Posted on 06/30/2011 7:35:29 PM PDT by markomalley
I have proposed before on this blog that we may be coming to a point where we should consider dropping our use of the word marriage. It is a simple fact that word “marriage” as we have traditionally known it is being redefined in our times. To many in the secular world the word no longer means what it once did and when the Church uses the word marriage we clearly do not mean what the New York Legislature or an increasing number of states mean.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines Marriage in the following way:
The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament (CCC # 1601)
The latest actions by New York, along with Washington DC, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Iowa have legally redefined the term marriage. Other states will likely join the list. The secular world’s definition of marriage no longer even remotely resembles what the Catechism describes.
To be fair, as we noted yesterday, this is not the first redefinition of marriage that has occurred in America. The redefinition has actually come in three stages:
Proposal: So the bottom line is that what the secular world means by the word “marriage” is not even close to what the Church means. The secular world excluded every aspect of what the Church means by marriage. Is it time for us to accept this and start using a different word? Perhaps it is and I would like to propose what I did back in March of 2010, that we return to an older term and hear what you think. I propose that we should exclusively refer to marriage in the Church as “Holy Matrimony.”
According to this proposal the word marriage would be set aside and replaced by Holy Matrimony. It should be noticed that the Catechism of the Catholic Church refers to this Sacrament formally as “The Sacrament of Matrimony.”
The word matrimony also emphasizes two aspects of marriage: procreation and heterosexual complimentarity. The word comes from Latin and old French roots. Matri = “mother” and mony, a suffix indicating “action, state, or condition.” Hence Holy Matrimony refers to that that holy Sacrament wherein a woman enters the state that inaugurates an openness to motherhood. Hence the Biblical and Ecclesial definition of Holy Matrimonyas heterosexual and procreative is reaffirmed by the term itself. Calling it HOLY Matrimony distinguishes it from SECULAR marriage.
Problems to resolve – To return to this phrase “Holy Matrimony” is to return to an older tradition and may sound archaic to some (but at least it isn’t as awkward sounding as “wedlock”). But clearly a new usage will be difficult to undertake. It is one thing to start officially referring to it as Holy Matrimony. But it is harder when, for example, a newly engaged couple approaches the priest and says, “We want to be married next summer.” It seems unlikely we could train couples to say, “We want to enter Holy Matrimony next summer.” or even just to say, “We want to have a wedding next summer.” Such dramatic changes seem unlikely to come easily. Perhaps you, who read this blog can offer some resolutions to this problem.
Perhaps, even if we cannot wholly drop the terms “marry” and “married” a more modest form of the proposal is that we at least officially discontinue the use of the word marriage and refer to it as the “Sacrament of Holy Matrimony.”
What do you think? Do we need to start using a new word for marriage? Has the word been so stripped of meaning that we have to use different terminology to convey what we really mean?
When I proposed this over a year and a half ago, many of you we rather unconvinced and some were even perturbed that we were handing on over our vocabulary to the libertines. That may be, but we already know that gay will never mean what it used to, and maybe marriage will never again mean what it did.
A secondary but related proposal is that we begin to consider getting out of the business of having our clergy act as civil magistrates in weddings. Right now we clergy in most of America sign the civil license and act, as such, as partners with the State. But with increasing States interpreting marriage so differently, can we really say we are partners? Should we even give the impression of credibility to the State’s increasingly meaningless piece of paper? It may remain the case that the Catholic faithful, for legal and tax reasons may need to get a civil license, but why should clergy have anything to do with it?
We would surely need a strong catechesis directed to our faithful that reiterates that civil “marriage” (what ever that means anymore) is not Holy Matrimony and that they should, in no way consider themselves as wed, due to a (meaningless) piece of paper from a secular state that reflects only confusion and darkness rather than clarity and Christian light.
Here too, what do you think? Should the Catholic Bishops disassociate Catholic clergy from civil “marriage” licenses?
