Category Archives: Consistent Ethic of Life

Family Life, Sacraments

Objective True Meaning

objective Truth

“Objectivity is a central philosophical concept, related to reality and truth, which has been variously defined by sources. Generally, objectivity means the state or quality of being true even outside of a subject’s individual biases, interpretations, feelings, and imaginings.”
–https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivity_(philosophy)

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-by Edward Peters, JD, JCD, Ref. Sig. Ap.

“Rusty Reno has a fine essay over at First Things addressing the Kim Davis matter. I differ, however, with one paragraph therein. Reno writes: When the Supreme Court issued its decree, American civil law ceased to define marriage and instead became a law of civil unions, with the word “marriage” now having no real meaning. With that sort of reasoning, I might be able to wiggle my way toward signing licenses that say “marriage” but really mean “civil union.”

I wish the Supreme Court had only enshrined same-sex civil unions in law; such a ruling we might have lived with. But that is not what the Court did. Instead five justices imposed on marriage (true marriage, natural marriage, traditional marriage, whatever pleonastic phrase one wishes to use) the lie that marriage includes the union of two persons of the same sex. This judicially imposed lie is not a ‘little white lie’ that might allow one to hide a surprise birthday party, it is not a ‘public figure lie’ (half of which aren’t true in the first place), and it is not even a ‘planted lie’ designed to deceive military enemies or dangerous criminals. Instead, the Court has published a naked, gross falsehood that tears simultaneously at the fabric of law, language, family, and society.

The word marriage has, and will always have, an objectively true meaning—no matter how many times it has been degraded by sinful societies (usually by its legal institutions but more lately by its mass media) and by many recalcitrant individuals (including some religious leaders). Justice Kennedy’s atrocious prose in Obergefell can no more deprive marriage of its meaning than, say, Barney’s insipid theme song (“I love you, you love me, we’re a happy family”) can deprive family of its meaning. Instead, Kennedy the Judge and Barney the Dinosaur teach something seriously false about marriage and family. But while Barney’s lyrics simply make one queasy, Kennedy’s words are now the pretext to throw people who do not accept his lie into jail.

The actual text of whatever document one is called upon to sign or certify is crucial to determining whether one may sign or certify it. I’ve not seen a Kentucky marriage license and so defer to those who have. But this much is certain: any document that declares two people of the same sex to be married, one may not sign or certify.

With that caveat in mind, again, I recommend reading Reno’s important essay.”

Love,
Matthew

Family Life, Marriage, Sacraments

There is no more “marriage” in the US, only “civil union”.

The_Myth_of_American_Religious_Freedom

Whither Freedom of Religion? So highly exalted while “proclaiming Liberty throughout the land”?

United States Constitution

Amendment I

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

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-by R. R. Reno

“I’m sympathetic to Kim Davis, the county clerk in Kentucky who has stopped signing marriage licenses. In her position, I’d do the same.

Her decision was straightforward, it seems. After Obergefell, the Supreme Court decision mandating a national right to same-sex marriage, Davis decided that she could not affix her signature to documents perpetuating the falsehood that husbands can have husbands and wives have wives. To do so would be to act in a way contrary to her conscience as formed by her Christian faith. With admirable consistency, she decided to stop signing marriage licenses altogether, not wanting to discriminate against gay couples.

One can judge Davis mistaken about the dictates of her conscience. Perhaps she is wrong about what Christianity teaches about marriage, as many liberal Christians argue. Perhaps she is mistaken about the implications of signing a marriage license. There might be a clever Jesuit who can convince us that her signature on same-sex marriage licenses should not have troubled her conscience.

One angle for the casuist: When the Supreme Court issued its decree, American civil law ceased to define marriage and instead became a law of civil unions, with the word “marriage” now having no real meaning. With that sort of reasoning, I might be able to wiggle my way toward signing licenses that say “marriage” but really mean “civil union.”

Whatever we might think of the moral or legal substance of the matter, however, we cannot claim Davis has misunderstood her situation. One of her duties as county clerk now asks Davis to do what her conscience tells her she must not do. The way forward is clear: She must obey her conscience. She must act, as she puts it, “under God’s authority.” That’s exactly right.

Many modern people have the wrong impression that conscience is active, impelling us to do things contrary to the law. This is not the tenor of Davis’ stance in Morehead, Kentucky. She is not issuing counter-opinions to refute Obergefell. Nor is she campaigning to get other county clerks to join her. There have been no press releases, no assertive shrill spirit of protest on her part. That’s the progressive mentality, which tries to upgrade its political ambitions with appeals to conscience. Instead, Davis simply won’t do what her conscience tells her she cannot do. She’s not acting contrary to the law; she’s not acting at all.

Some might say that her refusal to sign marriage licenses disqualifies her from holding her position as county clerk. She should resign or be removed. People are certainly entitled to that opinion. But Davis does not think she must resign. The county clerks in Kentucky are elected, so she can’t be fired. She could be impeached, but that’s for the legislators of the State of Kentucky to decide. And the citizens of Rowan County can vote against her in the next election. Conscience, properly exercised in civil disobedience that otherwise respects the law, isn’t always easy to dislodge.

I can imagine some harrumphing about the notion that Davis respects the law. After all, isn’t she refusing to act in accord with it?! I find this worry rather rich when expressed by progressives. For decades, elite colleges and universities run by progressives have made arrangements with local police that allow students to use drugs and drink while underage, free from the worry of arrest. These sorts of special arrangements, which are widespread in elite institutions, are not criticized for the obvious ways in which they undermine the rule of law.

Under the circumstances, Kim Davis poses little threat to the rule of law. Her actions have done nothing to prevent gay couples from getting marriage licenses throughout Kentucky. The couples that present themselves for her signature can easily go to the next county, as I’m sure heterosexual couples in Rowan County have done over the last two months. She’s not making grand public statements about a supposed right to dissent. She’s done nothing in the way of organizing resistance to Obergefell. No counter-revolution.

So why the furor? Because her refusal poses a symbolic threat to “marriage equality” and its claim to realize the high ideals of justice. One word of dissent, one act of conscience, disturbs the serene confidence of progressives that they have a monopoly on all that is right and good.

Neither you nor I nor Kim Davis have a “right” to follow our consciences. (Ed. as those red-faced, shouting, infuriated by her conscientious refusal insist she comply immediately in serving them have apparently, all this time?  Of all people that should be more sympathetic to Ms. Davis and her motives?  Whether or not they share the same motives?  Who have, of late, imitated her method?  How quickly memory fades in the shadow of self-interest.)  That’s silly. Our consciences do not wait upon the niceties of rights. I would not protest if higher authorities decided to remove Davis from her position. The law has a proper claim on public life, even if it does not have a final authority over our consciences.

Our legal and political system has no final authority over us, because there is a higher one. At times, one ought not to do what one is told to do. Kim Davis finds herself in just that sort of situation. Good for her. She’s doing something noble: quietly following the dictates of her conscience.”

Love,
Matthew

Consistent Ethic of Life, Moral

Good vs Evil vs Relativism: the ends never justify the means. Never. Ever. Ever. Never.

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“Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.” – G.K. Chesterton

Here in Wisconsin, our legislature is debating the ban on sale of aborted fetal tissue, enflamed by the recent Planned Parenthood expose’ videos.  The dean of the medical school of the University of Wisconsin and a couple legislators have argued against this ban citing the benefits of medical research.  Clearly, I note, they are not catechized in Catholic teaching.

