"Mawwage. Mawwage is what bwings us togethew today. Mawwage, that bwessed awwangement, that dweam within a dweam. And wove, twue wove, wiww fowwow you fowevah…So tweasuwe youw wove,…" – The Impressive Clergyman
Today I watched a beautiful Ukrainian Catholic Divine Liturgy in which my friend, and occasional cohort in blogging crime, Jerry Nora, entered into the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. I wish him and his wife, Krystia, all the happiness in the world. May God bless them with a marriage that sanctifies them, unifies them, and provides them with many children.
Due to in part to this blessed event, I have a mildly polemical point to make.
I think it's high time Christians take responsibility for how they have directly or indirectly damaged the institution of marriage. I think the high rates of the practice or tacit approval of divorce, premarital sex, abortion, and homosexuality have the same root cause.
Marriage is being redefined. Holy Matrimony was once a permanent, exclusive, and sacramental union of one man and one woman for the sanctification of two people in one flesh and for begetting, raising, and catechising children.
The first blow against the institution was struck by rejecting marriage as a sacrament. Sacraments are conduits for sanctifying grace which, if confected properly, cannot be revoked, removed, or repeated on the same elements. The Reformation demoted marriage to merely an outward sign of an inward covenant. This opened Pandora's box, so to speak.
The second attack was the acceptance of no-fault divorce by Christians. Christ said, "every one who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery." (Matthew 5:32, 19:9). Why has this Scripture lost power in the Church? Divorce among Christians, though considered undesirable, is often not treated as sin. Furthermore, remarriage is not discouraged. The result? A lifetime commitment is treated like a leased car.
Marriage was damaged a third time by attack was the acceptance of artificial contraception. No longer was child-rearing a necessary component of marriage. The focus shifted to the couple in exclusivity. With permanence and fruitfulness negated, marriage became an institution many people entered into because they were in love and for no other reason. Furthermore, a wedge was driven between spousehood and parenthood. One need not enter one to experience the other. Sex, once intimately linked with the command to "go forth and multiply", could be enjoyed without procreation. When pregnancy is treated like an undesirable side effect, rather than a natural and appropriate outcome, abortion is soon to follow. Sure enough, within a generation, abortion began to be accepted by Christian laity and clergy alike.
Today many nominal Christians enjoy pre/extra-marital sexual relationships without fear of consequences. Marriage has become an optional state-sponsored institution that only the most old-fashioned or anti-progressive insist upon. There isn't any real Scriptural support for this practice, but too few people declare it to be sinful and condemn it, so it continues unabated. Many Christians, who are to be the salt of the earth and a light to the nations, have actively participated in or impotently witnessed the deconstruction of marriage to merely a weak binding of a man and a woman who claim they are in love and ready to spend their lives together. They may or may not have children and raise them to love God. They may or may not stay together. If the marriage "just doesn't work out", they'll end it and the Church will accept them without chastising them. If you don't condemn wrong behavior, you might as well be condoning it. You're not part of the solution, so you're part of the problem.
Conservative Christians are scared about the prospect of homosexual marriage. They are quick to blame secular culture for the downfall of society. However, I think the bulk of the blame lies with the Church. The Church has idly watched marriage be redefined, abused, degraded, and discarded. If Christians want to stop the current threat of homosexual perversion of marriage and the future possibility of state-sanctioned polygamy, they need to return to the full sacramental and procreative view of matrimony. To demand any less is to sin against God's created order.
“the states with the highest divorce rates (not including Nevada) are all in the bible belt.”
And the Bible Belt is by far majority Protestant. Protestants deny sacramental status to marriage, accept artificial contraception, and no-fault divorce. Divorce, premaritial sex, extramarital cohabitation, and unwanted pregancies have become far more common among Catholics since the decade of Vatican II. Since that council, the Catholic Church seems to be attempting to repeat 400 years of Protestant error in 40. The high divorce rate among Christians helps my point rather than hurting it.
“the lowest divorce rates are in Massachusetts and Connecticut”
Well, when people don’t even bother to get married, or at least try out several roommate lovers before doing so, the divorce rate is bound to be affected. In reality, though, they’ve been effectively married numerous times.
The number of times I have seen pro life and anti gay marriage messages delivered together in one package has made me seriously consider whether I want to be associated with the pro life movement considering everything else which is now associated with the words “pro lifeÂâ€.
For the record, I’m more than willing to work with pro-gay pro-lifers. I’ll do any ethical thing to save lives.
BTW, by “Church”, I meant the entire body of baptized Christians, not just the RCC.
First off, I’ll state the obvious that you have no grounds to make the accusations against Masschusetts that you do.
Also, you’ve switched your set of standards. Earlier you made a point of saying that when you said “The Church” you meant all Christians, not just Catholics. And now you’ve gone to decrying Protestants for ruining marriage. {insert witty joke about flip-flopping}.
