I sometimes think that if the Catholic Church ever makes the inimitable GKC a saint, I will have no choice but to succumb to the prayers of my Catholic friends and sign up for RCIA at the earliest opportunity. Perhaps I shouldn't joke about it, but this side of the Tiber just doesn't have anyone who can compare. Not even close. So, whenever I hear that tired old accusation that I hate, I am an angry person, yadda, yadda, yadda, I hear the words of the wise Mr. Chesterton ringing in my ears:
“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
There. I feel better now. On to topic #2 for today - the so-called battle for "marriage equality":
Here's the deal, folks. We all have the right to marriage under the same conditions. Any person above a certain age may marry any other consenting person above a certain age so long as the two people are not too closely related and of opposite sexes. Love may come into it, but it needn't and throughout most of our history, it really didn't.
If this deeply felt emotion we call love were justification for marriage, then I daresay an awful lot of us would be marrying dogs or cats or even a cannoli from Mike's Pastry in Boston. We'd have given presents to that British guy that "married" Cindy the Dolphin instead of laughing about it. Yeah, I did say a cannoli. Because if we are going to go about deconstructing and reconstructing marriage, why limit it to two human beings? Two? Why limit it to two? Polyamory, anyone? You do know that cases are wending their way through our court systems already arguing for polygamy. Right?
It all boils down to something a little bit deeper than lurv.
It all comes down to what marriage is. And for that, we have to go to the God who created marriage. Marriage is the union of man and woman, a sexually exclusive union to last throughout this life. It is so because God made it that way, and made it that way to show us something about his relationship to us - His relationship to Israel and Christ's relationship to the Church, his Bride. The meaning and purpose of marriage are woven throughout the Holy Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation. It cannot be unpicked without destroying the whole. I know it's trite, but God did create Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve or Eve and Jennifer -- much less Ken and Lassie or, you get the picture.
Two men can no more create a marriage than two women, that crazy Brit and Cindy the Dolphin, Meat Loaf and a meatloaf, or Sam and his Pet Rock. Such things are a metaphysical impossibility - kinda like round squares and married bachelors. That's just not what marriage is.
But if we're going to create something new and call it marriage -- can I start calling myself Mrs. Prince Andrew? I mean, if we all get to make things up, why should consent come into it?
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