Jennifer, you seem to be under the impression that self-sacrifice is anathema to gay people.  But consider.  As things stand now, gay people who form relationships in most areas of our country are willing to spend their entire lives building that relationship, with everything it entails, such as a home, pets, retirement savings, and, yes, even children.  At the end, when one of them dies, it’s all too easy for relatives to step in and take away what has been built.  To be willing to take that chance in order to be able to spend your life with someone…that’s a major investment in self-sacrifice.

Yes!  We must reform traditional marriage from the inside out.  We all should reflect on our own marriages and our approach and whether we understand the purpose of our marriages.  This is much along the lines of George Weigel’s book, The Courage to Be Catholic.

To add to Jennifer’s comments: There are many gay couples, married & committed with children whose unions are better examples to all than many of the so-called hetero-sexual marriages. Often times, these unions reveal to the rest of us just what a loving Christian union should be.

In my opinion, the state of traditional marriage may make gay union look good, but such comparison is just not in the same world.  But what’s common is relevant in the here and now; the powerful head of the World Bank and the royal family of US politics share the same fall.  It has taken the simple to show up the mighty must surely sound a warning that sex will destroy the temple of Babylon.  Sex is now in the psyche that people will defend their sexual freedom before they defend their gods, and the Church may need to dig deeper in order to save the individual, let alone marriage.

Ms. Fulwiler, this is a very thoughtful piece.  And I agree that a conversation on marriage is what those of us in support of traditional marriage need to have.  One thing that does intriguingly come out of your article is the emphasis these days on “lifestyle” rather than on life, period.  As for self-sacrifice, while it’s part of this larger conversation of marriage, it’s (as you touch on in this piece) part of the larger conversation on what sex is actually for.  So I think there probably needs to be several conversations happening at once, precisely because contraception’s allowing us to radically redefine human sexuality touches on so many things at once.  Because while marriage is about self-sacrifice, certainly, it’s also touches upon some of the other points you’ve made in the past—about whether our children belong to us or to God:  whether, therefore, they’re gifts from God, and whether or not we have a “right” to them (and the resulting commodification of people—reduced to eggs, sperm, embryos, uteri), simply because it’s what we desire or want.  Nobody, regardless of their sexual orientation or identification has any “right” to a child, just because they want one.  And before Catholics can speak up, we need to go back to the likes of Humanae Vitae, which so many people don’t want to touch.

To PeterTW: Please don’t equate sex with the violence of rape, as is alleged in the case of the head of the IMF of this week.

As more is being revealed about the case (the maid is Muslim), the alledged act was a sheer act of violence. Sex as an act is not a component of it. Class and race, as well as sex as gender, may well be.

@Kieth,
Jennifer said nothing about whether gay people were capable of self sacrifice.  She did say that the notion of gay marriage would have been alien to a gay man a couple hundred years ago because the notion that living with another man would entail the sort of self sacrifice that naturally comes with bearing and raising children would have been impossible in a world without surrogate mothers, wide spread adoption, etc. 

The whole point that Jennifer was making is that by removing the concept of self-sacrifice from marriage, and divorcing the notion that children are a natural consequence of marriage, social conservatives have little solid reason to claim that gay marriage is wrong.  Faithful Catholics, who understand that marriage and children are flip sides of the same coin understand better why gay marriage cannot be marriage in God’s eyes.

Now, I know the natural counter argument to this is what about people who are sterile, too old or otherwise incapable of having children; why should they be allowed to marry and not gay people?  The reason is that men and women who are incapable of being a biological are still by nature men and women and therefore intended by God to be joined; bringing two different but complementary beings together; perhaps to be fruitful in other ways.

“There are many gay couples, married & committed with children whose unions are better examples to all than many of the so-called hetero-sexual marriages. Often times, these unions reveal to the rest of us just what a loving Christian union should be.”

Well, opinion polls show the the majority of gays don’t actually want to get married they just want the right to do so.  And the statistics show that gay marrieds get divorced at the same rate as straight marrieds.  And as the song goes, “no one knows what goes on behind closed doors”.  People have said the same thing more than once about straight couples only to find out later that things weren’t as “Christian” on the inside as they seemed on the outside.

It really is not enough to say that gay marriage is an invalid option until we acknowledge that a large number of heterosexual marriages are invalid by the higher standard set by the Church.  It is not based on some sort of hatred of gay people, but a deeper understanding of the purpose of marriage and rules of Christian chastity (before and during of marriage).  And as Christians we really need to remove the planks out of our own eyes.

More grist for the mill:  Someone just wrote a question in the newspaper for “Ms.Manners” about addressing invitations to the many “polyamorous” groups she is friends with.  Her friends seemed to have started out as couples who added a third person (usually a female).  This is but one more extension of the homosexual “marriage” game.  Is this truly where we want our society to go?  Is this the society we want for our children and grandchildren?  I don’t.
It flies in the face of common sense to think that our modern society knows better than every previous society about what best constitutes a marriage relationship.  What hubris.

I get it - you’d be delighted for gay people to marry as long as they committed to adopting children. Presumably you would also call for the annulment of any marriage that hasn’t produced a child within five years, and ban infertile or older women from marrying.

“Because if social conservatives truly embraced the millenia-old understanding of marriage, as an institution founded on self-sacrifice and inherently ordered toward the bringing forth of new life, my guess is that the demand for gay “marriage” would subside.”

This ‘if ... then’ sentence makes absolutely no sense. If social conservatives thought of marriage as child-farming, then gays wouldn’t want to get married any more? Whuh?

Jennifer, do you ever even read back what you’ve just typed?

You can’t have a conversation in the church about the meaning of heterosexual marriage and human sexuality. As soon as someone strays one iota from the paaty line the scribes and Pharisees will send in the sex police and pound down the offender. There is no room for open challenging discussion and study.

Did you watch the royal wedding?  I thought the priest’s words were a beautiful affirmation of marriage.

For the sake of my own time, I’m gonna largely plagiarize off myself from Tim Muldoon’s column and alter to fit Jennifer’s wonderful words.

We often refer to marriage as a “one-flesh union”.  Most times, we consider this to be a metaphorical understanding, but that is not the case.  In the marriage bed, a man and a woman truly become one flesh with each other.  Within each person, their bodies function in one complete unit.  Our digestive systems function on their own to extract nutrients from our food, our respiratory systems take in oxygen and remove carbon dioxide from our systems.  This holds true for every organ system in the body except one.

Our reproductive systems in and of themselves are incomplete.  On their own, they do not function towards their ultimate end - that of reproduction.  No man on his own can sire progeny, and no woman (barring one who had some divine assistance) ever gave birth to a child without a man.  However, when a man and a woman join in coital sex, their bodies function together as one complete unit towards one ultimate goal - they are literally one flesh together.

This union is entirely unique - their bodies are not merely interacting with each other, like they might with a handshake or a kiss.  They are literally working as one functional unit, with the concerted goal of reproduction.  And so children are the natural fruit of marital love, because marital love defines marriage, being the only instance in which two people can literally become one.

Viewed in this purely biological way, we can see why natural marriage excludes those who cannot participate in this type of union, no matter the quality of their affections towards each other.  Even infertile couples can still participate in the type of union that gives rise to children, even if their actual union cannot.  But two men or two women cannot within themselves participate in that type of union.  They remain forever two bodies interacting with each other, because (to be frank) two penises or two vaginas cannot act towards one biological goal.  The goal cannot merely be sexual pleasure, because (again to be frank) two people are simply not needed for sexual pleasure to be achieved.

This also explains why marriage is limited to one man and one woman, since no two men and a woman or any other combination can simultaneously participate in a one flesh union.  They might do so in parts, but not all together.

Viewing marriage in this way also explains why we expect marriage to be exclusive and lifelong, because marriage is not simply about the happiness of two adults but also about the well-being of the children that they bring forth as part of their marital love. Marriage is exclusive because children deserve to know who their parents are. Marriage is lifelong because the knowledge that their parents are in a stable relationship is vital to the physical and mental well-being of children. Children who grow up in broken homes almost universally do poorer than children who grow up in intact families made up of their biological mother and father. Even adult children can be affected by the divorce of their parents - my older cousin no longer speaks to his mother after his parents’ divorce, which happened when he was in his thirties.

This stability is also vital for the couple - who wants to worry that their spouse will leave them if at some point they become infirm or their looks change with age? And yet if marriage is merely about the feelings we have for another person, lifelong marriage no longer makes sense. In fact, if our feelings for a person wane or if we develop those feelings for another person (both of which may naturally happen over the course of time) it only makes sense to leave the deficient relationship to pursue the one that apparently defines marriage - the one where the feelings are. If marriage is simply about the emotional feelings of the adults involved, then neither exclusivity or permanence are a built-in factor of marriage.

What’s more, this allows us to understand why the use of contraception destroys the one-flesh union of marriage.  Through the use of contraception, we either block the one flesh union in a physical manner - as with diaphragms and condoms, or we render our reproductive systems nonfunctional as in the case of hormonal contraceptives. By artificially rendering this one-flesh union null, we then reduce ourselves to merely interactive with each other, not working as one unit any longer.

We no longer invite children to be the natural fruit of marital love (we should note that infertile couples often desperately invite, though that invitation is not always answered), we actively work against them being any sign of affection between the couple, so that they become instead a lifestyle choice, as Jennifer so aptly stated.  Thus separated from marital love, anyone who wants a child is free to have one in whatever means necessary - adoption, artificial insemination, etc. and what’s more, we’re free to have the child that we specifically want - one that is free of disease, that has good genes from a choice father, etc.  The needs of the child rarely come into question except that we reassure ourselves that children are “adaptable” and will surely do well in whatever situation we put them in as long as they are “wanted”.

We have, in essence, turned the entire system on its head, then wonder why our children are becoming more intractable, why our families are falling apart, and society of itself is in a general disarray.  Why shouldn’t it be, when we have forgotten what any biology student two hundred years could have told you?  Sex produces babies.

Great article!  Good arguments.  However, looking at things unbiased and scientifically, we all know that using anything for the purpose of which it is intended is positive.  As a result, things flourish.  Any time mutations or growths set in, something negative happens.  We are living in a time when mutations and growths have set in on marriage, and many are saying “yeah, yeah” let it be, let’s be nice to each other, let’s have gay marriage.  In another 40 years we will all hear the horror stories of children raised in these conditions, much like we heard horror stories of homosexuals and pedophiles hiding within the confines of the Catholic church.  All things come to pass.

Pam,
Wow, great post.  You stated clearly what I think many of us here have been trying to clearly articulate.  Thank you so much.

Jen—this is pretty much where I am in the issue.  If we think we need to target gay marriage specifically, I can’t see why. 

The point of the Gospels and the term “bearing witness” is that our own commitment to live well and with joy the values of Catholic marriage, will transform society to the point of making such petty political squabbles moot.

If we don’t believe that—I guess we don’t believe the mustard seed either. 

Similar to the Holy Father’s recent comment about condoms, in relative scale, stable cohabitational relationships might be a step in the right moral direction, in a positive law environment that provides more obligation between a landlord and lessee than a husband and wife. 

Now if they start to pass laws that PREVENT us from living life well as a married couple, espousing the values of Catholic marriage from living example, then we’ve got a fight worth the narrow focus we currently see on this issue, which I agree, is a battle we lost when the 50th state passed no fault divorce, making it the law of the land.

I’m sorry to say I have known many gay poeple in “relationships”—But they sure were not monogamous.  Many of them would hit clubs looking for a “third” for the night and they alos have open relationships.  This, to me, is why I am opposed to gay “marriage”—For it is a mockery of the term.

Poeple forget that “Marriage” is really a church sacrament—and that is why so many poeple are opposed to it. 

And for gay couples to adopt children.  I feel ABSOLUTELY NOT!  A child needs to learn their gender role and should have a mother and father.  Thus, not only is it inappropriate for gays to adopt children, but even straight couples that are intimate without being married and have children—then the guy runs away leaving the woman as a single mother doesn’t help in the development of a child, either. 

Sooo many poeple want sexual freedom-that’s fine—they will have to live with themselves and what they do in their lives, but when it comes to them wanting to dilute someone else’s religous rights and want to involve children in the mix is downright criminal IMO.

What is “Radical re-thinking of Marriage?” The most radical rethinking of marriage was by Jesus himself. When the Son of God rethinks.. consider it RETHOUGHT! You can’t raise a psychosis to a Sacrament! and that is what the Gays want.. (now out on a limb I go.. ) I said GAYS. This term signifies a lifestyle chosen and a way of communicating to the world.. Homosexual personalities are not GAY! Why do we think that every homosexual person is gay? or that every Gay person is necessarily homosexual?  I know what I am talking about, and I will defend my position.. useless to vilify, because Jesus has rethought marriage! Take it up with God! (Good luck, you can’t fight city hall!) I find the premises of the Gay Rights so annoyingly stupid and unintelligent.. Paul VI of blessed memory wrote a whole letter on the pastoral care of people living in irregular relationships. He had a whole lot to say about Christians of the Catholic church who are homosexual and who before conversion had chosen a “Gay Lifestyle”. One has to love the Sinner, but hate the sin.  As for Fr Tim’s comment, may God have mercy on him! Father bless and preach the Gospel and bring Jesus to the flock in your care.. Don’t drive them away with you opinions.. Pope Benedict cares deeply about the state of the clergy.. But one thing I learned when I took my Theology was that I, and I alone am responsible for my actions before God. BUt to vilify your fellow priest with no experiential knowledge of what you speak is vile, Father. If YOU have wisdom about marriage share it, but don’t drive away those who seek God, with who wants them they just fight all day!

“Sex produces babies.”

... if you define it so narrowly it only encompasses baby making, yes. If I define ‘breakfast’ as ‘corn flakes’ then all breakfast is corn flakes.

It is self evident that not *all* sex produces babies.

” I’m sorry to say I have known many gay poeple in “relationships”—But they sure were not monogamous.  Many of them would hit clubs looking for a “third” “

... if you define it so narrowly that ... hmmm, sensing a pattern here.

OK. Look. Here’s why you are wrong: you are wrong if there’s ever been a monogamous homosexual couple. And you are wrong if there has ever been an unfaithful heterosexual.

This isn’t an argument, this is plain and simple prejudice. You hang around gay bars (apparently) and see gay people cheating on their gay partners? Gosh, well done. I guess all gay people are like that. A Lithuanian stole my wallet once, I guess every Lithuanian’s a dirty wallet thief.

“when it comes to them wanting to dilute someone else’s religous rights”

I’m a married atheist. Do you think I should be allowed to adopt a child?

“I find the premises of the Gay Rights so annoyingly stupid and unintelligent.”

If it’s any consolation, I’m sure it’s mutual.

“It flies in the face of common sense to think that our modern society knows better than every previous society”

Your argument depends on the belief that every single previous society defined marriage as when one man and one woman established in a religious ceremony that they would form lifelong, monogamous relationship to produce children.

This belief is false.

“Did you watch the royal wedding?  I thought the priest’s words were a beautiful affirmation of marriage.”

Yes. If you’re a Catholic, then you are forbidden by law to marry into the British royal family. Is that a beautiful affirmation of marriage, too?

Jennifer, not everyone who is childless is childless by choice; some have tried unsuccessfully to have children and can not afford adoption.  Sometimes it’s just easier for couples to say they don’t children than to go into there history of failed reproduction. 

Therese6040, I totally agree! 

Pam, Great analysis!

I agree that I got more “don’t get married” comments than “congratulations” when I got married.  It’s disheartening.  I believe in the institution of marriage, but I look around and so many people do not.

“I believe in the institution of marriage, but I look around and so many people do not.”

Do you think that the gays and lesbians who want the right to be married believe in marriage? If you knew a gay couple who loved each other and were monogamous and thinking of adopting and they said they were getting married, would you say ‘don’t get married’ or would you say ‘congratulations’?

Fr. Tim,
I have no idea if you are a real priest or only play one on this blog.  I find this attitude that one must have direct personal experience in a matter to have knowledge or wisdom of the situation to be one of the more silly assumptions that has been made by modern man.  If we take this idea to its logical conclusion, then we must also accept that no one is capable of teaching anyone else, other than their own spouse about marriage since every marriage is different.
—
Ultimately, imho, while priests may not have the direct personal experience of living with a wife, they have had lots of opportunity to observe many marriages from the outside.  Further, I think there is the problem of being too close to the problem.  I have seen more than one article or book written by an “expert” whose advice might have worked wonderfully well in their own marriage, but I am sure would wreck my own.  In contrast, celibacy might allow the the priest to be more objective. 
—
Over all, I would say the advice I have received about marriage from priests, based on the collective wisdom of the Church, is at least as good as the advice I have gotten from people who are married or who have been married.

There are a lot of good points here for sure.  For me being that marriage is at the core a religous sacrament, then we must look at the purpose of it’s original design.  The sacrament of marriage was designed for the union of man and woman until death, before God. The fruit of the union would be the children created as a result of this union. Society has re-defined it as a possible permanent or possible temporary state of living arrangement, thus no longer rendering this as a sacrament.  Marriage, like most things of secular world, has become disposable.  To truly live out the sacrament of marriage as originally designed, one would need to possess a real knowledge, and understanding of the depth of the committment being taken before God, which I believe we have completely lost.  We have so !@#$% our society with immoral acceptance, that we can no longer function to the advantage of society, but only to it’s detriment.  Our moral compass is well of the mark, which has erroded our families, our communities, and our way of thinking.  Our society want’s to redefine everything so that everyone get’s their way.  This is God’s law.  It’s not re-definable.  Marriage is between a man and a woman, not a man and man, not a woman and woman.  If society deems it necessary, I’m sure they will create a secularized, !@#$%, legal way of recognizing gay relationships.  But this will never be marriage as God designed.

Jemima Cole,
I think gays and lesbian believe in the benefits that come with marriage, I’m not sure why else they would want to be married.  If I knew of a gay couple getting “married” I would say “Why?”

“If I knew of a gay couple getting “married” I would say “Why?””

And you’d ask that of a heterosexual couple, too? Or do heterosexual couples never get married for the ‘benefits that come with’ marriage?

The only way that you can sneer at gay marriage and celebrate heterosexual marriage is if you ignore all the gay people who otherwise meet your criteria while also ignoring all the straight people who don’t. For all this talk of ‘natural’ and ‘eternal values’, you don’t half seem to be making it all up as you go along.

Do you think that it is right that *any* man and *any* woman can get married pretty much as and when they want to - some eighteen year old drunkard can pick up a fifty five year old stripper in Vegas and get married by Elvis ten minutes later ... but that a loving couple who’ve been faithful for forty years, devoted Catholics, share a house, adopted children, lived productive live can’t because they both have penises?

“To truly live out the sacrament of marriage as originally designed”

Hello.

Would you care to outline exactly when it was marriage was considered a sacrament by the Catholic Church? When the sacrament, in its current form, was ‘designed’? If you don’t know, look it up. The answer may surprise you. Clue: it wasn’t ‘in Biblical times’ or ‘something Jesus said’.

Jennifer,

Welcome to my world. You try to focus on marriage, and you get numerous comments about something other then marriage.  Not everyone gets married, but everyone has a ‘kinship chart’ to put in anthropological terms. As I like to say true to Catholic teaching, even gay people have a mom and dad.

Now today because we have separate sex from is biological function, never mind contraception, we conception outside the womb and surrogacy/donors for pregnancy. Everything is outsources, literally consider reproductive tourism in India.

You try to bring it together in action, but according to our civil laws we can’t even have a word for it. We’re silenced, we can’t talk about how babies are made and that they have a mom and a dad without being detoured. We would be better off in terms of conversation, if states actually stricken out all marriage laws, then to redefine a word we are legally bound to use as they say.

Think about the word itself, matrimony, literally means ‘act of becoming a mother’. The biology is evident, but as individuals we choose to deny it. That’s unfortunate.

Thanks,
Renee Aste
Lowell Massachusetts

“I find this attitude that one must have direct personal experience in a matter to have knowledge or wisdom of the situation to be one of the more silly assumptions that has been made by modern man.”

Yes, it’s true. That’s why I never took a driving test. I just rely on some old man sitting in the back seat barking instructions at me. He’s never driven a car, either. It’s such fun! Actually knowing stuff and having experience are the sort of things only a moron would do. And I don’t want to listen to morons. Anyway, the old man is shouting that I should stop being on the internet while I’m driving! I trust him with my life! Whoops, just ran over another child. Hey, it’s God’s will that kid got squished.

