Two Posts on SSM For the Price of One!
Post One: An Un’civil’ View of Marriage
I was married twenty-eight years ago in a Protestant church. At the conclusion of the service, the minister cleared his throat and in an unctuous baritone declared, “By the authority vested in me by the State of Rhode Island, I declare you husband and wife.” As a born-and-bred Evangelical, I thought nothing of it at the time. It was only a decade later, as I prepared for reconciliation with the Catholic Church, that I reflected on the odd tradition of a Christian minister invoking the authority of the state to seal a union ostensibly just blessed by God.
Chalk it up to Martin Luther, who believed that marriage was strictly a temporal affair, like real estate transactions or probate: “Marriage is a civic matter. It is really not, together with all its circumstances, the business of the church,” said Luther. Under the powerful secularizing influences of the Reformation and the Enlightement, marriage gradually became largely a state institution over the next half millenia. In the 1870′s, “civil marriage” was introduced in Germany, Wales and England (where it had already been tried and abandoned by Oliver Cromwell two centuries earlier). Today, of course, every nation in the world has some form of civil marriage, and the debate over same-sex marriage is largely settled in Europe and now, the United States.
To me, state involvement in “marriage” in any form – whether as originator, authenticator, or even as regulator – makes about as much sense as “civil baptism” or “secular Eucharist.” The Catholic Church holds matrimony to be one of the seven sacraments, and for most of the centuries during which the Church was dominant in Europe and elsewhere, marriage was only tangentially a civil matter. Couples would marry in or have their de facto marriages blessed by the Church, and inform their secular rulers only after the fact. Public laws affecting marriage were limited in scope, mostly negative in construction, and dealt mainly with who could or could not marry or how couples were to be taxed. But today, we are routinely treated to the spectacle of Catholics “defending” (heterosexual) civil marriage as … well, as “marriage,” which it is not. The problem is that when we concede the power of the state to stamp its imprimatur on what ought to be – what IS! – a Christian sacrament, we get what we deserve.
The same-sex marriage (SSM) debate has brought this weird state of affairs into stark relief. It seems to me that the way out of the predicament created by that debate (and in anticipation of inevitable future debates over group, consanguinous and other forms of “marriage”) is to end the practice of state sponsorship of something called “marriage” once and for all. No marriage licenses. No reference to “marriage” in the tax code. No special privileges for those who have taken part in a religious ceremony recognizing their mutual commitment. The role of the state is not to administer or authenticate sacraments, artificial or otherwise. It is to seal and adjudicate contracts between parties legally permitted to enter into them. If two or more people, of any gender, wish to enter into a civil contract that governs their mutual rights and responsibilities toward each other, they should be free to do so. If a religious body wishes to perform a ceremony invoking divine blessing on the mutual commitment of two people of any gender and call it “marriage,” that body should be free to do so.
Look, Catholics don’t recognize the validity of the Methodist “eucharist,” and we don’t consider Unitarian ordination to carry any sacramental weight. A confession made to a Lutheran pastor by a member of his flock may be good for the soul, but Catholics don’t believe it confers sanctifying grace, except in the most general sense. Why, then, do we grant any status to declarations or licensures of “marriage” made by the state? Proponents of SSM will charge that I’m changing the rules of the game now that they’re on the playing field, and they will be right. But I propose changing the rules for everyone, precisely in order to eliminate what I concede is unfair discrimination in the law. Any two people ought to have the right to conclude a civil contract exchanging mutual rights and responsibilities. The state has (or should have) no power to declare or infer that such contracts have a transcendent character, a significance deeper than the signatures at the bottom of the page, which it does when it uses the term “marriage.”
Post Two: Redefining Redefinition
Shortly after New York State’s legalization of SSM, I listened to a gentle debate on the subject on NPR. The spokeswoman for Marriage Equality New York insisted that SSM doesn’t “redefine” marriage at all. In fact, according to this commenter, SSM only reinforces what is essential about marriage – mutual commitment – and is therefore deeply faithful to the core definition of marriage. Well, yes, but …
If the bare-bones secular definition of “marriage” is the union of one man and one woman who are not closely related, then SSM does indeed “redefine” marriage. This traditional definition has three critical elements: number, gender, and relation (or non-relation, as the case may be). SSM proponents have in effect said that one of those elements, gender, doesn’t and shouldn’t matter; that it is not essential to what marriage is. They have reconfigured the definition to read “the union of two people who are not closely related.” Fine. But if one element of the formula can be dismissed so easily, why not the others? Why should number be preserved, for instance? Or relation. On what basis would proponents of SSM oppose group marriage or the marriage of father and his adult son, so long as those entering into the union are mutually committed to one another? It seems to me that by doing away with one element in the traditional formula, they have critically undermined the other two. Having accepted the logic of SSM, I don’t see how one can avoid permitting group marriage, consanguineous marriage, and other arrangements that radically redefine what marriage is.
