If I attend a "gay marriage" what does my presence signify? And yes, it IS related to my beliefs. If it is simply to celebrate two people who love each other and their wish to share their excitement and joy, well that is one thing. Parties are fun, if well done.
And, if that is all marriage is, one is hard pressed to make a coherent argument against "gay marriage." At least, I am.
But, Christian marriage is more, much more than a party. Regardless of the tradition that Christians may embrace, all must accept that a marriage ceremony is more than a party. And my presence at one or the other ceremony indicates my understanding, approval and support of what is actually going on.
My disapproval of "gay marriage" goes beyond my revulsion of the physical acts the two are telling me they engage in.
From Chapter 5 of Paul's letter the the Ephesians
31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
Marriage shows us something about the Church. And a man AND a woman are the vital elements of that showing. That simply cannot be done with two men or two women.
Don:
If you are Roman Catholic and understand “holy matrimony” as a sacrament, then your attendance at such a religious travesty confirms your cooperation in the “error”, in the same manner that your attendance at the Eucharist confirms your “community” in your parish.
If you don’t agree that holy matrimony is of/at he same level as the Eucharist, then....you just might be Lutheran.
That said, If my son or daughter were to invite me to such an affair, I would attend out of my love for them - not to condone the "union".
If I was still a part of the Catholic Church - born into it but never "got it" and wandered from age 14 to age 50 before hearing the message of Christ's Love and Sacrifice and turned myself over to Him as my Savior - I couldn't imagine not attending a traditional marriage of someone I loved because they were divorced. I can see not condoning it, but have a bit of trouble with shunning the relationship, even if only for the ceremony vs. everyday life.
My attitude is that God's Laws trump our laws and He defined marriage and we can pervert the concept at the human level, but we cannot pervert what He has wrought and decreed. Ergo, there is really no such thing as gay/homosexual marriage - it all becomes a human-defined construct and with no real meaning.
At any rate, I appreciate the response and the Catholic point of view - while I don't have much use for religions, I understand that even the parts I disagree with have some potential value as far as getting the Good News of the Gospels out and most of the souls saved since His sacrifice have been under the aegis of religion.
Don-o. Perhaps I’m missing something here, but aren’t we implicitly assuming that these so-called marriages are being sanctioned and performed in Christian churches? Is that really the case?
Caesar can use his civil authority to call any ceremony anything he wants. He could call himself Pope if he wanted to. He could sell licenses for people to call themselves Cardinals if he wanted to. In the eyes of the church, it doesn’t make it so. If he wants to say that two men, three women, and a yak are “married” under his twisted definition of the term, it doesn’t make it so in the eyes of the church, either. So he collects his $100 and makes some grand prouncement about the men, women, and assorted beasts being civilly joined in eternal sodomy. That really has no bearing on the church. As far as the church is concerned, the ceremony has no sacramental value.
I wonder if we’re making a mountain out of Caesars molehill?