The Torah was a stroke of genius. In this concise handbook, Moses gave the Jews an identity, a moral code, and above all he set them apart from their masters, the Egyptians who treated the Pharaoh as a god. Moses’ single greatest contribution is to set God above man, and made certain that no man was a god. I don't even recall any Jewish Kings in the Torah. Order was kept through the Levities (an early version of lawyers). This does not translate into a JEWISH concept of MARRIAGE is the greatest thing to reach the planet and thereby lifted the Jews and subsequently the Christians to a higher level of success as espoused in the Catholic article. Jews could have more than one wife. They could own slaves. This was the way of the times.
The idea that God is the supreme authority did have some influence in holding back societies from treating Kings and Emperors as deities. However, most western monarch's achieved their goals by brute force. Quite often they didn’t care about God, they just killed their enemies. It was the re-emergence of Classical thought that launched Europe to a level beyond anywhere else in the world. It was the same classical thought that created the Roman Empire and taught Alexander the Great how to think. The early Roman farmer could own property and could own weapons to defend their land. He was free unlike medieval Christian serfs. He did have Aristotle as a teacher. Aristotle taught how to think in a straight line whereas most of the world used circular reasoning, which is a basic mode of thinking in Christian thought. Western Europe ascended principally as a result in advances in science. This gave them wealth which in turn gave them more time to refine culture.
Christ’s contribution to Judaism was to make the Jewish Bible universally available to everybody. He spent much of his time irritating Rabbis who were ingratiating themselves rather than doling out wisdom and guidance to followers. Christ spent much time rebelling against established order, but he also asked his followers to follow his order. He also asked people to give up their property and go with him. He never got married so far as I know. I could say this about many of today’s socialists.
To blame the success of Western Europe solely on Moses and Christ, but ignore the heathen Greeks and Romans does a real disservice to intellectual thought. It is pure Catholic dogma that flies in the face of experience. I do seem to recall that secular law had to be made in America to prevent Mormons from practicing their version of Christianity that reaches back to the days when men could have more than one wife.
Very true. I agree with you, but with regard to the Greeks and Romans, the problem was that they had a very limited view of who qualified as a "person" under their law. Slaves and members of other lower orders weren't considered legal people, which is what led to the famous slave rebellions.
Judaism, however, regarded any Jew as a person. Obviously, there were class differences and there were certain heirarchical differences in families (those who were priests and those who were not). However, the reason that somebody like Jesus - who was a nobody - could go into the Temple and teach was that he was a Jew. Obviously, the "regulars" at the Temple, who were probably well-off and considered themselves scholars, were a little annoyed by this. But they couldn't stop him, because he was a Jew and therefore a person.
What Christianity did was extend this to all of humanity.
And what institution was behind most of the advancements of Science, culture and art in the early Middle ages? It was the Church, which had held in trust, during the Dark Ages, all the previously gained information, and when societies began to grow once again, brought forth those ideas and began Universities to spread that knowledge.
This was the true beginning of Western Civilization.
Yes, you get it...
It was landmark U.S. Supreme Court precedent Reynolds v. United States in 1878 that made "separation of church and state" a dubiously legitimate point of case law, but more importantly; it confirmed the Constitutionality in statutory regulation of marriage practices. Congress, state legislatures and public referendums have statutorily determined polygamous, pederast, homosexual, and incestuous marriages are unlawful. No Constitutional Amendment restricting marriage is required to regulate "practice" according to the Reynolds decision.
Marriage is a religious "rite," not a civil "right;" a secular standard of human reproductive biology united with the Judaic Adam and Eve model of monogamy in creationist belief. Two homosexuals cannot be "monogamous" because the word denotes a biological procreation they are not capable of together; human reproductive biology is an obvious secular standard.
All adults have privilege to marry one consenting adult of opposite gender; therefore, Fourteenth Amendment "equal protection" argument about "privileges and immunities" for homosexual marriage is invalid. Driving, marriage, legal and medical practices are not enumerated rights; they are privileged practices that require statutory license.
Homosexual monogamy advocates are a cult of perversion seeking ceremonious sanctification for voluntary deviancy with anatomical function, desperately pursuing esoteric absolution to justify their guilt-ridden egos. This has no secular standard; it is an idolatrous fetish. Why not properly apply the adjudicated Reynolds 'separation of church and state' here?
[Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 8 Otto 145, 24 L. Ed. 244 (1878).]