For the sake of honest debate, I would like SSM advocates to simply admit that they are redefining marriage, much as Naomi Wolf once conceded in a now-famous New Republic article that abortion is in fact a form of homicide. By continuing to insist on something everyone knows is false , they prevent an honest discussion among people of goodwill, and thereby play into the hands of the homophobic Christian Right.
Comments are closed.
To be fair, though, marriage isn’t just a Sacrament, even in Catholic theology. It is for Christians, of course, but marriage as simply a natural institution exists outside the Church. Whether the secular state has any particular claim to even natural marriage is another question, but marriage is not first and foremost a religious reality. It is a natural institution raised to the level of Sacrament for Christians.
I would add that I too have questioned why incest laws should apply any longer to civil unions. If, say, an elderly mother and her single daughter, or two spinster sisters, want the legal benefits of domestic partnership…why shouldn’t such caretaker relationships be recognized? And why can’t people enter into multiple such partnerships (except, of course, the unfeasibility of extending, say, insurance benefits to 12 different partners of someone).
If this is no longer an issue of mating, of exchanging mutual rights to reproduction, then I don’t really see why the State should care whether these are sexual relationships or not. That seems irrelevant at this point, so why can’t closely related family members living in domestic situations adopt the “civil union” arrangement as well?? What possible reason does the State have for sanctioning homosexual (assumably) sexual relationships, but not a variety of other non-sexual domestic partnerships that people may find themselves in?
This history of marriage presented here is exactly backwards. Marriage did not start out religious and gradually become civil. It was the other way around. For at least the first thousand years of Christian history, Christians got married the way anybody else did in whatever location and culture they happened to be. Marriage was not recognized as a sacrament until the 12th century. It wasn’t until the 16th century (Council of Trent) that it became mandatory for couples to be married before a priest.
The Catholic understanding of marriage is that it is permanent (indissoluble) and exclusive. Anywhere divorce and remarriage are permitted, civil marriage is fundamentally at odds with the Catholic understanding of marriage. This means the only country that has marriage, properly defined, is the Philippines, since it is now the only country in the world without divorce laws. For Catholics, you can’t “change the definition of marriage.” Changes to civil marriage do not “change the definition of marriage.”
David is, generally, right about the history of marriage being one of a civil institution only gradually brought more and more under the aegis of the Church. Though I would question the “wasn’t recognized as a Sacrament until the 12th century” thing, certainly it was before around that time something contracted without any particular religious ceremonial, simply between two parties with witnesses (with the secular magistrates involved or not) even if the Church saw it as then binding and indissoluble for Christians in the moral law.
I would disagree with your statement about divorce and remarriage laws being equivalent to redefining marriage civilly, however. Natural Marriages CAN be dissolved, and there are, of course, situations where Christians need a CIVIL divorce either because they have obtained a Church annulment or dissolution of a previous marriage, or because they are domestically separating (even if remaining sacramentally married in the eyes of the Church). So, unless we want the State to apply laws differently to Christian and non-Christian/merely natural marriages, or to be dependent on the Church approving an annulment or dissolution or separation in order to approve Christian marriages civilly…it seems like provision for civil divorce in the civil law makes perfect sense (whether it should be so EASY to obtain is another question) in a way that same-sex “marriage” would not.
You’re right, though, that the State merely applying the WORD “marriage” to civil unions that are not marriage (by our definition)…is simply semantic and not worth, methinks, all the effort to oppose politically. Though I am concerned by the thought of the State trying to change THOUGHT through legislating change in LANGUAGE (it all seems a little Newspeak/1984)…ultimately, it is merely verbal. They cannot actually change the nature of the institution traditionally called “marriage.” If they’re applying “marriage” to mean “civil union” now…then maybe WE should just start using a different word for the relationship between a mating pair.
Marriage was not recognized as a sacrament until the 12th century.
Hogwash.
Poppycock!
David, that’s like saying that the Assumption wasn’t taught until 1950 just because that’s when the ex cathedra definition came out. Whoever wrote this has a poor understanding of how dogmatic definitions by councils are related to the question of whether something is taught. The teaching does not begin to exist with the definition, in fact such a definition is usually promulgated only once the teaching is called into question.
A Sinner,
I disagree. The Assumption is allegedly a historical event that had long been a part of Tradition. The statement, “Marriage is a sacrament” depends on a long development of the meaning of the word sacrament. The Pachyderminator seems to argue (by a single rude word and a link) that since Augustine called marriage a sacrament, that settles the matter. What we need here is an expert in the development of sacramental theology, which is definitely not me, but even the most conservative sources, like the online Catholic encyclopedia, acknowledge that the concept of sacrament developed over time.