Thanks Gerald @ 11.04 AM
That’s exactly my point; ‘sex is in the psyche’, as you claim to be a tool or weapon of religious conflicts, class struggles, political agenda, racial incitements, animal behaviour, and so on, let alone in a traditional marriage or other. 
But why not join Anglicans or start another church of homosexual gay unions than trying to destroy the fundamentals of the Catholic Church.  I’m sure your loving and caring will be fruitful too unless homosexual gay unions fit in the above description.

“Think about the word itself, matrimony, literally means ‘act of becoming a mother’.”

OK. Let’s think about the *actual* word we’re talking about, not some other word. ‘Marriage’. From ‘Maritus’. Husband. No mention of wives or kids, there. Adam and Steve all the way.

Dear Jemima Cole,
Your analogy is not comparable to my own, since corn flakes are not a unique aspect of breakfast, while coital union between a man and a woman IS unique in all of man’s experience, as I demonstrated.

And yes, by that measure, because two penises cannot work towards one bodily function by which otherwise would not be accomplished, two men cannot indeed get married because they cannot become one flesh.  That one flesh union is unique to coital intercourse between a man and a woman, and therefore only a man and a woman (and only ONE man and ONE woman) can participate in a unique natural institution.

When, you might ask, was that institution set up?  When humankind was created male and female.  That’s why marriage is known as the primordial sacrament, the sacrament that existed before all the rest and that existed even before the coming of Jesus.  It has existed - even if unacknowledge, as long as mankind has.

Jemima Cole said:

“Would you care to outline exactly when it was marriage was considered a sacrament by the Catholic Church? When the sacrament, in its current form, was ‘designed’? If you don’t know, look it up. The answer may surprise you. Clue: it wasn’t ‘in Biblical times’ or ‘something Jesus said’.”

I’m sorry, Jemima I am tied up with work and do not have the necessary time to do the research. Can you please enlighten me?

And if I may request something else of you, I was curious if you would provide a definition of ‘love’ for me and give a description of the greatest love one person could give to another.

I ask just so I may better understand your point of view.

“It flies in the face of common sense to think that our modern society knows better than every previous society”

Your argument depends on the belief that every single previous society defined marriage as when one man and one woman established in a religious ceremony that they would form lifelong, monogamous relationship to produce children.

This belief is false.

—Excuse me, Athiest—but have you ever picked up a bible?  Marriage is indeed a scarament of the church, it is between a man and a women and sex is indeed (but not always followed) to express the love between a man and a women to produce a trinity—mother, father & children.  This cannot be done between two poeple of the same sex. period! 

Calling two men or two women married is like calling a skateboard a mac truck.  They may both be used for transportation, yet they are still very different. 

If two poeple of the same sex want a so-called monogamous relations ship and IS TRUE to each other as that (plus, lets face it, they really want to reap in the perks of medical insurance, visiting rights if their spouse is sick, and be able to SUE EACH other when they want to divorce)—call is what is—a civil union.  Some poeple, both gay and straight still are not happy about civil unions, but at least it will shut up most poeple on both sides and act as a compromise.  But, as always with extremist, you give an inch, they want a mile.

I’ll keep my ideals out of your bedroom as long as you keep them out of my church.

“But why not join Anglicans or start another church of homosexual gay unions than trying to destroy the fundamentals of the Catholic Church.”

What’s happening, though, is that Catholics (and other social conservatives) are actively lobbying to block all gay marriage, everywhere. Secular and religious. There is not a single gay couple anywhere in America who would dictate the manner in which a Catholic could or could not get married or lecture you on what marriage ‘really means’. But the Catholic church is active in attempts to dictate their terms to every gay couple.

If Catholics agreed to let non-Catholics go off and do what they want when it came to their own marriages, there wouldn’t be an issue.

Jemima,
Glad to see that you completely ignored what I wrote before you ridiculed it.  I never said that it was better if the priest had no knowledge.  I also never said it was bad if the priest had experience.  What I did say was that “personal experience” was over rated. 
—
Lets put it this way; lets say you are worried about heart disease.  Are you going to take the advice of a 90 year old who smoked and ate bacon and ribeye steak every day since from personal experience they never harmed him or are you going to take the advice of your 30 year old doctor who has seen what the 90 year old’s life style can do to many people?  The 90 year old has personal experience, but all the evidence suggests he is giving really bad advice, the doctor has knowledge from study and from observational experience… and I think most rational people would believe that the Doctor’s advice is better.
—
Of course, I have noticed your form of debate tends to ignore other people’s actual arguments in favor of distorting what they have actually said so you can ridicule them.  So perhaps the rest of us should just learn to ignore your trolling.

“—Excuse me, Athiest—but have you ever picked up a bible?  Marriage is indeed a scarament of the church”

Sorry. I have a Bible right in front of me. Could you point me to the relevant passage? The bit where Jesus says marriage is one of the sacraments? Having trouble finding it.

It is a sacrament of the Church. The question I asked was when marriage *became* one of the sacraments.

“If two poeple of the same sex want a so-called monogamous relations ship and IS TRUE to each other as that (plus, lets face it, they really want to reap in the perks of medical insurance, visiting rights if their spouse is sick, and be able to SUE EACH other when they want to divorce)—call is what is—a civil union.  Some poeple, both gay and straight still are not happy about civil unions, but at least it will shut up most poeple on both sides and act as a compromise.  But, as always with extremist, you give an inch, they want a mile.”

I think you have expressed the basis of your belief and your intellectual capacity far more eloquently than I ever could.

Jemima,
If you think that there are no Gay couples in America who would not lecture a Catholic about what marriage means or about who should be allowed to get married then you are delusional.  Already in states where gay marriage or civil unions are legal, Catholic organizations have to grant the same benefits to gay couples as they would to heterosexual married couples even though the Church does not recognize the marriage of the gay couple. 
—
Just because the state might not force the Church to “marry” gay couples doesn’t mean the Church won’t be forced to recognize gay marriage.

“Of course, I have noticed your form of debate tends to ignore other people’s actual arguments in favor of distorting what they have actually said so you can ridicule them.  So perhaps the rest of us should just learn to ignore your trolling.”

—-Agreed.  This is a site for Catholics and poeple interested in speaking about their faith and morals—not a means to lash out at others.  Since you are an Athiest, it may be in your own best interest to join an Athiest discussion group.

MarylandBill, while reading your post, I just realized I was speaking to a troll.  I mentioned nothing in my original post about gay marriage and I was sucked into the rhetoric. 

Teddy, I’m with you!

“I’m sorry, Jemima I am tied up with work and do not have the necessary time to do the research. Can you please enlighten me?”

It’s the Council of Trent, 1563. The Catholic Church did not formally consider marriage one of the sacraments until after the Reformation. Even then, celibacy was preferred.

Until then, the line was that *all* sex was fornication. Bishop Cyprian said that the world had too many people in it, now, so ‘go forth and multiply’ didn’t apply any more. Augustine said that he thought marriage was a sacrament (and was called a heretic), but he also said that all sex was sin, and the Kingdom of God would only return when everyone was celibate.

Church teaching has changed over time. If you had a Catholic service, it followed guidelines set down in 1907, not dating from the Garden of Eden.

from gotanswers.org

Question: “What does the Bible say about marriage?”

Answer: The creation of marriage is recorded in Genesis 2:23-24: “The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called “woman,” for she was taken out of man.’ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” God created man and then made woman to complement him. Marriage is God’s “fix” for the fact that “it is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18).

The word “helper” used to describe Eve in Genesis 2:20 means “to surround, to protect or aid, help.” Eve was created to be alongside Adam as his “other half,” to be his aid and his helper. A man and woman, when married, become “one flesh.” This oneness is manifested most fully in the physical union of sexual intimacy. The New Testament adds a warning regarding this oneness. “So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate” (Matthew 19:6).

There are several epistles written by the apostle Paul that refer to marriage and how believers are to operate within the marriage relationship. One such passage is 1 Corinthians chapter 7, and another is Ephesians 5:22-33. When studied together, these two passages provide biblical principles that form a framework for a God-pleasing marriage relationship.

The Ephesians passage is especially profound in reference to a successful biblical marriage. “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior” (Ephesians 5:22-23). “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). “In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church” (Ephesians 5:28-29). “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh” (Ephesians 5:31).

When a believing husband and wife institute God’s principles, a biblical marriage results. A biblically based marriage is one that is in balance, with Christ as the head of the man and the wife together. The biblical concept of marriage is a oneness between two individuals that pictures the oneness of Christ with His church.

You beat me to it, Teddy. :-)  Let me throw in a few others from the Fathers of the Church.
“Flee wicked arts; but all the more discourse regarding them. Speak to my sisters, that they love in our Lord, and that their husbands be sufficient for them in the flesh and spirit. Then, again, charge my brethren in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they love their wives, as our Lord His Church. If any man is able in power to continue in purity, to the honour of the flesh of our Lord, let him continue so without boasting; if he boasts, he is undone; if he become known apart from the bishop, he has destroyed himself. It is becoming, therefore, to men and women who marry, that they marry with the counsel of the bishop, that the marriage may be in our Lord, and not in lust. Let everything, therefore, be done for the honour of God.” Ignatius of Antioch, To Polycarp, 5 (A.D. 110).

“Now that the Scripture counsels marriage, and allows no release from the union, is expressly contained in the law, ‘Thou shalt not put away thy wife, except for the cause of fornication;’ and it regards as fornication, the marriage of those separated while the other is alive. Not to deck and adorn herself beyond what is becoming, renders a wife free of calumnious suspicion while she devotes herself assiduously to prayers and supplications; avoiding frequent departures from the house, and shutting herself up as far as possible from the view of all not related to her, and deeming housekeeping of more consequence than impertinent trifling. ‘He that taketh a woman that has been put away,’ it is said, ‘committeth adultery; and if one puts away his wife, he makes her an adulteress,’ that is, compels her to commit adultery. And not only is he who puts her away guilty of this, but he who takes her, by giving to the woman the opportunity of sinning; for did he not take her, she would return to her husband.” Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 2:24 (A.D. 202).
“Two reasons can be advanced to explain why the marriage was celebrated with external festivities in Cana of Galilee, and why the water was truly changed into wine: so that the tide of Bacchanalian frenetics in the world might be turned to chastity and dignity in marriage, and so that the rest might be directed aright to the enjoyment both of wine free of toil and of the favor that presented it; so that in every way it might stop the mouths of those aroused against the Lord, and so that it might show that He is God with the Father and His Holy Spirit.” Epiphanius, Panarion (Against All Heresies),5 1:30 (A.D. 370).
“Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly ejaculated, nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted” Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor of Children 2:10:91:2 (A.D. 191).
“This proves that you [Manicheans] approve of having a wife, not for the procreation of children, but for the gratification of passion. In marriage, as the marriage law declares, the man and woman come together for the procreation of children. Therefore, whoever makes the procreation of children a greater sin than copulation, forbids marriage and makes the woman not a wife but a mistress, who for some gifts presented to her is joined to the man to gratify his passion.” Augustine, The Morals of the Manichees 18:65 (A.D. 388).
That’s all well before the Council of Trent, and many even before Augustine.

From answers.com

Leveticus 20:13, “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is an abomination, they shall surely die.” Romans 1:27-27 says, “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts… Men committed indecent acts with other men, and recieved in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.”
—Jemima Cole, I Hope my last two posts will help you with your bible references

When did marriage become a sacrament?  The simple answer is that it has been a sacrament since the time of Jesus.  Usually it is believe to have been, since the Wedding feast of Cana. 
—
It should be noted that everything that is considered a sacrament by the Church today was not called a sacrament in the Bible.  Rather, the Church, through the scripture and tradition, recognized certain practices as sacraments after the fact.  Doubtless Jemima, you will claim that it was declared a sacrament at the Council of Trent or perhaps, if you are generous, at the Council of Florence 300 years earlier. 
—
That being said, there are reasons why we can believe that the early Church thought of marriage in sacramental terms even if they didn’t have the language for it.  At the latest, we can say that the Church understood the seven sacraments to be sacraments (again perhaps using different words) by 451 AD; otherwise the Oriental Orthodox Church probably would not have the same list of sacraments that the Catholic Church has.  That being said, if we look in the Bible, we recognize that even the New Testament gives marriage special attention.  Jesus prohibits divorce and remarriage; Paul likens the relationship of Jesus and the Church the a groom and his bride.  Oh right, and Jesus explicitly defined marriage as being between a man and a woman.

“This is a site for Catholics and poeple interested in speaking about their faith and morals—not a means to lash out at others.”

I’m not ‘lashing out’, I’m pointing out untruth when untruth is said. I’ll do you a deal. You find the bit in the Bible that says marriage is one of the sacraments, as was asserted here, and I’ll go away.

This is an issue that affects millions of people. If you really think all gay people spend their time cruising gay bars to cheat on their partners or set up threesomes and that’s what the ‘gay lifestyle’ entails ... well, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed just how boring most gay people are. If you think gay marriage is some sort of welfare entitlement fraud ... well, there are easier ways to make a buck.

This is a hot button political issue. It deserves better than stereotyping and circling the wagons, and that’s true for both sides. If you want a forum where Catholics endlessly agree with each other and say the stupidest things and are never called on it ... well, I’m sure there are plenty of those.

What’s more, dear Jemima Cole, is that your challenge to show where the Bible calls something a sacrament falls flat to Catholics, since *none* of the seven sacraments are named directly as sacraments in Scripture.  That might be of concern to an evangelical or otherwise “Bible” Christian, but we Catholics are not simply people of the book.  We are people of the Church, who gave us the Bible, and despite the fact that you can always find people who disapproved of anything that She has ever said, that does not thereby mean that her truth or her teachings has radically altered in any way over the centuries.

“Leveticus 20:13, “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is an abomination, they shall surely die.” Romans 1:27-27 says, “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts… Men committed indecent acts with other men, and recieved in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.”
—Jemima Cole, I Hope my last two posts will help you with your bible references”

No. Answer the question I asked, not one of your own devising.

I did not ask a question about gay marriage, or homosexuality. I asked where in the Bible it says marriage is one of the sacraments.

Thing is, I have read the Bible. Cover to cover. It’s a great book, really good fun. The bit with the talking donkey, the bit where God’s married, the bit where children are killed by a bear for mocking a bald man, the bit where all the dead holy men rise from their graves at the moment of the resurrection. I read all that. I didn’t find the bit where marriage was one of the sacraments.

If it helps, this is probably the point where you flip your argument around from ‘you don’t know the Bible’ to a declaration, probably with every third word spelled wrong - dude, you managed to make a spelling error *cutting and pasting* - that I only have book smarts, not street smarts.

You were wrong about the Bible saying marriage was one of the sacraments. Be man enough to admit that an atheist just schooled you.

Thank you Jemima, Teddy, Pam, and MarylandBill for your replies. Extra thanks to Teddy and Pam for providing sources.

So here are my next questions: Why was the Council of Trent called? What was the purpose of the Council? Why would the Church talk about and bless marriages (as evidenced by sources referred to and quoted) without laying out a specific rubric until that time (especially considering the similarities between the Catholic Church and the aforementioned Orthodox)?

“We are people of the Church”

Yes. I know. Asking for the chapter and verse was a reply to Teddy (Wednesday, May 18, 2011 3:36 PM (EDT)) who asked ‘—Excuse me, Athiest—but have you ever picked up a bible?’. I don’t mind being called ignorant, but when it’s by someone who probably started his day being outwitted by a barnyard animal, it’s a character flaw of mine that I feel the need to respond.

There is a general point here: Church teaching has changed. Over two thousand years, it’s changed. I think this is a good thing. I think it’s an inevitable thing.

But an argument from tradition, that ‘it was ever thus’ only works if it *was* ever thus. It’s simply not true that until a generation ago every human being ever born would have agreed that marriage was between one man and one woman, for the purpose of having children.

Any argument that says it was starts from a false premise. And ‘it was ever thus’ is often a bad argument. I’m not equating them, obviously, but the main argument for slavery was ‘it was ever thus’.

What is marriage for? To define it as ‘so babies are made’ is such a nasty, narrow one. Is that really all you see your own marriages as? The ‘one flesh’ one is even odder. I didn’t get married, exclusively at any rate, so that I could get a penis into my vagina. 

Marriage is a clever way of bundling together all sorts of types of stability in a relationship. That can include kids and sex, but the idea that it’s *just* about that is as silly as saying it’s just about making it easier to get cheap car insurance, or that it’s a great way to carpool when you go to the mall.

The problem the anti-gay marriage people have is they reduce a marriage down to a tally of penises. It’s the only way you can get the definition to work. Because all the *other* virtues can be there in a gay marriage - the love and stability, the belief in the future, the social bond. But there are plenty of heterosexual marriages where all there is left is that one of them has a penis and the other one doesn’t.

If you don’t like gay people having gay sex, that’s fine. But the Church’s position always used to be ‘well, if men and women are going to do that icky sex stuff, it’s not so bad if they get married’. Why not just adopt that view now with gay couples? Or, at the very least, with non-Catholic gay couples in non-Catholic marriages?

Oh, Jemima: “And if I may request something else of you, I was curious if you would provide a definition of love for me and give a description of the greatest love one person could give to another.”

I asked…you never responded.

“Why was the Council of Trent called?”

Long story short: after the Reformation led to Protestants leaving the Church, the Church had a pressing need to assert its authority and declare what it stood for. The Council addressed a lot of the complaints, clarified points of doctrine, reformed the administration of the clergy top to bottom and forbade some of the more egregious practices (like selling indulgences). The Council of Trent took about twenty years to complete its task, but it was definitive for a very long time.

Obviously there *were* marriages before the Council of Trent. But it’s only then that marriage becomes one of the formal sacraments, and marriage is something a priest has to officiate at (until then, there were all sorts of local traditions and practices). Cynically, it could be seen as an assertion of Church power - for the first time, you weren’t married unless the Church said you were married.

“The problem the anti-gay marriage people have is they reduce a marriage down to a tally of penises”—are you neglecting the lesbian community?

“I did not ask a question about gay marriage, or homosexuality. I asked where in the Bible it says marriage is one of the sacraments.”—you wnated to know about where in the bible it talks about marriage and i provided you with where to find it in the bible.

and why are you going into topics such as slavery when the topic is marriage?

Whatever, it seems that you have some sort of grudge against poeple of faith, and unfortunatly, since you never have experienced God in your heart, you will never understand our faith and how it feels to be affected by the holy spirit—and from this, comes dedication and respect for the church.

Jemima,
The question about where the Bible uses the word sacrament in relation to marriage has been settled; why don’t you drop it.  It is clear in the New Testament that starting with Jesus and Paul, the ideal for marriage was one husband and wife, and that the union was indivisible. 
—
As I and others have pointed out, there are reasons to believe that the understanding of the early Church of marriage was a sacramental understanding, and that this understanding was also held by Jesus and the apostles.  Unless you care to provide some substantial rebuttal, I think it is time to move on.

“But the Church’s position always used to be ‘well, if men and women are going to do that icky sex stuff, it’s not so bad if they get married’. Why not just adopt that view now with gay couples? Or, at the very least, with non-Catholic gay couples in non-Catholic marriages?”

AGAIN, Because marriage is a sacrament of the church and is between a MAN AND A WOMAN! Marriage is also moral.  How many times does this have to been told to poeple like you?

“I was curious if you would provide a definition of love for me and give a description of the greatest love one person could give to another. I asked…you never responded.”

I guess I don’t love you.

This isn’t an episode of Star Trek. I do not have a pithy summary of this Earth thing we humans call love.

The greatest love? To share a life, a mutual bond that helps both to become everything they can be, in a way they couldn’t individually?

Yuck. It sounds like a greetings card. The point at hand: I believe that two men can love each other, I believe two women can. My definition of love has very little to do with how well two sets of genitals may or may not fit together.

“you wnated to know about where in the bible it talks about marriage and i provided you with where to find it in the bible. and why are you going into topics such as slavery when the topic is marriage?”

Teddy. Enough. You’re a fellow atheist playing at being an idiot. I get it.

Teddy: In you’re actual asking of: “How many times does this have to be told to poeple like you?” you just said volumes about both yourself and this whole debate, whether you know it or not. Even your misspelling of the word “poeple” says quite a lot.

Most probably you’ve always been against this kind of equality, then you found additional qualifications for your position by cherry-picking from scripture and from the teachings of our Mother Church.

As we progressively move forward to accomplish civil rights for all, it’s good to revisit these positions, remembering where they come from.

