The topic of mercy in the confessional is a different topic from today’s Supreme Court Decision. First of all, I believe in infinite Divine Mercy. Every person is made in God’s image and likeness. Jesus Christ on the cross can restore that likeness of God to anyone—those struggling with same-sex attraction—as well as those struggling with other issues. That’s no problem for God.
But today’s Supreme Court decision is a problem of government regulation of family, so we’ll consider this in three sections:
- CIVIL RIGHTS
- CHURCH AND STATE
- THE CHURCH AS A WITNESS IN THE WORLD
I’ll be traveling across the country, so this will be my last post for a couple weeks. That’s why it’s so long. So take your time, or read it all in one gulp.
I. CIVIL RIGHTS
CNN’s opening story today shows a picture of a young African-American man waving a rainbow flag and the headline reads: “In a landmark opinion, a divided Supreme Court ruled Friday that states cannot ban same-sex marriage, establishing a new civil right and handing gay rights advocates a victory that until very recently would have seemed unthinkable.”
If it is truly a civil-rights issue, why has the media nearly ignored the fact that black Christians across the country nearly-categorically abhor the thought of gay-marriage as a civil rights topic like their own battle? They find it offensive to compare sodomy to having black skin. Consider the rapper Bizzle’s take on gay-marriage:
“Sayin’ it was the way you was born and I’m sure you lust like I do, just in a different form. But I’m married, so if I give into mine, I’m a cheater; if you give into yours, you just fight to make it legal…We were all born in sin. But Christ died so that we could all be born again.”
Let’s consider the African-American community outside of the rather predictable Bible-believing world of Pentecostals and Baptists. Let’s consider urban, black California, and their take on gay-marriage as a civil-rights topic. Did you know that in 2008, a whopping 70% of black voters voted against considering same-sex unions to be called a “marriage”? This means that even non-Christian blacks do not see gay-marriage as the same as a civil-rights movement.
Finally, on the topic of Civil Rights, it’s important to realize that not all gay leaders in the world see the issue of gay-marriage as as one of Civil Rights. For example, the homosexual mayor of a French town believes the following about gay marriage:
“As a society we should not be encouraging this. It’s not biologically natural. We [gays] do not have the fertility, in the sense of making a baby. We have plenty of other forms of fertility..artistic, for example, and other forms of fertility..In my case, I feel I’ve connected with my village, and I’ve reinvigorated a village that was dying, fading. I know how to create ties within my community. In summary, the law I advise would be whatever’s best for the child. One must favor what is best for the child. Nobody can deny, I believe, that it’s best for a child to have a mother and a father who love each other as best they can.”—Jean Marc
Now whose civil rights are being considered? The children? Or only the parents?
Finally, before we get into the philosophy of marriage in the Church and State, let me give one more obvious statement: Sodomy was not legalized today. That has been legal for a long time. It’s about the control of the Church by the State that goes a lot deeper.
II. CHURCH AND STATE
Many people cite “the separation of Church and State” as an argument for gay-marriage. First of all, the term “separation of Church and State” is not in the Constitution, nor in the Amendments. It comes from a letter by Jefferson to a Church assuring the Christian community that the State would not trample the rights of the Church, not vice versa.
Since gay marriage is a biological impossibility (Since when do Christians despise science?) then the only question that remains is this: Is gay-union a government issue or a sacramental issue? If it’s a government issue, then yesterday’s decision regulated private acts. If it’s a sacramental issue, yesterday’s decision regulated public acts.
But we all know that private acts of marriage have been unregulated for some time in this country.
Thus, the government now regulates the public witness of marriage. In fact, the English word liturgy comes from the greek leitourgia, meaning a public act of worship. If the witness of a “leitourgia” must answer to Obama, it’s only a matter of time before priests like me are put in prison. Bring it. Already a priest in Canada is in prison for this. Maybe he’s like the Apostle Paul: “Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death.”—2 Cor 11:23.
Bring it. I decided to forfeit a family not to be fed cakes and pies by comfortable parishioners but to follow in the footsteps of my hero, St. Paul.
The reason the government is inept to rule on marriage is because marriage is based on matter and form, where the government repeatedly says that emotions can be shared by people of opposite or same-genders.
Of course they can.
However, “to define marriage as primarily an emotional relationship…would put the government in the business of defining and even regulating marriage.”
So, if love is primarily emotional, then the complementarity of man and woman in the marital embrace is not substantial to marriage, but accidental. If it’s accidental, then gender is a social construct, not one of biology. (You may have noticed that these are sacramental terms: Substance and accident.)