What I see here (although as definitely a non expert), is a defensiveness about Catholicism, wholly unnecessary for even the most ardent (“credulous”) Catholics, that would like to maintain that everything Catholics do and believe today was done and believed in the earliest Christian communities, whereas a huge amount of what Catholics believe and do today took many centuries (sometimes well over a thousand years) to develop. Something like the Baltimore Catechism, or even the Catechism of the Catholic Church, if you could send copies back to Catholics in the first Christian millennium, would boggle their minds.
At the time of Augustine, our current understanding of the meaning of sacrament had not yet developed. It is just silly to maintain that because Augustine called marriage a sacrament, it means that marriage was understood to be one of the seven sacraments in the 5th century. There was no notion of “the seven sacraments” in the 5th century.
Whether there always were, from the moment of, say, Pentecost, seven sacraments (no more, no less) is a matter of faith that no amount of argument can settle. But whether the concept of sacrament was understood and defined by the Church in the 1st century as it is today, or whether it developed over a long period, with rapid, key developments taking place around the 12th century is not a matter of faith but a matter of history. If someone wants to believe that Jesus raised marriage to the dignity of a sacrament by attending the wedding feast at Cana, I find that bizarre, but it is a matter of faith, not of fact. But when and how it came to be believed that there were seven (and only seven) sacraments, and how and when marriage was deemed to be one of them, is a matter of the history of sacramental theology, not a matter of faith. And that history is well known and documented.
At the time of Augustine, our current understanding of the meaning of sacrament had not yet developed. It is just silly to maintain that because Augustine called marriage a sacrament, it means that marriage was understood to be one of the seven sacraments in the 5th century. There was no notion of “the seven sacraments” in the 5th century.
If that’s really all you meant, fine – I had a pretty good idea that was the case when I provided that link to Augustine – but I didn’t and still don’t see how not to interpret your initial post as saying that because marriage was not known to be one of seven specially elevated, divinely instituted efficacious signs of grace for the first thousand years of Christian history, Christians therefore considered marriage only a civil and not a religious institution with little spiritual significance. That would be at least equally silly. If, however, you didn’t actually say it, I’m not sure we need to get into the intricacies of the historical development of sacramental theology.
FWIW, I think “hogwash” is appropriate language for most internet discourse.
David, what you say about the development of doctrine may be true, but Christianity is first and foremost a matter of orthopraxy, not orthodoxy. A systematic theology of “the seven sacraments” with “holy matrimony” being one of them may not have been explicated until later, but that does not mean it was treated differently in any essential manner when it came to PRACTICE. Our morality of marriage has, practically speaking, been constant, even if it took time to explicate the systematic “rhyme and reason” behind all the nuances of that practice.
“I didn’t and still don’t see how not to interpret your initial post as saying that because marriage was not known to be one of seven specially elevated, divinely instituted efficacious signs of grace for the first thousand years of Christian history, Christians therefore considered marriage only a civil and not a religious institution with little spiritual significance.”
That’s certainly how I interpreted it…
What is missing from this discussion is a recognition of the role that marriage–not just sacramental marriage, but natural marriage–plays in the formation of the family, the foundation of society itself. The Church sees healthy family life, grounded in marriage, as the necessary basis for a just society. To redefine marriage is to undermine the very possibility of social justice. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church offers a clear explanation of this point:
The starting point for a correct and constructive relationship between the family and society is the recognition of the subjectivity and the social priority of the family. . . . Society, and in particular State institutions, respecting the priority and “antecedence” of the family, is called to guarantee and foster the genuine identity of family life and to avoid and fight all that alters or wounds it. . . . In this sense, there is a necessary prerequisite, one that is essential and indispensable: the recognition — which entails protecting, appreciating and promoting — the identity of the family, the natural society founded on marriage. This recognition represents a clear line of demarcation between the family, understood correctly, and all other forms of cohabitation which, by their very nature, deserve neither the name nor the status of family.
I’ve never really understood this. As it seems to demand a RELATIVE recognition of heterosexual marriage/family, as opposed to any absolute privileges.
In other words, the Vatican seems to recognize that granting legal privileges to other sorts of relationships…won’t take anything AWAY from real marriage. It will still retain all its privileges absolutely speaking. So the concern they trump up is that it will no longer be MORE special than everything else, that it won’t have a position of RELATIVE privilege.
But that seems odd. It’s like saying that marriage should be granted more privileges than any other institution or relationship NOT because of an essential logical connection between those specific legal privileges and marriage, but simply in order to emphasize that it is better than other relationships. And that those other relationships must be arbitrarily denied certain legal privileges, not because they logically only apply to mating pairs (ie, stuff regarding the pedigree of offspring, etc) but simply in order to make sure that such relationships are seen as lesser than marriage.
But I really don’t think it’s the State’s job to be using legal privileges as that sort of…demonstration of precedence.