“there are reasons to believe that the understanding of the early Church of marriage was a sacramental understanding”

And there are reasons to think it was not. The Church’s early position on sex was that celibacy was the ideal, and that sex even within marriage was fornication. They had the language to call marriage a sacrament - ‘marriage is a sacrament’ would have done the trick.

This was a long and dynamic debate within the church, and saying that Adam and Eve settled it, or that Jesus did, or that Paul did just doesn’t tally with the writings of the Church Fathers. Augustine was called a heretic for saying marriage was a sacrament.

“As we progressively move forward to accomplish civil rights for all, it’s good to revisit these positions, remembering where they come from.”

Catholics should also understand that it’s not that long since there were places in America and Europe where people were saying the same things about Catholics that they are now about homosexuals. It’s not natural, they come over here wanting more than their fair share, why are they doing all that weird sex stuff, your kids aren’t safe around them, I don’t want my daughter marrying one.

@Jemima: Whether the Bible formally declares that marriage is a sacrament is utterly irrelevant, and nobody here should feel any need to play along with your little “show me the chapter and verse in the Bible where marriage is declared a sacrament” game. Sacrament is a theological term that denotes a particular type of institution within the Church. Something can play the role of a sacrament whether it is formally called by that title or not. Whether something is called a “sacrament” within the text of the Bible or prior to Trent has zero theological significance. And your characterization of the Church’s position on sex prior to Trent is way off. Augustine and others who were influenced by either neo-Platonism or Manicheanism thought that all sexual acts were at least venially sinful; but there is no major tradition which holds that all sex acts were the moral *equivalent* of fornication. And this wasn’t just a sex issue- you can find analogous opinions about the consumption of food; namely that the act of eating is almost invariably accompanied by inordinate desire or some other minor moral imperfection. That doesn’t mean the church thought that eating was “icky” up until some unspecified point in recent history.

Why is focusing on the “one flesh” reality of marriage odd?  What is it that makes your relationship with your husband unique from all others?
Is it that you live under a roof with him?  I did that with roommates for a few years, and would never claim that I was married to any of them.  That you have romantic feelings for him?  Again, you’re not married to anyone that you merely date.  That you share financial responsibilities?  Roommates and siblings can do that too.  That you share your lives together?  Two bachelor friends can do that as well.
What makes your relationship unique (hopefully) is that he is the only person you have sex with.  So why does sex define your relationship?  It does so because it makes you one flesh in a unique manner that does not occur in any other type of interaction with another person.  Holding hands, kissing, laughing together, none of that makes you one flesh with another person.  Coital sexual union is the ONLY time that this occurs.  THAT is what sets marriage apart.
Now, of course, as the original article states, this understanding has been weakened because of sexual promiscuity, and more so because of contraception. We no longer link the sexual organs to reproduction, but here’s the hard fact about it.  Sexual organs take their name from what they do - sexual reproduction.  We do not call them pleasure organs, union organs, or the pleasure system.  It’s called reproductive organs, and they make up part of the reproductive system.  And its only when they act towards reproduction that they function as they ought.
That’s not to say that every act of sex results in children.  There’s a natural rhythmic cycle to fertility - that’s what we base natural family planning on.  That’s also not to say that every single union of man and woman is going to be fruitful, but it is still the *type* of union that does result in children when the reproductive systems function as they are supposed to.  No matter how you look at it though, two penises and two vaginas cannot participate in this unique form of bodily communication.  And if this is what sets a marital relationship apart from other forms of human social contact, then it must thereby exclude certain pairings of people.

@Pam: Exactly. The basic point is this: why should the state recognize any relationship between two people? Why not me and my best buddy? Why not people who are just boyfriend and girlfriend and going steady? Why not me and my siamese cat? You can try to draw the line at monagamous love and fidelity, but there is simply no *reason* for the state to exalt or protect that type of relationship. The only reason why the state has an interest in marriage is because a)heterosex is normally procreative and b)human children are dependent upon their parents for a long time and they require the stability of a two-parent environment to be raised and reared in. This has nothing to do with finding gay sex “icky” or with discriminating against homosexuals. Homosexuals have no right to marry because there is simply no *reason* for the institution to be extended to them. And there is no reason for the institution to be extended to them for the exact same reasons that the state should not recognize a relationship between me and my best buddy or between me and my girlfriend or between me and my favorite siamese cat. Those relationships don’t require the sanction and protection of the state and for obvious reasons. So yes, it is discrimination. But it is not morally arbitrary discrimination and hence there is nothing problematic about limiting marriage to heterosexuals.

Keith, per your question, I would say this.  The Church never addresses anything until it become controversial for some reason.  The Immaculate Conception of Mary is a good example of this.  There is evidence for this doctrine not only in Scripture but throughout Church history, with near-unanimous assent until AFTER the Protestant “reformation”.  It was not until fairly recently in time that the Church, in the midst of confusion about the doctrine, felt it needed to step in and officially define it, explicitly stating what was permissible and impermissible about the belief.
The same we could apply to marriage.  There was enough assent about what marriage was that certain aspects of it needed no clarification until Trent, possibly because the Church needed to define what was a sacramental marriage now that there were communities like Martin Luther’s who rejected various aspects and forms of sacraments.
As per Jemima’s complaints that Church teaching has changed, that is simply false and speaks to a lack of understanding about the nature of the Church.  The Church either is or is not the institution founded by Christ and given the protection of the Holy Spirit that we see in Matthew 16.  If it is not, then her teachings indeed can be arbitrary and can and will change over time, as we see in many Protestant communities. 
If she IS that Church however, then her teachings CANNOT change because they are divine truth, and God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  He is eternal, and therefore unable to change, since change requires time.  Our understanding of those teachings may evolve, yes, but they do not change in their basic nature.  We can compare this to the mustard seed.  A mustard seed looks entirely different from a mustard plant full grown, but at their core, they are the same entity - to be biological they have the same DNA and are the same plant at different stages of development.  Thus the early teachings of the Church might have been in a nascent form, but they remain fundamentally unchanged today, even if they are more developed and complex.
Marriage is built in to our bodies as male and female.  It is the primordial sacrament, and has always stood for the relationship of God and His Church - a union of life-giving love that is faithful, fruitful, and permanent.

“And if this is what sets a marital relationship apart from other forms of human social contact, then it must thereby exclude certain pairings of people.”

You’re defining something solely in terms of one form of behavior, then excluding whole categories of that form of behavior! It’s ... silly. “You have a unique bond with your husband because he’s the only person you’ve ever had sex with ... except these days he probably isn’t ... but my argument still stands”.

I know a lesbian couple. They have dated since they were fifteen. They are forty now. They have only ever had eyes for each other. They’ve lived together for twenty years. They are both devout Christians. They have raised two children, (one of the women’s nieces, their parents were killed in a plane crash). They are legally married. But that can’t be a real marriage.

Meanwhile, a man and a woman can email each other on Craigslist, arrange to meet at a chapel, get married the next day and that’s a sacred bond?

There are many things I do with my husband that I don’t do with anyone else. I don’t clean anyone else’s toilet. I have never put up wallpaper with another person. I have never had a joint bank account with anyone else.

Your version of marriage is such an impoverished one. Check one of them’s a man, check the other one isn’t. Married. Sacred bond. The end.

“If she IS that Church however, then her teachings CANNOT change”

Oh come on, we’re in Wonderland now.

You are seriously suggesting that no Church teaching has ever changed? Since the time of Christ? That is not what the Church teaches, and it’s such a barmy thing to say that you can’t possibly mean it.

I really believe that to a great degree we have the widespread use of contraception (even among Catholics, sadly) to thank for the confusion in society of what marriage really is supposed to be.  Janet Smith has an excellent talk (“Contraception: Why Not”) on the effects of the use of contraception on women, men and society as a whole. I actually don’t know if it’s acceptable to plug on blog comments, but it was so impacting to me that I give a CD to my family and friends who are about to get married, as well as those in our RCIA classes.

““show me the chapter and verse in the Bible where marriage is declared a sacrament” game.”

As I said, that wasn’t a general invitation, that was a response to Teddy’s ‘it’s in the Bibble, moran’ comment.

“but there is no major tradition which holds that all sex acts were the moral *equivalent* of fornication.”

Wouldn’t it be funny if I had a quote from a Church Father that used pretty much the exact form of language ‘all sex acts are the moral equivalent of fornication’?

And ... cue Tertullian:

“It is laws which seem to make the difference between marriage and fornication; through diversity of illicitness, not through the nature of the thing itself. Besides, what is the thing which takes place in all men and women to produce marriage and fornication? Commixture of the flesh, of course; the concupiscence whereof the Lord put **on the same footing** with fornication. “Then,” says (some one), “are you by this time destroying first — that is, single-marriage too?” And (if so) not without reason; inasmuch as **it, too, consists of that which is the essence of fornication**. Accordingly, the best thing for a man is not to touch a woman; and accordingly the virgin’s is the principal sanctity, because it is free from affinity with fornication.”

My asterisks, there.

I understand the distinctions you make, and they are important ones. Do you understand that the current Church teaching is not at all what Tertullian said?

Now, perhaps Mr Ratzinger has a better understanding of what Jesus was thinking than the father of Latin Christianity. I don’t know. But Tertullian taught that all sex was equally sinful, and that stood regardless of whether it was legal, within a marriage or whatever. Current church teaching is not the evolution of that, it’s the opposite of that.

“I really believe that to a great degree we have the widespread use of contraception (even among Catholics, sadly) to thank for the confusion in society of what marriage really is supposed to be.’

No. Here’s the problem: ‘really is supposed to be’.

‘Supposed’ by who? The only answer you can give is ‘the current teaching of my particular faith tradition’.

What you think it has to be is not how it always was, how it is or how it might be. If you’d like to create a little bubble where it’s how it is, that’s fine. If you’d like to extend that bubble so that I have to believe in Adam and Eve rather than real things. No thanks.

My dear Jemima,
I keep focusing on that aspect, the one flesh union, because it is the crux of the matter.  You may not clean anyone else’s toilets, but I’ve cleaned the one I share with my roommate, and people who work in housekeeping clean lots of other people’s toilets.  It’s hardly seen as an exclusive thing to married couples.
No one cries foul in a married relationship when you clean someone else’s toilet.  No one cries foul if you chat on the phone with someone other than your spouse, or go to a ballgame, or even share a hotel room for a night on a business trip.
No one cries foul when you hold your child’s hand, or kiss your child or a relative.  But sleep with someone else?  Have sex with someone else?  You better believe it.  We even have a name for it - adultery, cheating, etc.  So there is something unique about sexual union that causes us to regard it as an issue that a relationship revolves around.
We’ve forgotten it, but that reason is the one-flesh union that makes marriage not only a unique relationship, but a natural one that needs only nature to define it.

As to the teaching of the Church, yes, that actually IS what the Church teaches, and it’s true.  No teaching of the Church as regards faith and morals that was taught to believers as binding upon the Church as a whole has ever been changed.  That’s what “infallibility” is, and while it is something claimed specifically by the pope, it is also claimed by the bishops in union with each other and by the Magisterium of the Church as a whole.  That is actually what the Church teaches.
The problem you are experiencing is that you are equating one man’s teaching, such as that of Tertullian, with that of the whole Church, which is incorrect.  Tertullian, in the quote you provided, is promoting Gnosticism i.e. that the flesh and all its aspects are evil, and that only the spirit is good.  The Church has renounced that time and time again as false teaching.  We even find that mentioned in Scripture - Paul tells Timothy that “some will depart from the faith” and forbid marriage entirely - exactly what Tertullian and the Gnostics proposed.
So your attempt to prove the Church “wrong” fails utterly - the opinions of one man do not equal official Church teaching, any more than the thoughts of any one modern theologian today equate to the official teachings of the Church.

Oops, forgot my citation.  The above quote from Scripture is 1 Timothy 4:1-5 in its entirety.

I think this quote from the article is at the heart of the real problem, and the fact nobody else really comments upon it shows just how mis-framed the entire issue is:

“Because if social conservatives truly embraced the millenia-old understanding of marriage”

Just as the *root* error in all sexual deviance today (e.g gay marriage) is rooted in contraception, the root of all moral deviance today rests upon the heresy (yes, heresy) popularly known as “Conservatism”.
—————
Some background is in order: There never used to be such a thing as “liberal” and “conservative,” this distinction is wholly made-up, and only really came about recently in history. Liberalism, as originally and properly defined, was a heresy that sprang from the Enlightenment (which itself was the second phase of Protestantism) In other words, historically and factually, the “options” were Catholicism or Liberalism, not “conservatism”.
The root principle of Liberalism was “separation of Church and State” (which few people know is actually a Catholic heresy). Man was seen as the source from where truth could be derived, especially in public/social/legal matters, and God was delegated to the “private” life only. Thus, when it came to forming laws, defining morality, economic theory, etc, God and Religion had no place in this endeavor. The result was that issues like Marriage could no longer be attached to divine or natural law, and only secular philosophy could set the parameters on what was and was not legally acceptable.
—————————
Now we come to “conservatism”. Conservatism is nothing more than Classical Liberalism, since it’s built on the *same foundation* of separation of Church and State and thus pushing God out of the picture on “public” matters. Think about it, when we hear the term “Conservative” today, we instantly think two ‘essentials’ pillars: (1) Capitalism, which is separation of God and morality from economics, in the scheme of amassing wealth without “governmental interference”, and (2) “Religious Right” morality, which is essentially prevailing Protestant morality (a morality divorced from an authoritative Church and based on popular and private opinion). What is ironic is that what we call “Conservative” today was simply known traditionally and by definition as Liberalism.
———————-
The modern terminology of (Little-L) “liberalism” is simply Classical Liberalism pushed to it’s more logical forms and extremes, and thus it’s relation to “Conservatism” is only in DEGREE BUT NOT SUBSTANCE. Notice that what was considered “liberal” 20 years ago is now considered “conservative” today. In other words, “Conservatism” is simply the “caboose” of a long Liberal train, heading more and more in the “liberal” direction each day but “conservatism” eventually catching up.
———————-
Now is where the disaster manifests itself, because all the while “Conservatives” want to save marriage, they have already admitted religion has no place in politics (separation of Church and State) and thus they’re stuck since they’ve cut off any true grounds from which to found marriage other than popular and prevailing opinion of the day.
This is even why some “conservatives” even advocate saying “who cares?” when it comes to defending marriage politically/legally, yet they’re falling into a serious trap and error.
———————-
This is also why the Pro-Life movement has not been as effective as it could be, because many of them are Protestants, who already accept contraception, despite the fact the *Supreme Court* said abortion is needed to be legal precisely in the event contraception fails.
The “fault” here is “Conservatism” being a false and dangerous religious (specifically: secular) philosophy, which is why the Church has condemned it from the start.
———————-
The solution is not to say “Conservatives” have failed, since they never had a chance. The solution is to educate on what true religion is, Catholicism, and have people strive to be faithful Catholics.

@Jemima: Nice try. You can quote-mine any of the early Church fathers on this topic, but it is of zero theological significance. The fathers are not infallible and most of them taught errors on at least some subjects. It is unsurprising that you could dig up a quotation from somebody somewhere who was important to the Church but who said something erroneous. I said that no *major tradition* taught that sex was equivalent to fornication. One quote from Tertullian does not a *major tradition* make. I can now see that you are arguing to “win”; not to get at the truth.

Nick—separation of Church in State is in both St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas.  I’m not sure what “background” your are talking about.

@Jemima: Sorry to sound so angry in my last comment. But you must understand the philosophy behind the Church’s teachings. You cannot simply dig up quotations from an age dominated by Platonism and Manicheanism and pretend that they are on a par with the more rationally considered Aristotelianism of the present era. At times you seem to think as if anything which has been said in the Christian past is an equally good candidate for representing the “official” Church teaching. That just isn’t so. Think about legal cases. There are better and worse examples of legal reasoning throughout American legal history, and it would be an egregious error to say that the Dred Scott decision was somehow “exemplary” of the U.S. constitution simply because some judge affirmed it in a prominent way. Same thing with Theology. Just because some important person somewhere said something, you can’t simply assume that their opinion is either exemplary or representative of Catholic teaching rightly understood. There are central and important teachings, and there are teachings which are outliers and are ultimately unimportant. Knowing the difference between the two is one of the first steps towards sound theology.

Let me come in and expand on the relationship between the one-flesh union of man and woman and the nature of marriage.  I suspect many here known that I don’t mean that union to be the be all and end-all of marriage, but since that is apparently not evident to all, I should do my best to clarify.
The one-flesh union tells us what marriage is.  It tells us something that most of us believe already - that marriage is supposed to be permanent, fruitful, and exclusive.  Though in today’s day and age that link is weakened, there is an instinctive relationship between marriage and children.  When a couple gets married, one of the first questions they’re often asked by nosy bystanders is “When are you guys going to start having kids?”  On the flip side of that, when an unmarried couple has a child together, the question is inevitably “When/Are you going to get married?”  We have an automatic connection between marriage and children.
The one-flesh union tells us why - because in that union, the reproductive systems are complete, and function towards their natural end, that is procreation.  It is, in fact, the only way that children can arise, thus there is a natural connection between child-birth and pair-bonding between a man and a woman.
This connection to children then gives us the expectation that marriage is permanent and exclusive.  Permanence is important to the raising of children (and the psychology of the spouses) and exclusivity ensures the parentage of the children such that any child born to a husband and wife assumes that that is their father and mother.  The law assumes this as well.
Now, that union tells us what marriage is, but not how to live it out.  Permanence especially cannot rely simply on sex.  We see the disaster of divorce that has stricken our culture based on trying to maintain permanence based on physiological feelings that may wane and wax.  We Catholics are blessed to have Scripture and the Church to fill us in on that account.  A husband and a wife, they tell us, must live out sacrificial love for each other, the type of love that Christ had for His Church.  They must, in other words, die to themselves for the sake of the other.  So the Church tells us “how”.
The Church also tells us the “why” of marriage.  She tells us that marriage is a sign, a sacrament, a visible sign of an invisible reality - the reality of Christ’s love for His Church and His people.  That is that Christ gives of Himself unconditionally, that He weds Himself to His people and pursues them with all of His being.  His love is faithful and it is permanent.  He asks that we love Him exclusively as the only path to true happiness.  And through Him, the Church is given life, fruitful abundant life.  Our marriages are supposed to give us a glimpse of Christ’s love for us.
So there is, of course, more to marriage than simply sex.  But that one-flesh union is what makes marriage a unique relationship of two people and defines something more than mere friendship or partnership, though those two things must of course also be present for a marriage to truly be successful.

“@Jemima: Nice try. You can quote-mine any of the early Church fathers on this topic, but it is of zero theological significance. The fathers are not infallible and most of them taught errors on at least some subjects. It is unsurprising that you could dig up a quotation from somebody somewhere who was important to the Church but who said something erroneous. I said that no *major tradition* taught that sex was equivalent to fornication. One quote from Tertullian does not a *major tradition* make. I can now see that you are arguing to “win”; not to get at the truth.”

Oh, I wish I hadn’t deleted my prediction of your reply.

OK. I’m not ‘quote mining’ Tertullian, I’m quoting. It’s what he believed. And he’s not some random guy who wandered past, this is one of the first people to talk about Christianity in Latin. A huge influence on the early Church.

“The fathers are not infallible”.

Pam said:

“No teaching of the Church as regards faith and morals that was taught to believers as binding upon the Church as a whole has ever been changed.  That’s what “infallibility” is, and while it is something claimed specifically by the pope, it is also claimed by the bishops in union with each other and by the Magisterium of the Church as a whole.  That is actually what the Church teaches.”

So Pam was wrong?

Hi Jennifer Pierce,

You have misread/misunderstood St Thomas and St Augustine on the issue. Separation of Church and State is a grave error and condemned repeatedly by the Church. Consider this quote from Pope Leo XIII in his Encyclical ‘On True Human Liberty’:

“For, to reject the supreme authority to God, and to cast off all obedience to Him in public matters, or even in private and domestic affairs, is the greatest perversion of liberty and the worst kind of liberalism; and what We have said must be understood to apply to this alone in its fullest sense.

Next comes the system of those [modern day Republicans and Conservatives] who admit indeed the duty of submitting to God, the Creator and Ruler of the world, inasmuch as all nature is dependent on His will, but who boldly reject all laws of faith and morals which are above natural reason, but are revealed by the authority of God; or who at least impudently assert that there is no reason why regard should be paid to these laws, at any rate publicly, by the State. How mistaken these men also are, and how inconsistent, we have seen above. From this teaching, as from its source and principle, flows that fatal principle of the separation of Church and State; whereas it is, on the contrary, clear that the two powers, though dissimilar in functions and unequal in degree, ought nevertheless to live in concord, by harmony in their action and the faithful discharge of their respective duties.

