Such a time as this

 From the Associated Press this morning:

"The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for same-sex weddings to start in Alabama, letting the number of gay-marriage states climb in advance of a constitutional showdown that may mean legalization nationwide.   

In a 7-2 order, the justices rejected Alabama’s bid to stop a federal trial judge’s legalization order from taking effect Monday. The state now will become the 37th where gays can marry."

At first glance, this perhaps doesn't look like much in terms of news. States' marriage laws have been crashing down left and right like felled timber over the past 2 years, and it's hardly shocking that Alabama has joined the ranks of the other 36 places in the U.S. where same sex couples can legally contract a "marriage."

No big deal, right?

Live and let live, and live the life you love, and you love who you love, and all the other platitudes that fill the airwaves and our ears in this modern cultural milieu.

I have some news for us Christians, and maybe it's going to come as a bit of a shock, but it may well be that none of those clever turns of phrase are going to apply to us before too long.

Make no mistake, this has never been about simply leveling the playing field so that all may freely participate in the institution of marriage; what it is about - what it has always been about - is redefining and recreating marriage into something else entirely.

And when something gets redefined, the old definition is, by necessity, destroyed. Retired into the annals of history, if you will. Marked down as a tried-and-failed social experiment, and abandoned in the name of Progress.

If you believe that Christians, Jews, progressive Muslims, people of other faiths who practice monogamous, heterosexual life-long fidelity within the context of a religious sacrament are going to be allowed to continue to teach, preach, and contract said marriages in peace once gay "marriage" is enshrined as the law of the land, you may be in for an unpleasant surprise.

Maybe not immediately, but highly likely in the not-too-distant future

If you think you're going to be able to teach your publicly-schooled fourth grader that sex is sacred and reserved for the intimate communion of marriage between husband and wife, you may have another think coming. (And possibly a visit from CPS, to boot.)

Once gay "marriage" becomes the law of the land, it will no longer be possible to hold a competing worldview and still be viewed, either professionally or legally, as a person of good will.

You will be a bigot, first and foremost. A menace to the pluralistic good of a society unshackled from the burdensome moral code of the past. And your kind - our kind - may not be tolerated.

Oh, it might not be a matter of legal troubles, at least not yet. It will probably be a quieter persecution. Passed over for a promotion. Let go from a job. Denied entry to a committee or school organization. Little things like that, white martyrdoms in varying shades of grey.

Because you see, it's not really possible to live and let live when life trajectories are fundamentally opposed. Something has to give, someone has to yield.

We can't all be right.

Relativism only works on paper. In real life it plays out like this: someone is right, and someone else is a bigot who is breaking the law.

Marriage can't be both a monogamous, permanent, life-long commitment between a man and a woman and an open-ended sexual relationship configured by any two consenting adults. The two definitions are fundamentally contradictory.

And while I may be perfectly capable of ignoring the antics and goings-on behind my neighbor's bedroom doors right now, when I am forced to publicly endorse their lifestyle by the laws of the land, my reality is altered.

Then it's no longer live and let live, but becomes instead applaud what we do and accept what we teach, because you are now legally bound.

It's time for us to wake up. Authentic Christian charity doesn't mean turning a blind eye to social ills and harmful behavior just because they're fashionable, trending heavily on Twitter, and popular in Hollywood.

I can love my gay brother or sister - and indeed, true love is willing the good of the other - without endorsing the institution of gay "marriage."

But I may not have that option forever.

One day in the not-too-distant future, it might not be okay to say that in public. It may be something we whisper in private: "oh, we still believe in the Sacrament of Marriage personally, but we can't talk about it here."

And you know what? That's on us. We have been hand-picked, each one of us, to occupy this unique space in this place and time in history. So what witness are you prepared to give, and what defense for the faith you have?

We ought to be praying, fasting, working like crazy to share the goodness and the truth and the beauty of married love. Not sticking our heads in the sand and pulling our kids, our voices, our potential to be influencers and world changers, out of the public square.

We have to be fearless. St. John Paul II said to us, over and over again, "be not afraid." This is the heart of the Gospel: perfect love that casts out all fear.

I won't let my fear of what somebody may think of me prevent me from speaking the truth. And so long as we have the freedom to do so, we ought to be speaking it boldly, humbly, inviting people in to the Faith, not cowering in church doorways, bracing ourselves for disaster.

Be not afraid. Over and over again, I have to remind myself. Be not afraid.

Gay "marriage" isn't going to satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart; only the one Who created us can do that. Let's invite as many people as we can to experience the truth of that firsthand. Jesus is what this sad, suffering culture of ours seeks, whether or not they know Him by name. And if we center our lives and our marriages on Him, we cannot lose.