Yes, there is a “1984″ concern, as I said above, about changing language to change THOUGHT. About the legal redefinition of marriage leading to people seeing heterosexual marriage and homosexual “marriage” as absolutely equivalent (with mating as something absolutely accidental). But that’s more a question of semantics (as I said, natural-thinking individuals can always just come up with a new word for the natural institution).
In general, though, recognition of same-sex partnerships isn’t going to STOP heterosexuals from getting married, nor would most of those homosexuals have entered heterosexual marriage had “gay marriage” NOT been available…so I think arguments about “undermining the family” are rather disingenuous.
If it does, it’s only in the broadest and vaguest sense of effecting public opinion…and I’m much more inclined to believe that legal recognition REFLECTS a change in public opinion that is largely accomplished under the surface already. The politics of it all are symptomatic of larger spiritual and philosophical crisis, not the cause.
It’s important here to distinguish between sacramental and valid marriages. A sacramental marriage can exist only between two baptized parties, but a baptized person and an unbaptized person could enter into a valid marriage–a marriage presumed valid by the Catholic Church. So too could two non-baptized persons. The Church presumes, for example, that the civil marriage entered into by two atheists in Vegas is a valid marriage. If they divorce, and one of them wished to marry a Catholic in the Church, the atheist would first have to obtain an annulment for the previous civil marriage.
I have done some research on this. When the Pauline privilege is invoked, there is no annulment. Apparently the same diocesan tribunal that handles annulments handles Pauline privilege petitions. If two persons who married were not baptized (they don’t have to be atheists, just not baptized) and one of them gets baptized and wants to invoke the Pauline privilege, the tribunal hears the evidence and decides the facts. If the tribunal decides in the petitioner’s favor, the bishop dissolves the natural marriage. This is different from granting an annulment, which is a ruling that a sacramental marriage never existed.
Interestingly, in the passage where Paul is now considered to have defined the Pauline privilege (1 Corinthians 7:10-16), he speaks only of separation (divorce) when one of two married, non-Christian spouses converts to Christianity. He does not say anything about the Christian convert’s right to remarry after such a divorce. The recognition of marriage as a sacrament was more than a thousand years in the future, so Paul could not have been making a distinction between sacramental and non-sacramental marriages. (Not knowingly, at least.) Here’s an interesting passage from What Binds Marriage?: Roman Catholic Theology in Practice by Timothy J. Buckley:
To the Catholic believer (or Catholic “true believer”), I suppose it’s accepted that sacramental marriage and the Pauline privilege really existed in the very early Church, and the working out of the details over the centuries has been a process of discovery. To others, it looks like a matter of the Church making stuff up (in good faith, no doubt) as it goes along and deeming it timeless Truth. I would have to say that taking over a thousand years conclude that by attending the wedding feast at Cana, Jesus “raised marriage to the dignity of a sacrament” requires a lot more faith than I am able to summon at the moment.
The following is a topic too big to take on at the moment, but it seems to me indisputable that when Jesus spoke of marriage, he was not speaking as a “Christian,” but as a Jew interpreting the Law. As John P. Meier says, the historical Jesus is the halakhic Jesus.
I was speaking more generally than cases in which the Pauline privilege may be invoked.
Again, David is half-right. As a true believer, I do think that marriage-as-Sacrament for the baptized was there from the beginning, but what he says about the Pauline privilege is true.
Valid Natural Marriages ARE dissoluble (as are, even, ratified-but-non-consummated Christian marriages).
If two non-Christians get divorced and remarried to other non-Christians, the Church has nothing to say about this. It’s outside Her concern or jurisdiction.
It becomes an issue when such a person wants to marry a Christian, or when we’re talking about the marriage of a Christian to a non-Christian that has fallen apart and now one of them (either one) wants to marry a Catholic.
In the first situation, if the non-Christian is willing to be baptized, the Pauline Privilege is invoked and the Church recognizes all previous natural marriages as dissolved…and they can marry the Christian no problem.
In the second situation, the Petrine Privilege (“in favor of the Faith”) may be invoked and the natural mixed marriage may be dissolved in order to allow EITHER the Christian or non-Christian party (whether the latter then gets baptized OR NOT) to marry a Catholic. (Interestingly, I believe this could then be done AGAIN if this marriage itself did not work out and one of them wanted to marry ANOTHER Catholic, etc etc)
Again, David is half right. As a “true believer” I do think sacramental marriage was there from the start.
But. Valid Natural Marriages ARE dissolvable, and don’t require an annulment for that.
When it is a question of marriage and divorce and remarriage between all non-baptized parties…the Church simply has nothing to say. That’s beyond Her concern or jurisdiction. But, generally speaking, natural divorce is possible (just look at the Mosaic Law even, etc). It’s not ideal, but it’s possible. Only the Sacrament is indissoluble (and even a Christian marriage, if ratified but not consummated, may be dissolved by the Pope).
It becomes an issue for the Church only when it is a question of a previously married non-Christian marrying a Christian.
