From #52: Promising love for ever is possible when we perceive a plan bigger than our own ideas and undertakings, a plan which sustains us and enables us to surrender our future entirely to the one we love.
We've kind of messed up as a society in our views of marriage. On one hand, we take it so seriously that a lot of young people are scared to take the plunge. They think it's safer and less complicated to just live with someone without getting married. On the other hand, we've lost any sense of permanency. We talk about trial marriages. It's not so much until death do us part, but until we can't stand each other anymore.
It takes a lot of courage to get married. It's not something to do half-heartedly or without thoughtful consideration. In getting married, you are not only changing your own life, but that of another human being. A person that you'll get to spend the rest of your life getting to know and love.
But there is a bit of recklessness involved to. It is called "taking the plunge." After all the thought and prayer, you eventually have to do it. Courage doesn't mean not feeling fear, it's not letting that fear control you. One antonym of fear is faith.
To get married, you have to have faith in a bigger picture. This bigger picture might not be exactly what you think you want. But we have to believe that this bigger picture is what is best, that the Person in charge of the bigger picture only wants the best for us. Marriage is never easy. It will require sacrifice. It will require change.
But all of that sacrifice and change is making you into a better, holier person. The main job of a spouse is to make sure their beloved makes it to heaven. That's one heck of a responsibility and one heck of a reward.
This is part of a series of reflections on quotes from Pope Francis' first encyclical. To read more, visit here.
From #32: Once we discover the full light of Christ's love, we realize that each of the loves in our own lives had always contained a ray of that light, and we understand its ultimate destination.
In the wedding ceremony, the husband and wife are considered to be the ministers. Everyone else is witnessing the ceremony in which the husband, wife and God become one. I've heard it said by a number of different sources that the Trinity is a Community of Love. Married people have a special responsibility in reflecting that love in their households. Our other relationships need to reflect that love as well.
How do we do this? By asking one clichéd, but still very important question: What would Jesus do? Jesus gave us an example of self-sacrificial, world-changing love. In all our relationships, including the martial ones, we need to follow that example. Easier said than done. No one said any of this would ever be easy.
This is part 13 of a series of reflections on quotes taken from Pope Francis' first encyclical. To see the other reflections, visit here.
On a personal note, I'm sorry I haven't been here for the past week. My son had surgery on his eyes about a week ago. His recovery went well, but I wanted to/needed to unplug for a while to take care of him and myself.
When I imagine yesterday's first reading, I see a little girl in a white dress dancing around the altar.
This reading talks about the Holy Spirit/Wisdom being the apple of God's eye. Some translations call Her "His darling" or "His partner." This isn't an example of a goddess in Scripture although I admit it seems to come close at first glance. But the truth is, our God contains all that is perfect in both the male and the female. We have no need for a goddess, our God transcends gender.
Now, that said, isn't this a beautiful image. Just like the priest re-presents Jesus' sacrifice on the altar, I think of God Himself creating the world on that same altar. As the New Adam brings our rebirth, God brings our initial birth.
This bright, loving child prances before her Maker. She has been with God since before the beginning. Since before time, before humanity, before dust. Like any little girl and her Dad, she wants to "help" Him anyway she can, even if that just means playing nearby and cheering Him on.
She adores Him, completely loves Him. He loves and adores her. They would do anything for each other.
It is out of this love, out of this dance, that all of existence is created. This is actually very Biblical and Traditionally correct. The love of the Trinity makes all life possible. It is the model of perfect love. Love that all people, all families, are called to emulate. Without this love, nothing could exist and nothing could be made. (See CCC 257 and link and link, just to scratch the surface.)
I cannot end this post without referring to the Romans passage. "Justified by faith," was one of the rallying cries of the Protestant Reformation. In recent meetings, Lutherans and Catholics realized that they weren't that different after all in regards to this teaching. Catholics don't believe that you are saved by works alone. Lutherans don't believe that works are completely irrelevant and unnecessary. To read more, see their published joint statement.
This is a couple days late because I was traveling this weekend. I've left MO where I've been for the past month visiting friends and family to go back to NY. I'm homesick already. Anything to cheer me up. :(
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This momma braved the tornado that hit Moore, OK while in the hospital, in full-blown labor.
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This baby was saved by a 3-D printer. Ain't modern medicine cool?
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Say it with me: Awwwwwwww... This guy made an engagement ring that could light up whenever he was near her.
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I know it isn't very Christ-like of me, but I can't help feeling good about this. The founder of Girls Gone Wild was convicted for false imprisonment and assault. He is exposed once again as the piece of work that he is. I hope he someday realizes how completely immoral it is to take advantage of drunk women to make a buck.
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Maybe we can learn a few things from Japan about how to treat mothers in the workforce.