It should be noted that Msgr Pope does NOT officially speak for the Archdiocese of Washington, he offers his opinions on various topics of interest. He is currently the pastor of Holy Comforter-St Cyprian parish in DC (and also is an aficionado of the Extraordinary Form). He is a genuinely nice guy (if you ever get a chance to meet him) and one of the best homilists I've heard in a long time.
The simple answer, I think is that the church is going to have to differentiate between civil marriages and holy marriages. Holy marriages are marriages that can meet the approval of God and civil marriages, to which cannot meet the approval of God.
The church may have to forfeit the marriage ceremony, but it could create a ceremony recognizing marriages that are holy in nature.
This isn’t talking about the Sacrament of Matrimony, is it?
As far as I am concerned that would still stand and still be recognized. Other ceremonies would not meet the criteria for the Sacrament.
If the document ceases to mean what it means according to your faith, signing that document would be to endorse sin and therefore sin yourself.
No Clergy should sign a document in a locality or state where this document is an instrument of sin.
Time to other throw the dictator who wants to redefine the meaning of words.
Sure, do that;no big deal. That's what they do in Italy - two separate ceremonies.
From a religious standpoint, a "marriage license" makes no more sense than a "bar mitzvah license" or a "first communion license."
I think no religious ministers should be signing licenses for the governments in the USA. It always seemed to set up a false equality between the Catholic sacrament or mystery of Holy Matrimony and all the other sort of services conducted even those by ‘ordained’ witches. It is always the same civil marriage license and what our Catholic or Orthodox priests are doing is a far cry from the Wiccans and the witches.
A kind of compromise ought to be reached where the State stops using the word “Marriage” and instead registers (a) non-procreative unions that may be terminated at any time for any reason (b) procreative unions which must remain intact until all progeny have reached their maturity and (c) family unions which can consist of anyone you like but are indissoluble. Then the Church, synagogue, temple or mosque can conduct whatever sort of religious ceremony they want but are never again acting as officers of the State in signing marriage licenses.
Yes.
As far as I am concerned that would still stand and still be recognized. Other ceremonies would not meet the criteria for the Sacrament.
Within the Church, of course, administering the sacrament would be the only way that a marriage would be seen as valid.
However, I think his bigger point is a "divorce" between what the State calls marriage and what the Church calls marriage.
Agreed. It was an error on the part of all religious institutions to allow their ministers to become agents of the State for this, or any other, purpose.
This guy gets it. Relying on the state to defend and define marriage has been a disaster, at least in recent times. Just like its involvement with charity and education, it has subverted the role of the Church that have resulted in less charity and a lower levels of education.
There were three big blows to the institution of marriage as I see it-divorce, birth control, and the conditioning of the populace to look at marriage as originating from the state, so that many accept whatever the state says is marriage as long as two people have a piece of paper from the state.
Here’s Pope Leo XIII railing about “civil marriage” 130 years ago:
“19. Nevertheless, the naturalists,(32) as well as all who profess that they worship above all things the divinity of the State, and strive to disturb whole communities with such wicked doctrines, cannot escape the charge of delusion. Marriage has God for its Author, and was from the very beginning a kind of foreshadowing of the Incarnation of His Son; and therefore there abides in it a something holy and religious; not extraneous, but innate; not derived from men, but implanted by nature.”
Freegards
How about referring to “Holy Marriage” or “Holy Matrimony” and always referring to the civil ceremony as a “Profane Civil Partnership”?
Hmmm. Could priests simply hold a Sacrament of Matrimony, and marry a couple without even bothering doing the civil thing? In that case, they could marry an older couple, and the two of them would never have to worry about losing pension from a previous spouse, because their ‘legal status’ would not have changed. Since civil marriage has become irrelevant in the era of homosexual marriage, and the polygamy that will surely be next, why would it matter if a couple has a marriage license, as long as they’re joined Sacramentally.
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