If the non-Christian is willing to be baptized, the Church will recognize all previous natural marriages as dissolved (the “Pauline Privilege”) and marrying the Christian (in a Sacramental marriage) is then no problem.
If it is a question of a non-Christian wanting to marry a Catholic, but who is NOT willing to be baptized, or even a case of a previous natural marriage between a Christian and non-Christian where one of the parties (EITHER one, actually) now wants to marry a Catholic….then the previous natural marriage may be recognized as dissolved (the so-called “Petrine Privilege”/”in favor of the Faith”) in order to allow either the Christian party from the previous marriage to marry a Catholic OR the non-Christian party without being baptized.
(And, in the latter case, even this new natural marriage may be dissolved someday, again, if either party wants to again marry a Catholic; though I think then it’s more likely to be granted if it’s the Catholic wanting to contract a Sacramental marriage, or if the non-Christian party wishes to be baptized and enter a Sacramental marriage with the new Catholic partner but doesn’t want the old natural marriage to the previous Catholic to become a Sacrament by that fact).
Whoops. My comment didn’t appear the first time, so I re-wrote it. Please disregard the FIRST one, then (as I think the second is more detailed).
Just a reminder of the high-level discussion surrounding this issue when you’re not at VN:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/jai6g/civil_sacraments_and_secular_marriage_definitions/
*shakes head*
Nobody other than Catholics really care how Catholics define marriage within the context of Catholicism. Why do Catholics care how the word is defined by non-Catholics? As the great Hank Williams sang it, “Mind your own business and you won’t be minding mine.”
David N. has it right above. The Catholic definition of “marriage” as a sacrament was the innovation–and a relatively recent one, even within the Church. The Reformation merely restored its original meaning, which was pretty much universal, and of long-standing.
The Church believes that how the institution is defined by the broader culture will have widespread social ramifications.
What you mean is that the Church believes that how the institution is defined by the broader culture will have negative ramifications for the Church’s control over its constituents.
That’s a little unfair, Rodak.
While I believe all the cries of “the sky is falling” over “gay marriage” are silly (really, the ship sailed long ago)…I think most of the people seeing negative ramifications from it really do seem to imagine (however incorrectly or correctly) that it will lead to more broken homes, more hedonism, more psychological dysfunction, more of some sort of Brave New World dystopia.
They may be totally overreacting, but I would give them the benefit of the doubt in terms of the negative sociological results they imagine will occur.
The Church has control over its constituents?
I always love how in these discussions we never talk about how marriage was back in the good ol’ days. Where the woman had absolutely zero say in whether she wanted to marry or not, and once she did marry she was literally the property of her husband. I guess, though, society was very stable when women knew their place and men were the only ones that mattered. It is difficult to take the Church serious on some of her teachings when we have a long tortured past when it comes to treating individuals with dignity.
Well…do you believe people are subjectively more happy now than they were back then?
Or do you think, that being all they knew, people accepted with contentment the way things were and adapt to the same basic subjective perception of happiness in their own circumstances??
If so, if subjective experience of contentment or happiness is essentially the same, then might not stability indeed then be a value which should “decide the difference” for us?
I have absolutely zero idea if people were happier or not back then & I don’t think it is relevant. I know that most women now, today, are very glad they are not the property of first their fathers and then their husbands.
Oh, of course. But, as a thought experiment, let’s say we do reinstate the “old ways” (I’m not actually in favor of that), and that within two or three generations…subjective levels of happiness are back to normal (obviously, people who have “known better” will not like it, there would have to be a transition).
If subjective perception of happiness is the same, might not stability at that point be better than instability? Perhaps even worth the turmoil and suffering of those transitional generations?
Again, I’m just playing devil’s advocate, but I’m trying to figure out how exactly various values interplay for people.
Sofia’s comments seem to reflect a lack of awareness of what we have lost, as men & women. It is silly to fault earlier generations for social customs we do not like & at the same time remain blind to our own neuroses & blind spots. Have relationships between the sexes improved in modernity? In some ways yes, in some ways no. I remember hearing a convert to Islam, being questioned about his religion’s lack of respect for women, ask pointed questions about how indifferent our culture is to the health & welfare of our children. “If you truly cared about children,” he said, “you would look more closely at the ideology of freedom in the west which encourages young teenaged boys to become sexual predators, & young teenaged girls to dress like prostitutes.” He went on for a while, asking if we loved our children enough to tell them no, to supervise their social behavior, to insist that they show respect for themselves & others in their dress & behavior. His remarks were not well received, particularly by those who assumed that the way we do things now is surely the best, if not, the only way. I look at the unhappiness of so many of the high school students I teach & wonder what’s going on. Prosperous kids with the whole world in front of them, adopting cynicism & despair as their outlook, & engaging in behavior that debilitates them, socially & morally. All in the name of modern progress, of “freedom.” But rather than adopt too-easy stereotypes about the past & other cultures & societies, the better course of action is to think critically about why drug abuse & addiction, teen suicide rates, the hook-up culture, & boredom are so prevalent parts of young life today.