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
PART THREE
LIFE IN CHRIST

SECTION ONE
MAN’S VOCATION LIFE IN THE SPIRIT

CHAPTER ONE
THE DIGNITY OF THE HUMAN PERSON

ARTICLE 4
THE MORALITY OF HUMAN ACTS

1749 Freedom makes man a moral subject. When he acts deliberately, man is, so to speak, the father of his acts. Human acts, that is, acts that are freely chosen in consequence of a judgment of conscience, can be morally evaluated. They are either good or evil.

I. THE SOURCES OF MORALITY

1750 The morality of human acts depends on:

– the object chosen;

– the end in view or the intention;

– the circumstances of the action.

The object, the intention, and the circumstances make up the “sources,” or constitutive elements, of the morality of human acts.

1751 The object chosen is a good toward which the will deliberately directs itself. It is the matter of a human act. The object chosen morally specifies the act of the will, insofar as reason recognizes and judges it to be or not to be in conformity with the true good. Objective norms of morality express the rational order of good and evil, attested to by conscience.

1752 In contrast to the object, the intention resides in the acting subject. Because it lies at the voluntary source of an action and determines it by its end, intention is an element essential to the moral evaluation of an action. The end is the first goal of the intention and indicates the purpose pursued in the action. The intention is a movement of the will toward the end: it is concerned with the goal of the activity. It aims at the good anticipated from the action undertaken. Intention is not limited to directing individual actions, but can guide several actions toward one and the same purpose; it can orient one’s whole life toward its ultimate end. For example, a service done with the end of helping one’s neighbor can at the same time be inspired by the love of God as the ultimate end of all our actions. One and the same action can also be inspired by several intentions, such as performing a service in order to obtain a favor or to boast about it.

1753 A good intention (for example, that of helping one’s neighbor) does not make behavior that is intrinsically disordered, such as lying and calumny, good or just. The end does not justify the means. Thus the condemnation of an innocent person cannot be justified as a legitimate means of saving the nation. On the other hand, an added bad intention (such as vainglory) makes an act evil that, in and of itself, can be good (such as almsgiving).39

1754 The circumstances, including the consequences, are secondary elements of a moral act. They contribute to increasing or diminishing the moral goodness or evil of human acts (for example, the amount of a theft). They can also diminish or increase the agent’s responsibility (such as acting out of a fear of death). Circumstances of themselves cannot change the moral quality of acts themselves; they can make neither good nor right an action that is in itself evil.

II. GOOD ACTS AND EVIL ACTS

1755 A morally good act requires the goodness of the object, of the end, and of the circumstances together. An evil end corrupts the action, even if the object is good in itself (such as praying and fasting “in order to be seen by men”).

The object of the choice can by itself vitiate an act in its entirety. There are some concrete acts – such as fornication – that it is always wrong to choose, because choosing them entails a disorder of the will, that is, a moral evil.

1756 It is therefore an error to judge the morality of human acts by considering only the intention that inspires them or the circumstances (environment, social pressure, duress or emergency, etc.) which supply their context. There are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, are always gravely illicit by reason of their object; such as blasphemy and perjury, murder and adultery. One may not do evil so that good may result from it.

IN BRIEF

1757 The object, the intention, and the circumstances make up the three “sources” of the morality of human acts.

1758 The object chosen morally specifies the act of willing accordingly as reason recognizes and judges it good or evil.

1759 “An evil action cannot be justified by reference to a good intention” (cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Dec. praec. 6). The end does not justify the means.

1760 A morally good act requires the goodness of its object, of its end, and of its circumstances together.

1761 There are concrete acts that it is always wrong to choose, because their choice entails a disorder of the will, i.e., a moral evil. One may not do evil so that good may result from it.”

USCCB

Love,
Matthew

Consistent Ethic of Life, Contraception

Protestants reflect on contraception


-God saw all that He had made, and it was very good. Gen 1:31


-by Julie Roys, 1/5/12

(Julie Roys is an Evangelical Christian reporter. She graduated from Wheaton College and also attended the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Julie has published many articles at Christianity Today, World Magazine. Religion News Service, The Federalist, and The Christian Post. As a respected, conservative Christian voice, Julie also has been interviewed numerous times on National Public Radio, One America News, and Total Living Network. Julie hosted a live, call-in talk radio show on the Moody Radio Network that was called Up For Debate for six years. For calling out the issues at Moody she apparently lost her job. Julie and her husband live in the Chicago area and they have three children.)

“(I was raised in an evangelical home and taught that contraception and reproductive technologies are okay, as long as they don’t destroy live embryos. But lately, I’ve been re-thinking this position. Some of this is due to the strength of Catholic arguments I’ve read that stress the deeply spiritual symbolic meaning of sex and reproduction. Also influencing me has been considering the disastrous fruit of contraception and Artificial Reproductive Technologies. Below are my recent thoughts concerning on the latter.)

She’s the “child of a stranger” – the product of an anonymous sperm donor at Baylor University in the early 1980s. For years, Kathleen LaBounty has searched for her “missing family” – for her biological father and potential half-siblings. She’s contacted some 600 men who attended the school her father reportedly attended and received 250 responses. But to date, Kathleen LaBounty still doesn’t know her father’s identity.

LaBounty’s situation highlights a problem associated with a booming industry that’s gradually redefining the family. Professionals call the industry Artificial Reproductive Technology, or ART. But, Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family calls sperm donation and artificial insemination “disembodied procreation.” And, he asserts that the growth of this industry is spawning one of the most significant social and cultural trends of 2012.

Stanton is right. In the past decade, the use of ART has doubled, creating family situations God never intended. Many so-called “test-tube babies” never know their fathers. Those from especially prolific donors have dozens or even hundreds of half-siblings. And some, in violation of God’s design, are raised in homes with same-sex parents.

ART has made it possible to mix and match children and parents in any combination imaginable. In truth, it’s taken contraception, the separation of sex from procreation, to the next level – the separation of children from their biological parents. And, like contraception spawned the hook-up culture, now ART is spawning alternative families.

For decades, evangelicals have dismissed as too Catholic the theology that God intended sex – or the act of marriage – to be inseparable from procreation and vice-versa. Yet, maybe we evangelicals need to re-think this one. Maybe we need to adopt a theology that submits to the natural order, instead of defying it – one that makes Kathleen LaBounty’s situation more rare, not increasingly common.”

Love,
Matthews

Abortion, Consistent Ethic of Life

Protestants & the evil of abortion


-God saw all that He had made, and it was very good. Gen 1:31


-by Julie Roys, 2/25/15

(Julie Roys is an Evangelical Christian reporter. She graduated from Wheaton College and also attended the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Julie has published many articles at Christianity Today, World Magazine. Religion News Service, The Federalist, and The Christian Post. As a respected, conservative Christian voice, Julie also has been interviewed numerous times on National Public Radio, One America News, and Total Living Network. Julie hosted a live, call-in talk radio show on the Moody Radio Network that was called Up For Debate for six years. For calling out the issues at Moody she apparently lost her job. Julie and her husband live in the Chicago area and they have three children.)

“When Jackie sent an email to her church asking about its post-abortion recovery group, she used an alias and created a new account to hide her identity. Even now, 11 years after her abortion, and after sharing her story to dozens of other women, Jackie asked me not to use her real name. She still hasn’t told her daughter or many people at church that she’s had an abortion. “It’s just such a shameful secret,” she said.

Abortion is difficult for almost any post-abortive woman to discuss. Pro-choice activists attribute this reluctance to a pervasive stigma that stems from society’s “shame-based message that abortion is wrong.” They try to remove this shame by defending abortion, saying unborn babies are not persons or convincing women that abortion actually did them, or society, a favor.