But this teaching is understood in two ways. Many wish the State to be separated from the Church wholly and entirely, so that with regard to every right of human society, in institutions, customs, and laws, the offices of State, and the education of youth, they would pay no more regard to the Church than if she did not exist; and, at most, would allow the citizens individually to attend to their religion in private if so minded. Against such as these, all the arguments by which We disprove the principle of separation of Church and State are conclusive; with this super-added, that it is absurd the citizen should respect the Church, while the State may hold her in contempt. “

Another important Papal quote from Leo XIII:

“But when impious laws, setting at naught the sanctity of this great sacrament [Marriage], put it on the same footing of mere civil contracts, the lamentable result followed, that, outraging the dignity of Christian matrimony, citizens made use of legalized concubinage in place of marriage”

In short, the Church teaches the Church and State are *distinct* but not so separated that issues such as morality can be defined apart from and solely by the Church. The counter result is absurd and obvious: the ‘liberal’ Catholic politician who says “I’m personally opposed to sin X, but this doesn’t affect how I vote sin X into law.”

Wow, Jennifer, you really start some conversations - and you are so right about this.  It seems like an overwhelming task, but every great movement in the Church started out very small.  So I guess we need to begin.  Any pointers?

“At times you seem to think as if anything which has been said in the Christian past is an equally good candidate for representing the “official” Church teaching.”

Presenting Tertullian as an ‘outlier’ is just ridiculous. This is the man that came up with the basic theology of the Trinity, this is ‘the founder of Western theology’. He taught Cyprian. Not only that, he was perhaps the key early figure who established the philosophical grounding for the apostolic tradition and the authority of the Church. 

“Tertullian, in the quote you provided, is promoting Gnosticism”

This would be news to Tertullian, who wrote a dozen books that denounced every whiff of Gnosticism. He hated the Gnostics. Sorry, that statement is flat out wrong. 

Tertullian is not some random guy, some man who lived in a cave with some weird ideas. And my quote wasn’t some out of character moment, or out of context. And he was born in 160. He might have met someone who met someone who met Jesus. He was one of the people who attested that the First Epistle of Peter was genuine. Yet you dismiss him.

I’m not trying to ‘win’ anything. Tertullian was a major figure in the early Church and his teachings were orthodox Christian belief at the time. I’m right to say that, whether you think I’m right or not. He is the person who coined the phrase ‘New Testament’ (and more importantly the theological meaning of the phrase), so, y’know, I think it’s safe to concede he was a big deal.

All I’m arguing against is the ridiculous idea that the Church has never changed its position on anything, that what it teaches now, and what it emphasizes now, is *exactly* what it has always taught and emphasized.

You know that isn’t true. The law analogy is a good one. Many things that were once illegal are now legal, and vice versa. The fact that laws can change like that is a *strength* of the American Constitution. The fact Amendments can be made is a great strength. Otherwise, we’d be stuck with a rigid set of instructions from 1776 ... except we wouldn’t, because the whole thing would have collapsed.

I’m not saying the Church used to like gays and women or anything crazy like that. But the Church has changed. Even by clarifying existing doctrine, it changes emphasis. It deals with the issues at hand - the Church wasn’t issuing statements about women priests and test tube babies in 1500.

“Our marriages are supposed to give us a glimpse of Christ’s love for us.”

Don’t you see the problem, though? This may well be true for you. It’s not true for me. Jesus is a character is a story to me, nothing more. You might as well cite Spongebob Squarepants. And I don’t mean to insult you when I say that, but I need to bring home to you the absolute crushing irrelevance to most people of the God stuff.

Boil it down, get rid of the supernatural stuff, you’re saying that men and women’s crotches fit together and make babies, and that’s a marriage. And that is such a horrible, reductive way to look at something so complex and beautiful.

“Jesus explicitly defined marriage as being between a man and a woman.”

If the fact Jesus didn’t have female apostles is the reason for the ban on all women priests, why is the fact that Jesus didn’t get married and lived a celibate, childless life and insisted on the same for the apostles evidence that he wanted everyone to get married and have lots of kids? Where does he say ‘get married and have lots of kids’? Is ‘he once went to a wedding’ an endorsement of all weddings?

You wrote:
“These days, marriage is widely seen as a path to personal self-fulfillment through a long-term commitment to monogamy, and nothing more. Children are completely tangential to the equation, viewed as lifestyle options under the self-fulfillment umbrella rather than a natural result of the bond between a man and a woman. [...] In this environment, where “marriage” increasingly means nothing more than “lifelong roommates” in the culture at large, it’s not surprising that same-sex couples have begun to ask why they can’t have that as well.”

Very well said! Thank you

Tertullian is also not the Magisterium of the Church.  When you can come up with a document from the Magisterium that all Christians are to believe as a matter of faith and morals that marital relations are fornication, let me know.
Considering that even Scripture puts a divide between those things - 1 Corinthians 7, Paul tells his audience to marry so as to avoid sexual immorality and to keep to one husband or one wife in that pursuit, Jesus in Matthew 5 claims that divorce is unlawful except for sexual immorality (suggesting that marriage itself is not immorality), and Hebrews 13:4 claims that those who defile the marriage bed are immoral (i.e. the marriage bed undefiled is not immoral), I don’t think you’ll be able to make such a case.
Tertullian may have been right in many areas, but that does not therefore confer infallibility upon him in all areas.

I don’t know the answer to this one, it’s not a trick question, it’s just something that struck me:

How unusual would it be for a 33 year old Jewish man in first century Judea to be unmarried? I know that Roman law allowed marriage from the age of 12, I don’t know what Jewish law would have been.

My guess is that it wasn’t just unusual, it was pretty startling to have a dozen or so unmarried men of that age in one group. It would be now, but it must have been even moreso when life expectancy was shorter.

So, sorry, but I repeat my question: how is that an argument for ‘Jesus thought that a holy life involved everyone getting married and having lots of kids’?

I know that the idea of Jesus getting married and having kids has made it to popular fiction, but I was wondering about the theology of it. What breaks if Jesus had got married? And why is it good for us to do it but bad for him and the apostles to? If it’s natural and a sacrament and why we’re here and so on ... why wasn’t Jesus a husband? Why wasn’t he a father?

I am not reducing marriage to sex.  I am saying that marriage is unique among human relationships because of sex.  Those are two different things entirely.
Nor am I saying that Christianity defines marriage (though I suspected you would suggest that I had).  Marriage is a natural entity defined by our bodies - I am saying that you cannot remove that from the equation because it is a unique experience.  Can you name one other time in which two separate systems become one?
To say that I am reducing marriage to this union, however, is to completely ignore everything else I have said, which unfortunately seems to happen often.  The one flesh union tells us why we immediately expect marriage to last forever.
No one goes into a marriage hoping to get divorced.  But why is that?  It must go beyond mere friendship, because we know that friendships come and go.  It must go beyond an emotional and chemical bond, because that too wanes.  The fact that society tries to base marriage solely on friendship, hormones, and feelings is precisely why 50% of marriages today end in divorce.
Friendship, chemistry, partnership, those things are important to a marriage.  I would not like to do without them in a marriage.  But if a marriage is SOLELY based on those things, there is no reason to remain in a marriage once those have passed, and the fact of the matter is those things pass.  Hormones wax and wane, the fondness two people have for each other does likewise.  Partnership can be strained and even ended.  If this is our basis for marriage, then of course it is not permanent and of course it ends.  It’s foolish to think that it’s going to last for everyone, though some people are indeed blessed enough to experience this.  But that’s the exception, not the rule.
Rather, if marriage is built on a knowledge of permanence due to concern for the welfare of both the children and the spouses AS WELL AS THOSE OTHER THINGS, then the marriage is far more likely to experience not only permanence but satisfaction within the relationship.  If the couple lives knowing that one or the other can leave, it changes the dynamic entirely from a couple who knows that divorce simply is not an option.  The second couple is more inclined to work through their problems knowing that they must stay together; the first couple, knowing that a marriage can end, will see divorce as a possibility.  The second couple will find that after the emotional trough comes more highs.  The first couple, unfortunately, often falls apart during the trough.
Basing a marriage on feelings does not inform us as to why marriage is permanent.  In fact, it informs us that should the feelings go away - should a couple “fall out of love” they SHOULD end the marriage in order to search for love elsewhere.  If one member of the couple should “fall in love” with someone else, that person should pursue that, because marriage is based on feelings. 
Marriage based on the indissoluble fact of family by its definition must be permanent.  The first is what our society believes is the case, and we have decreased marital happiness overall and a high divorce rate.  The second is what people used to believe in and - imagine this - marriages lasted and overall were more satisfied.  Children experienced a better environment, while today, research shows that the most dangerous arrangement for a child to be in is with one biological parent and an unrelated adult.  These children perform far worse in sociological benchmarks and also experience the highest rates of abuse.  Research shows time and time again that children fare best when in a home headed by their married biological parents - even cohabitating but unmarried biological parents aren’t as effective.
Research tells us over and over and over again - though we are hard of hearing - that children and spouses fair best in a permanent, indissoluble home - which is amazingly exactly what our biological systems demonstrate to us.

Jemima, Jesus IS married.  Jesus is the Bridegroom, the Church His Bride. (You can find such references in Ephesians 5 and throughout the book of Revelation.)  He took no earthly bride because He had spiritual one.  You must realize that in Christian theology, marriage is the sign, not the goal.  The goal is the relationship of Christ and the Church, it’s what marriage is pointing towards.  This is why celibacy is still seen as the higher calling, but only when the earthly good of marriage (and it IS a good) is forsaken for the greater good of the relationship with Christ.  The priesthood and the religious life tells us that there is more than the earthly good, there is a heavenly good which the earthly good can only imperfectly show us, despite how good it is.
So for Jesus to have been married on earth would have been missing the point, so to speak.  It would be loving the sign to ignore what the sign was pointing towards, something like clinging to the sign saying “Chicaco 10 miles” and failing to see that you were in Chicago itself.
As I said before, sacramental marriage is a physical sign that helps us understand the greater reality.  As Paul tells us in Ephesians 5 after expounding on the selflessness of marital love, that the spouses must die to themselves for love of the other, “I speak of a great mystery, but it is of Christ and His Church”.

@Jemima Cole What is your definition of marriage?

@Jemima Cole,

Seriously, you’re my new pretend best friend. Please keep up your skepticism and wit. Please.

I want everyone to ask themselves this ONE question;

What would you do if, for some reason, you could not marry the person you loved? For ANY reason? Be they of a different race, religion or of the same gender? Because the greater population saw fit to force everyone to abide by what THEY viewed as ‘proper’?

Think VERY carefully and be completely honest with yourselves. There are people, of all and no religious denominations, who are gay and in COMMITTED, monogamous, loving relationships. Many of them for decades. They have built their lives together. They own their own home and many times have children, either from previous relationships, adopted or in-vitro. You have jobs and friends and love.

Now imagine if that was all taken away from you. Your spouse dies. Your challenged in court by relatives who disapproved of your relationship. Despite having documentation and power of attorney, it’s not enough. legally speaking, you are not viewed as next-of-kin. You loose everything; your house, your children… the life you built with that person is stripped from you. You weren’t allowed to visit them in the hospital or claim their remains. You don’t even get to decide where they’re buried. Their last wishes are disregarded. This happens to gay couples every day.

But because they can’t have sex in the way you think they ‘should’, they don’t count as a ‘real’ couple.

Would you suggest that being able to have sex the way YOU THINK they ‘should have’, with the ability to reproduce in the way YOU THINK they should, makes them ANY LESS of a couple?

You are suggesting that they are somehow ‘less fufilled’ because they can’t have sex in the same way a man and a woman have sex. Who are ANY OF YOU to determine that? Is that all marriage is to you? Are you married? Would you love them any less, or be any less married if, for some reason you could no longer have sex with them? If you could not for any reason have children, would you love them any less? If you chose not to have children, are you less of a married couple?

Ask yourself that question. And ask yourself what really matters in a marriage. In YOUR marriage.

@Jemima Cole
“Yes. If you’re a Catholic, then you are forbidden by law to marry into the British royal family. Is that a beautiful affirmation of marriage, too?”

I would assume that the same marriage service is available to all Anglicans, and the fact that one family in Great Britain doesn’t want me to marry into it doesn’t change the beauty of the marriage vows and the priest’s exhortation to the couple.

There was a time in this country when elements (Bishops) of our Catholic Church were so closely aligned with the Southern Confereracy so as to be complicit in not blessing interracial marriages. Through the grace of the Holy Spirit that too has changed. It’s only a matter of time when full equality will be recognized for all irregardless of their sexual orientation. And it’s one of the few authentic means of salvation for both the institution and sacrament of marriage.

Jemima,

Ephesians 5:31-32 says:

5:31 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and will be joined to his wife, and the two will become 40 one flesh. 41 5:32 This mystery is great – but I am actually 42 speaking with reference to Christ and the church.

The word mystery means “divine secret”.  This Divine Secret (marriage) is great…as it imitates the relationship between the Church and Christ.

That’s pretty much all you need to know, scripturally speaking, that marriage was considered sacred, more than just a social convention.  Sacramental, in nature, if you will.

Red,

But because they can’t have sex in the way you think they ‘should’, they don’t count as a ‘real’ couple.

Would you suggest that being able to have sex the way YOU THINK they ‘should have’, with the ability to reproduce in the way YOU THINK they should, makes them ANY LESS of a couple?

First, YOU have just reduced this “marriage” to the freedom to share a sexual act.  So all this talk about love and committment is just obfuscation of the fact that it really comes down to sex.

Second, lol, it has nothing to do with the way WE think they should be able to reproduce, it is that they are NOT ABLE to reproduce at ALL.  You make it sound like they reproduce THEIR way and we don’t like it.  Great Gatsby man,  we have nothing to do with it!  They cannot REPRODUCE by definition!

This is the real issue.  Is it moral for two people of the same sex to have intimate sexual relations?  It has nothing to do with love.  Can a man love another man?  Of course.  Not only can he, but he is commanded to do so by God Himself.  We are ALL to LOVE one another.  We are not talking about Agape however.  We are not even talking about Philis.  We are talking about Eros.  Erotic “love”.  This type of love, and ONLY this type of love, is reserved, in the Churches eyes, between 2 married people of the opposite sex.  1 man and 1 woman.  Men are free to love other men as much as they want in the Philo/Agape sense.  So please stop mixing the three and making it sound like the Catholic Church doesn’t recognize the fact that men can love men and women can love women.  What you are talking about is not “love” at all, but “feelings”.

J,

But because they can’t have sex in the way you think they ‘should’, they don’t count as a ‘real’ couple.

Would you suggest that being able to have sex the way YOU THINK they ‘should have’, with the ability to reproduce in the way YOU THINK they should, makes them ANY LESS of a couple?

Those are really, really good questions.  Pam is right that Jesus is married to the Church.  But there is more.  Marriage is meant for the temporal world.  Precisely because we are humans, we have bodies.  And the way that a body reproduces is through sex.  We were designed this way.  Jesus, while here temporally for a time, is truly from the Eternal world, where sex and marriage do not exist.  To become one flesh with another human would limit Him in His ability to become “one flesh” with all.  PLUS, marriage is only meant for our time on earth, because of those bodies.  There is a heirarchy of love.  Eros, which is sexual and reserved (and necessary) for humans, Philos which is a more encompassing love, deep friendship and concern for fellow man, and Agape, the highest…love for the sake of love.  Jesus is Agape.  God is Agape.  Not that God loves, but that He IS Love.  The highest form of Love.  So to marry would be to choose a lower form/expression of love.

This is why St. Paul says that celibacy is a higher calling.  Eventually, none of us will share “eros” because we will have moved on to a higher place, a place where “erotic love” is no longer needed.  It is good, as all love is good, but it is the least “good” of the three.  We should all be striving to attain Agape.  Eros pales in comparison.  But being human, we cannot all achieve this type of love here on earth. Jesus could.  So could the apostles.  So can most of our priests today.

They forgo the love of Eros to better embrace the love of Agape.

“What is your definition of marriage?”

Hemingway was once asked what the message of one of his novels was, and he snapped back ‘if I wanted to write a message, I’d have written a message. I wrote a novel’.

My point is that you *can’t* some up something as big and important and long-lasting as a marriage in a sentence or boil it down to a handful of characteristics. What’s your definition of a ‘game’, or a ‘war’ or a ‘god’, because I can guarantee I could nitpick that definition and demonstrate that it doesn’t always apply.

“That’s pretty much all you need to know, scripturally speaking, that marriage was considered sacred, more than just a social convention.  Sacramental, in nature, if you will.”

Now who’s quote mining?

There is a different between ‘sacred’ and ‘Sacrament’, as I’m sure you know. The fact there were only two sacraments was a key part of Luther’s criticism of the Church, and the reason the Council of Trent changed policy.

It’s simple enough to prove this - look for the wording for the Catholic sacrament of the Eucharist from 500, 1000, 1500 and 2000. Now do the same for the sacrament of Marriage.

Jemima, Jemima, Jemima…

You asked for a quote.  I gave you one.  I am not your enemy.  We lose sight sometimes, I’m afraid, that our ideas are opposed, but we don’t have to be.  I don’t have a problem with you, I have a difference of opinion about your idea.  Sometimes you ask such good, deep questions, but more often than not you just come out fighting.  There’s no need for that. 

I’m not Lutheran so I don’t really care what Luther’s take on Sacraments was.  The definition of a Sacrament is that it is an “outward sign of an inward Grace”.  Whether the Church recognized it, or named it, is not important to me.  The Truth didn’t change.  Only our understanding changed.  The Truth was expressed by Paul.  In Ephesians.  Marriage is a divine mystery.  An outward sign of an inward Grace.  Of course we could quibble about whether or not it was an official sacrament, but to what end.  It was “sacramental”.  That’s enough.  When Jesus was asked about divorce He replied “In the beginning this was not so”.  It was due to our misunderstanding of the meaning of marriage and God in His infinite Mercy allowed us to do all sorts of things that were habits and wrong thinking.  Slowly and gently He led us to greater understanding.

The teaching of the Fathers and the constant tradition of the Church, as already remarked, set forth the dogma of Christian marriage as a sacrament, not in the scientific, theological terminology of later time, but only in substance. Substantially, the following elements belong to a sacrament of the New Law:

  * it must be a sacred religious rite instituted by Christ;

  * this rite must be a sign of interior sanctification;

  * it must confer this interior sanctification or Divine grace;

  * this effect of Divine grace must be produced, not only in conjunction with the respective religious act, but through it.

Hence, whoever attributes these elements to Christian marriage, thereby declares it a true sacrament in the strict sense of the word. Testimony to this effect is to be found from the earliest Christian times onward.

Your reference to Augustine is moot.  The Church is not a dead thing, with a handbook on “How To” given to us by the Apostles.  Jesus dropped a bombshell on us and we have been sorting through his Words ever since.  The Church is a living, breathing entity.  The Truth does not change, but the Church does.  It’s not that new things have been revealed to us (nothing new will be revealed since the time of John’s death), but that new understanding of those revelations is constantly being given to us.  Good heavens, we’ve been hammering out our dogma and doctrines for 2,000 years and I imagine as new attacks arise, new defenses will be put forth.  Right now, for basically the first time, Gay Marriage is confronting the Church.  Perhaps the Church will put forth a new Dogmatic Statement pertaining to this.  This won’t mean that it is not what the Church has always taught, it just means that in this day, and at this time, given this specific challenge, a clarification needs to be made and a definition set forth.  1,000 years from now another Jemima will say “The Church wasn’t against Gay Marriage until 2011!”  But they will be wrong.  The Church might not have DEFINED their opposition to gay marriage until 2011, but it’s stance has been consistent.

It must be frustrating to hear us constantly state things as “It is So”.  Try to remember that the words “WE BELIEVE” or “THE CHURCH TEACHES” are tacitly implied before all of these statements.  I, at least, realize that to hear us make these “decrees” can be offputting and cause one to become defensive.  I don’t think most people here mean to come off as on the offense…

Reading all of these comments and arguments can leave one very confused - am I listening to a very articulate proponent of progressive heresy or a legitimate authority on the teachings of the magisterium?!?!?
Once again, I am reinforced in my belief that the magisterium has the final word on Truth as revealed by God.  If someone - anyone - priest, theologian, pewsitter, - espouses something that is contrary to the teachings of the magisterium (subtly or obviously), I must reject that opinion.