It’s likewise silly to assume an either/or, something people often do when talking about these topics. “So, because things are not perfect, we should go back to past social norms? You must be a sexist, misogynist, racist, etc.” How about the more mature question: Are there customs & mores from the past that we might consider adapting for our purposes today? Are there ways we can improve current practices & ideals? There really were no “good ol’ days,” if by that you mean a time when everyone was happily skipping along without a care. Appeals to such are the last hope of those who have no insight or imagination; similarly, those who assume that by criticizing modern culture one is rejecting it completely & calling for a return to some idyllic past are being simplistic. The chronological snobs who recoil from a past they stereotype in monolithic terms are just as mistaken as those who long for the comforts of a past that never existed. We can, & should, temper the sarcasm & anger & think about why we are so hopelessly confused about sex & gender, all the while smugly professing our sophistication & superiority. When sex & marriage become reducible to “rights” & “freedom,” understood strictly in terms of personal autonomy, hard questions need asking.
With Sofia, I too am grateful that ownership of others is not an option. But let’s keep in mind the role of the Church in articulating the concept of human rights & dignity. Where does that language come from? Which institution is responsible for wrestling through the complexities associated with these concepts, & which institution today is standing up, almost alone in western nations, for human dignity? A slippery term, no doubt, & one which has taken considerable time to even begin to understand & apply. But servitude comes in many forms, & as a father myself, I worry about how my own kids will be drawn by their culture, popular & otherwise, into ideas & practices that threaten their freedom. Genuine freedom is not simply being left alone to decide your path, your gender, your orientation, your fill-in-the-blank; it is growing in the capacity to love, which takes discipline & being told no. And, it takes an awareness that there is a thing called “nature” which is not merely a social construct; that there is a human telos, an end to which every person is called. Our goal should be to try to adopt & perfect, as much as possible, norms & ideals that will facilitate our reaching our telos, which is always in accord with our nature as created, contingent beings. Apart from that, there is no genuine freedom, only a shell game using the term to bludgeon one’s opponents.
“We can, & should, temper the sarcasm & anger & think about why we are so hopelessly confused about sex & gender, all the while smugly professing our sophistication & superiority”
How are confused about sex and gender?
Baby Storm; the continuing influence of the theories of John Money & others who insist that gender roles are mere social constructs; the inabilities of many to see sexual desire as little more than an itch to be scratched whenever by whomever; the frequent claims that “safe” sex is not merely possible, but the absolute right of every person physically mature enough to copulate; sex ed programs teaching grade-school children how to masturbate. One could go on, I suppose. Oh, here’s one from the local news: a sex ring busted up by police, in which men made arrangements to pay for sex with dogs. Just within the Catholic Church, consider the confusion about the Theology of the Body. I’m not talking about the debates over teaching of Christopher West et al., but over the very notion that sexual love is rooted in our being created in the image of the Trinitarian God, & that men & women are complementary as male & female. There is no cultural script regarding these matters in our society today, no commonly accepted
understanding of the nature & meaning of sexual roles & love. This allows for the wild diversity of practices which people defend in the name of freedom.
What practices, for example, are considered sexually immoral by most people today? More importantly, why? What defense could people give today for claiming that, say, bestiality is immoral because it is unnatural? The very concept of “unnatural” is laughed at today, considered a sign of intolerance & a recalcitrance rooted in closed-mindedness, no doubt the result of religious commitments. When even pedophilia is being reclassified as “intergenerational intimacy” by psychologists, I think it obvious that we
are beyond confused.
Sofia is right, of course, that the Church’s high ideals regarding marriage have throughout history too often been at odds with what really goes on in the world. When women were, for all practical purposes, bought and sold into marriages, the sacrament, if it existed at all in most instances, was hardly the mystical sign Paul talked about. And if they became divorced, no annulment tribunals existed to free them to enter a true sacramental bond. Now that women, for the most part, have the freedom they lacked then, secular society has changed its mind about indissolubility and many of the ideals the Church still claims constitute marriage. Is this a worse state of affairs than what’s existed before? I don’t think so. As a woman, I’d much rather have the freedom to follow Christ’s teachings than live in a society that treats me like a slave and yet takes pride in calling itself “Christendom.” Unfortunately, those who speak of returning Christianity to its old glory, with “focus on the family” being the first ideal considered (I’m thinking of American Protestants of the “quiverfull” school of thought, but traditionalist Catholics talk this way as well), speak so often in terms of the old bondage in which women act as they did when they were slaves to men — barefoot and pregnant and eager to please. Why is that?
+1 on realizing that there was very typically a wide gulf between the theory and actual practice of marriage, and rhapsodizing about the former while ignoring or diminishing the latter is a red flag.