If love is simply emotions, then there is no problem with gay marriage. But the sacrament of marriage is founded upon natural law holding that that which is complementary is substantial, not accidental, especially (but not exclusively) within the act of procreation.
Where is love found? In the emotions or in the body? You might think that the Christian answer is “in the emotions.” But it’s not. This is because we’ll not be judged on our emotions, but rather “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body.“—2 Cor 5:10. Or just look at a cross and wonder if feelings defined love then. Rather, it was a body in sacrifice that those with same-sex attraction are invited to follow, as every Christian is asked to follow. So much for discrimination.
Indeed, when God became man, everything we were to do in the body would take on supreme connection to real angels or real demons. There is no neutral moral act.
As of today, the government now regulates family. If you think this is an exaggeration, consider the next step of liberal totalitarianism for a country a bit “ahead” of us is this: German police stormed a homeschooling family’s house for homeschooling against the law. This wasn’t in 1940. It happened in 2013:
Europe has already reached this level of totalitarianism, and oh, by the way, in Scandinavia few apply for gay marriage anymore. They won that political battle many years ago and now monogamy isn’t so attractive to many gays. It was all an attack on the traditional family, not civil rights.
Married people could sustain just as much persecution as priests, because now that the government regulates family life, this doesn’t just induce a permissiveness of gay “marriage ” upon society, but it also invites a new stringency of control upon sacraments and family-life. For instance, not baking a cake with two grooms on it could land you in the slammer. I’d rather be a priest in prison than a married-man in prison. With today’s decision, I may end up there for refusing any battery of attempted-marriages (not just homosexual ones.) That would make prison interesting!
III. THE CHURCH AS A WITNESS IN THE WORLD
Obama said today’s decision was “justice that arrives like a thunderbolt.” Let’s write about that: Justice that arrives like a thunderbolt. Some bishops today say that the universal Church is better than ever before. In Genesis 19, “God destroyed the cities of the plain,” Sodom and Gomorrah. But today, there was no fire from the sky today at the Supreme Court Decision. Maybe everything is okay.
Or maybe the silence found in Church and political leadership nowadays is the very punishment from God.
The reason I’ll bank on the latter is because the Bible makes it clear that the Jews sustained so many calamities precisely because of God’s singular love for them. He punished them quickly, on this earth, so that they would return to Him. The nations who continue in their sin, unchecked, is apparently the worst punishment that God could bring upon a nation, according to the Bible:
“Now I beseech those that shall read this book, that they be not shocked at these calamities, but that they consider the things that happened, not as being for the destruction, but for the correction of our nation [Israel.] For it is a token of great goodness when sinners are not suffered to go on in their ways for a long time, but are presently punished. For, not as with other nations (whom the Lord patiently expecteth, that when the day of judgment shall come, He may punish them in the fulness of their sins) doth He also deal with us, so as to suffer our sins to come to their height, and then take vengeance on us.”—2 Mac 6:12-15
What this means is that the nations that continue unchecked in their sins (no earthquakes or tsunamis) are actually storing up the fullness of God’s wrath, reserved for the afterlife. This is because their arrogance has blocked them from receiving the chastisements that a Father gives his son. The saints say that when Church or political leaders are silent, it is the worst punishment of God’s justice that we as a Church or nation can endure.
So, we have to remember that the early Christians in Rome weren’t threatened by the Emperor. They weren’t even threatened by a government putting priests or families in prison. We American Catholics care way too much about politics. The early Christians in Rome didn’t care if the Emperor was Decius or Valerian. Both would hunt them down. Thus, the Christian’s vocation is simple: Worship God as He deserves, and then get your family and a few neighbors to heaven. They really didn’t worry about the government as much as the state of their own souls. Selfish? No. Your soul will last longer than the United States of America. St. Agnes’ soul has lasted longer than the Roman Empire. Your soul (and later your body) will live forever in heaven or in hell, much longer than this crumbling country of the United States. So, just do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a perverse and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.—Phil 2:14-15
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Nota Bene: National acceptance of gay “marriage” has it’s entire root in contraception. You really should be pro-both or anti-both (as happily most Americans are.) Both have globally separated babies and bonding. So, you can’t rip on those acting out same-sex actions (closed to life) if your heterosexual actions have been closed to life. It’s no wonder, in a contraceptive society, that the smaller same-gender-attraction population has felt discriminated against. In all charity, I don’t expect you to get this post if you don’t think contraception in marriage is devastating. So, here’s the best mp3 to understand contraception—scientifically and religiously—in an hour: http://www.janetsmith.excerptsofinri.com