To be a Christian we must love God above all things and then we should love everyone as we let God judge them,as He asks ,our lives should reflect God’s love to all ...Spend more time with God and this will happen

Therese,

What specifically.  Because if I have misrepresented the Churches teaching, I want to know.  Never hesitate to correct me if I have stated something incorrect or incorrectly.

“First, YOU have just reduced this “marriage” to the freedom to share a sexual act.  So all this talk about love and committment is just obfuscation of the fact that it really comes down to sex.”

This makes no sense. The Catholic Church teaches that sex in a marriage is to do with intimacy and bonding as well as children, and that while children are the desirable outcome, they are not a necessary one - an infertile couple, say, can get married.

I’m not the one reducing. I know for a fact that there are gay couples who could do *everything else* a marriage actually demands except ‘have different genitals’. I know for a fact there are currently married couples who are terrible at being married. 

Given that, what’s the difference between a post-menopausal woman marrying and a homosexual? Neither can have children (biologically).

A widow with a child but too old to have another one remarries. Marries a man ... fine. Another woman ... no, no that’s *completely different*. Why? Why deny that child the security of a stable, loving home for the theoretical point that if she was ten years younger, she could have another baby?

The answer comes back to ‘because their bits don’t fit together the way a man and a woman’s do’. This strange, corrupted, use of the word ‘natural’ where suddenly for one instance only ‘animals act this way’ is why we’re meant to do something, not why we’re not (and, in any event, homosexual behavior has been observed in every single mammal species and in many birds and reptiles. No one’s seen any gay fish).

The moment you allow one man or one woman who you know can’t have children to get married, you’ve conceded the only argument against gay marriage that isn’t ‘ugggh ... they do *that*?’. But given the very limited number of ‘that’s’ permitted by the Church, and without wishing to go into detail, any reasonably imaginative heterosexual couple will cross at least one of the lines before they’ve been dating all that long, too.

And the main thing is ... this is at one remove. No one is saying that the Catholic Church has to adopt this. My lesbian friends can’t get married because Jesus is married to the Church as spelled out in Ephesians?

I’ve asked people to explain this in secular terms, and the answer comes back ‘because Jesus defined as between a man and a woman’. This is not an argument even every Christian would buy, let alone people like me who think Jesus was just one of many apocalyptic preachers who were thick on the ground for a couple of hundred years, saying the world was about to end in the lifetime of those listening (checks watch ... nope, still here). Absolutely no desire to stop *you* taking it more seriously, please do. But why should two people who don’t believe in God - or that version - not be allowed to get married?

By exactly the same standard of logic, I say that you can’t get married because Batman can’t get married - if he did, his war on crime would be compromised. You may not believe that, but it’s stated time and time again in the texts. Your marriage will lead directly to an increase in the crime rate, so I’m afraid from now on, your marriages don’t count. Batman will punish you for your crimes, he hates crime. Society has forgotten that.

Yes. Ridiculous. But also pretty much theologically equivalent to your position, from the perspective of a non-believer. If you feel insulted, imagine how my friends feel when they’re told that the twenty-five years they’ve spent together and the children they’ve raised don’t count as real.

“If someone - anyone - priest, theologian, pewsitter, - espouses something that is contrary to the teachings of the magisterium (subtly or obviously), I must reject that opinion.”

Pope?

Ten Popes explicitly said that Popes aren’t infallible. Do you agree with them, or the eight who’ve explicitly said they are infallible?

Jemima,

Animals are not moral creatures.  Whether they do or do not copulate with the same sex is irrelevant to this discussion.

Yes, it does come down to the naughty bits (Monty Python reference, so don’t even bother latching on to it).  They don’t fit.  By natural we mean as Nature intended.  The eye is meant to see.  If it doesn’t, we say something is amiss.  The ear is meant to hear.  If it doesn’t we say nature has gone awry.  Homosexual tendencies are out of the Natural Order of things.  In themselves they are not morally bad or good, just as blindness is not morally bad or good.  Some girls get pleasure out of cutting themselves.  Would you say that this is okay, because if it gives them pleasure who are we to say it’s wrong?  Or do we conclude that all is not right with Jenny when she takes a razor to her skin?  Is it morally wrong that Jenny WANTS to cut herself? No.  She can’t help that desire.  Something is wrong, but it isn’t moral yet.  But once she begins to actually cut herself, then it becomes a moral issue because it is an act of the will.  She cannot control her feelings, no one can.  But we can all control our actions.  And don’t bother telling me that I’m condemning Jenny, because I am not.  I fully understand that Jenny is disturbed and even her actions don’t carry the same weight as a mentally healthy person.  But homosexual actions are not driven by pain, they are driven by a desire for pleasure.

If you buy a car and get it home and find that the windows don’t work or the muffler fell off, do you say, oh well, that’s the way THIS car was made.  Deal with it.  Or do you take it back and say this one is broken.

Those naughty bits were put there for a reason (we believe).  If people are inclined to put those bits in other places we say they are deviating from the norm.  It is not how the body was designed.  CAN you put those bits in other places?  Of course.  You can put them in anything from a kangaroo to a 2 year old.  But both of those are not where they were intended to go.  Granted that intent denotes an “intender” but like I said “we believe”.  Even biologically speaking, we can see that other than physical stimulation, there is not biological reason to place our “bits’ anywhere than where they were meant to be placed.  They are called reproductive organs for a reason.

“I want everyone to ask themselves this ONE question;

What would you do if, for some reason, you could not marry the person you loved? For ANY reason? Be they of a different race, religion or of the same gender? Because the greater population saw fit to force everyone to abide by what THEY viewed as ‘proper’?”

reply—It has nothing to do with the greater population—it is a sacrament of the Church and the law of nature AND…...GOD!!!!!! This is where poeple miss the point—it’s not up to poeple it is what GOD intended.

“Some girls get pleasure out of cutting themselves.  Would you say that this is okay, because if it gives them pleasure who are we to say it’s wrong?  Or do we conclude that all is not right with Jenny when she takes a razor to her skin?  Is it morally wrong that Jenny WANTS to cut herself? No.  She can’t help that desire.  Something is wrong, but it isn’t moral yet.  But once she begins to actually cut herself, then it becomes a moral issue because it is an act of the will.  She cannot control her feelings, no one can.  But we can all control our actions.  And don’t bother telling me that I’m condemning Jenny, because I am not.  I fully understand that Jenny is disturbed and even her actions don’t carry the same weight as a mentally healthy person.”

I would agree with you that anyone who hurt themselves like that was troubled, that something is seriously wrong with their reason and ability to control themselves and they are perhaps even mentally ill.

Oh, look:

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-01-27/world/pope.flagellate_1_vatican-radio-pope-john-paul-ii-vatican-insider?_s=PM:WORLD

The Church’s attitude to Flagellation is another example of them changing their mind and changing their teaching. Clement VI wrote a letter in 1348 sanctioning a flagellant procession and wrote another in 1349 prohibited all flagellant processions as heretical.

It’s something that’s been condoned, condemned, tolerated, turned a blind eye to and actively hunted down over the years. It’s currently something that the Church condemns in some countries, officially sanctions in others, and is clearly practiced in private by people high up in the hierarchy.

Now, OK, perhaps there’s an argument that you can take this ‘broken’ mental condition and harness it, turn it into something sacred. Presumably Jenny’s a nutcase because she’s cutting herself, but Mother Teresa is a saint because she’s cutting herself *for Jesus*. It’s the same argument used for sex - sex is bad, but marital sex is sacred (as long as there’s not too much monkey business). So, OK ... why not harness homosexuality the same way? If something like cutting yourself and fornication or even murder (in the case of the Crusades) can be retasked to be one of the highest and sacred acts, why not gay marriage? Why is that beyond the pale but a couple of people who self-harmed are on a just-add-water instant track to sainthood?

Unless it’s sex in general and specific homosexual practice in particular that’s the actual problem, why couldn’t a compromise be reached in the same way ‘natural birth control’ was arrived at? Gay people can work from a very limited menu of sex stuff, *if* they are married? Why is that any weirder or less natural than the withdrawal method?

J,
As I said, the Church changes and grows.  Truth does not.  Self flagellation is not a dogma or doctrine of the Church.  It is a discipline that can be greatly misunderstood.  You just misunderstood it.  Therein lies the danger.  The girl who harms herself is despairing.  The saint who takes on extra suffering for the sake of lost souls is an act of love.  Discerning where these actions are coming from is something I am not qualified to do.  The Church probably feels the same.  The reasoning behind self flagellation is sound.  IF it is done for that reasoning.  Intent matters.  But how does one know why a person is doing this?  I imagine, tho I don’t know, that these are some of the reasons the Church doesn’t recommend people doing it.  It is an extraordinary expression of love and in the wrong hands could be a sign of mental illness.

It’s the same argument used for sex - sex is bad, but marital sex is sacred (as long as there’s not too much monkey business). So, OK ... why not harness homosexuality the same way?

Again.  Intent is key.  Homosexuality is always disordered.  However you are right, that sex can be used for good in a homosexual person.  Offering up this cross, this “malfunction” would be a very holy thing indeed.  There is never a “good” reason to engage in homosexual activity.  There is a very good reason for using your suffering to fight sin.  Your analogy is wrong for that reason.  Sex is good.  Homosexual sex is disordered.  Homosexual tendencies can be viewed as a suffering.  Offering that suffering up by abstaining from all sexual behavior can benefit mankind.  This would be an act of love.  Indulging this disorder would be an act of selfishness.

Self flagellation done for the right reasons would be purposefully taking on suffering for the betterment of mankind.  This could (I emphasize could) be a good.  It would be a selfless act in that the focus is on other.  Self harm to cause pain, because you are depressed and it makes you “feel good” would be considered wrong.  It is a selfish act, as it is focused totally on self.  Abuse of self flagellation would always be wrong also.

The problem you are having with this ever changing Church thing, is that you confuse Truth with understanding, and Changable laws with unchangable laws.  Some things in the Church are musts.  Some are Tradition with a capital “T”.  Some are disciplines (celibacy), some are customs or traditions with a small “T”, some are local, some are private (private revelation)....so making a blanket statement that if the Church changed this here She should be able to change anything She wants, is false.  If it was determined by humans, it is changeable (celibacy) if it was decreed by God (Women priest) it is unchangeable.  Self flagellation is not a divine law.  Marital sex is.  God is not the author of whipping oneself, He IS the author of marriage.

Of course the church changes. In the early years the church did not object to slavery. In fact St. paul told slaves to obey their masters. He did not tell the masters to free the slaves. That was the culture of the time. Women were second class citizens and just better than slaves. That is why Christ chose only men to be apostles. They spoke mainly in the synagogues. If there had been a woman apostle she could not do that. Again St. Paul told women to shut up in church and to cover their heads. To hold that women can not be priests because Christ chose only men as apostles is embarassingly weak. It was the magisterium that burned people at the stake during the inquistion and imprisoned Galilleo when they disagreed with his science.

In the 1940’s a man could not be a priest if he was illegitimate. It was a grave sin to be in a friends wedding party at a Protestant church. It was also a sin to belong to the mason’s lodge. you could not have a Catholic funeral if you were to be cremated. Your baby could only be baptised with a saints name, not those that are used today. It was a mortal sin to miss mass on Sundays and holy days. You had to fast from midnight before going to communion the next day and of course it was a sin to eat meat on Friday.  Lobster and sea bass were OK. In the fifties a pastor might withhold the sacraments if you didn’t send your kids to Catholic school. Any effort to impede and oppose the power of unions was a grave matter, unless it was aunion trying to organize the Catholic schools or diocesan offices. There was a reason we all went to confession every week or two. Every time you turned around there was a mortal sin and I didn’t even get into the sexual sins.

“Self harm to cause pain, because you are depressed and it makes you “feel good” would be considered wrong.  It is a selfish act, as it is focused totally on self.  Abuse of self flagellation would always be wrong also.”—Agreed.  The problem today is poeple just do what “feels good” without taking consideration of their actions and morals.  That is why there is such a deterioration of family because of so many girls subjecting themselves to casual and unprotected sex.  And who suffers the most? the child. 

“It’s the same argument used for sex - sex is bad, but marital sex is sacred (as long as there’s not too much monkey business). So, OK ... why not harness homosexuality the same way?”—-zzzzz…For the upteenth time, sex is really for the use reproduction—homosexual sex goes against this—THE LAW OF NATURE AND THE LAW OF GOD!!!!!..  Unlike animals, humans were given free will—yet there are many people who act like animals and will do anything with anyone. 

The whole concept of right and wrong has so been thrown out the window. Why?  I believe from the evils that the media feeds America and the twisted teachings in our public school systems. I hate to say it, but the decline in poeple’s attention span also is contributing to poeple’s lack of clear judgement—wanting to be stimulated in a matter of seconds from such things as Iphones, the internet and so on. Poeple are consuming their time more and more on gibberish on their cell phones and thru facebook instead of taking time to educate themselves and raising their children AND to grow in faith. Until poeple wake up, we will continue to go down this spiral of becoming a society filled with nothing but 3rd class citizens and bottom feeders.

JEC,

In looking over your examples I see that you make the same mistake that Jemima made.  You confuse Dogma/Doctrine with discipline and custom. 

It still is and will always be, a Mortal Sin to miss Mass on Sunday. Women have never been priests, not because of the culture of the time, although I can see why you’d think that, but because of the roles of men and women both in and out of the Church.  These are unchangeable laws as they were given to us by God.

Almost everything else you named is cultural, custom or discipline. Customs, cultural traditions and disciplines CAN and DO change, because they are instituted by men.

The reason failing to follow them was a mortal sin, is not because of the things in themselves, but because we are called as Catholics to be obedient to the Teaching Authority of the Church.  Obedience to the Church is an example of an unchangeable law.  We trust that following her is in our best interest.  Sometimes cultures change and needs change.  Then the Church is free to Change also.  But never on dogma or doctrine.  Padre Pio is a great example of being Obedient even tho it turned out later that he was in the right.  He realized that Obedience to his Mother is a greater virtue than “being right”.  So in humility, a word that has virtually lost it’s meaning in our culture, he obeyed.  Even tho it was painful.  Even tho he was right.  We are called to do the same.  We believe that given time, the Holy Spirit will make all things right again.  He hasn’t let us down yet.

@Jemima: Good grief this thread has gotten out of control! Yes, on this particular topic, Tertullian’s opinions are those of an outlier. Not because Tertullian is a marginal figure, but because he had very idiosyncratic opinions on this *particular* issue. Pam is not wrong at all. Just because a Church father or prominent theologian asserts something, it simply doesn’t follow that their assertion part of the *official* magisterial teaching of the Church. Consider: Origen is also an important theologian, but when it came to salvation his opinions were indeed “marginal” despite his stature, because they were idiosyncratic and rejected by the mainstream of Church authorities. You cannot, therefore, quote Origen on Universal salvation and then turn around and say “See! The Church once taught that everyone gets saved! They must have reversed themselves at some point by preaching the real existence of Hell!” that would be pure sophistry. Likewise with your use of Tertullian-just because he was influential on *some* topics it doesn’t follow that everything he taught was definitive of any *major* theological tradition within the Church. And you missed the point entirely with my legal analogy. Some legal positions are advanced that cannot ultimately be sustained, because they are in tension with the constitution principles they depend upon. The U.S. constitution contained principles which were implied, alebeit implicitly, that the institution of slavery was unfounded even though many legal scholars upheld its legality for some time. The fact that they upheld its legality points towards a failure by some individuals to consistently apply the relevant legal principles, not towards some kind of “reversal” of policy. Likewise, the Bible and the preponderance of early Church teachings on sex imply that marriage is a sacrament and that sex is licit within its context, even if some individual teachers failed to correctly apply these teachings. Your position is wrong on almost all counts.

And this is another example of quote mining: “Ten Popes explicitly said that Popes aren’t infallible. Do you agree with them, or the eight who’ve explicitly said they are infallible”

As if context played no role in adjudicating this dispute. What was the infallibility being attributed to, the individual person or the exercise of a particular office? Some popes correctly denied that the pope as an *individual* is infallible. This does not contradict the current doctrine of papal infallibility, which does not teach that the *man* is infallible but that he has the capacity to *sometimes* teach doctrine infallibly. Once this distinction is in place, the objection collapses. The bishop of Rome, as an individual, is not infallible across the board and this has never even been disputed. The present doctrine is that he has the ability, under circumscribed conditions, to teach infallibly. There is no contradiction between the two teachings, and it becomes clear once you stop deliberately blurring a relevant distinction. Again, this kind of argumentative move makes me suspect that you are just out to score debater’s points.

Dear Ms. Fulwiler:
Our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters have embraced the milenia-old understanding of marriage, as an institution founded on self-sacrifice and inherently ordered toward the bringing forth of new life, especailly in the adoption of hard-to-place children.

Sadly, many of these people of the LBGT community are not allowed to get married.

We would lov nothing more than to dance at our children’s wedding. After all, they have been in loving, committed relationships for eleven years. But in many states, they and their partners, are not allowed to get married.

A majority of Americans agree that all of our sons, daughters, neighbors and coworkers deserve the opportunity to marry their loved one, whether they are gay or straight. Let’s change the law so many American parents—can finally walk their children down the aisle.

If we believe in justice for all, as Jesus has taught us, then let’s pass marriage equality this year once and for all.

I fully understand how slowly Our Church evolves on these issues, but we have hope.

On a bright note of hope: whether many catholics know it or not, each year, many committed gay, lesbian, and transgendered quietly take the tour of the Vatican and as they reach the Sistine Chapel, they hold hands and quietly take vows of committment—there in front of the eyes of God who made them as they are. faith, love and charity will find a way. Pax et Bonum. +

“What was the infallibility being attributed to, the individual person or the exercise of a particular office?”

The office. Most of the Popes who said Popes weren’t infallible came from a period of schism in the Church, when there was simultaneously more than one Pope, or a previous Pope would be denounced as a heretic.

Now, I understand that Catholic teaching is nuanced, and I know that the Vatican is often very coy about which statements are infallible or not, but you’d agree, surely, that retroactively declaring that a past Pope was a heretic does cut against the idea that the Church never errs?

Teddy,

‘Poeple’

Your consistent spelling ‘error’ there is a dead giveaway. I know what Poe’s Law is. It was funny to begin with, but stop trolling these poor Catholics by pretending to be an idiot, dear, it’s not nice.

“This is the chalice of My Blood of the New and Eternal Testament, the Mystery of Faith, which will be shed for you and for many unto the remission of sins.”

“This is the chalice of My Blood of the New and Eternal Testament, the Mystery of Faith, which will be shed for you and for all unto the remission of sins.”

You’d agree that both forms have been presented as official Church teaching, I presume. Would you agree that they are not the same teaching?

You’d agree that the Council of Trent represented official Church teaching? So when that rules:

“With reason, therefore, were the words ‘for all’ not used, as in this place the fruits of the Passion were alone spoken of, and to the elect only did His Passion bring the fruit of salvation.”

And the current wording *is* ‘for all’, would that not count as Church teaching changing?

I understand that the Church wants to present change as ‘evolution’, but how is this not a switch from saying one thing to saying the exact opposite?

Or is the Council of Trent not ‘official Church teaching’? Does the *Mass* not count as something the Church ‘teaches’, now?

I appreciate this sounds like quote mining and trying to ‘win’. But you’ve set the bar so very low for me - ‘if I can find one example of the Church changing its teaching’.

When it appoints a bishop after a two year vetting process, says he’s part of the apostolic succession, gives him a cathedral to run and allows him to make public statements about church teaching and to guide the priests below him ... is it not a change of position to say ‘actually, no we’ve defrocked him because ... ’ the ‘because’ doesn’t matter, really. He’s part of the apostolic succession one day, claiming welfare the next. Is that not a change of position on the Church’s part? Does that not say at least something about whether the church is inerrant or not? Or does ‘appointing bishops’ not come under the aegis of ‘Church teaching’? 

Is, for example, the acknowledgement that St Christopher probably didn’t exist and the removal of his feast day and the discouraging of wearing a St Christopher not a ‘change in teaching’?

Is, for example, the acknowledgement that St Christopher probably didn’t exist and the removal of his feast day and the discouraging of wearing a St Christopher not a ‘change in teaching’?

No. That is not a Change in Church Teaching.  Devotions are part of private revelation.  No one is required to pray to a particular Saint.  That is not a deposit of the Faith.  It IS a deposit of the Faith that there are Saints in heaven.  Saints that have been officially recognized and Saints that have not.