The U.S. is one of a shrinking number of developed nations that have never had a woman head of state. And Catholicism is one of a shrinking number of Judeo-Christian sects that does not ordain women as clergy. I used the word “control” above, and my usage was questioned. But I maintain that “control” is exactly what is sought. It is in the nature of any corporate body to put its survival first and foremost. And maintaining control of its constituent elements is one of its most important survival strategies. If the Church is losing that control, then it is dying. If it is dying, it is going to become defensive and conservative, even reactionary, in defense of its corporate integrity. I believe that I heard the current pope resigning himself to the probability of a smaller, but more devout Church (or words to that effect.) “Orthodoxy” is another way to say “control.” You will believe this, not that. You will do this, not that. You will recognize this authority, and none other. Etc.
Here’s what you bourgeois (which means Protestantized) and “socially conservative” Catholics in America will never come to grips with: the reason for the “sacramentalizing” of marriage is that connubial life in ancient, traditional Catholicism was given an INFERIOR status to the chaste, celibate life of cenobites, hermits and monks. When what Catholics call “marriage” was finally “sacramentalized,” it was with the understanding that each member of the couple’s PRIMARY relationship was to Christ, and not to his or her partner; that’s why the Church came into the “marriage business” in the first place–it was as if the two members of the marriage were establishing, first and foremost, a relationship with Christ and their creator THROUGH the “marriage” relationship: they were “marrying” HIM. And that’s why the “marriage” could never be undone.
This was, indeed, a new concept regarding marriage, born out of the New Testament’s higher valorization of the lives of “eunuchs” for the “Kingdom’s” sake. It has very little to do with “natural” marriage of pre-Christian cultures or modern, secularized or Protestant ones, and it would do all the American participants in this discussion to be mindful of the THEOLOGICAL reason for Luther’s re-institution of divorce: he was reminded, by one of his followers, that Christ TWICE rejected divorce (which is the lynchpin of American “marriage”), and his reply was that the Saviour “had his tongue far in his cheek” when He “gave us that commandment,” because it was given to us “to confirm us in our sins”–in other words, because He knew that we could not keep it, and would therefore have to throw ourselves upon His mercy and be “saved by faith alone.” To make his point, Luther married a nun; in other words, he “divorced” a woman from Christ, to illustrate the point that marriage had no grounding in religion whatsoever–that man was too ignoble a creature to have something like his “concupiscence” sanctified by religion.
The point I am trying to make in the above comment is that the Catholic notion of marriage would ALWAYS have had to be imposed upon a people whose social arrangements regarding sexual relationships and family life were founded upon seriously heretical theological differences regarding what marriage actually is. (And for those of you above who like to talk about the “protection of family life,” consider this: the American capitalist system, which ALSO finds it underpinning in the profound pessimism regarding “fallen human nature” of the Protestant heresiarchs, has strongly depended, at least in the modern era, upon the BREAKUP of the extended, “traditional” family structure (the “Biblical” one, if you will), and has created “unit families” to be scattered across a continent, depriving children of the aupportive, emotionally fortifying presence of their family’s elders. There’s a strong correlation between divorce, “children raising children,” and corporate profits.)
I wholeheartedly agree with the implication of the above post: that to attempt to impose Catholic Christian social arrangements upon a majority of Protestant, and, now, secularized population is cruel and unreasonable: they have NEVER accepted “sacramental marriage,” and their heretical justification of divorce, which is central to their culture, carries, as its rational extrapolation, “gay marriage,” polygamous marriage, sterile “May-December” marriages and anything and everything in between.
The only role for governments in such a “marriage” culture is for the government to give tax benefits to EVERYBODY with dependents (meaning anybody from an aging relative to an adopted child) and to DENY them to anybody–including childless heterosexual couples–who are not supporting such “dependents.”
I stick by my original statement, which was, “This history of marriage presented here is exactly backwards. Marriage did not start out religious and gradually become civil. It was the other way around.” I was speaking, as was the post I was responding to, of who was in the business of performing marriages.
Let’s go back further than we have. Here is one of the quotes from John L. McKenzie’s Dictionary of the Bible that I have reproduced a number of times in discussions on marriage:
Moving up to the Christian era, whatever religious significance was invested in marriage (and certainly it was invested with religious significance), Christians of the first millennium got married the same way their non-Christian neighbors got married. They did not book a church and arrange with a priest to have a church wedding. Up until the Council of Trent, a priest was not needed for a marriage to be valid. Clandestine marriages were illicit, but not invalid:
A Sinner said:
If we are talking about the history of the morality of marriage, I haven’t looked into that, although it does seem clear that, from the earliest times, remarriage after divorce was never permitted But if we are looking at practice in terms of how people got married, then the practices of actually getting married that we know today weren’t definitively nailed down until the 16th century.