However, in the church, we face the challenge of upholding the sanctity of life, while simultaneously ministering to women who feel overwhelming shame about their abortions. Our response is not to deny the sin and death inherent in abortion. Instead, we point women to the healing found in a community centered around the One who redeems us from all sin.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, one in every five women who gets an abortion identifies as a born-again, evangelical, charismatic, or fundamentalist Christian. Given that more than a million women abort each year in the US, this means a staggering 200,000 Bible-believing Christians annually. And according to Christian ministries working with this population, a vast majority of them will never reveal their secret.

In interviews with about a dozen post-abortive Christian women, I heard each say they deeply regret their abortions and experienced profound emotional and spiritual trauma as a result. Without a place to confess and seek recovery, women who’ve had abortions remain shackled by fear, grief, and guilt.

“These women have no idea how this is affecting every facet of their lives – their relationships with their husbands, their children,” said Kathy Rutledge, who leads a study calledSurrendering the Secret at a non-denominational church in Kentucky. Rutledge said her shame kept her from volunteering at church and made her fear God’s punishment for her choice in the past. “I was… convinced that God was going to take my children from me,” she said.

Jackie, who after years of silence finally sought healing in a recovery group, likens women’s silence about their abortions to a splinter in their flesh. “Until you get it out,” she said, “the healing really can’t begin. It just continues to fester.”

Certainly, the church has grown in its ability to minister to these women. In the past 20 years, abortion recovery groups have multiplied in churches nationwide. Surrendering the Secret has trained about 2,500 leaders in churches and crisis pregnancy centers. Another leading recovery ministry, Rachel’s Vineyard, hosts about 1,000 retreats annually in 48 states and 57 other countries. Yet, these statistics pale in comparison to the number of post-abortive women in the church (not to mention the men who carry regret over their wives’ or girlfriends’ abortions).

Leaders in post-abortion recovery ministry say the church remains reluctant to fully face the impact of abortion within their own congregations. Rutledge said she once gave her testimony to a group of women at a megachurch in the South and by the end, several women were “practically bawling.” Yet, when Rutledge asked about doing a follow-up, the group’s leader said, “None of my women have had an abortion… and even if they did, they don’t need to be speaking about it.”

Nancy Kruezer, who serves as Chicago Regional Coordinator for Silent No More, said some pastors express fears that if they address abortion, it will “open the floodgates,” and they will be overwhelmed by wounded people. Others object because they say the topic is too political—or that discussing abortion might actually make it more acceptable.

But, Kruezer, said these fears are unfounded and that women desperately need to talk about their abortions. As a result of her abortion 22 years ago, Kruezer said she suffered overwhelming fear, anxiety, and nightmares. These problems persisted for about 15 years until Kruezer finally confessed her abortion to her small group. “They prayed for me,” Kruezer said, and “through them, I experienced God’s mercy.”

Kruezer also confessed her abortion to her pastor. “And, it was in confession,” Kruezer said, “that I came to understand that Jesus had truly come for me—not for the perfect or the righteous, but he had come for me, the sinner, the wounded.”

Stories like hers, when shared publically in the church, can lead fellow Christian women to admit their abortions and seek healing for the first time. Also, those who are considering abortion hear a stark warning—that abortion doesn’t solve our problems, but devastates those who participate.

“Silence is a powerful weapon of the enemy,” Kruezer said. “It’s in silence that the truth remains hidden and that lies flourish… lies that justify the killing of unborn children, lies that say abortion doesn’t hurt people.”

Jackie vividly remembers when Catherine Walker, a woman who runs an abortion recovery ministry called Life After Decision, shared her testimony in front of Jackie’s church. Walker told the congregation that she had had three abortions before becoming a believer and one after coming to Christ. Her fourth abortion happened when she was a brand-new believer, unmarried and uncertain if she was ready to have a baby.

“I was just so shocked,” Jackie recalls. “I never would have guessed that somebody else that could just look like a church-goer… somebody I would pass in the hallways, also had (an abortion). It was freeing.”

Jackie’s abortion had occurred nine years earlier, when she was in a prodigal season of her life. Though she had grown up in the church, she was reeling from a divorce and had begun engaging in casual sex. “I just got into this very devastated, dark place,” she recalled. “I can hardly even believe that I ever was that person—scared to death. I grew up in a family (where) nobody had a child out of wedlock… I just couldn’t imagine telling them about being pregnant.”

About a year after her abortion, Jackie returned to the Lord, but kept silent about her abortion for years. After hearing Walker’s, though, she got the courage to join a recovery group. “For whatever reason,” Jackie said, “part of the healing is just telling everything and feeling safe to do that.”

Our churches need to regularly communicate that they are safe places women like Jackie. While we cannot whitewash the sin of abortion, we also can’t ignore those who at one time have had abortions and are suffering. We must let them know that Jesus’ blood covers all sin, including theirs.”

Love,
Matthew

Culture of Life, Ecclesiology, Family Life

Sodomy vs divorce: lesser of two evils?

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-by Rev Dominic Legge, OP

“Thomas Reese, writing about gay marriage in the National Catholic Reporter, argues that the Catholic bishops of the United States should “admit defeat and move on.” They’ve done this before, he claims: Think of “their predecessors who opposed legalizing divorce but lost,” and who then “accepted divorce” in practice if not in theory—for example, by hiring divorcées. “Today, Catholic institutions rarely fire people when they get divorced and remarried,” and the divorced and remarried “get spousal benefits.” “No one is scandalized by this,” he writes.

This is like saying: “The patient has been taking this poison for years, getting sicker and weaker—so let’s triple the dose.” The argument is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Further, there are manifold reasons why gay marriage is a different and greater threat than divorce, and why acquiescing in it would gravely damage the Church. Here are four.

1.  First, virtually no one celebrates divorce or regards it as a positive good. There is no “Divorced Pride” parade. At most, some think of it like abortion rights: a tragedy and an evil when it happens, but a necessary escape hatch. No one is clamoring for prelates to praise divorce. In contrast, gay marriage is trumpeted as a positive good, and the Church will be shown no mercy by its advocates until bishops, too, march in the parade. We should have no illusions about the way cultural forces (and, soon, legal coercion) will aim to compel the Church not only to be silent on gay marriage, but to praise it and to integrate it into the Church’s life—or else.

2.  Second, while divorce negates an important element of marriage, it doesn’t change the kind of relationship we’re speaking about. With divorce, we recognize that the old bond should have endured, but didn’t. A new legal act is needed to sunder what was joined. But even in this, we still grasp the nature of the bond itself: between a man and a woman, of a kind that generates children, implying permanence, if only for the good of the kids. Gay marriage undermines true marriage in a different and much more dangerous way: It hollows out its very essence, applying the word to something else entirely, a relationship that itself has no potential to generate children, and so cannot itself (without help from the law or from outsiders) form a family. Gay marriage makes it increasingly hard even to talk about what is essential to true marriage. To accept gay marriage as a genuine expression of marriage—and to treat it as such in the parish office, even if we could then keep it out of the parish church—would be vastly more destructive than accepting divorce (which has been bad). It changes the very essence of the institution.

3.  Third, divorce and remarriage is often hidden from view. One often doesn’t know if someone was divorced years ago—and it’s even more rare to know whether there was an annulment. Gay marriage is obviously different, and the threat of scandal is much greater.

