The government started performing civil ceremonies as an adjunct to religious marriage. And now they claim to supersede them.
Pope Leo XIII saw this coming 130 years ago.
“Now, since the family and human society at large spring from marriage, these men will on no account allow matrimony to be the subject of the jurisdiction of the Church. Nay, they endeavor to deprive it of all holiness, and so bring it within the contracted sphere of those rights which, having been instituted by man, are ruled and administered by the civil jurisprudence of the community. Wherefore it necessarily follows that they attribute all power over marriage to civil rulers, and allow none whatever to the Church; and, when the Church exercises any such power, they think that she acts either by favor of the civil authority or to its injury. Now is the time, they say, for the heads of the State to vindicate their rights unflinchingly, and to do their best to settle all that relates to marriage according as to them seems good.”
He was writing about civil divorce and remarriage at the time. His mitre would have spun off his head if someone would have explained ‘gay marriage’ to him. To the state in the modern era, marriage is simply whatever judges, pols, or 50% +1 of the voting public thinks it is at any one time. It was always a danger.
Freegards