Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

This passage from Zechariah’s canticle in the Gospel of St. Luke was the refrain from today’s morning prayer intercessions. It is, of course, appropriate as it is the Memorial of the Beheading of John the Baptist who presaged this Subject of this prayer. It seems to me also appropriate if one were to choose this as a prayer as one for the opening of our society’s eyes to the great truth of marriage and sexuality.

My inspiration for this suggestion comes from St. Bede’s reflection on St. John the Baptist as a Martyr from the second reading in the Memorial’s Office of Readings. Bede states that John died as a martyr because he testified to Truth Himself when he bore witness to Herod about the sanctity of marriage.

This reminds me that only the Christian understanding of marriage, as the divinely instituted arrangement ordered to the manifestation and living of life giving love, can help us out of our trajectory toward societal implosion. It is an implosion with its roots in the destruction of marriage’s meaning when the unitive and procreative meanings were separated with the wide Christian acceptance of artificial contraception in the early 20th century. The Christian message of the Trinitarian foundation of marriage is the only remedy for a society that has come to view relationships as consumable commodities for personal fulfillment and marriage as just one of those disposable commodities. It is a society searching for God but replacing Him with a idolization of the many goods of His creation. It must be shown how it can find what it is really looking for but despairing of ever finding.

I was struck by an article in LifeSiteNews yesterday about Governor’s Schwarzenegger’s amicus brief to the California Supreme Court which is considering the legality under the California Constitution of licensing same-sex “marriages.” A clip from the brief says:

“. . . except for the ability to choose and declare one’s life partner in a reciprocal commitment of mutual support, any of the statutory rights and obligations that are afforded to married couples in California could be abrogated or eliminated by the Legislature or the electorate for any rational legislative purpose.”

Now I am not sure what they have in mind when they say “rational legislative purpose” but I suspect that it does not necessarily need to accord with common sense, much less natural law. Whether or not the Governor’s claim is justified by current standards in the field of jurisprudence, it is clearly a rejection of common sense. It is not clear to me why he should suppose that the legislature would then have any interest in an individual’s “right” to “declare one’s life partner in a reciprocal commitment of mutual support.” If such a relationship cannot be said to benefit a healthy and functioning society then why should tax payers foot the bill associated with the costs of sanctioning it (here one sees costs from tax reductions to administrative management of records). Only a marriage that is ordered to procreation and the nurturing of children can fulfill this societal interest. One need not be a biologist to see that procreation occurs only when gametes from each of the two (and there are only two) sexes come together a child results. However, he must have common sense to recognize the implications of this for a healthy family and for society.

Certainly, if the possibility of procreation and the cooperative nurturing of children is not an issue then the intent to engage in sexual intercourse is of no concern to the state. Thus, why could not, for example, all of the sisters in a California convent declare themselves “life partners in a reciprocal commitment of mutual support”? After all, they fit this definition quite nicely.

Further, I do not see how this curious interpretation of the California Constitution, could then limit “life partners” to two people or that those life’s partner’s necessarily would need to live together. Why couldn’t my sister in MI and her family, and my brothers and their families in FL and TX all get together as life partners (extrapolating this logic to a national policy of course)? This could get us several dozen exemptions on our federal taxes. We are, after all, committed to one another in a relationship of “reciprocal commitment of mutual support.”

Of course, legislation could be written to rule this type of thing out but as it would not be based upon any natural principle, the legislation would set arbitrary limitations. If California’s leaders are so blind as to not see the necessity of protecting marriage between a man and a woman as the foundation for a healthy society then they will not be able to see that they will have no defense against any and all demands for state sanctioned relationships that can garner enough political clout.

We desperately need the Dawn from on High to break upon us again as a nation and so recover our nation’s Christian heritage. The Truth, to Whom John the Baptist witnessed, is the only way to recovering this fundamental institution and healing our crumbling culture. I suspect though, that we can expect some modern day Herod’s to behead many witnesses to the truth along the way before we will see a recovery of the authentic meaning of marriage amidst this lost and wandering generation.