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Stand for Something Catholics – Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman.

by admin on November 18, 2008 · 4 comments

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Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman. Today we begin a new series highlighting various religions and how they value marriage. Whatever religion, you should educate yourself and stand firm on this subject. I believe this issue will be an important issue, among other important issues, that will sift the firm from the soft in the latter days.

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Do Catholics oppose same-sex marriage because they think sex is dirty? Do they not want others to have fun?

The Catholic Church takes a very high view of marriage and human sexuality. As the account of Genesis shows, marriage and sexuality were created by God and given to mankind as gifts for our benefit. Scripture records God’s statement that “it is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Gen. 2:18). As a result, “a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). Some may forego the good of marriage to serve a higher calling (cf. Matt. 19:10-12), but it is a good nevertheless.

Marriage is a conduit through which God’s grace flows to the couple and their children.1 The Catholic Church understands marriage between a baptized man and woman to be a sacrament, a visible sign of the grace that God gives them to help them live their lives here and now so as to be able to join him in eternity.2 For Catholics, marriage is social as well as religious, but its religious aspects are very important. The Bible repeatedly compares the relationship between man and wife to that between God and Israel (cf. Hos. 9:1) or between Christ and his Church (cf. Eph. 5:21-32). For Catholics, marriage is a holy vocation.

Since the Church sees marriage as holy, it believes it must be treated with reverence. It also recognizes that marriage is basic to the health of society and therefore a public institution that must be defended against harm.

Marriage is a public institution. Consequently, proposals that could harm the institution of marriage must be subjected to the same sort of objective analysis that we give any public policy question. Marriage is not just a private matter of emotion between two people. On the contrary, its success or failure has measurable impact on all of society. Rational analysis yields solid, objective reasons for limiting marriage to one man and one woman-reasons anyone can agree with on purely secular grounds.

Our analysis will show that prohibition of homosexual marriage is not just a “fairness” issue, nor does it require anyone to “force religious dogma” down anyone else’s throat. Nor is it a manifestation of hatred, as proponents sometimes suggest.

