Marriage Has Been Redefined: Now What?

[Contrarian]

In our Western civilization, post Roman Empire for 2000 years, the best combination for deemed for society and the rearing of children is a monogamous man/woman couple. The New Testament for Christians has supplanted the antique, outdated practices of tribes in the desert regarding diet and marriage. Still, ONLY heterosexual arrangements are recognized for the purpose of reproduction in any culture of the world. Same-sex is sterile and there is no “consummation”. I’m really tired of these specious arguments trotting out the practices of the Old Testament. Our culture has thrived on the preservation of the family, meaning if you know where you come from, you will care about what happens to your children.

Since when does marriage depend on the ability to have children or not? There are heterosexual couples that cannot have children correct? Is it somehow required for married couples to have children? Huh, I never knew…

 

[pete_29]

Could the Catholic Church perform Sacramental marriages and ignore the civil restrictions? The state would have to acknowledge these as marriages after a time anyway. I just wondered.

 

[Bubba_Switzler]

Could the Catholic Church perform Sacramental marriages and ignore the civil restrictions? The state would have to acknowledge these as marriages after a time anyway. I just wondered.

This is a question I’ve raised before. Previously nobody wanted to address it since “SSM” was still being contested. Now that the US has joined other western nations in establishing this as civil law maybe it’s time to ask why the Church is still involved in civil marriage.

The next question is why the state is involved in civil marriage. If marriage has nothing to do with children, or any practical purpose, if it’s just self-experssion, why is it being legislated? What legitimate state purpose is served in licensing civil marriage?

 

[pete_29]

This is a question I’ve raised before. Previously nobody wanted to address it since “SSM” was still being contested. Now that the US has joined other western nations in establishing this as civil law maybe it’s time to ask why the Church is still involved in civil marriage.

The next question is why the state is involved in civil marriage. If marriage has nothing to do with children, or any practical purpose, if it’s just self-experssion, why is it being legislated? What legitimate state purpose is served in licensing civil marriage?

Money

 

[zamyrabyrd]

Since when does marriage depend on the ability to have children or not? There are heterosexual couples that cannot have children correct? Is it somehow required for married couples to have children? Huh, I never knew…

Since time immemorial, Contrarian, if you “never knew”…
Infertile heterosexual couples are the exception but they can still provide the much needed role models of father and mother to adopted children. The attempt to bring in all arguments that the cat drags in about polygamy in other cultures does not apply to our civilization that has thrived due mainly to the preservation and promotion of monogamous couples (no need to call them “hetero” because this is understood as commonsense) as heads of families.

 

[ericc]

What exactly is morally wrong with providing cakes to SSM if I don’t personally support SSM? I would sell cakes to pagans/Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists etc when they get married so what’s the difference?

Are we going a bit overboard with this?

I think so. They still need to eat and drink and have fun. And one shouldn’t deprive them of basic necessities. Yep, you can still sell them that mobile phone so that they can talk to each other.

 

[Frankenfurter]

The depths of destruction that the Supreme court has created should not be underestimated, but it has nothing to do with gay marriage. Let the few gay folks who want to get a piece of paper have their paper. Most gay folks don’t want to marry anyway, so we are talking about a minority of minorities. And then there are the queer folks that are repulsed by having to use a heterosexual term to make themselves acceptable. Anyways, my point is that what the court has done is throw away states rights on a political whim. They said themselves about 10 years ago that the states have the right to define marriage. Then they toss out their own decision for political correctness on a minor issue.This damages the supreme court and we need that court to maintain the rule of law. The country now appears to lack a transparent, apolitical, legal authority to interpret its own rules. It simply makes them up as it wants.

The damage to are nation’s rule of law is great. But not because some gay folks get married.

We no longer can trust our court.

Perhaps we should just ignore their rulings since they are not legitimate anyway.

They have no enforcement arm of their own. Unfortunately, that chaos is what they are heading us into eventually. That is what happens when the government becomes corrupted and people no longer trust it. They fight back.

Thanks supreme court - thanks for bringing the country closer to the black hole of chaos for your own political whims. You have missed the point of what your job is. You are there to prevent chaos from happening by being a trust worthy interpreter of the laws that we elect our representatives to create.

What is next on their agenda? They wield massive power. That is why the job is limited to just interpreting the laws. But what happens when they use their position of power for political gain, outside the scope of what they are supposed to do? What is our recourse for that? We will have to look seriously into that.

