simply asked the question: “Do we really view natural marriage and same sex marriage as indistinguishable in their key characteristics?”
 
FrDavid96 said:
It’s not much of a difference, but it is a subtle way of distinguishing between “Matrimony” as a sacrament and “Marriage” as whatever-the-state-says.
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I think that particular distinction is not in question. Both sacramental marriages and natural marriages were good. SSM is clearly not sacramental - but the State now proclaims that it and natural marriage are the same.
 
That does not conform to Church teaching.

"Where the government’s policy is de facto tolerance and there is no explicit legal recognition of homosexual unions, it is necessary to distinguish carefully the various aspects of the problem. Moral conscience requires that, in every occasion, Christians give witness to the whole moral truth, which is contradicted both by approval of homosexual acts and unjust discrimination against homosexual persons. Therefore, discreet and prudent actions can be effective; these might involve: unmasking the way in which such tolerance might be exploited or used in the service of ideology; stating clearly the immoral nature of these unions; reminding the government of the need to contain the phenomenon within certain limits so as to safeguard public morality and, above all, to avoid exposing young people to erroneous ideas about sexuality and marriage that would deprive them of their necessary defences and contribute to the spread of the phenomenon. Those who would move from tolerance to the legitimization of specific rights for cohabiting homosexual persons need to be reminded that the approval or legalization of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil.

“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. In this area, everyone can exercise the right to conscientious objection.”

Source: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/c...cfaith_doc_20030731_homosexual-unions_en.html
 
FrDavid96 said:
Some canonists are proposing doing exactly that.

The book that replaces the old “Rite of Marriage” is now called the “Order of Celebrating Matrimony.”

It’s not much of a difference, but it is a subtle way of distinguishing between “Matrimony” as a sacrament and “Marriage” as whatever-the-state-says.

The Church really is searching for a way to do exactly what you’re proposing.
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That’s good but I think the Church needs to do more. perhaps hold a competition and find the best word to replace marriage. Matrimony doesn’t have a verb? (correct me if i’m wrong) so what word to replace “marry”.

For those who think this is too radical and unworkable, my reply would be that semantic meanings in language change all the time. initially people will feel uncomfortable but after two generations no one will notice.

The Jewish people did a fantastic job in reviving the whole Hebrew language, surely the Church can just revive/create one word?

The word “gay” used to mean “happy”, now it means “homosexual”. but that’s ok, we can just use “happy”
For certain countries now, the word “marriage” used to mean “marital bond between man and woman”, now it means any persons. Well, my proposal is, we can just use “x”. Let’s be smart and not fight this head on. The Church is an eternal insititution, people can have the word “marriage” for 2 or 3 generations, but they may find we’re back to where we started if we can achieve this.
 
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