But silliness aside, it brings us to a critical point. When we ask the question of whether “we” take marriage seriously enough, it is of critical importance that we define “we”. If we define “we” as members of the Church, then it’s a valid discussion to have; but we must only look at members of the church. If we talk about people in general, youi get into problems.
I believe we have dedicated ourselves at least somewhat to tolerating other people’s faiths. It seems to me that decrying a Baptist for not considering marriage a sacrament makes little more sense than denouncing a Jew for not crossing himself before he prays.
We are also running fast and loose with the deffinition of “marriage”. There are two deffinitions, but we’re using them interchangably. Marriage is a Catholic Sacrament. It is also a special kind of contract issued by the state. You create a situation where you’re saying “a contract issued by the state is not the same as a Catholic sacrament”, which I’m prepared to call a truistic statement. But that is not a valid source of indignation. A duck is not a cat either.
If you want to discuss whether marriage is being treated as it ought be, you have to limit your discourse to Catholics whom are entering into Catholic marriage. Otherwise you’re applying a set of standards that is not relevant.
Funk Dung, I hear you. But I have a lot of hope for the next generation. I don’t have statistical data to back it up, but my gut tells me these kids are going to put us to shame morally speaking.
h2,
Thanks for the encouragement. 🙂 You’ve thrown me a curveball, though. How are Baptists “not technically part of the protestant movement”.?
I fear I’ve not made myself clear. My original intention was to not sound like a anti-Protestant Catholic. That’d be ludicrous since I was one and reunification is a cause dear to my heart.
I honestly believe the first major blow to marriage was dealt by the Reformation. The next real tragedy was the unchecked “spirit of Vatican II”, which has been “progressing” the “Catholic” out of “Catholic Church”. Protestant marriage was, I believe, in worse shape than Catholic marriage until the council and the Sexual revolution” that coincided with it.
My point is that since marriage, if not officially defined the same way, is effectively treated the same by Protestants and Catholics, the problems created by redefinition of marriage must be solved by the entire body of Christians.
Re: Massachusetts, I wasn’t condemning the state or its people in particular. I only meant that extra-marital cohabitation is significantly less tolerated in Bible Belt states. When living together outside marriage vows is an acceptable option, marriage statistics are likely to be skewed.
I find it hard to believe that what you described was the “norm” for pre-modern Christian marriage. While I don’t think there was some “historical state of perfection”, I believe that once upon a time real marriages more closely modelled the Chuch’s ideals, more of the time. Yes, there’s always been a disparity. However, I think it has grown very much worse in the last century or so.
I hate religion. It makes people write mean spirited logs like the one above and allows them think they are doing something good. The number of times I have seen pro life and anti gay marriage messages delivered together in one package has made me seriously consider whether I want to be associated with the pro life movement considering everything else which is now associated with the words “pro lifeÂâ€. (On a side note I think the only feasible option is for pro life and pro choice people to work together to try to reduce the number of abortions and unplanned pregnancies, but it seems to me people are so wrapped up in emotion and ideologies that they would rather continue shouting. There could be some common ground there – reducing the number of abortions, but too much energy is diverted away from working on what should be a common goal to less productive endeavors).
Back to the main point you seem to be referring to some ideal time in the past where people acted differently about marriage, but there has always been affairs, illegitimate children, homosexuality and so on. Gay marriage would only demean marriage for you in your own head, and that is very selfish.
I donÂ’t think a gay marriage is an ideal situation for a child to be raised in, but how many children are raised in ideal conditions? If the constitution is amended to ban gay marriage (however it is worded) should also ban marriage between other people less fit to be parents? I honestly believe that being raised by alcoholic parents is a far less ideal situation than being raised gay parents, yet almost no one else would dare suggest limiting marriage in that way, in part because that has been a problem that always has existed. Basically what IÂ’m saying is that just because something is traditional, it isnÂ’t necessarily good.
All religions have been made up by men, man was not made in godÂ’s image, god was made in manÂ’s image (personification) because we were unable to conceive of something more creative. Taking something made up by men and pretending it is sacred is dangerous, and has had disastrous results as we have seen though out history. Anyone who tries to figure out what their god wants them to do needs to watch more star trek TNG.
Now I know I just said nothing is sacred, but if I thought anything was IÂ’d put marriage at the top of the list. Which is why my blood curls whenever I hear married people talk about sex. The whole reason you have sex before marriage is so you can talk about it (IÂ’m being factious), but after you are married things should be kept between the couple, at least for about ten years.
Hope some of that made sense and I didn’t ramble in too many different directions. In the future Ales, I humbly suggest trying to avoid phrases which sound like something GWB would say. The phrase “Sacraments are conduits for sanctifying grace which†reminds me to much of GWB arguments for a constitutional amendment, which is probably half the reason I got so
I have to question the statement that up until the “advent of widely available birth control, the majority of brides were pregnant.”
I’m sure this was the case for some, but I’ve yet to see any clear indication that it was the case for a majority.