Someone else will be better qualified to address the second one, but let me just say that we have always taught that Jesus died for all.  That He gave up His body for all.  Saying many does not exclude all, it just doesn’t include all.  When someone objected, I’m sure that the wording was changed to a better theological expression of what Christ did and for whom.  Again, the understanding changed, not the Truth.

No one gets to heaven except through Christ.  Some will get there the ordinary way, some an extraordinary way.  If a Buddhist makes it to heaven, it will still be because Jesus died, even if that particular Buddhist never acknowledged it.

It would greatly help if you would provide a link to the entire passage that you quoted.  I need the context.

“Again, the understanding changed, not the Truth.”

OK ... look. The teaching went from ‘if we meant “all”, we’d say “all” and we don’t’ to ‘We say “all”.’

Now the ‘Truth’ up in Heaven may not have changed, God might have meant ‘all’ all along, but that’s not what his Church was teaching. That’s all I can demonstrate. The Church taught one thing, now they say the opposite.

There’s a nice article here:

http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/new-mass-translation-more-just-words

Now, there are two possibilities. The inerrant church changed its teaching, or the inerrant church made a mistake. Which?

If I could, I’d delete the second half of that comment.  Truthfully, I can’t answer it.  I just don’t where you got the quote from.  I don’t want to misstate Church teaching and what I wrote was just a guess…an uneducated one at that.  So do me a favor and ignore it.

Ahhhhh….you’re referring to the changes in the language of the Mass that are going to take place.  That is a mistake in translation, not doctrine.  It says right in the article that it was poorly translated.  That’s part of the reason we are changing the language this November.  A number of things were translated less than perfectly.  What the article is saying is that the teaching did NOT change, but unfortunately a bad translation gave the impression that it had.  Translation is not doctrine either.

For instance.  We now say “And also with you” which is a more loosely translated version of “And with your spirit”.  Some of the poor translations lacked clarity and some of them were theologically unsound.

Jemima: “My point is that you *can’t* some up something as big and important and long-lasting as a marriage in a sentence or boil it down to a handful of characteristics. What’s your definition of a ‘game’, or a ‘war’ or a ‘god’, because I can guarantee I could nitpick that definition and demonstrate that it doesn’t always apply.”

If you can’t define what marriage is, then how can any government define it?

“The office. Most of the Popes who said Popes weren’t infallible came from a period of schism in the Church, when there was simultaneously more than one Pope, or a previous Pope would be denounced as a heretic.”

You are wrong yet again. A lot has happened since Vatican I and Vatican II to clarify the nature of papal infallibility. The person who becomes pope is not infallible. The person who occupies the office of the papacy is not infallible by virtue of his *office* either. The office itself is not *normally* infallible, but someone teaching from it can, at certain times, teach with the weight of infallibility when the Pope *explicitly* proclaims a doctrine ex cathredra. This has only happened on a small number of occasions. The Church recognizes the general fallibility of her authorities and of Her teaching. So the only thing being taught here is that the Pope can *sometimes* teach with the authority of infallibility. That is hardly the outrageous claim that you and other secularists make it out to be.

“That’s part of the reason we are

——>***** CHANGING *********<—-

the language this November.”

Thanks. All that I was saying was that the
Church changes its teaching. No doubt there is
some mystical distinction between ‘the language
used’ and ‘what they say’ that you are now going
to claim means that altering the words so they
say something different isn’t a ‘change’.

It changed. Good. Thanks. *Now* we can move on.

“So the only thing being taught here is that the Pope can *sometimes* teach with the authority of infallibility.”

Look ... there are two issues here, Papal infallibility, which I’m barely talking about because it’s silly. Did you know all atheists are infallible and Papal infallibility is silly? I’m speaking ex cathedra, and believe me, atheists are *way* ex of that cathedra. That’s exactly how silly I think one person trying to win an argument by saying they never make mistakes is. It’s the sort of thing a nine year old says, *when* they’ve lost the argument. If you think differently, go for it, but for me it’s about as important an argument about whether Superman is faster than the Flash. The issue isn’t whether I believe, it’s what has the church taught.

The issue at hand is ‘does the Church change important teachings?’. And it does. I just want to demonstrate that it does. Its stance on Papal infallibility has been at every point on the map at one time or another, that’s the only reason I bring the subject up. If you have one set of Popes saying they’re infallible and another set of Popes saying they are and a whole other set of Popes denounced as heretics, how is that the Church speaking with one consistent voice?

Simple question: is current teaching what Jesus said and has the Church taught exactly the same thing consistently for two thousand years?

Jemima,

Again, I would just like to know how you would want the Church or the Government to define marriage?  What are you for?

Well, this conversation has been going nowhere for a long time; I should have unsubscribed a long time ago.

It seems the discussion has been ‘de-railed’ by folks who either don’t know what the Church teaches or want to disobey. The issue of gay marriage is settled for Catholics, so going down that path is to de-rail the main subject by definition.

Well, Nick, I really appreciated your description of the “heresy of conservatism” and the separation of church and state.  You explained it in a way which clarified a few things for me.  It’s interesting that while so many countries are falling into a state of moral anarchy which will probably lead to a need for dictatorship to maintain a semblance of order, Hungary ratified a constitution which looks to its Christian roots for identity and has the guts to define the human person and marriage accordingly.

Jemima,

Go over my comments and the comments of others here.  I have never denied that the Church changes.  In fact there is at least one comment where I not only say that it does, but explain that there are things that CAN change and things that CANNOT change.  You have pointed out a number of things that HAVE changed.  You have not pointed out a single thing that CANNOT change that DID change.  That’s the whole point.  We change all the time.  I’ve acknowledged this.  But in the areas where God instituted something, we HAVE NOT changed.  If there was an error and it appeared that we changed, or someone who didn’t have the authority to do so, CLAIMED that something has changed, it didn’t really CHANGE.  Not officially.  There were some bad translations.  They have been caught and addressed. 

I can’t tell if you’re purposely not getting the distinction, or are truly missing the point.

Simple question: is current teaching what Jesus said and has the Church taught exactly the same thing consistently for two thousand years?

On matters of dogma/doctrine?  Yes.  On everything else. Not always.

There have been all of about 20 (probably less) infallible statements made by popes over the last 2,000 years.  All an infallible statement means is that when an argument has come up, the decision has been made and the door to the question has been closed.  Permanently.  Most of the infallible statements were answers to heresies and were not NEW beliefs but disputed beliefs. 

If the sun is shining and the Pope says it is raining, he is wrong.  If he thinks that dogs are cats, or the sun sets in the north, he is wrong.  If I believed as you seem to, that every word that comes out of a popes’ mouth was infallible, I would have left the Church a long time ago.  But you seem to be obstinate in your refusal to understand what we keep saying.  It is one thing to ask a question because you have a sincere desire to know, and a entirely different thing to mock what we or anyone believes with no intention of understanding what those beliefs are.  Given some of your comments, I have to wonder if you read the answers we give, at all.  You laugh at our unity over these beliefs, making them seem moronic and cliche’ and then present typical, cliche’ arguments against them.  We’ve all heard the flying spaghetti argument, the sky fairy discourse.  The Pope is not God, and he doesn’t play one on TV.  In matters of Faith and Morals, the Church has remained virtually unchanged since Jesus walked the earth.  God does not have eyes.  There is a difference between dogma and discipline, doctrine and custom.  The churches customs change.  God does not live “in the sky” hence he cannot be a spaghetti monster that resides there.  You cannot “prove” God with hair sample or a petri dish.  You won’t “find” Him in outer space or your closet.  You cannot properly argue against something (quantum physics) unless you have a working understanding of that which you argue against.  You’ll never learn anything unless you are willing to listen.  Gay marriage cannot exist, not because we say so, but because it is impossible given the true meaning of marriage.  A civil union is not a marriage.  Catholics do not base their Faith on feelings.  Love is not a feeling.  These are the things that have been said to you over and over, and yet you persist in pretending that you’ve never heard them before.  I disagree with your beliefs, but not once have I condescended to you or answered a question with sarcasm.  People here have gone out of their way to treat you as an equal and answer your questions openly and honestly.  Your anger is palpable.  But unnecessary.  We are not your enemy.  We are just people who have a belief system that differs from yours.  There is no need for the derisive comments. 

That is all.

“Again, I would just like to know how you would want the Church or the Government to define marriage?  What are you for?”

I’m not trying to come up with some form of words that defines all marriages for all time. All I’m ‘for’ is that in modern America gay couples be treated like straight ones, that they be allowed to marry in the same way straight couples can, and gain the same social and legal recognition, more importantly stability in life.

I was able to show a lifelong commitment to my husband in a way that people (and authorities) understand, that brought with it certain responsibilities, duties and advantages.

It’s bizarre to me that self-declared champions of marriage would think that’s a sacred and wonderful thing if my partner had a penis but some terrible destructive thing if my partner had a vagina. And sickens me that people who define extra-marital sex as sinful deny a group of people marriage, then turn around and say ‘well, all gay sex is extra-marital so it’s all sinful by definition’. It’s like banning someone from owning an umbrella and then criticizing him for being wet.

“If I believed as you seem to, that every word that comes out of a popes’ mouth was infallible,”

No, I don’t.

I’m going to be perfectly honest, I think I understand Papal infallibility better than someone who’d say:

“If she IS that Church however, then her teachings CANNOT change because they are divine truth”

or

“If someone - anyone - priest, theologian, pewsitter, - espouses something that is contrary to the teachings of the magisterium (subtly or obviously), I must reject that opinion.”

We’re talking about different things:

1. the Truth - ie: what God thinks.
2. Catholic teachings - ie: what people empowered by the Vatican have taught or what important (not infallible) Church documents or (again, not infallible) major thinkers have laid out. 
3. infallible statements.

Now, I guess in your terms (3) always expresses a statement that could be found in (1). But (2) needn’t. I think it’s a bit odd that God has made it known beyond all doubt that we can’t be Jansenites while leaving some of the more controversial stuff for us to work out for ourselves, but he’s the boss.

There’s clear evidence that people commenting here on this thread think that the Catholic Church teaches the Truth and nothing but the Truth. That isn’t Catholic doctrine. Catholic doctrine is that to get closer to the Truth you need the Catholic church, but that the Church is… well, more like ‘science’, in that it has a good working model and methodology, but we know more now than we did a thousand years ago, and we’ll know more in a thousand years than we do now. 

We agree that there have only been twenty infallible statements (I think it’s less than that - the Catholic Church is incredibly coy about which statements are infallible and left it to others to compile lists). That, effectively, everything else is, if not up for grabs, then it can be revised. The wording of the Mass has changed, the oaths priests swear have changed, attitudes to flagellation, Papal infallibility, relics, indulgences and so on have changed.

Catholic teaching changes. Some of those changes flip from ‘yes, I encourage it’ to ‘no, it’s a terrible heresy’ (such as the attitude to flagellation, where the same Pope said both things).

Given that ... do you agree that there has been no infallible statement on gay marriage? That, yes, doctrine *seems* to point one way, but it’s not been nailed into place with an infallible statement.

We’re rapidly getting to the point with gay marriage where it’s gone from ‘people’s attitudes are more liberal’ to ‘people find this actively offensive’. It’s actively offensive now to say that you can’t socialize with someone from a different religion, and so priests don’t say that any more. It’s actively offensive to say that women are all vile and all sins are down to them, so priests stopped saying that. Homophobia is already beyond the pale in most European countries, it’s getting that way in some parts of the US. And the Church adapts its teachings to fit social norms. Slowly but surely. Crude stereotypes and policy based on race aren’t acceptable any more. We’re seeing the same with gender.

The ultimate consequences of two thousand years of anti-Semitism were so horrific, and the change in attitude that society had so swift and so profound that the Church abandoned the idea all Jews were ‘Christ killers’. That’s got way more theological implications than gay marriage. The idea of collective guilt is central to Catholic belief. If all Jews aren’t guilty because some killed Jesus, why are all people sinners because two of them ate an apple? Ask your priest about that one, and watch him change the subject to the football or the weather.

Now, I’m not saying that by 2015 it’ll be gay marriages galore with the Pope officiating. I’d be willing to bet, as with the Anglicans, it’ll be women priests before gay marriage, and that it’ll happen in the twenty-second century not the twenty-first, but if the Church wanted to rule gay marriage out for all time, they’d have issued an infallible statement, and they’ve been careful not to go that far because they know they may have to keep their options open (just as John Paul II’s ‘women priests’ statement is ‘infallible, but’). They imply it’s Truth, they’ve never actually quite come out and said it is.

“We’ve all heard the flying spaghetti argument, the sky fairy discourse.”

Not from me. That started as an answer to a very specific criticism of atheism which was ‘hey, atheist, you can’t disprove God’. No, we can’t. You can’t disprove Russell’s teapot orbiting Mars or say categorically that the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn’t exist, either. We can’t categorically disprove God.

Science has categorically disproved Adam and Eve. Once you’ve done that, you’ve pretty disproved classical Catholicism - note how even in this discussion, people are invoking Adam and Eve as justification. If Adam didn’t exist, original sin didn’t, Christ died to redeem the sins of a fictional character and so on. I know that there’s been a frantic retroactive bid to suture that problem, but ... well, find the pre-Darwin Pope who said Adam and Eve was to be understood metaphorically or that they weren’t the first people, just the first people to have souls, or whatever the line is this week.

What’s your understanding of Adam and Eve? Real literal people just like it says in the Bible, story with a kernel of truth with the Biblical account being a garbled account of something that happened in caveman days, or just a story? More to the point, what’s your understanding of current doctrine? If Adam *didn’t* eat the apple, you’d concede that the Catholic narrative is, ahem, undermined a little.

The Catholic Encyclopedia: “To what extent these chapters should be considered as strictly historical is a much disputed question, the discussion of which does not come within the scope of the present article”

Is hilarious. ‘Oh, this may not be real - who can say? - anyway, moving on ... ‘.

And that’s the thing. We can’t ever disprove God (or ever prove it). We can demonstrate that Catholic doctrine up until 1850 was based on what, generously, we could describe as ‘what is probably a fairy story’. That’s why I’m interested in individual claims, not the big stuff. ‘The Catholic church has never changed its teaching’ or ‘The Catholic church has always seen marriage the same way it does now’ are testable claims.

Did you know all atheists are infallible and Papal infallibility is silly? I’m speaking ex cathedra, and believe me, atheists are *way* ex of that cathedra. That’s exactly how silly I think one person trying to win an argument by saying they never make mistakes is. It’s the sort of thing a nine year old says, *when* they’ve lost the argument.

This is the statement that was right up there with the sky fairy and spaghetti monster.  Sarcasm.  Mean spirited.  Old and tired.

An infallible statement does not “make it so” as if it wasn’t so before.  It is, has always been, and will always be Catholic OFFICIAL Teaching that women cannot and will not be priests, and that Homosexuality is INTRINSICALLY disordered.  That CANNOT change.  Even if all the Popes and Bishops wish that it COULD, because the Church is not a democracy.  These are God authored laws, not man made ones.  Period.  If the day comes where the Church ordains women and homosexuality becomes sanctioned, I and a billion other Catholics will walk.

Adam and Eve…You want it both ways.  Why doesn’t the Church spend billions of dollars advancing science?  Why, when science proves something, does the Church change her understanding of Scripture?

Our Faith CANNOT contradict science.  We can make errors in our understanding. In this post alone, there have been a gazillion misunderstandings of the words that have been printed.  We read scripture, we interpret scripture, we discover WE made a mistake, not Scripture.

I was not around in the 3rd century, and I am not an historian or a theologian.  What did the first apostles believe about Adam and Eve?  Probably what the Jews believed, as they were Jews.  What do we believe now?  We view the books of Genesis as written in the genre of Mythology.  We, unlike fundamental Protestants do not view the bible as a literal history.  For the people, in the time it was written, given their circumstances and lack of working knowledge of the world, attempted to show that there was a creator, that we are loved by Him, and that we have a specific place in the order of things.  It tells of human weakness, and that man, in his arrogance, rejected God’s love and broke the relationship that the Creator had intended.  It began the story or “our journey home”.  The bible IS the inerrant Truth, but in it’s lessons, not it’s “text”.  It was authored BY God, THROUGH men.  Each of those human authors told the story in their own particular way.  Was there an apple?  Who cares?  Was there a serpent?  Who cares?  Was Eve fashioned out of Adams rib?  Who cares?  Did God create the world and everything in it, including human beings?  Yes.  Does He love us?  Yes.  Did our disobedience bring ramifications, most notably death?  Yes.

Has that been what was taught from the beginning?  YES!

“If the day comes where the Church ordains women and homosexuality becomes sanctioned, I and a billion other Catholics will walk.”

Anglicans said the same thing, and only a few left. Using that as a model, when it happens, there will be particular problems in Africa, and a lot of fudging from the authorities, but a good nine out of ten Catholics in Europe and the US will embrace it.

“Was there an apple?  Who cares?”

Talk about having it both ways! Matthew 19:4 is true when it means that a man has to marry a woman because that was how Adam and Eve were created ... but who cares whether Adam and Eve literally existed?

Or how about:

“For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ”

Now you can say that you’re not a third century theologian or whatever, but who do you think the ‘one man’ is there? I know, and I’ll reveal the mystery to you if you can’t work it out. It’s not *our* disobedience (talk about Protestant belief!) it’s very specifically *Adam’s*, transmitted through us because of collective guilt. Who cares? Well, Jesus cared enough to die for that reason, and that’s what the apostles believed he did and why he did it.

So, which is wrong - did Jesus go to his death thinking something understandable at the time but we now know to be foolish; was that the mistake of interpretation of the apostles who were there with Jesus, or an error that crept in (very) early in the history of the church?

It’s the way that people can be blase on that point, then instantly become Biblical literalists when the issue is ‘marriage is between one man and one woman’. The reason why is simple - ‘oh, that’s obscure theology I’m not qualified to judge’ versus ‘ugh, gay men doing stuff with their bums, that’s horrid’. But you know full well that the exact reason Christ died is, to put it mildly, perhaps the single most important thing in Christian belief, and that tiny variations in phrasing of the reasons are enough to schism a church. 

Two of the gospels have genealogies of Jesus that go back to Adam. Now, yes, I understand that it’s not that long ago that we all thought that we went back to Adam, but ... well, the apostles were wrong to say that, weren’t they? If that is ‘well, they were writing in the first century, that’s just how they understood the world’ ... well, great, cultural relativism, I’m all for it, but why can’t you do the same squint and say ‘and that applies to their narrow first century Judean view of marriage’?

I’m not asking you to become a literalist or creationist, but if you can make the leap to ‘when we read the Bible we’re not meant to understand that the first person was Adam and he actually existed’, you can make the leap to ‘God will not be shattered if two men got married’.

What’s the Catholic doctrine on Christ’s gen

MK, when did God tell us that all priests must be men?

JEC,

If you’ve been reading along you know that we, unlike fundamentalist Protestants, do not read the bible “literally”.  So if you are asking me where Jesus explicitly states in Scripture that women cannot be priests, you won’t find it.  Neither will you find Him say explicitly that He is God, or that He is part of a Trinitarian God.

What we do see is that He did not ordain any women, and He had every reason to do so, as it was the women that stayed with Him faithfully til the end. 

If any woman deserved to be ordained, it was His mother, with Mary Magdalene next in line.  He ate dinner with the TWELVE, broke bread with the TWELVE, and instituted the priesthood of the New Covenant with the TWELVE.  If He had wanted women ordained, He would have ordained them.

We understand the reason for this as the priest would stand in Persona Christi during the Mass and Jesus was a man.  Also, the Eucharist is the consummation of the marriage between Jesus and His Bride, the Church.  Male.  Female.  When speaking of male and female roles, it is the females role to “receive” and the males role to “give”.  We receive the Eucharist.  If you think of the Church and Jesus as the Bride and Groom, the altar is the marriage bed.  That is where the bride and groom come together and share their most intimate act.  Male and Female He made them.  It’s not about who deserves to be a priest, it’s about the “role” that men and women play in the life of the Church.

Talk about having it both ways! Matthew 19:4 is true when it means that a man has to marry a woman because that was how Adam and Eve were created ... but who cares whether Adam and Eve literally existed?

You seem to have a need for us to believe that the first man’s name was actually Adam and the first Woman’s name be Eve.  But that is your dilemma, not mine.  We are perfectly comfortable referring to them as Adam and Eve because of what their names mean, not because we believe they were actually named that.  You could just as easily call them Man #1 and Woman #1.  But as the story was told in the Genre of Mythology, we understand that much was symbolism and much was imaginative.  The Song of Songs is a love poem between God and Israel (later seen as the Church) and no one believes that God actually caresses the breasts of the Church.  It’s like you desperately want to fit us into a mold that you have devised, ignoring what we actually believe. 