If the Catholic Encyclopedia is to be believed, nuptial masses were customary from early patristic times. This indicates that it was, if not required, at least expected that marriages should be solemnified and sanctified by the Church.
David Nickol accuses me of having the history of marriage “exactly backward.” He wrote, “Marriage did not start out religious and gradually become civil. It was the other way around.”
But the quotes he uses to buttress his argument contradict him. The first, from McKenzie’s Bible Dictionary, reads: “Marriage in Israel was neither a religious nor a public concern …” The second, from “Catholic Divorce: The Deception of Annulments,” reads, “Since the church had accepted the Roman assumption that marriage could be contracted privately between two individuals, young people who wanted to thwart their parents’ plans could secretly give themselves in marriage to each other and then publicly announce they were married.”
It would be more precise to say that marriage began as a private affair, then became a religious instituion, and then became a civil matter. David wishes to equate “private” with “civil,” but before the development of the modern state – which is the context in which this entire discussion is taking place – there were vast regions of private behavior and conduct, including religious practices and observance, that weren’t subject to civil regulation, much less state licensure. And that, really, is the subject of the post. I am advocating a restoration of marriage as private, religious matter.
Do you really believe that everyone ‘knows’ this is false? Is it not possible that some people ‘know’ that it is true? Even if you think they’re wrong, they could be just wrong and not disingenuous.
What if this isn’t the bare-bones secular definition of marriage?
The term ‘marriage’ has long had uses that lack any transcendent character and has always applied to non-Christian (and non-religious) marriages — as well as completely other uses, such as ‘a marriage of opposites’. Insisting that it has so narrow a definition, as to always be spiritual or transcendental, seems at odds with the very language that we speak.
Is our understanding of marriage solely derivative from Western and/or Abrahamic tradition? Marriages from other regions and cultures are generally recognized as such — even legally recognized as such — despite their differences in origin. So, if we are talking about ‘marriage’ defined solely in the aforementioned terms, it seems like we already talking about something different from ‘marriage’ as recognized legally and commonly discussed.
David Nickol accuses me of having the history of marriage “exactly backward.” He wrote, “Marriage did not start out religious and gradually become civil. It was the other way around.”
Mark,
I was speaking (as I assumed you were) of Christian marriage when I wrote that you got it exactly backwards. I stand by what I said, which was
I made an error in coding in the message above, so I am trying again.
David Nickol accuses me of having the history of marriage “exactly backward.” He wrote, “Marriage did not start out religious and gradually become civil. It was the other way around.”
Mark,
I was speaking (as I assumed you were) of Christian marriage when I wrote that you got it exactly backwards. I stand by what I said, which was
But the quotes he uses to buttress his argument contradict him.
In a subsequent message, I said, “Let’s go back further than we have,” and I introduced the quote from McKenzie to show that prior to Christianity, marriage had been neither religious nor civil, but private. So I was making a different case with the McKenzie quote, about marriage even before Christianity.
It would be more precise to say that marriage began as a private affair, then became a religious instituion, and then became a civil matter.
I am not sure that is entirely accurate. I tend to think that within the Judeo-Christian tradition, marriage began as private, then became public (if not necessarily civil), and then became religious. (Within Judaism, I am not sure when rabbis began officiating at weddings, but they were never necessary and are not necessary today. Within Judaism, a marriage is still a contract between the parties getting married.) This is not to say that Jews and Christians haven’t always looked upon marriage as something from God. But marriage for Christians for the first 1000 years of Christianity was not a religious ceremony, and Christian marriage could be entered into validly, if not licitly, up until the Council of Trent, without a priest.
David wishes to equate “private” with “civil,” but before the development of the modern state
Actually, I don’t “wish to,” and I do plead guilty to making no distinction (and of course there is one) between civil versus private, since I did not research (and do not know) the history of civil (government) marriage. This is why I fudged the issue and said (paraphrasing something I read), “For at least the first thousand years of Christian history, Christians got married the way anybody else did in whatever location and culture they happened to be.”
Perhaps we would be in agreement if I say I was talking about marriage mainly prior to the Reformation and the Council of Trent, and you say you were talking about marriage mainly after the Reformation and the Council of Trent. What I was reacting to was the idea (which you never really expressed) that starting with the Apostles, there were church weddings until the secular state started to horn in on what had been for 1500 years the province of the Church. What interests me was the idea that marriage was not officially designated as a sacrament and that people didn’t speak of “the seven sacraments” for at least a thousand years. I was somehow left with the impression from my Catholic education (1950s to early 1960s) that basically nothing had changed in Catholicism since the time of the Apostles and that, for example, people in the earliest Church lined up to go to confession to someone in a little booth, began with, “Bless me, father, for I have sinned,” and after receiving absolution, prayed the rosary.
I apologize if I distracted from your point about the modern state and marriage as something controlled by the government.