4.  Fourth, it is not true that no one is scandalized when church institutions hire divorced and remarried people. Reese’s argument implies that no one will be shocked if we have divorced sacristans (or gay-married parish receptionists), since everyone understands that it’s just the world we live in. But scandal, as Jesus spoke about it, is not a psychological shock. It is rather a skandalon, a stumbling block to others who will then be tempted to sin. “It is impossible that stumbling blocks should not come, but woe to him through whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck . . .” (Luke 17:1–2). Is it plausible to claim that widespread acceptance of divorce has not contributed to more divorce? The effect will be even more powerful with gay marriage. If the Church accepts the new cultural and legal norms on gay marriage in its institutional life, even if not in its worship, it will say (especially to the “little ones” Jesus was talking about) that gay marriage is no big deal. Even today, it is a grave scandal when a Catholic teacher gets divorced and shows up at school with a new last name. Every kid in the school knows it. It teaches a lesson more powerful than any textbook. Accepting gay marriage would do much more damage.  (Ed.  I realize Fr Legge is speaking in hypotheticals as a form of intellectual charity as if the option were real for Catholics.  It is not.)

Yes, we may have lost the battle in civil law about the civil definition of marriage. That is all the more reason that the Church must now speak ever more clearly and firmly about the truth of marriage, or her “little ones” will soon weaken and fall. That would be the true scandal.”

Faith of our fathers, living still,
In spite of dungeon, fire, and sword;
Oh, how our hearts beat high with joy
Whene’er we hear that glorious Word!

Faith of our fathers, holy faith!
We will be true to thee till death.

Faith of our fathers, we will strive
To win all nations unto Thee;
And through the truth that comes from God,
We all shall then be truly free.

Faith of our fathers, holy faith!
We will be true to thee till death.

Faith of our fathers, we will love
Both friend and foe in all our strife;
And preach Thee, too, as love knows how
By kindly words and virtuous life.

Faith of our fathers, holy faith!
We will be true to thee till death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=89&v=P0eBd7blggs

Love,
Matthew

Family Life, July, Marriage, Sacraments, Saints

Jul 7 – Bl Peter To Rot, (1912-1945) – Husband, Father, Catechist, Martyr, Patron of Christian Marriage

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He was born in 1912 at Rakunai, a village on the Melanesian island of New Britain, today part of Papua New Guinea. His parents belonged to the region’s first generation of Catholics. He was a pious boy and the parish priest thought that he should study for the priesthood, but his father, the village chief, felt that the tradition of Catholicism in the region was too short and none of the people were yet ready for the priesthood, so Peter became a catechist.  Most of the evangelization in the area was carried out by catechists, like Peter. He married Paula LaVarpit, from a nearby village on November 11, 1936 and they had three children.

When the local priest was forced to leave for a concentration camp, he said to Peter, “I am leaving my work in your hands.  Do not let them forget about God.” Peter did just that. He and the other catechists helped to keep the Catholic faith alive. Peter learned some Japanese and was able to get along well with the Japanese Naval Authorities. But then the Military Police took over. They thought the Christians were praying for a Japanese defeat. Christian worship was forbidden, and a decree was issued that the people should go back to the ancient practice of a man having more than one wife. Peter publicly protested this, and harshly corrected anyone who considered it.

He organized prayer services, gave religious instruction, baptized children, preserved the consecrated Hosts and administered them to the sick and dying, and gave help to the poor. The Japanese had destroyed the church when they arrived, so Peter built a new one out of the branches of trees.

Peter was arrested when the Japanese Military Police found out he was organizing prayer groups and witnessing marriages. His family came to the prison every day to bring him food. Methodist and Catholic chiefs of different tribes tried to have Peter released, but could not. Peter told them, “Don’t worry. I’m a catechist. If I die, I die for the faith.”

After a quiet start, repression grew violent. The Japanese banned all Christian worship, public and private, and decided to reintroduce polygamy among the people. Peter was arrested in April or May 1945 and savagely “questioned” by officials. He was sentenced to two months in prison. A month before the Japanese surrendered to Allied forces in the Pacific, a Japanese doctor came and injected Peter with poison, stuffed his ears and nose with cotton wool, and held him down and suffocated him until he died.

An immense crowd attended Peter’s burial, at which no religious rite was permitted. He has been increasingly revered as a martyr ever since that day.

“I am here because of those who broke their marriage vows and because of those who do not want the growth of God’s kingdom.” ~ Bl Peter To Rot

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Love,
Matthew

Family Life, Sacraments

Sacrament of Holy Matrimony & AMAZING GRACE!!!

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The President went from rainbow coloring the White House to singing Amazing Grace, all in the same day (6/26/15).  Wow.  Imho, that was quite the spiritual and intellectual contortion.  Let’s hope he has an analgesic for his soul and mind.  He’s gonna need it.

Unions, “marriages”, not in line with God’s commandments, limit, inhibit, mortally wound? their supply of sanctifying grace.  How, in the world, can hope remain?

-by Paul McLachlan (© 1997)
Thomas More Centre Winter School
St Leo’s College, Brisbane, UK
19 July 1997

“I have been asked today to tell you something about the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. This is obviously because of my vast experience in this area, having been married for 3½ years so far, which by modern standards, appears to be quite a feat!

Marriage is a hot topic these days. Statistics tell us that a sizeable proportion of them are doomed to end in divorce, the majority of couples live together before they marry and about 10% of couples with children decide never to marry at all. And, we are told, Catholics are living together, divorcing and remarrying at about the same rates as the rest of the community.

Magazines, talk shows, pop psychology self-help books, even Catholic Marriage Preparation materials will all tell you everything you could want to know and more about the relationship of marriage, how to sustain it, how to improve it. You can get advice almost anywhere on how to get hitched, how to be enriched and when to ditch.

If you were to judge what marriage is and should be by reading the magazines or watching television or by talking to people on the street, you’d be led to believe that it’s a relationship founded on sexual compatibility and romance. If the sex goes bad or the romance dies, then the couple can walk away from the marriage. How do you work out whether you are sexually compatible. Well, of course, you try before you buy! You make sure you have a sufficient number of sexual partners (the prevailing wisdom is that the appropriate number is about 12) to work out what you like and what you don’t like so that when Mr or Ms Right comes along, you’ll know he or she is the one for you as soon as you sleep with him or her. You live together before you’re married, often before marriage is ever mentioned or contemplated, and often for several years before deciding to marry. You judge the strength of a marriage by how romantic it is: how often does he bring home flowers unexpectedly, how often do you go away for romantic weekends at luxury hotels, how often do you get breakfast in bed, how often does he tell you he loves you?

Marriage is no longer meant to stifle your individuality. Couples rewrite their vows to read something along the lines of: “I take you as an individual. I want to help you reach your full potential. I want to help you reach your own goals and dreams.” Children are a real dilemma. Do you have any at all? How much will they cost? Should we have just one or two? Children come after the mortgage has been paid off, after the trip to Europe, after studies are over and careers are firmly established. Then when they come, they’re treated as little more than accessories. Pay someone else to look after them during the week and complain about your lost freedom on the weekend.

Marriage is seen as a social construct built to protect sexual intercourse, or as a prison with woman chained to the sink and the children. The secularization of marriage so that it is merely a legal contract with attendant rights has led to demands that those rights be extended to those who live as though they were married, even homosexuals. These days, we define ourselves by our “sexuality” and our view of sex is warped by the omnipresent, omnipotent eroticism of the media.

Is it any wonder people are asking why they should get married in the first place? Who’d want to be?!

But, then, that’s what happens when you reduce marriage to just another human relationship, or worse still, an animal relationship. So, I’m not going to say another word about the relationship of marriage. Instead, I’m going to talk about Catholic Marriage, the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. How is that different from the mere “relationship of marriage”? There are three things about a Catholic marriage that make it far more than just a relationship: it is a Sacrament, it is a Vocation and it is a path to Sanctity. Three things that we so often forget.