I am part of a family.  The first man and the first woman were my parents.  They sinned.  That sin affected me.  WE, the family of man, sinned.  Seriously?  You want to play reindeer games?  Because I don’t.  Of course Jesus died for that sin.  No one is arguing that.  What I said was that it didn’t matter what their names were, or if it was a serpent, a kangaroo or anything else that tempted them.  Doesn’t matter if they ate an apple or an oreo cookie.  What matters is that they did what they were told not to do.  I am not the one hung up on the details.  You are.  I don’t have to defend those details, because they don’t matter.  You can attack them all you want.  They’re irrelevant to the Truth.

Anglicans said the same thing, and only a few left. Using that as a model, when it happens, there will be particular problems in Africa, and a lot of fudging from the authorities, but a good nine out of ten Catholics in Europe and the US will embrace it.

I don’t care what the Anglicans did.  I am not Anglican.  The Anglicans have no teaching authority, therefore they cannot be betrayed by them.

but a good nine out of ten Catholics in Europe and the US will embrace it.

And….?  So what?  So nine of ten Catholics embrace it.  They’ll be embracing a lie.  That doesn’t mean the Truth doesn’t exist.  9 out of 10 people embrace lies every day.

“The first man and the first woman were my parents ...  I am not the one hung up on the details.”

The ‘detail’ in question here is ‘did a “first man and woman” ever exist’. We know how species come about, now. There was never a ‘first man’ and a ‘first woman’. If they did not *exist* they did not *disobey*. It’s not a question of what Adam’s name was, it’s a question of how species emerge. There was no ‘first man’ any more than there was a ‘first chicken’ or ‘first cat’.

If you had a, I dunno, a time telescope and you pointed it at Adam and Eve, where would it be pointing and what would it see? What *you* think happened, just how you reconcile the modern scientific account with the Biblical one.

Here’s what modern science would say: there is no one point where a monkey gave birth to a man. All species are varied due to mutation in their DNA and sexual recombination. One group of monkeys got split off from another, probably by some type of geographic barrier. In a slightly different environment, slightly different mutations would have been beneficial. Over millions of years, both groups changed both morphologically and behaviorally and these changes add up. There came a point where those populations had mutated to the point that if they met up again, they could no longer interbreed. We would now be able to say they are two species. But there was no one individual who represented the ‘first’ of any new species.

Now, I believe the current Catholic position is something like ‘God took one of those monkey people, gave it a soul and it became a man and then when he got lonely God did the same with a female in the same group and she became the first woman’. But, yowch, really? You’re happy with that? You don’t hear the gears grinding as the testable, evidence-based with a well understood and observed mechanism of the scientific account becomes the prologue to a third rate fantasy novel?

This isn’t a ‘detail’.

1. Jesus died for a reason.
2. Different Christian sects give different reasons.
3. Those differences have seen wars fought.
4. The Catholic position is particularly nuanced and detailed.
5. The Catholic position is that it was, in simple terms, to pay back a debt. Adam did something so uniquely egregious the only way to rectify it was for God to die. Jesus died to balance the cosmic books, to counteract the greatest possible sin with the greatest possible sacrifice.

But if Adam *didn’t exist* Jesus died to pay a *non existent* debt. You might as well say Jesus died to pay off the Easter Bunny’s account with a chocolate wholesaler.

And I know that sounds glib and nasty, and I’m sorry, but hearing ‘Adam’s existence is mere detail’ in the context of a debate about real people alive now who just want to be able to visit their husband in hospital even if his husband’s parents don’t want him to ... that’s what’s glib and nasty. It’s not even one step up from ‘you can’t get married because it would make Thor sad’.

“I don’t care what the Anglicans did.  I am not Anglican.  The Anglicans have no teaching authority, therefore they cannot be betrayed by them ... And….?  So what?  So nine of ten Catholics embrace it.  They’ll be embracing a lie.  That doesn’t mean the Truth doesn’t exist.  9 out of 10 people embrace lies every day.”

There were Anglicans who felt betrayed. John Paul II issued a number of statements intending to appeal to those who did, and there were a number of conversions to Catholicism. But, in the UK at least, while women priests didn’t attract more people to Anglicanism, it did slow the decline. Weddings make a church a lot of money, and the boom in gay civil unions in Anglican church has brought in a lot of cash.

Not, of course, that the Catholic church would do anything that was a cynical way of making money and slowing the decline in attendance.

“All I’m ‘for’ is that in modern America gay couples be treated like straight ones, that they be allowed to marry in the same way straight couples can, and gain the same social and legal recognition, more importantly stability in life.”

“And sickens me that people who define extra-marital sex as sinful deny a group of people marriage”

Are you wanting marriage to be any group of people who wish to have the government validate their relationship.  Why would the government need to be involved in this at all?  What does the government care who loves who and for how long and who lives with who and for how long?

The only reason the government got involved in marriage in the first place was for the protection of the offspring which the marriage act produces.  Perhaps we are moving towards a time when marriage should no longer involve the government at all and be a function of religion alone?

J,

My point is that the Anglican church was not the Church instituted by God.  So it doesn’t matter to me if they dissolve, or are disappointed.  I’m sure a whole lot of people will be disappointed tomorrow when they aren’t sucked up into wherever.  That’s not my problem either.  The Catholic Church has a threefold Authority all given by God.  The Teaching Church, Scripture and Sacred Tradition.  If either one of those ever proved to be false, then the whole thing would collapse.  So far that hasn’t happen and I believe it never will, nor never can.  Therefore,if women were suddenly allowed to be priests or homosexuals to marry, I would know that the end was near or the Church was always a lie.  But since I have been promised by God that that will not happen, I’m not too worried.  Will she stumble?  Oh yeah.  But will she prove to be false?  No.  I don’t believe so.

“Perhaps we are moving towards a time when marriage should no longer involve the government at all and be a function of religion alone?”

Marriage involves a legal contract, the legal system is administered by government, so it’s a government matter. Perhaps the solution is for it to be a purely secular matter and if religious people want a priest to wave their magic wand over it to bless it, or whatever, then they could do so at a later date.

“Therefore,if women were suddenly allowed to be priests or homosexuals to marry, I would know that the end was near or the Church was always a lie.  But since I have been promised by God that that will not happen, I’m not too worried.”

Anglicans think they’re right and you’re wrong - I’m generous, I think you’re both equally right - and a lot of Anglicans huffed and puffed about women priests and civil partnerships, and those both came to pass and hardly anyone left. The Catholic Church has adapted to the changing attitudes to race (just look at what they say about Jews now compared with a hundred years ago), and I suspect they’ll adapt to attitudes about gender. There’s been a consistent decline in the number of people attending Mass in the US, about 0.5% a year, for the last fifty years,

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2004-11-07-church-main_x.htm

so unless something changes, the Church only has about forty years now before it’s completely empty. Women priests and civil partnerships slowed the decline in Anglican church attendance a little and I suspect at least some people in the Vatican have spotted that.

I’m forty, I suspect in my lifetime the Vatican will find some loophole to allow women to be semi-ordained to help priests out a bit. An actual female priest would take a lot longer, but I bet that woman’s alive today. I also suspect the Vatican will discover that actually God has always approved of two men living together but only in certain circumstances which just happen to involve going to church a lot and hiring the full choir for the right service to bless a legal civil union. Inevitably, the Vatican will soon be run bunch of people who grew up in the sixties not the thirties, and inevitably that’s going to lead to some change - liberalism, I suspect, rather than an ultraconservative backlash. I may be wrong; it’s a testable hypothesis, though. Time will tell. A hundred years from now, who knows, perhaps your granddaughter may be on here saying that the Church’s teaching never changed, how dare I suggest otherwise, and she should know because she’s the Pope.

Roman Catholics, the nation’s largest Christian denomination, grew 1.49 percernt to 68 million members. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1.71 percent to 5.8 million members and the Assemblies of God grew 1.27 percent to 2.8 million members.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/belief-blog/2010/feb/12/latest-church-growth-stats-in/

That’s from 2010.  Who knows, maybe in 5 or 6 years I’ll turn to give the handshake of the peace at Mass and you’ll be sitting next to me.  ;)

As for Adam and Eve.  No One knows how the Human species came to be.  People have theories.  But no one knows.  Until man came to mean body AND soul, the whole thing is moot.  At some point, man as we know him, an ensouled body, came to be.  That is the only man that matters.  Souls don’t “evolve” any more than God ”  There was no soul that crawled out the primordial pit of slime and evolved from a monkey’s soul to a human soul. How it happened is not the jurisdiction of the Church.  That it happened is all that concerns us as a whole.  There are surely individuals who are scientifically minded, but the business of the Church is not to explain how the world began in scientific terms. 

It is a huge leap from Bob wants his partner Rick to visit him in the hospital to therefore Bob and Rick should be allowed to get married.  I am not so coldhearted that I want the laws to keep Bob and Rick from being together at the moment of death.  But marriage is not the way to accomplish that.  Civil unions would solve a lot of these problems.  I’m not thrilled with that idea either, but I could live with it.  We have different definitions of marriage.  As one of the commenters above stated, perhaps we should abandon marriage as a civil service altogether.  Marriage could be a religious ceremony, and everything else could be a civil union.  Marriage could still be defined as between 1 man and 1 woman, and civil unions could take place between 1 man and 6 women, 2 men or a woman and her canary.  The children would still be protected, your gay couples would be protected, those of us who view marriage as more than a contract would be happy and the canary could inherit the family toaster.

Souls don’t “evolve” any more than God ”

  That should have read “any more than God has eyes”...

“Roman Catholics, the nation’s largest Christian denomination, grew 1.49”

The Catholic Church count ‘the number of people who were baptized Catholic living in the US’. That figure includes all the lapsed Catholics. As Richard Dawkins pointed out, if you use that measure, you also have to count Hitler as Catholic, as he was baptized. A third of the baptized now self identify as ‘former Catholics’, but the Church still counts them as Catholics.

The US population is growing by about three million a year, a lot of that is among the Hispanic population (1.4M of the 2.9M growth in population in 2005 were Hispanic; half of those were immigrants, half were babies), and Mexico’s a Catholic country. So you’d expect the raw numbers to increase - the raw numbers of every group has increased.

The figure I was using was the number of people who attend Catholic Mass. A much more sensible measure of actual religious practice, I’m sure you’d agree: 

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=29948

That’s from a thoroughly unpleasant (Catholic, as it happens) person, but spells it out pretty starkly. I had other links, but the moderating software on this site thinks a post is spam if there are too many links in it.

I’m sure I’m wrong and the reality on the ground where you are is a confident, thriving Church with full pews full of young people who have tons of kids, new churches being built, no outstanding unpleasant law suits and priests who are young, dynamic and not shipped in from some other country to make up the numbers.

“As one of the commenters above stated, perhaps we should abandon marriage as a civil service altogether.  Marriage could be a religious ceremony, and everything else could be a civil union.”

I’m an atheist, I’m married. I suggested a better model - all marriage secular, and religions can do a little blessing ceremony later if people want to. I think that’s how it’s done in France, isn’t it?

“civil unions could take place between 1 man and 6 women, 2 men or a woman and her canary”

And this is the thing. You go on about how man is created in God’s image and has a soul, and then three seconds later a gay man counts as much as a canary. It’s hard not to see this as you thinking gay people are somehow less than straight people.

There’s a very simple way to sink the ‘hey, if we allow gay marriage, what’s to stop people marrying children or animals?’ question. Marriage is a legal contract. Children and animals can not sign legal contracts. There you go. Done.

The civil union compromise is OK, and goes a long way to addressing most of my concerns. If that’s the best we can do, well, let’s have that. So ... why are the Catholic church in an unholy alliance with the Mormons (who say some very nasty things about you right there in the Book of Mormon) spending millions on political lobbying and violating the law by having priests telling their congregations to vote against civil unions?

The answer is, as you instinctively got to, is the Church wants a monopoly on wedding services. They bring in the mazumas, as I’m sure you know if you’re married and got the invoice.

You go on about how man is created in God’s image and has a soul, and then three seconds later a gay man counts as much as a canary. It’s hard not to see this as you thinking gay people are somehow less than straight people.

Nah.  That wasn’t a comment on gay men or canaries.  It was a comment on changing the definition of marriage.  If marriage is not a sacrament, but a contract, then it can mean anything anybody wants it to mean.  You got somethin’ against canaries???

There’s a very simple way to sink the ‘hey, if we allow gay marriage, what’s to stop people marrying children or animals?’ question. Marriage is a legal contract. Children and animals can not sign legal contracts. There you go. Done.

That’s YOUR definition of marriage.  I have a different definition of marriage and someday the definition could be that only one member of the part needs to “sign on”.  Today it is viewed as a sacrament.  Tomorrow it could be viewed as a legal contract between two people and 20 years from now it could simply be like buying a car.  That’s the reason so many of us get up in arms about changing the definition of words.

You act like the US is the only place where Catholicism matters.  First, newly baptized DOES indicate growth, as they are either adults who have CHOSEN to enter the Church, or the children of parents who are obviously practicing or they wouldn’t be bringing their children into the Faith.  But put that aside.  The US is not the only country in the world that reflects the Catholic Reality.  We import priests?  Great.  That means that in Poland or India or Korea, the Church is flourishing.  That means that there ARE priests to import! 

Are you claiming that an increase of 1.49% doesn’t count because they aren’t really Catholics?  People are JOINING the Church.  That’s called growth.  Even if you subract the number of lapsed Catholics, it doesn’t negate the fact that NEW Catholics are coming in.  If there were 100 Catholics and 15 of them were lapsed, how does that affect the fact that 15 new Catholics came into the Church?  It affects the number of Catholics, sure, but NOT the upward swing of NEW Catholics and that is the contention.  You claim the church is dying.  Lapsed Catholics doesn’t prove that.  A dying Church doesn’t have new members.  It has lapsed members and no new members.  The 60’s and 70’s did a number on the Church, to be sure.  It did a number on the world.  It will take time to recoup from that but we ARE recouping.  Those lapsed Catholics are ill formed Catholics.  That can be rectified and great lengths are being taken to do just that.  The Catholics Come Home campaign is a huge success.  Every year the RCIA programs have more candidates.  Give it time, not that much time either, and you will see a resurgence.  You can see it already.  You just need a little more time for the numbers to reflect it.

The most important part of the matter is that gay/lesbian and transgendered unions and their marriages will be legalized, just as many gained the right to vote decades ago and many were freed from slavery a century before that. Whether our Church, reactionary in this case, chooses to turn its back on all of these people is yet to be seen.

There are many parishes now that are quite welcoming, allowing full and complete access to all the sacraments. They are in the vanguard of great charity, a charity that will eventually spread throughout His one true Church.

“Are you claiming that an increase of 1.49% doesn’t count because they aren’t really Catholics?”

No. I’ll spell this out.

1. This is an increase in the NUMBER of Catholics, as defined by the Church itself. The US population is growing by about 1% a year. The ‘Catholic population’ is growing broadly in line with general population growth.

2. The Catholic Church defines a Catholic as someone who was baptized Catholic. This gives the largest possible number. It includes people who have never attended Mass as adults, it includes people who call themselves ‘former Catholics’ and those who explicitly converted to other faiths (or atheism).

3. Much of the growth (I gave the number in my previous post) is because we have a lot of people coming from Mexico, a Catholic country. They’ve not ‘become Catholic’, they’ve moved house. Immigration’s cool, I’m not saying they don’t count as people or anything like that, good luck to them, but they bolster the numbers. The boom in the Hispanic population masks the steep decline of the non-Hispanic Catholics.

4. A more sensible definition is how many people attend Mass. The Vatican has itself called that number a ‘crisis’. Others look at the decline in people wanting to be priests, or the number of diocese, or the number of churches open. Compare with the fifties, ‘decimation’ doesn’t cover what’s been happening in the seminaries. And the fewer applicants, the lower the bar to get in. The next generation of priests won’t be the best and brightest, it’ll be anyone who bothered to show up. University Theology courses used to be hard to get into, now it’s as easy as writing an application letter, and places like Baylor have been caught fiddling the figures.

5. The official number of Catholics in Poland is going to be higher than thirty years ago *when it was part of the Soviet Union and Catholicism was highly curtailed*. There are growth areas for Catholicism, certainly.

“the upward swing of NEW Catholics”

‘New Catholics’ (who aren’t immigrants) are almost all baptized at birth (we have the figure, it’s over 95%). It’s a count of babies born to Catholics, not how many have looked at Catholicism and thought ‘yay, that’s brilliant’, or who think ‘yes that’s actually Christ’s body, not just some wafer’. 70% of young Catholic adults, those between 18-40, *who take Mass* don’t believe in the literal Eucharist. And only about 20% of young Catholics take Mass. So (assuming the 80% who don’t do Mass don’t believe, either) only about 6% of Catholics between 18-40 believe in the Eucharist. And they are the ones currently raising children, they’ll be the ones in charge of the Church in a generation’s time.

“The 60’s and 70’s did a number on the Church, to be sure.”

The decline in attendance of Mass started in the fifties, it’s been an absolutely steady decline of about 0.5% a year since then. There was no surge after the sixties, or even after the child abuse scandal broke. It’s a steady decline, and I doubt there’s any one reason.

“Give it time, not that much time either, and you will see a resurgence.”

Well, good. First of all you admit that the resurgence hasn’t happened, yet. Second you give us another testable hypothesis. I predict that over the next five years, we’ll see an increase in the ‘number of Catholics’ of about 1.5% a year, in line with general US population growth, but a steady decline of about 0.5% a year in those who say they attend Mass. In 2010, around 31% of US Catholics said they attended Mass. I predict by 2020 it’s around 25%. You’re predicting ‘more than 31%’?

“They are in the vanguard of great charity, a charity that will eventually spread throughout His one true Church.”

Indeed. There are two stages. ‘Civil unions’ or something like it will be legal across the US in ... ten years? Five? It’s inevitable, it may even be protected by a Constitutional Amendment. At the moment, Catholic churches are engaged in (unconstitutional) lobbying to prevent that, but it will happen, and I don’t know anyone that doesn’t think it won’t (I know a lot of people who think it’s a horrible idea, I don’t know any of them who think it won’t happen).

The second stage is the Church accepting that within the Church. That will take a generation longer. But it’ll happen. At the moment, the Church thinks it’s got a Unique Selling Point in the marketplace of religion - ‘eternal truths and a consistent message’. It thinks of itself as not trendy, or subject to the whims of fashion and gets a lot of support from people who like a sense of certainty. At some point, though, gender discrimination will look as disgusting as racial discrimination does now. Anti-semitism was once one of the eternal values, and if the Catholic Church can forgive the Jews for killing Christ, they can forgive two dudes who want to live together. That’s not my lifetime, but it’s this century, I’d guess. 

Someone like MK may hate the idea. The moment the Vatican is sure that they’ll get 1.1 new Catholics for every current Catholic they lose, they’ll do it. Those gay guys have a lot of disposable income, and the Church has a lot of roofs that need fixing.

Second you give us another testable hypothesis. I predict that over the next five years, we’ll see an increase in the ‘number of Catholics’ of about 1.5% a year, in line with general US population growth, but a steady decline of about 0.5% a year in those who say they attend Mass. In 2010, around 31% of US Catholics said they attended Mass. I predict by 2020 it’s around 25%. You’re predicting ‘more than 31%’?

You’re on.  I’ll bet the number of practicing Catholics (people who attend Mass) increases.  As well as the number of newly baptized.  We’ll just have to wait and see. 

Note that the decrease in attendance coincided with decrease in morality, and the misinterpretation of Vatican II.  I believe less people were interested NOT because the Church is too strict, but because she became to lax.  If the Church says the same things as the “world” then why the heck would a person join?  I predict that as the language of the Church changes and the Bishops get held accountable, and the poorly formed priests of the 60’s and 70’s die off, you will see a resurgence far greater than 25%.  You say becoming more liberal will bring in more members and I say that’s precisely why people left.  You might get more of the type of members who would continue to dilute the Churches teachings to the point of non recognition, but those would hardly be pew sitters.  Clean her up, and you’ll get the type of Catholics that know what being Catholic means.  Just look at the Traditional Church and how fast it is growing.

At some point, though, gender discrimination will look as disgusting as racial discrimination does now.