I think it’s pretty clear, on balance, that we take marriage (whether viewed as a spiritual or a secular institution) much less seriously than we ought. There’s many ideas that have been permeated by this doctrine of disposability — where we simply give up on something because it ceases to be convenient. Marriage just happens to be one of the saddest examples. And it’s often born of a lack of respect for the institution.
I think you are very right in assessing that there are many differences between marriage as it currently exists and marriage as the Church says it ought to exist.
Your means of framing the argument created some severe innacuracies though. In framing it as a decline from an historical state of perfection, you have concocted a history that isn’t based in the past. Historically, getting married is something that people have done when their premarital sex yielded a pregnancy. Up through the advent of widely available birth control, the majority of brides were pregnant.
It is very easy to create a history in our heads that serves our ends. But it is very dangerous.
John,
Why are you so quick to assume the worst possible motives for someone’s words or actions? You’ve done it countless times to your political rivals and now you’re doing it to me. Conservatives aren’t just wrong to you. They’re fascists and the country should be in riots. I’m not just a neo-tradiationalist Catholic. I’m a crusader on a mission of ecclesiastic conquest. Why must everyone be an extremist in your eyes?
Yes, I do believe the fullness of the truth is to be found in the Catholic Church and Orthodox Churches. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t have converted. However, I also believe there is a lot of truth to be found in Protestant faiths. IMHO, the Holy Spirit has has been more active amongst Protestants to make up for the loss of the sacraments.
The Reformation redefined marriage. There’s no getting around that. It ceased to be a sacrament. The sacramental nature of marriage is the “model” that I think Protestants should adopt. Why do I believe they would do such a thing? I don’t know that they will. I can only hope that as marriage continues to maligned, they’ll see the need for change.
May they have many happy years together… The world needs more people who believe in the sacramentality of marriage.
Maybe this will encourage you a bit, as a little bit of informal theology from the land of the Baptists (even though we’re not technically part of the protestant movement):
In my church, a divorced person cannot be married, and our leadership has long preached the necessity of seeing marriage not as a two-way, but as a three-way contract (the third party being God). And any contract that purports to include God should be taken with the utmost seriousness.
Blog on my Funky brother!
michael
you may want to check out “the new faithful: why young adults are embracing Christian orthodoxy” by colleen carroll. there are statistics to back up your optimistic attitude. 🙂
Michael,
I’m glad someone out there’s hopeful. We need optimists like you to balance out cynics like me. 😉
Sean,
I gather from your comment that you’ve moved from agnosticism to atheism. I’d be interested to hear why. Perhaps next time we wall climb?
“Sacraments are conduits for sanctifying grace” is almost a quote from the traditional definition of sacrament. It predates Dubya by at least a millenium.
Sean,
You might enjoy the writings of theomorph.
Well, the period that I have read studies about is seventeenth century Massachusetts. Which was probably the most socially conservative society that the world has ever known. I do know that most women were pregnant at the time of their marriage in that period in Massachusetts. I don’t have firm numbers throughout history, but human nature has always been the same, so it’s reasonable to presume that things have not changed all that much.
Surveys taken in the 1950s showed that a strong majority of married people had been with someone other than their spouse before being married.
If you go back to the middle ages you’ll see women bought and sold in exchange for land or political advantage. Any Midieval love story you ever read will always entail wanton adultery (as will any history). Likewise the sheer number of bastard children you’ll find in the middle ages means that a lot of funny stuff had to have been going on.
Also, if you look at statistics now, you’ll see that the states with the highest divorce rates (not including Nevada) are all in the bible belt. And the lowest divorce rates are in Massachusetts and Connecticut. So it does not seem that defending the righteousness of marriage is really a cause disproportionately rallied to by the religious people of our country. Those people who would throw me in jail for discussing Darwin are the same ones who are getting the most divorces, and the people arguing for a complete separation of church and state are the same people whom are being the most faithful to their vows.
Lastly, I would like someone to show me verifiable numbers that divorce rates have actually risen in the past fifty years or so. I have not seen firm evidence that there has been a trend towards more divorces since the divorce laws were made more equitable to women.
While I think it would bwe a great study to correlate first-born birthdates and parent marriage dates for any given time in history, the point John Thompson makes is that it is common throughout history for weddings to serve both a sacramental purpose as well as a very common practical purpose of the time.
While I sigh at what I also see as a societal decline in general, I am also pleased by what I see many people of this generation making a committment that is more focused than what I saw as commonplace even 30 years ago.
It is not so much that there too many people in the world that troubles me. It is that there needs to be more good people in the world.
I wish your friends a blessed future.
Why is there reason to believe that the Protestants, who you say have redefined marriage, would decide to return to a Catholic model?
For all your efforts you do seem to be coming across as an anti-Protestant Catholic. Your notion of reunification sounds to be closer to a ecclesiatic conquest.