A reader writes:

As my friends are wont to do, one of them gave me this article. He says that since marriage as changed over the centuries, and “drastically” so in the bast two, that gay marriage is merely another progression towards a more perfect understanding of marriage being based on love. While I don’t disagree that some aspect of marriage, their arrangement, how cultures felt a man and wife should feel towards each other, etc., as the article shows what constitutes a marriage (a man and a woman), has not changed. Thus redefining marriage as no longer between a man and a woman is far more drastic and radical than anything else that has changed in marriage. What are your thoughts?

The notion that all of history has been leading up to Me and My Sort is called, variously, Whig History or Chronological Snobbery. It is the notion that we in the present moment stand upon the final and permanent platform from which to view all our ancestors and that we are not ourselves subject to the same forces that made it difficult for them to see some things and easy for them to see others.

As Catholics, we believe, of course, in the development of doctrine and in the notion that it really is possible for us to more deeply understand the revelation which has been entrusted to Holy Church by the power of the Holy Spirit who gave it.

Another way of putting that is to say, “We believe in a Transcendant God who is guiding history to its proper end.”

The myth into which modernity and postmodernity have bought is to confuse the Spirit of Progress with the Holy Spirit such that, in the words of C.S. Lewis “Evolution means ‘Progress = Whatever comes next'”.

But Progress does not equal whatever comes next. Progress equals greater conformity to the revelation of Jesus Christ since the revelation of Christ is, among other things, the revelation which alone can ensure full human happiness.

So, for instance, Christian marriage is already predicated on the the fact that it is based on love: the love of Christ for his bride and vice versa. In fact, gay marriage is yet another specimen of contract theory which says that “marriage” is based on two (and why just two?) individuals entering into a consensual arrangement of property and lifestyle based on their feelings. And as soon as the feelings are gone, the contract can be voided through no-fault divorce without any regard at all to the impact on the common good. That’s not progress. That’s the reduction of an understanding of love from the cosmic vision afforded by Christ to the level of teenage understanding that still dominates the minds of Generation Narcissus.

Your friend might benefit from this little series:

The Sole Criterion of the Good
Ideas Have Consequences
How Sin Takes Over

Any conception of marriage that gives no thought to the common good (meaning the impact on children and the rest of the culture) is not “progress” but a regression and an act of narcissism that arrogantly assumes we are the Summit of History.