Oh please.  It is not immoral for a person to be black.  It is not immoral for a person to “act” black.  It is not immoral for a person to be homosexually bent.  It IS immoral for them to act “homosexually”. The Church is not against homosexuality because they hate homosexuals.  It is not against homosexuals at all.  It IS against sin.  Duh.  And homosexual acts are sinful in the Churches eyes.  No one is keeping gays out of the Church.  If they are in a state of Grace, they are welcome to the Communion Rail…the same rules apply to ALL Catholics.  If they aren’t in a state of Grace they are more than welcome to attend Mass. 

Yeah, the Catholic Church is going to change it’s 2,000 year old doctrines to get a couple of extra bucks from the Gay guys!  You’re funny.  Gays are as welcome in our Church as anyone.  You make it sound like they aren’t there now.

Tell me something.

If the Catholic Church is built on lies, and there is no God…If it’s all a scam to get money, and the teachings as you claim change with the wind…then why the heck would any gay person (or any person) want to belong to it anyway?  First you diss every aspect of the Faith and then say it isn’t fair to keep people out?  (Which we of course, don’t)  If the gay community doesn’t like the teachings of the Church, then why are they so fired up to be accepted by it?  Why would they join and give their money to something that is so obviously distasteful?  Unless they just want to do what they are told they cannot?

“I’ll bet the number of practicing Catholics (people who attend Mass) increases.  As well as the number of newly baptized.”

The *percentage* of Catholics who attend Mass, as measured every year by Gallup, will continue to drop. That’s what I’m betting. It’s currently 31%. I’m betting it’s lower in five years, then lower still in ten years. You would be betting it will be more than 31% both times. 

The absolute number of people the Catholic Church counts as Catholics will increase. Because the population will increase, and because once you’re baptized you literally can punch the Pope in the face with knuckledusters marked ‘I am now an atheist’ and they’ll still count you as Catholic. They’re not counting Catholics, they’re counting people baptized Catholic.

“Note that the decrease in attendance coincided with decrease in morality, and the misinterpretation of Vatican II.”

Note that it didn’t. It was already falling. Vatican II was an attempt to stop the decline. The Church has been in an ultraconservative phase since John Paul II became Pope, the decline continued. Nothing has sped up or slowed down a steady decline of 0.5% a year.

It’s also amusing to see that you think the Church teaches Truth but can’t teach its own teachers. I’m not sure where all this Truth teaching actually is meant to be happening.

There are two ways to play it. The Catholic Church can continue to position itself as a far right conservative movement, as its older members want, banking on the fact that the younger members will get grouchier as they get older, or it can put its own house in order and become a place young couples feel safe leaving their kids. As an atheist, the current Pope is so far beyond any satirical Pope I could have come up with (implicated in the cover up, ex-Hitler Youth *and* he looks like the Emperor from Star Wars ... did the Vatican consult Christopher Hitchens when they appointed him?), that I’m happy with it steering its current course. I’m glad we can agree on something.

“If the gay community doesn’t like the teachings of the Church, then why are they so fired up to be accepted by it?”

Two things.

1. Catholics are not lobbying to keep the ban on *Catholic* gay marriage, they want *everyone* to be subject to the ban. If it was Catholics keeping it to themselves, I wouldn’t have a problem. You don’t just want to stop Catholic homosexuals getting married, though, do you?

2. I genuinely don’t know why any homosexual, or any woman, or any working class person, would want to be a Catholic. It baffles me. Masochism? There are clearly people in those categories who want to be Catholics, though. One of the reasons I’m here is to hear women, in particular, articulate what they get out of a Church run by old men who so clearly despise women as a category.

I understand why they would fight the church.  What you proposed is that if we sanctioned gay marriage then they would finally want to BE Catholic.  Two very different things.

Secondly, for someone who wants to why women belong to the Church, you sure aren’t being obvious.  You’ve never asked once, of any of us, on this thread or any other, why we are Catholic.  You’ve given us plenty of examples of why you are NOT Catholic, and why you hate the Church and blah, blah, blah….but not once have you openly or honestly asked any woman here why she is Catholic.

Q: Who cares if the Catholic population is growing while Mass attendance declines?

A: Although Catholic Mass attendance did decline in recent decades from a peak in the 1950s, there has been no decline in Mass attendance percentages nationally in the last decade. Just under one in four Catholics attends Mass every week. About a third of Catholics attend in any given week and more than two-thirds attend Mass at Christmas, Easter, and on Ash Wednesday. More than four in ten self-identified Catholics attend Mass at least once a month.

http://nineteensixty-four.blogspot.com/2010/11/pies-damned-pies-and-statistics-is.html

I’d like to see the NCR do a post on this topic.  You raise some interesting points, and I’d like to see them fleshed out.

If Jesus had made Mary Magdalen one of the apostles she would not have been able to speak in the temples.She would have had no status in that culture. So rather than take on that issue Jesus appointed only males counting on the people of God at a later date to recognize the inherent inequity of that. Women today are heads of state, CEO’s, theologians, and excelling in previously exclusively male occupations. It is just a matter of time until they become priests also. I believe that will happen because the Spirit is working to that among the people of God and the Spirit will prevail. Your interpretation is no better than mine and I believe it is embarassingly weak.

I read these reports of the increases in the number of U. S. Catholics. That data is misleading. The number of Catholics is skewed because of the large number of Hispanics who have entered the country, legaly or illegally. Discounting Hispanics we continue to decrease.Many observers have discribed it as hemoraghing members. As bad as it is here it is much worse in Europe. There are many reasons but a term that has arisen lately is very good at discribing it, “arrogant clericlism.” We are approaching the time when someone may again nail a list of grievances to the front door of the Vatican. Over 200 theologians in Germany may have already started something akin to this.

If Jesus had made Mary Magdalen one of the apostles she would not have been able to speak in the temples.She would have had no status in that culture.

SO WHAT????  Jesus Himself didn’t exactly have standing.  Not everyone preached in the Temples. If Jesus had wanted women priests He would have ordained them.  What does it matter to you anyway?  You don’t even acknowledge the Male Priesthood…sheesh!  Our Lord was not above making waves.  Everything He preached turned the culture on it’s head.  Women priests would have been nothing!

<blockqutoe>I read these reports of the increases in the number of U. S. Catholics</blockquote>

Again, is there some reason you think that only the Catholic Church in America matters???  There are Catholics in other countries.  Read the last link I put up.

I know this is late coming into the discussion, but I couldn’t help but wonder why no one looked up the Tertullian quote posted earlier to see the context in which it was written.  Everyone just assumed Tertullian thought marriage was bad!  The quote in question comes from a document titled “On Exhortation to Chastity”, and is from Chapter 9, entitled “Second Marriage a Species of Adultery, Marriage Itself Impugned, as Akin to Adultery”.  The entire document is written questioning the validity of second marriage - arguing it is akin to fornication.  It is not a document about first marriage or marriage in general.

You can read the entire document here:
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0405.htm

In fact, Tertullian wrote another letter defending marriage and monogamy. 

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0406.htm

And then there’s the letter he wrote TO HIS WIFE.  Again, if you read it, you will see he is very much hung up on the remarriage question.

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0404.htm

This is a short paper outlining and dissecting Tertullian’s teaching on marriage and remarriage. He did not encourage remarriage, and encouraged those who were divorced or widowed to pursue a life of holiness and celibacy.  His views on remarriage he realizes are not laid out in scripture but are a matter of his own beliefs.

http://people.vanderbilt.edu/~james.p.burns/chroma/marriage/tabbmar.html

Good Work Lee.  I guess we get lazy, especially given that when we DO do the work, no one reads it.  99% of the time when you look up one of these accusations, you see that it is pulled out of context and misunderstood.

“It was a comment on changing the definition of marriage.”

While we’re on the subject of ‘changing definitions’, the Church’s latest report into the child abuse scandal says that only 23% of cases were pedophile cases ... but they define that as the child being under ten, while the standard definition used by the mental health industry is under thirteen ... and 51% of cases involved children between the ages of 10-13, so the actual number of pedophile cases is 74%.

http://mirandaceleste.net/2011/05/24/a-worthless-and-dangerous-report/

And for all the talk about how ‘the media’ is against Catholics, CNN has just reported the 23% figure the Church gave without spotting the deception.

The Church didn’t have any problem changing *that* definition. (Prediction: someone is going to reply to this by saying that it doesn’t matter what the psychiatric industry definition is, Jesus never defined it as thirteen, so what’s wrong with calling it ten). And it’s a training issue, they say. Do Catholics generally need ‘training’ that having sex with eleven year olds is wrong, or is it just Catholic priests?

Here’s a fun quiz: complete the following sentence - “an influential Italian Cardinal who has been working with Pope Benedict XVI on reforms to respond to prior scandals of pedophile priests has .., “

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2072613,00.html?xid=rss-world

Is there a bit in the Bible where Jesus said:

“I do not want 16-year-old boys but younger. Fourteen-year-olds are O.K. Look for needy boys who have family issues,”

People here have said that truth is important, that truth can not contain lies. Does anyone doubt that every level of the Church has lied about this, from individual priests to top level official reports? The scandal is not that there were abusers, it’s that their bosses knew about it and not only didn’t stop it, they actively hindered the eventual investigations. 

Now, I know that Catholics tend to yawn when anyone dares to suggest that raping kids is wrong, or they try to spin the line that there were a few cases in the seventies but the Church knows it did wrong and is at the forefront of reform, now.

It’s not.

We now have the Church’s 2011 report on what they think the problem is, and it’s a conscious act of deception. They blame child abuse dating to the fifties on the liberalism of the sixties. They contradict themselves over whether the hierarchy knew. They fight the disclosure of documents all the way up to the Supreme Court, and when those documents are released, they say the opposite of what the Church claimed they said. They’ve tried to downplay the problem by changing the definition so that raping a ten year old girl doesn’t count as child abuse. And the biggest lie of all is that nowadays they’ve changed. They are still lying. You do not produce a report like that by mistake.

Simple question: do you think raping a ten year old girl should be defined as child abuse? Would you trust the motives and honesty of anyone who defined it differently? Assuming ‘yes’ and ‘no’, then is your objection to gay marriage *really* ‘nevertheless, we trust the exact same people who are wrong about that with the definition of marriage’?

OK ...

I may not persuade people here of my broader point that an organization and individuals consistently caught in conscious acts of deception might be liars, and might by lying (and indeed just wrong) about other things. Even I did, it might not change your personal feelings about gay marriage. Fair enough. 

Can I make a more modest request, though? People here are active on Catholic fora and in other discussions. If anyone ever cites that report, which was last week’s “The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010”, or uses the statistic ‘only 22% were cases of child abuse’ or something like that, please could you reply: ‘that report didn’t define child abuse in the same way it’s usually defined’.

Jemima,

No one is claiming that the Church acted correctly in these horrifying circumstances.  There were mitigating factors, yes, like the fact that in the 60’s and 70’s it was still believed that these guys could be rehabbed, but they still should have been turned over to the police.

That said, the report “The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors” was a. Not done BY the Catholic Church but presented TO the Catholic Church by a group that had nothing to do WITH the Catholic Church and b. was an attempt to confirm or refute whether or not homosexuality or child abuse was the core problem.  (Among other things) This is the reason the age of the children mattered.  There are a number of terms being thrown around…pedophilia, ephebophilia, hebephilia…

Granted these are not in the DSM-IV, but as late as the year 2,000, pedophilia was not considered a clinical diagnosis unless the PERPETRATOR was suffering from extreme clinical stress.  (See pg. 53 of the report).  While the diagnosis of ephebophilia and hebephilia are not in the DSM-IV, they are still significant here because most of the cases were against boys.  Which led to the accusation that this was of a homosexual nature.  It is also important to note that at the time of the majority of abuses, pedophilia was not thought to be criminal or even necessarily clinically disordered.  Therefore the priests would have viewed their behavior as wrong (due to their vow of celibacy) but “would not have viewed them as criminal or harmful” Pg 112 of the report. 

Also, of the children molested, over 80% were male.  1856 were molested between the ages of 1 and 11, while 3506 were molested between the ages of 12 and 15.  This places the majority of victims at post-pubescence and predominantly, male.  Hence the focus on homosexuality.

Add to that the idea that during this time it was believed that with therapy everything could be straightened out, and you have the perfect storm for not going public.

NOW, if you try to twist my words and make it seem as though I am excusing ANYONE INVOLVED’S behavior, I’m not going to be happy.  They were WRONG.  We do not determine whether our behavior is wrong based on whether it is legal or illegal, named in the DSM or not.  Each and every instance of abuse and cover up was wrong, wrong, wrong. 

All I am attempting to point out is that the report is complicated, trying to answer specific questions and shows how misunderstood by EVERYONE, Catholic or not, pedophilia was at the time. 

Note also that the number proposed was 22.6 not 22 and it was rounded up to 23%.

Lastly, every faction of society is made up of people who do not respect the concepts of right and wrong.  Whether it is the boy scouts, the YMCA, teachers, Police Officers, the guy next door or the Catholic Church.  Not only do these abuses occur and get covered up in the general population, but they do so more often than they did in the Catholic Church.  The report itself states that there are no accurate numbers for the occurrence of sexual abuse of minors in the Protestant Churches. 

Were these priests wrong?  Of course.  Terribly, horribly wrong.  There are no words.  Were the Bishops who covered it up wrong?  Of course, maybe more wrong than the priests themselves.  Does the Catholic Church condone or promote sexual abuse of minors?  NO!  Individual members are as subject to failings as anyone else, but the Church Herself abhors this behavior. 

We cannot undo the abuse, we cannot take it back.  We are doing the best that we can.  What more would you like us to do?  Seriously, tell us?  What would satisfy you? 

http://www.usccb.org/nrb/johnjaystudy/incident3.pdf

“It is also important to note that at the time of the majority of abuses, pedophilia was not thought to be criminal or even necessarily clinically disordered.”

Thanks for your reply, but you’re going to have to clarify something: what ‘time’ are we talking about here, when having sex with a ten year old wasn’t a criminal act?

I agree we need to be nuanced and thoughtful about this, and it’s easy to turn this tragedy into a cartoon. But isn’t the issue here that ‘having sex with children’ has long (ie: for many centuries) been heinous under any circumstances, even before we get into the fact these are people with a duty of care, or religious men, or people who swore celibacy and fulminate that half the perfectly normal sex things married couples get up to are sinful?

I think the reason is has so much traction is that central hypocrisy - these are the people with the sole job of telling people what’s right and wrong, particularly when it comes to sex. The notion that they did it because of training issues or ‘because it was the sixties’ just doesn’t play. 

What would I like? The Church to open its paper trail about this, the one that we know they’ve compiled privately, in full, and for everyone complicit in the abuse or the cover up, regardless of rank or office, to get the punishment that an individual in the secular world would receive. The same law for them. That’s all.

I just don’t get the sense that lay Catholics are going after their priests over this. Where’s the anger? There just seems to be a lot more ‘the media are out to get Catholics’ than investigation of what went on in their own diocese. I’m an atheist, I’m a moral relativist, I don’t believe in objective truth, I don’t believe in ‘Good and Evil’. Why, then, is it your lot saying ‘dude, it was the free love sixties, a lot of crazy stuff happened back then and everyone was at it’ and my lot saying ‘raping kids is always wrong’?

But that’s my point Jemima.  Our lot isn’t saying that.  This report was not OUR report.  That’s important.  That is the conclusion that John Jay came to.  Personally, I think it’s a load of crap.  So do a lot of Catholics.  But either way, no matter what the “reason(s)“for the abuse, it doesn’t change the fact that it was, is abuse.  It’s sick.  No one, no one, no one in the Catholic community disagrees.

We might not be marching in the streets about it, but that’s because when the news broke, it broke for us too.  And at the same time that the news broke, the situation was also being taken care of.  If you don’t think people (Catholic People) are pissed off then you aren’t paying attention.  We just don’t know what you want us to do.  What is the right response?  Burn down the Churches?  Lynch all of the priests?  Every priest I look at…I think, would he hurt my kids?  Which is so sad, because given the HUGE number of priests that have NEVER done anything like this, ALL priests are under suspicion.

Christopher West once said “If you want to know what is truly Sacred in the world, look at what is most violently attacked”.
Family, marriage, our children, the priesthood, the Church…ALL of these were hurt by what went on in the 60’s and 70’s…not just relating to the priest scandal.  Abortion, birth control, divorce…so many things.  In that respect, the report got it right.  It was a very damaging time for all time honored traditions.

As for pedophilia being a criminal act…of course having sexual intercourse with children was illegal, but not all of these cases were about sexual intercourse.  Which doesn’t make them less horrifying, but makes them less likely to be reported, proven and punished in a court. 

Look at how confusing the laws are right now.  A 14 year old girl can get birth control or have an abortion legally, but in many states she can’t have sex.  So why she’d need birth control or abortion is beyond me.  OR she can have sex with a 17 1/2 year old, but if he’s 18, he can go to jail.  OR two 16 year olds can have sex, but they can’t get married.

Sometimes the law isn’t that clear.  And men having sex with a younger male has not always been frowned upon.  Many societies thought it was perfectly normal.  Don’t some Islamic countries allow marriage between young, young girls and older men? 

I don’t think this report was trying to “blame” the culture as much as say that with the sexual explosion, free love, etc, the boundaries of what was acceptable and what was not, were blurred.  People were accepting and promoting things that hadn’t been accepted or promoted for a long, long time.  My mother would have passed out if a Gay Pride Parade had marched down Michigan Ave in her younger days.  Today, it’s a big ho hum.  You couldn’t show a woman wearing a bra on television.  Today Victoria’s Secret pedals soft porn in the malls.  Personally, I think THAT is child abuse.  (NOT on the caliber of the priest scandal mind you). 

But for ME, NONE of that matters.  We are Catholic, and with all my harping on our morality does not change, I expect MORE from my priests than I do from the average Joe on the street.  These priests make me sick.  I know I’m supposed to pray for them, and I actually do, but my heart is not in it.  Still, I understand that Satan (whom I also believe in) would strike at the heart of his enemy, (I am NOT saying “the devil made them do it…they had their wills and could have said no…the temptation may have been satans, but these priests did not have to cooperate) and that would be Christs representatives on earth.  He managed to do more damage to the Church in 30 years than in the other 1970 combined.  I hang my head in sorrow and shame and I’m sure that I am not alone.

What I do not do is turn a blind eye, or pretend that it didn’t happen.  And I don’t know a single Catholic who does.

You know, Satan may be running amok, God is considering whether Humans can solve anything on there own, Big Disasters. Who Cares about this topic, Really. God Bless

All:  we are not asking for the religious part of your right to marry, we are looking for the civil, government part. You can spout lies about me all you want, but it won’t change the fact that I exist, I am a citizen, and I deserve every civil institution you get.

Fulwler: “I bet the average _same-sex-attracted person_ living in 1711 wouldn’t have even understood the terms of our modern gay marriage debate”

Don’t call me a “same-sex-attracted person”. That’s patronizing. Call me what you really want to call me and say it to my face: use the many time-honored slurs that the “devout” have always used to keep gays in their place.  The so-called devout (but actually sanctimonious) Christians would do better to use the words that truly characterize their utter hatred, disregard, and fear of gay people.  Don’t cloak hatred in pat euphemisms just to appear “compassionate”.  The depths of hatred against gay people I have seen in “Christian” comment boards and on Facebook after the NY gay marriage OK have convinced me that many Christians are openly duplicious: a false public pity and a rabid hatred when among their peers.

Other gay people might view my call as an irresponsible invitation for violence. I’d just rather see the sanctimonious honestly reveal that their “charity” is really contempt and bald hatred.

“Posted by Mark on Friday, Jun 24, 2011 2:38 PM (EDT):All:  we are not asking for the religious part of your right to marry, we are looking for the civil, government part. You can spout lies about me all you want, but it won’t change the fact that I exist, I am a citizen, and I deserve every civil institution you get. “

MY REPLY—When then you said it all.  Call your commitment to your partner a CIVIL UNION, not a MARRIAGE—for marriage is between a man and a woman is a church sacrament.

If gay just said they want a “civil union”—there wouldn’t be hardly any debate on this matter.

As an unopenly gay individual, I feel the repercussions of anti-gay sentiment constantly. My own family isn’t even aware of my sexual “orientation”, simply due to the fact that I do not want to bring another burden after a year of death and unfortunate circumstances in the family. I have two gay aunts, two gay uncles, and I am now the 5th gay individual in my family, although I haven’t come out entirely yet. I couldn’t agree more with the last post, and I would like to see what you have to say about it. I am open to both sides of the debate, so please post anything that you feel is relevant.