Path to sanctity

Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, repeats again for our modern ears the truth that each and every one of us is called to holiness, called to be a Saint. Saints are not meant to be isolated, rare individuals. You don’t have to be a monk and shave your head, or a contemplative nun to be a Saint. Every single one of us, no matter who we are or what we do is called to be “perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect”. That is what God expects from us! That is what we are called to strive for throughout our entire lives! So many of us are happy to live each day just getting by when it comes to God and our Faith. We go to Sunday Mass, we pray every once in a while. But “holiness”, “piety”, “sanctity” … no thanks, too hard, too different! Who wants to walk around with a halo on their head?!

There’s a tendency to think that holiness is for the Pope and priests and nuns who give up their lives for God, for people who lived in another age when there were kings and queens and crusades and inquisitions. People who have day jobs and are married with children just don’t have time for all that praying and helping the poor and smiling at everyone. You can’t wear sackcloth to work! Maybe this view has arisen because so many of the Church’s great Saints are priests and monks and nuns. But don’t forget all the married Saints as well. Our Patron Saint, St Thomas More was a married man. He died for his faith and for refusing to renounce allegiance to the Holy Father leaving behind a wife and several children…

Marriage should not be an obstacle to our growth in holiness.  (Ed. HARDLY!) The Church teaches very clearly that God gives us marriage as a way of becoming holy.

So, if you’re married, or think that’s what God has planned for you, there’s no excuse! You still have to be a Saint, and use your marriage as the means to that end, not as the excuse if you don’t make it!

Vocation

That leads me to my next point. One of the other things that makes Catholic marriage different is that it is a true Vocation.

Most of us tend to think that only Vocations to the priesthood or religious life are Vocations. That may be because the vast majority of people marry rather than live a life totally devoted to God. It may be because of the notoriety of the supposed shortage of Vocations to the priesthood in the Western World. It may be because the Church has always affirmed that a Vocation to Consecrated Virginity or Celibacy is more exalted than a Vocation to the married state.

Nevertheless, it is very clear that the Church teaches that God has a plan for each of us which He invites us to participate in. He created us, He knows us through and through, and He has a special role for each of us in this life. A select few, He calls to live lives devoted entirely to Him so that we can all have a foretaste of how He wants us all to live in entire union with Him in Heaven. Many others He calls to be married, so that we have someone to help and to help us reach Heaven, and so that we can beget even more Saints.

But, whatever we are called to be, it is clear that God is calling us to some particular state in life. Each of us must pray hard to discern what our Vocation in life is. And once we have discerned it, we must embrace it wholeheartedly.

OK, now how much more dignified does marriage seem already: it’s not just something you fall into: God calls you to be married, He wants you to be married, and He wants you to use your marriage as the way you become a Saint!

But hold on, I’ve left the big guns for last…

Sacrament

The most important thing about Catholic marriage, the thing that sets it apart from all other relationships, from civil marriage, from Jewish and Islamic marriages, is that Catholic marriages are sacramental.  (Ed. visible signs of grace!)…

We forget so often that marriage is a Sacrament. I suspect that it is so easily forgotten because none of us really understands what a Sacrament is!

So, maybe it’s worthwhile going back to basics to look at just what a Sacrament is. First of all, though, we need to understand what Grace is.  (Ed.  ALL is grace!!!)

“Grace is nothing else but a certain beginning of glory in us.” – St. Thomas Aquinas

“God gives each one of us sufficient grace ever to know His holy will, and to do it fully.” – St. Ignatius of Loyola

“God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” – James 4:6 

There are three types of Grace: Sanctifying Grace, Sacramental Grace and Actual Grace. We receive Sanctifying Grace at our Baptism. We lose it completely when we commit a mortal sin. It is the presence of Sanctifying Grace in the soul that we refer to when we say we are in a State of Grace. We need Sanctifying Grace to be saved, to make it to Heaven, even if we have to take the “scenic route” through Purgatory on the way. If we are in a state of mortal sin after Baptism, then the Sacrament of Penance restores sanctifying grace to our souls. The worthy reception of all the other Sacraments, including the Sacrament of Penance when we are not in a state of mortal sin, increases sanctifying grace in our souls. Each Sacrament also imparts a special Sacramental Grace to us. This is a special Grace that is different for each Sacrament. Actual Grace is the grace that God gives us when we call on Him to help us, to give us strength not to sin.

A “Sacrament” then, is an effective sign which imparts Grace instituted by Christ. It is a channel between our souls and the graces poured forth by Our Lord on the Cross. It infuses the soul with God’s Grace.

And so, that is what is so incredible about Catholic Marriage, what makes it more than a mere relationship. In the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, not only do you receive an abundance of Sanctifying Grace, but you receive a special Sacramental Grace which elevates the natural order of Marriage and perfects it giving you the right, as a gift from God, to receive from Him whatever Actual Graces you need throughout your married life to live the Sacrament in the way God intended.

When we say that we take our spouse, “in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, till death do us part”, God is giving us the promise of His guaranteed assistance to cope with the sickness as easily as with the health, with the bad times as easily as with the good. People say to couples who have remained successfully married, “How did you do it?!”. People say to Mothers who have had 10 children, “How on earth did you cope?!”. People say to spouses who have forgiven the serious failings of the other: “How could you forgive?!”. The answer is very simple: “Through the Grace of God!”.  (Ed. AMEN!!! -Mary D. McCormick & all other mothers!  The hardest job in the world!)

Pope Pius XI in his landmark encyclical on Christian Marriage, Casti Connubii, in 1930 wrote:

“By the very fact, therefore, that the faithful with sincere mind give such consent, they open for themselves a treasure of Sacramental Grace from which they draw supernatural power for the fulfilling of their rights and duties faithfully, holily, perseveringly even unto death. Hence this sacrament not only increases Sanctifying Grace, the permanent principle of the supernatural life, in those who … place no obstacle in its way, but also adds particular gifts, dispositions, seeds of grace, by elevating and perfecting the natural powers. By these gifts the parties are assisted not only in understanding, but in knowing intimately, in adhering to firmly, in willing effectively, and in successfully putting into practice those things which pertain to the married state, its aims and duties, giving them the fine right to the actual assistance of grace itself, whensoever they may need it for the fulfilling of the duties of their state.”

These days, the Wedding is so often a time of fear, uncertainty, and even secret pessimism for the couple. Couples sign pre-nuptial agreements in case it doesn’t work, in case they fall out of love, in case they can’t cope. But, Christians have infused in their souls since Baptism the virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity. Their pre-nuptial agreement is the common Faith that God will give them all the assistance they need, the Hope that they will never reject His assistance, and the Love of God and of each other that will make their home a piece of heaven on Earth.

But, marriages do fail. Catholics do get divorced. Catholic husbands and wives commit adultery. Catholic couples do reject children in their marriages. That is because, however abundantly it is poured out for us, Grace cannot override our Free Will (more’s the pity!). We must respond to God’s Grace, we must choose to accept it, to call on it. We must not place obstacles in the way of His Grace. That means we have to try and live our Sacrament every day in a way that doesn’t hamper God’s assistance or Graces. More about how to do that in a minute…

The Church teaches that the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Orders impart a “character”. In other words, they place an indelible mark on our souls. While we can’t see it yet, it shines forth in the supernatural realm. That is why these Sacraments can only be received once. Holy Matrimony does not impart a character, instead it creates an indissoluble bond between the couple which is only broken by the death of one of the spouses. St Paul has taught from the very beginning that this bond is a great mystery because it is the same bond which unites Christ to His Bride, the Catholic Church. In his Epistle to the Ephesians, St Paul says: “Wives be subject to your husbands as the Church is subject to Christ. Husbands love your wives as Christ loves the Church!” What an incredible responsibility! To love one another as much as Christ loves His Church! Each and every Christian marriage lived to its potential is a concrete sign to the world of the love Christ has for the Church, for the obedience the Church owes to Her Lord, to His promise to be with Her always even until the end of time.