Marriage is a beautiful vocation, and it is worthy of being defended. But it is our lived example that speaks volumes to a visually distracted and chaotic culture starved for beauty.
So that awkward encounter with a fellow commuter holding a matching newspaper early in the morning? Be not afraid.

A hard conversation with a beloved friend or college roommate who champions an alternate view of marriage? Be not afraid.

An unpopular stance with your child's school administration for the sake of your impressionable 5th grader who won't be participating in the sex-ed program? Be not afraid.

"For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Esther 4:14

Why No Gay Marriage?

(Mea culpa, I'm one day behind in my commitment to post daily in October, but I promise I've got plenty of excuses. Moving on...)

The issue de jour (well, one of the big ones, anyway): why won't the Catholic Church relax about gay marriage? And how can we claim to be purveyors of mercy and love while simultaneously denying a subset of the population their shot at happily every after?

This is not an easy teaching in our present cultural climate, but it is a simple one, I promise. The bottom line is thus: the Catholic Church will never recognize gay marriage because there is no such thing as a gay marriage.

Are there same sex couples who love each other and are attracted to each other and who desire to build a shared life together? Absolutely. But what they have cannot be called marriage, because it does not meet the necessary criteria: marriage is a life long, covenanted commitment between two persons of the opposite sex ordered toward the mutual good of the spouses and the procreation and education of children. 

I know the arguments and I'm sure you do too, but I'll just go ahead and highlight the usual suspects: what about couples who get divorced? What about couples who are biologically incapable of having children? What about couples who cheat/beat/lie/steal/hurt one another? How can those marriages be called such while loving, committed same-sex couples are denied the dignity of the title?

Simply put, because even though human beings are inevitably going to fall short of the glory to which each of us are called, God and His Church are never going to lower the standards in order to wallow with us in our misery. He will, however, lower His arms in order to lift us up to the life He desires for us.

Marriage is a higher calling, a natural attempt to live out a supernatural reality. We're all incapable of answering that call without the sacramental graces God provides. And even then, we still screw it up. Over and over again. But that's not an argument for altering the terms on the designer's part, is it?

Marriage, the big-M sacramental kind, is not primarily ordered toward personal fulfillment or entertainment or even happiness. All those things are (hopefully) wrapped up in the larger experience of the marriage relationship, but they're not guaranteed, and they're actually not the point. The twofold end of marriage is the mutual good of the spouses (and sometimes what's good for you isn't necessarily pleasant) and the procreation and education of children. So a marriage can never be, from the outset, intentionally damaging to one or both spouses or closed to life. That's actually not "marriage" at all.

Gay marriage is a misnomer because homosexual relationships are not ordered toward the good of the other, and because they are fundamentally sterile. So right off the bat, neither of the twofold "goods" of marriage are present. Basically put, the raw material is missing from the start. Think of it like baking a cake without sugar, flour, or eggs. You can certainly attempt something cake-shaped and perhaps even vaguely reminiscent of cake in flavor (and I speak from sad, paleo experience here) but you're not really eating cake. The ingredients are wrong.

Human beings are more complex than baked goods, and the issue of who should be allowed to marry is a touchy one, but keep this in mind going forward: every adult human person has, by nature of their inalienable dignity, the right to pursue marriage if they are so called. But nobody has the right to redefine or reconstruct marriage in order to suit their own tastes or preferences. So while we are all extended the invitation to enter into the Sacrament of marriage, we are not permitted to alter its essence.

More the point, we're not actually capable of altering its essence. Marriage "is" something deeper than human eyes can see: it's a re-imaging of the love of the Trinity, and a participation in God's own nature of self-giving and life-producing love. And in His design we're welcome to participate, but we're not able to change the terms.

This is a tough sell to a culture largely incapable of philosophical or metaphysical reasoning, but the truth of it isn't diminished by our inability to grasp it.

In a culture such as ours which has embraced contraception, abortion, divorce and a whole host of other evils, this is a particularly difficult concept. Because how high and mighty do you have to be to say that I can do all kinds of crazy sh*t in the name of freedom and autonomy but that poor slob over there can't marry his boyfriend, because sin.

Yeah, it's a tough sell for sure. But it's all a piece. Those other touchy issues we'll surely touch upon this month? The Church will never alter her position on those, either, and for the same reason: She only has our best interests at heart. And She will never sell us short, even when we fail to recognize our own dignity. Especially when we fail to recognize our own dignity.

Here's your takeaway lesson from today's post: the Church will never recognize gay marriage because there is no such thing as gay marriage. There's also no such thing as consecrated Oreos standing in for the Eucharist. Right form, wrong matter.

Is this going to facilitate amicable water cooler discussions between coworkers or pleasant Thanksgiving dinners? Probably not. But in a culture fixated on the physical world to the ignorance of the spiritual, it's a good starting point for reawakening the eyes of the soul.