{"id":529,"date":"2014-04-24T20:16:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-24T20:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/04\/marriage-the-science-is-settled-and-intentions.html"},"modified":"2014-04-24T20:16:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-24T20:16:00","slug":"marriage-the-science-is-settled-and-intentions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/04\/marriage-the-science-is-settled-and-intentions.html","title":{"rendered":"Marriage, “the science is settled” and intentions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
Thinking through a couple items on marriage, things I\u2019ve written about before but am trying to assemble again:<\/div>\n

First, a post on the Volokh Conspiracy site <\/a>at the Washington Post, about the question of whether you can oppose gay marriage and keep your job. \u00a0Or, rather, the comments to that post. \u00a0Maybe it\u2019s just a few people, but there was an argument running through the comments that went like this (paraphrased):<\/p>\n

The science is settled. \u00a0Judges have ruled that marriage is a civil right having nothing to do with the sex of the two parties involved, nor is there any connection (or any conceivable reason for a connection) to children. \u00a0It\u2019s only due to the lack of court cases elsewhere that gay marriage isn\u2019t the law of the land throughout the whole country, because it\u2019s an indisputable fact that gay marriage is a civil right. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Since it is a civil right, anyone who votes to deny this civil right is a bigot who has forfeited all of their civil rights. \u00a0They deserve, among other things, to lose their jobs, because of their \u201cright-less\u201d status.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So what do you think \u2014 a small minority not worth worrying about? \u00a0Or a rising wave of intolerance? <\/p>\n

At the same time, there\u2019s a report in CNN<\/a> about a call the pope made to an Argentine woman who had written about her situation, married to a divorced (without annullment) man and hence unable to receive communion. \u00a0And I start to wonder: <\/p>\n

Catholics take a lot of heat for the concept of an annullment; it\u2019s treated as simply a bunch of unnecessary hoops to jump through and people point to it as being an overly-legalistic \u201cCatholic divorce.\u201d \u00a0But the idea behind it is this: \u00a0in order for a marriage to be valid and \u201csacramental,\u201d it requires that the parties be able to make a sound judgement (being sufficiently mature, not being pressured), and have a proper intention: \u00a0to be open to children, to be faithful, and to commit to each other until death. \u00a0(See this \u201cCatholic Update<\/a>\u201d for a lot of background.) \u00a0The presumption is that a marriage is valid; hence, an annullment is a finding that these requirements were not met.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s increasingly clear that in secular society, we can\u2019t make this presumption any longer. \u00a0We\u2019re told repeatedly: \u00a0\u201cmarriage has nothing to do with children\u201d \u2014 with the latest variant being, \u201cmarriage has nothing to do with children, and you have no right to say that it does.\u201d \u00a0We\u2019re told that marriage is, instead, a legal contract intended to confer government benefits and societal recognition on its participants. \u00a0We not only have widespread acceptance of divorce but have proposals for such things as a 5 or 10-year marriage contract, and warm human interest stories of women rediscovering themselves after a late-in-life divorce. \u00a0In this environment, is it really the firm intention of married couples to, in fact, remain faithful to each other until death? \u00a0It would seem as if, more and more, the \u201cdefault\u201d assumption has to be that a couple entering into a marriage, at least a secular marriage, does not have such an intention. \u00a0And even marriage in a Catholic church, with its emphasis on Pre-Cana marriage preparation \u2014 it would require quite a firm resolve to believe marriage to be something other than what the prevailing cultures says it is.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m not sure exactly where I\u2019m going with this. \u00a0What do you think?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thinking through a couple items on marriage, things I\u2019ve written about before but am trying to assemble again: First, a post on the Volokh Conspiracy site at the Washington Post, about the question of whether you can oppose gay marriage and keep your job. \u00a0Or, rather, the comments to that post. \u00a0Maybe it\u2019s just a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nMarriage, "the science is settled" and intentions<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Thinking through a couple items on marriage, things I've written about before but am trying to assemble again:First, a post on the Volokh Conspiracy site\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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