 

[MrSnaith]

Since when does marriage depend on the ability to have children or not?

This has always been a Catholic teaching. The Catholic Church does not permit heterosexual couples who cannot produce children to marry. Most instances of infertility can be managed by NFP; I’m not talking about infertility in such instances. What I’m talking about are congenital conditions, bodily traumas, etc. that have the known effect of making it impossible to conceive. Such people who suffer from such incapacity are not permitted to marry in the Catholic Church for exactly the same reason homosexual couples cannot marry: they cannot produce children.

Note: a couple who marries, and then discovers they are unable to produce children are still validly married. Their late discover of this fact does not render their marriage null and void. But knowledge in advance of marriage precludes access to marriage.

There are heterosexual couples that cannot have children correct?

See answer above.

Is it somehow required for married couples to have children?

Not necessarily. There must simply be a genuine openness to conceive, along with the ability to do so.

Huh, I never knew…

Now you do.

 

[Bubba_Switzler]

The Catholic Church does not permit heterosexual couples who cannot produce children to marry.

Would you please cite an authority for this?

 

[Bubba_Switzler]

We no longer can trust our court.

Perhaps we should just ignore their rulings since they are not legitimate anyway.

It’s a tricky business but there seems to be something to this:

A new Rasmussen Poll indicates that a growing number of Americans want state governments to tell the Supreme Court to get out of the business of rewriting laws and telling American citizens how to live their lives.

breitbart.com/big-government/2015/07/04/time-for-the-states-to-declare-independence-from-the-federal-government/

 

[MrSnaith]

Would you please cite an authority for this?

I apologize. My understanding was slightly at variance with Canon Law:

Can. 1084 §1. Antecedent and perpetual impotence to have intercourse, whether on the part of the man or the woman, whether absolute or relative, nullifies marriage by its very nature.

§2. If the impediment of impotence is doubtful, whether by a doubt about the law or a doubt about a fact, a marriage must not be impeded nor, while the doubt remains, declared null.

§3. Sterility neither prohibits nor nullifies marriage, without prejudice to the prescript of ⇒ can. 1098.

It is impotence, not merely the inability to conceive (which may result from sterility), which impedes marriage. I knew it was along these lines, and I tried to drive at this in my post, but I didn’t have this clarity.

It is the inability to consummate the marriage (that is, to perform the sexual act) that makes a marriage impermissible.

 

[Mark121359]

You think?? Goodness me. Calm down! Has anyone here from the US thought to ask someone from Canada how they handle situations you bring up? Bakeries, florists, school teachers, etc. Our good friends in Canada have been living peacefully with married people of the same gender for 10 years! The RCC has survived; florists still exist, as do bakers. The country is doing quite well, I believe. Canadians, we would love to learn from you. And a Happy Canada Day to all.

Umm…you might want to rethink your “You think??” And you yourself might want to ask someone from Canada just how well these “situations” are going up there! Canada is way worse off than you might think. In fact they’ve been warning us for years of what to expect if so-called SSM became law here. You can read for yourself about some of the problems they’ve been facing here and here. And while you’re at it, some older articles here, here, here, and here.

You mentioned school teachers. Take a good look at what happened to this Catholic school teacher and Catholic Priest in Pennsylvania. You wanna hear the kicker? They were showing the pro life film to a sixth grade CCD class in a Catholic School! And their parents!!! and the local newspaper blasted them for it! The real shame of it is, is when the heat got turned up, they folded. You can read about it right here. And in more detail here.

I know that many of you here will probably point out that the Constitution protects us here in the U.S. Uh-huh…I just watched three women and two men in black robes pull gay marriage out of the Constitution like a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat. As Judge Scalia points out;

***“I write separately to call attention to this Court’s threat to American democracy. Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”

~Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia~***

Peace, Mark

 

[Frankenfurter]

It’s a tricky business but there seems to be something to this:

breitbart.com/big-government/2015/07/04/time-for-the-states-to-declare-independence-from-the-federal-government/

There needs to be a list of these supreme court rulings that have created these feelings, and we will need to make sure that this list represents all points of view. I mean, if the list only has things on it that Catholics and Evangelicals don’t like, it won’t have legs. But if there is a list that includes things from many folks and makes up a majority, then there is something to this. The judges could be impeached perhaps.

“If the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, then the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.” --Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861:

I mean, all the supreme court has to say is that it is not up to them to decide. There are so many cases that they have no business hearing, but they do. They are completely out of control actually.