Is it any wonder then that alone among all the religions and faiths of the world, alone among all the Christian Churches, the one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church proclaims today with as much force as ever that Sacramental Marriage is indissoluble, that only those marriages that are judged never to have existed in the first place because of some defect or impediment can be dissolved?!

We are not called to love until the love dies, we are not called to stay together until the children are grown, we are not called to stick around only until the sex gets boring or our individuality is repressed: we are called to be a living witness of the love of Christ for His Church and the unbreakable bond between them.

And it is because of that unbreakable bond which is created by the Sacrament that many have compared the Sacrament to those Sacraments that impart a character, that consecrate us: Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Orders. Again, Pope Pius XI in Casti Connubii wrote:

“If, however, doing all that lies within their power, they cooperate diligently, they will be able with ease to bear the burdens of their state and to fulfill their duties. By such a sacrament they will be strengthened, sanctified, and in a manner, consecrated. For, as St Augustine teaches, just as by Baptism and Holy Orders a person is set aside and assisted, either for the duties of Christian life or for priestly office and is never deprived of their sacramental aid, almost in the same way (but not by a sacramental character) the faithful once joined by marriage ties can never be deprived of the help and binding force of the sacrament.”

God understands that it is not easy to live holy lives, it is not easy to sustain a lifelong relationship. All these things take sacrifice and effort. But, thankfully, He never leaves us to our own resources. He gives us the Graces throughout our entire married lives to carry whatever crosses He sends our way. He never asks us to do the impossible.

That is a privilege that comes about through the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, as a special privilege for having accepted God’s call to live the married life. That mere fact alone is enough to show you how different Sacramental marriage is from any other form of relationship.

You have no right to call on God’s grace simply because you have contracted a civil marriage. You have no right to call on God’s grace because you’re in a de facto relationship. But, you have the incredible right to call on the Grace of God to help you through all that life throws at you because you are sacramentally married.

In Casti Connubii, Pope Pius XI also recalled how St Robert Bellarmine had likened the Sacrament of Marriage to the Blessed Sacrament. He says:

“Let them constantly keep in mind that they have been consecrated and strengthened for the duties and the dignity of their state by a special sacrament, the efficacious power of which, although it does not impress a character, is undying. To this purpose we may ponder over the words full of real comfort of holy Cardinal St Robert Bellarmine, SJ, who with other well-known theologians with deep conviction thus expresses himself. ‘The sacrament of Matrimony can be regarded in two ways: first in the making and then in its permanent state. For it is a sacrament like to that of the Eucharist, which not only while it is being conferred, but also while it remains, is a sacrament; for as long as the married parties are alive, so long is their union a sacrament of Christ and His Church.”

How, then do we live our marriages so as to reap the benefits of the Sacrament and please God? St Augustine teaches that there are three “blessings” of marriage, or in Natural Law terms, three “goods”: fecundity, fidelity and indissolubility. These three goods apply to all true marriages, even marriages that are not sacramental. The Church also teaches that marriage has two main purposes: the more important is procreation, the begetting and education of Children, raising them to worship God; the second, is the consortium vitae, the companionship and union of married love.

To live our marriages in a way pleasing to God, to take full advantage of the graces He offers and not put obstacles in their way, we must always respect these blessings and ends of marriage. Without going into much detail, because they are topics in and of themselves:

  1. We must respect the blessing of fecundity in marriage: entering marriage with the intention of never having children is a grave wrong and more than likely grounds for an annulment because you aren’t consenting to be married at all; blocking God out of your fertility, using technology to control it, limiting family size without serious reason are all attacks on the blessing of fecundity, contrary to God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply”, contrary to the generous love we are called to live every day, contrary to the faith and trust God wants us to have in Him. The atrocity of procured abortion is a direct attack on the fecundity of marriage. Resorting to technology for the conception of children, as Pope Paul VI terms it in Humanae Vitae, deliberately removing the unitive purpose of sexual intercourse, attacks the good of fecundity.
  2. We must respect the blessing of fidelity in marriage, we must fulfil the purpose of a communion of mutual benefit, the consortium vitae. Adultery obviously attacks this, but so does “adultery of the eyes and the heart”. Contraception and premarital sex in their own ways also attack the blessing of fidelity because they muddy our vision of sexual intercourse. Instead of a truly holy act, when each spouse says to the other, I love you with my whole self, I give you my whole self, they are led to treat sex as a means solely of deriving personal pleasure, to treat each other as objects of gratification rather than to give themselves as subjects of love. Doing the dishes strengthens the blessing of fidelity, holding each other while you watch the children sleep strengthens the blessing of fidelity, the million and one ways of saying I love you, I am yours, we are one in flesh and mind all strengthen the blessing of fidelity.
  3. And finally, we must respect the blessing of indissolubility. We must not treat marriage as a transitory thing, temporary or impermanent.

Apostolate

And it doesn’t stop there! The Church is calling married couples more than ever to change the world, to evangelize. The Second Vatican Council in its decree Apostolicam Actuositam said that the witness of Catholic couples faithfully living their marriages according to God’s will, their witness to the indissolubility of marriage, is part of the most important aspect of the apostolate of the laity. We have to be out there as shining examples of the truth about marriage.

The Holy Father also exhorts married couples in Familiaris Consortio to be the primary force in the Apostolate to married couples, teaching other married couples the value of the Church’s teaching on the family, sexuality, on birth control, on marriage itself.

We can’t sit and wait for our priests to give homilies on these things. The last 30 years have shown that they won’t! We have to live by example, we have to take advantage of the opportunities to witness to other couples, particularly those preparing for marriage. And most importantly, we have to raise our children well. Sadly, Catholic schools seem to do more to undo a child’s Faith than they do to foster it these days. We have to ground our children in the Faith so that they too are examples throughout their lives. It’s no small task, but with the Grace of God and a love of His Church, we’re up to it!

And the first step to take in restoring the esteem and value of marriage for Catholics is to restore the high esteem that celibacy and virginity previously held in the Church. Pope John Paul says in Familiaris Consortio, explaining the Church’s teaching that celibacy or virginity is preferable to marriage, that the truth of this can only be understood when marriage is also highly valued. Because if you value marriage, how much more do you respect those who have given up that great blessing for the love of God and the sake of His Kingdom?

How to get hitched

Well, hopefully by now, I’ve completely sold you on Marriage and all of you who think that that is your Vocation are going to set about finding a partner with great zeal! But, where do you look? How do you find someone?!

Well, again, you’re not going to get far if you follow the advice they give on radio talk shows or in Cosmo, if you ring the psychic hotline and ask “Is he the one?”. It’s no secret that compatibility and communication are the buzzwords for a successful relationship (even if Grace is the buzzword for a successful marriage!). I’ll assume that God and your Catholic Faith are the most important things in your lives: not your studies, or your careers or your material worth. If God and your Catholic Faith are not the most important things in your lives, then why on earth not?!