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I think we could all learn a thing or two from this woman. She didn't look in a mirror for a year, including her own wedding day. In our culture which is so obsessed with looking good, I think we could all benefit from covering a few mirrors.
My son and I are visiting family right now and this weekend my husband joined us. Off and on all weekend, I'd look over at my husband holding our son and I'd wonder at how absolutely beautiful they are to me.
I wish I knew how to draw. I wish they could both see themselves the way that I do.
And at Mass, it made me think about how God sees us.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.-John 3:16
Yeah, I know, it's repeated so much it's cliché. But maybe it's repeated so much because it's true. And maybe it's repeated so much because we need to hear it. And, just maybe, we could stop repeating it if we would all just finally believe it.
God is Love. God loves us more than we could possibly imagine. God created us simply because He loves us. God experienced suffering and death for us. He gave us free-will to love Him back, because it's not really love unless it's given freely.
Can you imagine how beautiful we must be to Him?
Me neither.
The following is a 3 minute video that made the rounds on Facebook a while back. In it, a sketch artist draws women based on how they describe themselves and on how they describe each other. It is discovered that the women described one another much more favorably than they described themselves. So, if we are that attractive to each other when we don't even know each other, how attractive must we be to God?
In January 2008, I went straight to grad school after graduating college. Due to numerous financial and personal issues, I dropped out, moved back home and worked full-time for two years.
I went back in September 2010. I went to school full-time while working part-time, volunteering for three different organizations, and sorta, kinda "planning" a wedding (my roommate actually did a lot of that job for me).
Got married in July 2011, moved half-way across the country, and had an unexpected baby. Thanks to the patience of the staff at Aquinas Institute and Rev. Terry Culbertson at Upstate University Hospital, I was able to complete the 5 remaining courses to finish my degree.
I technically graduated in December 2012, but I got to walk this past Friday. It is the end of a very long journey. As a woman I met Saturday said, "You really wanted this."
So, a woman signs a contract saying she'll live up to the Christian ideal to be a good role model for the students. She falls. We all fall. Nobody is perfect. Didn't Christ Himself say that whoever among you that is without sin cast the first stone?
This does not mean that actions do not have consequences. I'm not saying that she should have been kept on as a teacher. But what is worse?
Having sex outside of marriage
or
Kicking a pregnant woman out?
She set a poor example for her students of chastity. The school's administration is setting a poor example to the whole world as to what it means to be pro-life. The number one cause of abortion in this country is the worry that you will not be able to financially support the child. Yes, she broke her contract and for that she needs to be moved out of her position. That will show the children that actions have consequences. But she needs a job and out of respect for the unborn child, the school should help her secure employment elsewhere.
And what makes this latest story worse is that the father of the child was offered a job at the very same school! So, the school knows he had premarital sex, but he gets offered a job while she gets fired. Is this because the woman has the misfortune of being the one whose sin is blatantly obvious to the world?
This stuff gets on the news because those who look down upon Christianity rejoice in stories like this. They've caught us committing one of secular society's cardinal sins: hypocrisy. It is a sin in the Bible, too.
Above is a 11 minute video of an interview that British comedian Russell Brand did on his show with members of the Westboro Baptist Church. For those who don't know, Russell Brand is quite the eccentric bad boy. He has had a lot of struggles with the law and drugs. He credits his practice of meditation in helping him to conquer his various demons. The Westboro Baptist Church, on the other hand, have made a name for themselves protesting at military funerals saying that God is letting our men and women in uniform be killed because our country is too tolerant of homosexuality. Needless to say, Brand and his audience vehemently disagree with Westboro's views. In this interview, the two parties are surprisingly respectful of one another. Of course, as a religion and ethics nerd, I found the whole thing facinating and I want to look at Brand's and the Westboro Baptist views through Roman Catholic eyes.
St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us! Now, let's get our geek on!
From a Catholic perspective there are major holes and major truth in both of these positions. There are many ways I can tackle this. The one way I have decided upon is topical. The points I want to make fall into three categories: The Bible, the nature of sin, and the nature of love.
Disclaimer: This analysis is based solely on the interview linked above. Any other statements made by either the Westboro Baptist Church or Brand have not been taken into account.
The Bible
I would say that Brand's understanding of Scripture is closest to the Catholic understanding, but not in anyway completely in line.
Close, but no cigar
The Westboro Baptist Church seems to be strong supporters in the Reformation idea of sola scriptura. That means that for them, the Bible is the one and only authority when it comes to knowing God's will and that the Bible is to be taken literally.
In the Catholic faith, we would have to agree with Brand's statement at 5:05 that "The Holy Spirit doesn't have a pen." Scripture is certainly inspired by God, but it was written by man. We would take it a step further, though, than Brand does when he says that the Bible is only meant to point us toward the one God who is Love. We don't believe that the Bible is merely a pointer. The Bible does also contain Truth. But to get the fullness of God's Truth, as Catholics, we believe that you need to take both Scripture and Tradition into account. Scripture and Tradition are used as a kind of checks and balances. Nothing in either one can contradict the other and they are both valid tools in the search for Truth.
