Marriage comes to us from
nature. In Catholic teaching Jesus sanctifies marriage as a sacrament for the baptized, giving it significance beyond its natural reality. Traditionally
the state has safeguarded marriage because it is indispensable to family and
thus to the common good of society. But neither Church nor State instituted
marriage, and neither can change its nature.
God created two mutually
complementary sexes, able to transmit life through marital union.
Consummated sexual intercourse between a man and a woman is ideally based on
mutual love and must always be based on mutual consent, if they are genuinely
human actions. No matter how strong a friendship or deep a love between
persons of the same sex might be, it is physically impossible for two men, or
two women, to consummate a marital union. (In civil law, non-consummation
of a marriage constitutes grounds for annulment).
It is easy to see that sexual
intercourse between a man and a woman is naturally and necessarily different from
sexual relations between same-sex partners. This was true before the
existence of either Church or state, and will be true should, heaven forbid,
the United States of America cease to exist. Any scheme to change this
truth about marriage in civil law is nothing less than an insult to reason andthe common good of society. It would mean that we are all to pretend to
accept something we know is physically impossible, much like saying that a
legislature could pass a law saying that God should not be God.
What is also at risk in the recent
hullabaloo over whether or not two humans of the same gender should be
permitted to “marry” is the natural relationship between parents and
children. Children, even if they are loved and raised by people who have
not procreated them, desire to know who their parents are. All data to
date has demonstrated what we all know” stable marriage between a husband and
wife safeguards their children, enveloping them with familial love and fashioning
the secure foundation for healthy humans. To cut to the gist of the
discussion, if the nature of marriage is destroyed in civil law, then the
natural family goes with it. Should religious teaching based on natural truths
be considered evidence of bigotry and punishable by law, when majority opinion
embraces disordered causes? The media have conducted a tremendous propaganda
effort to propagate this view. Isn’t it true that since all of the firmly
legal consequences of natural marriage are already given to same-sex partners
in civil unions, what is really at issue in the debate is whether or not civil
society will grant self-respect and full societal acceptance of their intrinsically
disordered sexual activities? It is often heard that since Christians must
not be bigots, “same-sex marriage” is the only appropriate Christian response
to help those with homosexual orientations pursue happiness. Those who feel
this way offer approval of “homosexual marriage” as an illustration of
compassion, justice and inclusion. History has shown that such sentiments
have been used to excuse everything from eugenics to euthanasia. Revealed
religion is more than mere sentiment! It rests on the firmament of the truths
of what human reason understands and God has revealed. Can anyone deny that
so-called “same-sex marriage” is
incompatible with the teaching that has kept the Catholic Church united to Our
Lord for two thousand years? Because of what we celebrate this week, the Passion
death, and Resurrection of Our Lord, the Church throughout time offers the
grace to live chastely in all circumstances, as the love of God both obliges
and makes possible. Let’s remember that traditional marriage is a public
commitment with a obligations entailing more than mere “happiness,” and that
creating “civil rights” (more accurately, “civil wants”) that reverse natural
rights will not lead to societal happiness. As a student of the thought of Pope
Emeritus Benedict XVI, I take to heart his recent statements on all of this: “The
manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is
concerned, now becomes man’s fundamental choice where he himself is
concerned. From now on there is only the abstract human being, who
chooses for himself what his nature is to be. Man and woman in their
created state as complementary versions of what it means to be human are
disputed. But if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and women in
creation, then neither is the family any longer a reality established by
creation. Likewise, the child has lost the place he had occupied hitherto
and the dignity pertaining to him. Rabbi Bernheim shows that now,
perforce, from being a subject of right, the child has become an object to
which people have a right and which they have a right to obtain. When the
freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily
the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity
as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The
defense of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that
when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is
defending man.” As I wrote in The Smokeof Satan in the Temple of God, quoting John Paul II, “Without the Creator,
the creature vanishes.”