If your life is Christ-centred and faith filled, you should be out their looking for someone else who is Christ-centred and faith filled, someone who will understand your faith, who will understand why you love God so much because they do too, someone who you’re not going to have to fight with to remain faithful to the teachings of the Church and bring your children up in the Faith.

They’re scarce as hens teeth, I know! But, look, there’s a room full of people here who probably fit that description, most of them single! Nightclubs are not where you’re going to find a wife or a husband! Work is not where you’re likely to find one either. It’s at Mass, in Catholic Groups and Associations (and I mean, capital C Catholic, not your average youth group or Catholic singles group which tend to be anything but).

And you have to pray! Monique and I found each other on our knees, literally! She prayed, as young women do, to St Joseph on his feast day that he would find her a good Catholic husband. Her parents nabbed me because they saw me praying the Rosary all the time after Mass. Before long, we were praying the Rosary together, and then, angels started whispering things in our ears about how God wanted us to be together.

So, there you go! Talk to each other at Mass! Be brave, go out with people you meet at Church. There are over a billion Catholics in the world! Chances are God has at least one of them in mind for you!!

So, go find them, get married, “be fruitful and multiply” and hopefully, one day, we’ll be singing together in the Heavenly Choir rubbing shoulders with all God’s other married Saints!”

Love,
Matthew

Family Life, Marriage, Moral, New Evangelization, Sacraments

Marriage: A Hard Discipline Over a Lifetime

catholicmonarchy

“Marriage is an adventure, like going to war!” -GK Chesterton

“I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible.” -GK Chesterton

Old joke, but too true!!!  Out of the mouth of babes, Catholic school children, when asked “What are the seven Sacraments?”  Answer:  “Baptism, Penance, Eucharist, Confirmation, Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders and … Martyrdom!” 🙂

revstephenfreeman

-by Rev. Stephen Freeman

“‘When couples come to ministers to talk about their marriage ceremonies, ministers think it’s interesting to ask if they love one another. What a stupid question! How would they know? A Christian marriage isn’t about whether you’re in love. Christian marriage is giving you the practice of fidelity over a lifetime in which you can look back upon the marriage and call it love. It is a hard discipline over many years.’ – Stanley Hauerwas

No issues in the modern world seem to be pressing the Church with as much force as those surrounding sex and marriage. The so-called Sexual Revolution has, for the most part, succeeded in radically changing how our culture understands both matters. Drawing from a highly selective (and sometimes contradictory) set of political, sociological and scientific arguments, opponents of the Christian tradition are pressing the case for radical reform with an abandon that bears all of the hallmarks of a revolution. And they have moved into the ascendancy.

Those manning the barricades describe themselves as “defending marriage.” That is a deep inaccuracy: marriage, as an institution, was surrendered quite some time ago. Today’s battles are not about marriage but simply about dividing the spoils of its destruction. It is too late to defend marriage. Rather than being defended, marriage needs to be taught and lived. The Church needs to be willing to become the place where that teaching occurs as well as the place that can sustain couples in the struggle required to live it. Fortunately, the spiritual inheritance of the Church has gifted it with all of the tools necessary for that task. It lacks only people who are willing to take up the struggle.

Marriage laws were once the legal framework of a Christian culture. Despite the ravages of the Enlightenment and Reformation, the general framework of marriage remained untouched. The Church, in many lands, particularly those of English legal tradition, acted as an arm of the State while the State acted to uphold the Christian ideal of marriage. As Hauerwas noted in the opening quote, marriage as an institution was never traditionally about romantic love: it was about fidelity, stability, paternity and duty towards family. The traditional Western marriage rite never asked a couple, “Do you love him?” It simply asked, “Do you promise to love?” That simple promise was only one of a number of things:

WILT thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor, and keep her, in sickness, and in health? And forsaking all others, keep thee only to her, so long as you both shall live?

And this:

I N. take thee N. to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death; according to God’s holy ordinance, and thereto I plight thee my troth.

Obviously, the primary intent of these promises was faithfulness in all circumstances over the course of an entire lifetime. The laws that surrounded marriage existed to enforce this promise and sought to make it difficult to do otherwise.

Divorce was difficult to obtain – long waiting periods were required and very specific conditions had to be met for one to be granted. Churches made remarriage quite difficult, to say the least. Obligations to children were very well-defined and grounded in parental (biological) rights and obligations. Indeed, there was a large complex of family laws that tilted the culture towards marriage at every turn.

Of course, none of this would have represented any benefit had it not also reflected a cultural consensus. Contrary to popular sayings, morality can indeed be legislated (laws do almost nothing else). But moral laws are simply experienced as oppression if they do not generally agree with the moral consensus of a culture. The laws upholding marriage were themselves a cultural consensus: people felt these laws to be inherently correct.

Parenthetically, it must be stated as well that the laws governing marriage and property were often tilted against women – that is a matter that I will not address in this present article.

The moral consensus governing marriage began to dissolve primarily in the Post-World War II era in Western cultures. There are many causes that contributed to this breakdown. My favorite culprit is the rapid rise in mobility (particularly in America) that destroyed the stability of the extended family and atomized family life.

The first major legal blow to this traditional arrangement was the enactment of “no-fault” divorce laws, in which no reasons needed to be given for a divorce. It is worth noting that these were first enacted in Russia in early 1918, shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution. The purpose (as stated in Wikipedia) was to “revolutionize society at every level.” That experiment later met with significant revisions. The first state to enact such laws in the U.S. was California, which did not do so until 1969. Such laws have since become normative across the country.

These changes in marriage law have been accompanied by an evolution in the cultural meaning of marriage. From the earlier bond of a virtually indissoluble union, marriage has morphed into a contractual agreement between two persons for their own self-defined ends. According to a 2002 study, by age 44, roughly 95 percent of all American adults have had pre-marital sex. For all intents, we may say that virtually all Americans, by mid-life, have had sex outside of marriage.

These are clear reasons for understanding that “defense of marriage” is simply too late. The Tradition has become passé. But none of this says that the Tradition is wrong or in any way incorrect.

Of course, there are many “remnants” of traditional Christian marriage. Most people still imagine that marriage will be for a life-time, though they worry that somehow they may not be so lucky themselves. Pre-nuptial agreements are primarily tools of the rich. Even same-sex relationships are professing a desire for life-long commitments.

But all of the sentiments surrounding life-long commitments are just that – sentiments. They are not grounded in the most obvious reasons for life-long relationships. Rather, they belong to the genre of fairy tales: “living happily ever after.”

The classical Christian marriage belongs to the genre of martyrdom. It is a commitment to death. As Hauerwas notes: faithfulness over the course of a life-time defines what it means to “love” someone. At the end of a faithful life, we may say of someone, “He loved his wife.”

Some have begun to write about the so-called “Benedict Option,” a notion first introduced by Alasdair MacIntyre in his book, After Virtue. It compares the contemporary situation to that of the collapse of the Roman Christian Imperium in the West (i.e., the Dark Ages). Christian civilization, MacIntyre notes, was not rebuilt through a major conquering or legislating force, but through the patient endurance of small monastic communities and surrounding Christian villages. That pattern marked the spread of Christian civilization for many centuries in many places, both East and West.

It would seem clear that a legislative option has long been a moot point. When 95 percent of the population is engaging in sex outside of marriage (to say the least) no legislation of a traditional sort is likely to make a difference. The greater question is whether such a cultural tidal wave will inundate the Church’s teaching or render it inert – a canonical witness to a by-gone time, acknowledged perhaps in confession but irrelevant to daily choices (this is already true in many places).