The Nature of Sin
In the case of sin, the Westboro Baptist Church would be closer than Brand in the Catholic understanding. However, in their understanding of God as seemingly hateful, they are very, very far off the mark.
Which is ironically, exactly what "sin" means
The phrase "love the sinner, but hate the sin" is way, way older than these guys think (see 6:52). It actually comes from St. Augustine. Yup, Billy Graham nor Gandhi thought it up. A Catholic saint did. And, actually, it's a pretty good summary of the Catholic perspective on homosexuality.
Contrary to popular belief, the Catholic Church does not hate gays. What some people in the Church (such as Archbishop Dolan, who I will be writing about later) have trouble with is this: Why do some people seem to limit their identity to their sexual orientation? You are so much more, pardon my crudity, than who you have sex with! You are a beloved child of God. God knitted you in your mother's womb. God sent His only Son to die for you. God is with you every second of every day, especially in the Eucharist! We would argue that everyone's main identity, it doesn't matter if you're gay, straight, white, black, tall, short, or purple, everyone's main identity is found only in God!
Our issue with homosexuality is with the act itself. God created our bodies. God basically created sex. We as Catholics feel that one of the main purposes of sex is procreation. God made us to make and raise children in a loving, married family. Anything that falls short of this goal, any sexual act that does not at least contain the possibility of leading to new life, is missing the mark, is "sin." We believe that homosexual activities are unbecoming of a beautiful child of God. That is something that we would agree with the Westboro Baptist Church about. We completely disagree with their belief that God hates gays, but we do agree with their belief that homosexual behavior is sinful.
The Nature of Love
Similarly, we would agree with Brand's contention that God's primary identity is Love, but we do not agree that this "love" means that anything short of murder is acceptable. As stated by the Westboro members in 1:35, it is sometimes more loving to point out the sins in another person than to accept all of that person's actions. One of our purposes in this life is to help one another get closer to God and ultimately to Heaven. That sometimes means showing some tough love. Now, I'm sure that very few Catholics would agree that protesting at a military funeral is an appropriate display of tough love. But, going on a talk show to spread your Truth might be.
God definitely does stand for tolerance, love and beauty as eloquently expressed by Brand at 4:14, but God's "tolerance" is not "tolerance" as it is currently used in every day speak in the US. "Tolerance" is currently defined as "a fair, objective and permissive attitude toward those who differ from you." (italics added) God loves the sinners. God loves the sinners deeply, passionately, madly, and thoroughly. (Remember the "lost" parables.) But God doesn't love the sin. God hates the sin for bringing dishonor to and ensnaring the beloved sinner.
"For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed you from the law of sin and death."- Romans 8:2
God isn't tolerant in the way we mean tolerant. God is Love, but because God is Love, He hates all that does harm to and blemishes the beloved. The Church would agree with Brand that Love, not hate, is the primary message of God. But we feel precisely because the main message is love, God hates sin all the more because it goes against His love.
I feel that it is very telling of Brand's perspective on homosexuality that he almost implicitly links homosexuality with the love between a short, interracial couple (around 7:21). He clearly believes that homosexuality is something that you're born with that you have no control over. He feels that just as interracial couples had to fight long and hard against prejudice, so must gay couples; that interracial dating is on the exact same moral plane as homosexual dating.
First legally married interracial couple in Louisiana, married in a Catholic Church
The Church recognizes that a homosexual orientation can't be fixed, that people are born with it and that is part of who they are. But just as unmarried people, married people where one of the spouses cannot have sex, and religious people are all called to celibacy, gays are as well. The Church would not put interracial marriage and gay marriage on the same moral ground. In fact, the Catholic Church was one of the first (if not the first) church to recognize interracial marriage (We even have a martyr for the cause).
In Conclusion
Neither Russell Brand nor the Westboro Baptist Church are in complete agreement with the Catholic Church on this issue (not that I think either of them would care). But, I hope that I have used this interview to make some sense out of what the Church does believe and to provide some compare and contrast to see the Church through a spiritual lens (Brand) and a fundamentalist lens (Westboro).
God is Love. He does love the sinner, but hate the sin. And the Church does have some reasons to think that homosexual acts are sinful. That seems like a good summary.
While Catholics have somewhere between a 1 in 3 and 1 in 5 divorce rate and gay marriage is legal in 6 states as well as the District of Columbia, people are concerned about the state of marriage in the Catholic Church. This opinion article by Russell Shaw and the comments that follow it, however are way off the mark. Here I will break down the article and give my take on Catholic marriage as someone who has recently been married in the Catholic Church. The highlighted is quoted from the article (blue) or the comments (pink). The plain text beneath is me.