 

[Corki]

You think?? Goodness me. Calm down! Has anyone here from the US thought to ask someone from Canada how they handle situations you bring up? Bakeries, florists, school teachers, etc. Our good friends in Canada have been living peacefully with married people of the same gender for 10 years! The RCC has survived; florists still exist, as do bakers. The country is doing quite well, I believe. Canadians, we would love to learn from you. And a Happy Canada Day to all.

Glad to hear it. So bakers in Canada are free to turn down cake orders for same sex “marriages” and florists do not have to do the floral arrangements either? And it’s such a relief that, contrary to what we have heard, that Catholic schools aren’t being forced to treat same sex “marriage” as if it was a legitimate option. And I guess we should be angry at the media which obviously lied when it reported JUST YESTERDAY that a law school accreditation has been withheld for no other reason than it upholds the traditional teaching about marriage and sexuality.

(sarcasm off)

Yes, we have seen and heard how Canada has handled this. And that’s one of the reasons we are so concerned.

 

[SilverLight]

Would you please cite an authority for this?

I would like to see some proof also.

 

[Rence]

What I think will happen is that he Synod this fall will conclude that the Catholic Church should no longer consider civil marriages valid.

That solves both the divorce and remarried issue, no annulment needed, just confession. And it solves the homosexual issue too.
See, with divorce and homosexuality a growing percentage of civil marriages are invalid, and the Synod I think will announce that the Church no longer recognizes no sacramental marriages as valid, for anybody.

What will happen next will be a persecution of the Church by way of lawsuits and fines.
People will try to make the Church conform to civil laws.

But…if the Church does not consider civil marriages legal at all…they have no reason to CONSIDER gay marriage even if it is legal in every state. It is no concern to them.
And the “Father but the Court said…” line will blow away.

I can’t see how the Church can consider all civil marriages invalid and non-sacramental without contradicting previous teachings. The Church will continue to recognize marriages that have confirmed to their teachings and will not recognize those that don’t conform to their teachings.

 

[Vico]

Well stated.
As a DRE, I can tell you that the Church holds that the parents are the primary educators of their children.
In practice, we don’t see this all that much. Parents expect catechists and youth ministers to have those “tough conversations” and instruct them when they have already been influenced by popular media and their peers with regard to sex, SSA, abortion, even Mass attendance. They either don’t have (won’t devote) the time, or their children have been allowed so much leeway in deciding “for themselves” on so many issues, that they find it nearly impossible to influence them in a Catholic/Christian way.
So they expect the Church to do it. Time for everyone, all Christians, to wake up.

The civil marriage is not valid for a Catholic (without a dispensation) because it is not the Catholic form of marriage, and the Church decides what that form is. For non Catholic Christian and also for other marriages, the form of celebration acceptable to that community is valid.
CIC Can. 1161 §1. The radical sanation of an invalid marriage is its convalidation without the renewal of consent, which is granted by competent authority and entails the dispensation from an impediment, if there is one, and from canonical form, if it was not observed, and the retroactivity of canonical effects.

 

[MJDorry]

People, you all say that the Church will not be affected by this.

Well think again.

I admire your optimism, but you all must realize this is the latest in a long line of planned legislation and or court rulings aimed at persecuting the Church.

This is a BIG deal.

And even if they do NOT force the Church to do this, it will STILL have the same effects on America that Roe v Wade had, and IS having.

The last I checked, the Church is in Rome, not in the US. And as far as I know, the Church has been able to maintain a positive influence in countries where state-instituted same-sex marriage has been legal for years. I hate this mentality in the US where if something changes here, the end must be nigh.

 

[peach_pit]

What’s going to happen to Catholic caterers, wedding photographers, bridal shop owners, bakers, etc. who refuse to do business with gay weddings? Will there be a conscience exemption, or will they be forced to comply?

They will be sued by activists. Faithful Catholics will lose those court battles. For punishment, they will at the very least lose a portion of their wealth.

 

[peach_pit]

Advocates of SSM are absolutely convinced that homosexual marriage is the same as interracial marriage and that opposition is simiarly equivalent.

So how do you think the Church will fare in a society that equates the two?

The heat will be turned up. But the Catholic Church will be fine. The gates of Hell ain’t gonna prevail against us. We are our own society, and it’s much larger, older, wiser, and better led than any country.