The “Benedict Option” can only be judged over the course of centuries, doubtless to the dismay of our impatient age. But, as noted, those things required are already largely in place. The marriage rite (in those Churches who refuse the present errors) remains committed to the life-long union of a man and a woman with clearly stated goals of fidelity. The canon laws supporting such marriages remain intact. Lacking is sufficient teaching and formation in the virtues required to live the martyrdom of marriage.

Modern culture has emphasized suffering as undesirable and an object to be remedied. Our resources are devoted to the ending of suffering and not to its endurance. Of course, the abiding myth of Modernity is that suffering can be eliminated. This is neither true nor desirable.

Virtues of patience, endurance, sacrifice, selflessness, generosity, kindness, steadfastness, loyalty, and other such qualities are impossible without the presence of suffering. The Christian faith does not disparage the relief of suffering, but neither does it make it definitive for the acquisition of virtue. Christ is quite clear that all will suffer. It is pretty much the case that no good thing comes about in human society except through the voluntary suffering of some person or persons. The goodness in our lives is rooted in the grace of heroic actions.

In the absence of stable, life-long, self-sacrificing marriages, all discussion of sex and sexuality is reduced to abstractions. An eloquent case for traditional families is currently being made by the chaos and dysfunction set in motion by their absence. No amount of legislation or social programs will succeed in replacing the most natural of human traditions. The social corrosion represented by our over-populated prisons, births outside of marriage (over 40 percent in the general population and over 70 percent among non-Hispanic African Americans), and similar phenomenon continue to predict a breakdown of civility on the most fundamental level. We passed into the “Dark Ages” some time ago. The “Benedict Option” is already in place. It is in your parish and in your marriage. Every day you endure and succeed in a faithful union to your spouse and children is a heroic act of grace-filled living.”

We are not promised that the Option will be successful as a civilizational cure. Such things are in the hands of God. But we should have no doubt about the Modern Project (Ed. the current trend) going on around us. It is not building a Brave New World. It is merely destroying the old one and letting its children roam amid the ruins. (Ed. another Dark Ages of civilization)”

Love,
Matthew

Family Life

Sacrifices of Joy

sacrifices_of_joy

“I will offer sacrifices of joy…”
Psalm 27:6

These He will accept.  These will be worthy offerings.

-by Rev. Gregory Smith, O. Carm.

“There is no quality quite so fundamental to the Christian character as the spirit of sacrifice.

From its birth in the Christian life each soul is pledged to a life of violence. The life of Christ comes to us as the spoil of conflict — Mors et vita duello conflixere mirando/Death and Life contended in a spectacular battle, –Victimae Paschali Laudes — as the fruit of the most awful violence ever wreaked upon human nature. This is the life into which we have been baptized. “Do you not know that all we who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death?”

Conflict, warfare; not peace, but the sword; a kingdom that suffers the assault of violence; self-denial, drinking of a chalice of pain — in composite it is the Cross that casts its bright shadow over the whole of the Christian life. In selfishness, to reject the selflessness of the Cross is to reject the happiness at its most abundant source for “by the wood of the Cross came joy into the whole world.” In any walk of life the sign of success as Christ sees success is the sign of the Cross. A share in the victory and in the Victor’s spoils won on the Cross is granted to every Christian who will match, not counting the cost in niggardliness, the generosity of Him Who paid in precious price the last drops of His blood. This is the way of the Christian life for priests and religious, for married and single, for youth and adult; an inescapable way, than which there is no higher way above nor safer way below; it is the highway of the holy Cross, the path of sacrifice.

Holy Orders and Matrimony

The priest, essentially a man of sacrifice, comes into the holy place to cast himself prostrate in the sanctuary, while all the people pray to all the saints for him that he may become a worthy servant of the altar for the building up of the body of the Lord. The virgin, woman of selflessness, makes by the altar the vow that binds her to the service of one Love. Her love song of praise will be her daily sacrifice: “Offer to God praise as your sacrifice.”

It is but right then that man and woman about to enter upon the life of Christian marriage make their vows by the altar. Marriage for the Christian is quite different from any other marriage. “This is a great mystery — I mean in reference to Christ and to the Church.” The first glory of Christian marriage is that it is the sacramental image of the union of Christ with His spouse, the Church, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but holy and without blemish, “born from the side of our Saviour on the cross like a new Eve, mother of all the living.” (Mystici Corporis).

Since it is on the Cross that Christian marriage finds its supreme significance, it is but fitting that man and woman should enter into the holiest place in the world to stand by the altar of sacrifice, there to vow that they will give themselves to one another and to Christ in their children. Here the Church, sacrificial spouse of the great High Priest, suggests that they be reminded that they are dedicating themselves to a life of painful giving which only the alchemy of love can transmute to pleasure. “Sacrifice is usually difficult and irksome. Only love can make it easy; and perfect love can make it a joy. We are willing to give in proportion as we love. And where love is perfect, the sacrifice is complete.” Having said so much, the ritual instruction places the measureless love of the Cross as the standard of Christian married love: “Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

Marry to Give Not to Get

Not for more delightful getting do Christians marry, but rather for more fruitful giving. Since Christ entered His creation to be found among us as One Who served, every Christian vocation entails a deliberate entry into the service of God, in the person of His Son, Whom we see not only in Himself, but also in “the members of His body, made from His flesh and from His bones.”

The vocation of Christian marriage, precisely because it is Christian marriage, can never be a narrowing experience that restricts the view or contracts the interests of man and wife, each wrapped up in the other. Rather, Christian marriage, because it is primarily concerned with the community, widens the vision of two individuals to embrace the good of the whole of God’s family, and calls them with sacramental power to exercise their noble functions in the Mystical Body of Christ.

“The Sacrament of matrimony, in which the parties become ministers of grace to each other, ensures the regular numerical increase of the Christian community, and, what is more important, the proper and religious education of the offspring, the lack of which would constitute a grave menace to the Mystical Body.” (Mystici Corporis)

With husbands loving their wives as Christ loves the Church; with wives subject to their husbands as the Church is subject to Christ, both are charged with implementing in their common life their daily petition to the Father: “Thy kingdom come!” No less than, and in a measure, because grace can only build on nature, before the priesthood those who enter the holy state of Christian marriage are thereby constituted servants of God and ministers to His Church.

To give all to one another in loving devotion; to sacrifice everything, that in their homes as in the smallest cells of the Body of the Lord the life of the Head might flourish; to be faithful stewards of the God’s treasures born of their flesh in the full knowledge that they are God’s children first and only He can make them precious; to give all and not to count the cost of giving — this is the way to sanctity, the only success in Christian marriage.

Practical Suggestions

…Married life is a veritable school of sacrifice; the Christian home a training ground of discipline. Wherever people live together in any sort of common life, there are bound to be differences of opinion and clashes of personality. This is as true in every home as it was true among the apostles. So must father and mother bear with each other and both of them with the children, the faults of each contributing to the sanctifications of all. Bearing with patience, correcting where parental correction is demanded — firmly and with kindness, and over and over again with patience — this is the daily school of sacrifice that is family life.

Return to the Altar

…To the altar by which it was established the Christian family ever returns to re-enkindle its ideals and to refresh its spirit [Ed. THROUGH GRACE!!!]

Crucifix, Hub of Home

… in the Catholic home it is the Cross of Christ which is the ever present reminder of the spirit of this house…Wise those parents who build their homes upon the solid foundation of the altar, for though rains fall and floods come and winds blow, their homes will not fall because they are founded on rock, and the rock is Christ. ”

Flesh_of_my_Flesh

Love,
Matthew