A word of caution at the start. Don’t read what follows as a suggestion or even a veiled hint that the Catholic Church and other defenders of traditional marriage should abandon the fight against legalizing same-sex marriage. Yes, the New York state legislature, strongly lobbied by Catholic governor Andew Cuomo, voted in June for legalization, making New York the sixth state where same-sex couples can marry. And yes, there are an awful lot of people in New York.
Thank you for the clarification, but I wouldn't have read that much into this article.
But let’s be clear about what happened. The legislature and Cuomo imposed gay marriage on the state without consulting the voters, and there are an awful lot of people who remain opposed. The widely repeated line that this marks a decisive step in the campaign for legalization is part of the propaganda — eagerly seized upon and parroted by media that support gay marriage — aimed at bullying opponents into throwing in the towel.
I agree with this assessment of what happened in New York. I also agree that this is not a decisive step. Where New York goes, others states do not necessarily follow. For example, New York has had a "Bottle Bill" (refund for recycling cans, plastic and glass bottles) for 26 years, and still only 10 other states have them.
...That said, however, recent events do underline the fact that the Catholic Church needs to do some fundamental rethinking on the subject of marriage. I don’t mean the Church should approve gay marriage. I mean making it crystal clear what a sacramental marriage sanctioned by the Church really is — and why the secular state’s version of “marriage” isn’t the same thing at all.
I would agree that we need better catechesis on the sacramentality of marriage. Some people just don't get it. As someone who has recently did all the tests, classes, and meetings herself, I can honestly tell you I got a better education in my theology classes about the importance of marriage than I did in any of the marriage prep programs.
...A new addressing this problem would involve a two-step procedure. First, a couple seeking to enter into sacramental marriage would be required to go through whatever civil ceremony the state might insist on in order to be recognized as legally married. Then, and only then, the couple could proceed to sacramental marriage — a church wedding — with the blessing of the Church.
This is where Shaw loses me. Two weddings? What?
Yes, [there] are problems with that. Some people would resist what they’d see as “getting married twice” and would settle for the civil ceremony alone. But many do that now anyway. If those who said no to “getting married twice” were, by and large, people like those who now get “married in the Church” without understanding what they’re doing, what difference would it make?
As for the pluses, the procedure outlined here would have the huge practical advantage of educating couples to the fact that civil marriage and sacramental marriage are two vastly different things. Catholic marriage, like marriage generally, is in crisis, with the push for gay marriage adding to the confusion. Something needs to be done. If not this — what?
Okay, so this would make a clear statement that state and sacramental marriage are two vastly different things. Yeah, I would agree that it would make a profound statement. But what about the couples?
They would face two wedding budgets, two wedding guest lists, two ceremonies to organize. I can tell you that planning one is enough work. Yes, weddings have turned into self-indulging, self-promoting circuses in recent years. That is a far cry from what Our Lord would like to see. It's a far cry from what our Church teaches. But two ceremonies are not the way to go.
(I understand that civil ceremonies don't have to be that complicated. But there will be people who are offended that they aren't invited to both. Also, you have to get the bride and the groom together on two separate occasions to do the ceremonies. I'm thinking of couples like my husband and I who lived half-way across the country from one another when we were married. Also, another catechetical nightmare: I can see people asking, "When is the couple actually *married*? Is it at the civil or the religious ceremony?")
And let's take a trip down to the comments:
I think for those states that allow gay marriage, the Catholic church should decline signing a civil marriage license. The state redefines marriage, and then the state wants a priest to sign their marriage certificate?
Thomas More wouldn't even sign such a document.
Seriously?!?! The state doesn't care if the couple gets civilly married or not. You aren't telling the state anything by refusing to sign the civil marriage license. You aren't "sticking it to the Man" because "the Man" doesn't care! You're only punishing the faithful couple who now has to go find someone who will sign it or face not getting their full rights as a married couple in their state.
Now to quote my comment to the article:
As someone who has recently gotten married in the Catholic Church, I find Shaw's suggestion and some of the comments completely ridiculous. All that you are doing is making a Catholic wedding more difficult and expensive for well-meaning, faithful Catholics. Instead of splitting the civil and the church wedding or making priest refuse to sign the marriage contracts, how about we...I don't know....BETTER CATECHIZE OUR PARISHIONERS!!!! I know, it's a crazy idea! Why don't we use our creativity to come up with a way to help Catholics understand the importance of a Catholic marriage through better catechesis rather than making life more difficult for the faithful Catholics who already want to do the right thing.
I still stand by this comment. And now I pass the torch on to you. Do any of you have any ideas on how to better catechize couples looking to get married?
