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The So-Called Respect for Marriage Act

11-27-2022Weekly Reflection

There is a bill floating in Congress with this title, which frankly is dishonest. This bill is NOT about respect for marriage. Quite the contrary. With the return of the issue of abortion to the states, there was worry by some that the same fate would befall so-called “homosexual marriage” by overturning the Obergefell vs Hodges decision of the Supreme Court, which ruled for same-sex marriage. Thus the issue would be returned to the individual states. Whether overturned or not, the Obergefell-decision is a nullity and any law codifying this decision would be a nullity because courts and legislatures have no power to change the nature of marriage.

Marriage was never a grant of any court, legislature, or political power because marriage existed prior to any political power and is rooted in human nature. However this attempt by raw judicial, executive, or legislative power to define marriage is part of a larger cultural issue allied with such issues as trans-humanism and gender-ideology. This attempt to be “gods” and claim a “new creation” based on human power goes back to the rebellion of original sin, hinted to in myths like Prometheus, and updated in the novel Frankenstein. A cardinal point of Catholic social teaching is that the nuclear family, father, mother, and children, is the basic building block of society, rooted in human nature and this cannot be usurped by any human power. The health of any society depends on this.

The Compendium of Catholic Social Teaching teaches: The solidity of the family nucleus is a decisive resource for the quality of life in society, therefore the civil community cannot remain indifferent to the destabilizing tendencies that threaten its foundations at their very roots. Although legislation may sometimes tolerate morally unacceptable behavior, it must never weaken the recognition of indissoluble monogamous marriage as the only authentic form of the family. It is therefore necessary that the public authorities “resist these tendencies which divide society and are harmful to the dignity, security and welfare of the citizens as individuals, and they must try to ensure that public opinion is not led to undervalue the institutional importance of marriage and the family.” It is the task of the Christian community and of all who have the good of society at heart to reaffirm that “the family constitutes much more than a mere juridical, social and economic unit, a community of love and solidarity, which is uniquely suited to teach and transmit cultural, ethical, social, spiritual and religious values, essential for the development and well-being of its own members and of society.”229 According to this perspective, it is obligatory that positive law be conformed to the natural law, according to which sexual identity is indispensable, because it is the objective condition for forming a couple in marriage. Hence the so-called Respect for Marriage Act is immoral and contrary to human well-being.

While there must be pastoral concern and care for persons with homosexual attraction, this does not mean that marriage can be between persons of the same sex. Marriage is not a human construct or political platform but something rooted in human nature. Sometimes you hear the phrase homosexual person or LGBTQ etc. person, as if there are alternate human natures. Human beings did not create themselves. Rather human nature is something received. Hence joining a political movement or isolated sexual attractions do not define human nature or the order of sexuality which is also received as both procreative and unitive between a man and a woman for the welfare of children and building up of society. Just as human beings cannot create their own order of health they cannot create their own order of sexuality. Moreover no pope, bishop, synod, cleric, or layperson can change the order of sexuality just as they could not change the order of health for the human being, or physical laws like the rising and setting of the sun. Sadly, in Germany and elsewhere many have abandoned the Catholic faith in this regard and the natural order to worship themselves in a “religion” of political correctness thus betraying the promises of their ordination in distorting and abandoning the Catholic Faith.

Sometimes you hear the phrase, “love is love,” to justify same-sex marriage. What kind of love? C.S. Lewis wrote a book called The Four Loves based on the insights of the ancient Greeks. There is emotional-instinctual love; there is the love between friends; there is the love between a man and a woman; and there is God’s love. In the attempt to justify same-sex marriage there is confusion between the love between friends, which can be quite strong, and can be same-sex, and the love between a man and woman, which has a procreative and unitive meaning as part of human nature. The continuing attacks on the nuclear family and the attacks on fathers and masculinity are serious destabilizing factors in society causing crime, poverty, and social disorder because human beings are not gods. They cannot create an alternate universe designed simply from ideas in their heads, which is a recipe for disaster.

There is also spiritual warfare going on here. The distinguished moral theologian and former Archbishop of Bologna, Cardinal Carlo Caffarra received a letter from Sister Lucia, who saw our Lady at Fatima. In her letter she said: the final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family. Don’t be afraid, she added, because anyone who operates for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be contended and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue. And then she concluded: however, Our Lady has already crushed Satan’s head.

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