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Works to Read

  1. Catechism of the Catholic Church 1613, 1653.
  2. Ibid., 1617.
  3. Ibid., 2358.
  4. Ibid., 2357.
  5. Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher, The Case for Marriage (New York: Doubleday, 2001).
  6. Harold J. Morowitz, “Hiding in the Hammond Report,” Hospital Practice 10 (1975): 35-9.
  7. Catherine E. Ross, John Mirowsky, and Karen Goldsteen, “The Impact of the Family on Health: Decade in Review,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 52 (1990): 1061.
  8. Bernard L. Cohen and I-Sing Lee, “A Catalog of Risks,” Health Physics 36 (1979): 707-22.
  9. Howard S. Gordon and Gary E. Rosenthal, “Impact of Marital Status on Hospital Outcomes: Evidence from an Academic Medical Center,” Archives of Internal Medicine 155 (1995): 2465-71.
  10. Sheldon Cohen et al., “Social Ties and Susceptibility to the Common Cold,” Journal of the American Medical Association 277 (1997): 1940-4.
  11. Tracy Bennett Herbert and Sheldon Cohen, “Depression and Immunity: A Meta-analytic Review,” Psychological Bulletin 113 (1993): 472-86; Janice K. Kiecolt-Glaser et al., “Marital Conflict in Older Adults: Endocrinological and Immunological Correlates,” Psychosomatic Medicine 59 (1997): 339-49.
  12. Nadine F. Marks and James D. Lambert, “Marital Status Continuity and Change among Young and Midlife Adults: Longitudinal Effects on Psychological Well-being,” Journal of Family Issues 19 (1998): 652-86; Alan V. Horowitz, Helene Raskin White, and Sandra Holwell-White, “Becoming Married and Mental Health: A Longitudinal Study of a Cohort of Young Adults,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 58 (1996): 895-907.
  13. Yuanreng Hu and Noreen Goldman, “Mortality Differentials by Marital Status: An International Comparison,” Demography 27, no. 2 (1990): 233-50.
  14. Ross, Mirowsky, and Goldsteen, loc. cit.; Debra Umberson, “Family Status and Health Behaviors: Social Control as a Dimension of Social Integration,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 28 (1987): 306-19.
  15. Umberson, “Gender, Marital Status and the Social Control of Health Behavior,” Social Science and Medicine 34 (1992): 907-17.
  16. K. A. S. Wickrama et al., “Marital Quality and Physical Illness: A Latent Growth Curve Analysis,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 59 (1997): 143-55; Waite and Gallagher, op. cit., 47-77.
  17. Waite and Gallagher, op. cit., 47-77.
  18. Ibid, 57, 65-77.
  19. Marks and Lambert, op. cit., 652-86.
  20. Edward O. Laumann et al., The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Scott Stanley and Howard Markman, Marriage in the 90s: A Nationwide Random Phone Survey (Denver: PREP, Inc., 1997).
  21. Robert G. Bringle and Bram P. Buunk, “Extradyadic Relationships and Sexual Jealousy,” in Sexuality in Close Relationships, eds. K. McKinney and S. Sprecher (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991), 135-53.
  22. Arne Mastekaasa, “The Subjective Well-being of the Previously Married: The Importance of Unmarried Cohabitation and Time Since Widowhood or Divorce,” Social Forces 73 (1994): 665-92.
  23. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1997), 466, table 719.
  24. Sanders Korenman and David Neumark, “Does Marriage Really Make Men More Productive?” Journal of Human Resources 26 (1991): 282-307.
  25. Linda Waite, “Does Marriage Matter?” Demography 32 (1995): 483-507, esp. 495-6.
  26. Waite and Gallagher, op. cit., 109.
  27. Frances K. Goldscheider and Linda J. Waite, New Families, No Families? The Transformation of the American Home (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1991).
  28. Gary S. Becker, “Human Capital, Effort, and the Sexual Division of Labor,” Journal of Labor Economics 3, no. 1 (1985): 533-58; Shoshana Grossbard-Schechtman, On the Economics of Marriage: A Theory of Marriage, Labor and Divorce (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993).
  29. Nicholas Berdyaev, Freedom and the Spirit (Freeport, N.Y.: Libraries Press, 1972).
  30. Mary Shivanandan, Crossing the Threshold of Love: A New Vision of Marriage in the Light of John Paul II’s Anthropology (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1999), 82, 135-7.
  31. Ibid., 118-120.
  32. CCC 2368.
  33. Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae (On the Regulation of Birth).
  34. Mercedes Arzu Wilson, “The Practice of Natural Family Planning Versus the Use of Artificial Birth Control: Family, Sexual and Moral Issues,” Catholic Social Science Review 7 (2002): 1-30.
  35. Leora Friedberg, “Did Unilateral Divorce Raise Divorce Rates? Evidence from Panel Data,” American Economic Review 88 (1998): 608-27.
  36. Judith Wallerstein, Julia Lewis, and Sandra Blakeslee, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce (New York: Hyperion, 2000), 295, 297.
  37. Waite and Gallagher, op. cit., 148-9.
  38. Umberson, “Gender, Marital Status and the Social Control of Health Behavior,” 907-17.
  39. Walter R. Gove, “Sex, Marital Status and Mortality,” American Journal of Sociology 79 (1973): 45-67; Janice K. Kiecolt-Glaser et al., “Marital Quality, Marital Disruption and Immune Function,” Psychosomatic Medicine 49 (1987): 13-34.
  40. Waite and Gallagher, op. cit., 124-40.
  41. Rex Forehand et al., “Divorce/Divorce Potential and Interparental Conflict: The Relationship to Early Adolescent Social and Cognitive Functioning,” Journal of Adolescent Research 1 (1986): 389-97; Carolyn Webster-Stratton, “The Relationship of Marital Support, Conflict and Divorce to Parent Perceptions, Behaviors and Childhood Conduct Problems,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 51 (1989): 417-30; Ed Spruijt and Martijn de Goede, “Transition in Family Structure and Adolescent Well-being,” Adolescence 32 (winter 1997): 897-911.
  42. P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, Andrew J. Cherlin, and Kathleen E. Kiernan, “The Long-term Effects of Parental Divorce on the Mental Health of Young Adults: A Developmental Perspective,” Child Development 66 (1995): 1614-34; Andrew J. Cherlin, P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, and Christine McRae, “Effects of Parental Divorce on Mental Health Throughout the Life Course,” American Sociological Review 63 (1998): 239.
  43. Waite and Gallagher, op. cit., 129-40.
  44. Diana E. H. Russell, “The Prevalence and Seriousness of Incestuous Abuse: Stepfathers vs. Biological Fathers,” Child Abuse and Neglect 8 (1984): 15-22; M. Wilson and M. Daly, “Risk of Maltreatment of Children Living with Stepparents,” in Child Abuse and Neglect: Biosocial Dimensions , ed. Gelles and Lancaster (New York: Aldine de Gruyer, 1987), 215-32; M. Konner, “Darwin’s Truth, Jefferson’s Vision: Sociobiology and the Politics of Human Nature,” The American Prospect 45 (1999): 30-8.
  45. Judith S. Wallerstein, “The Long-Term Effects of Divorce on Children: A Review,” Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 30, no. 3 (May 1991): 358-9.
  46. Norman Bales and Anne Bales, “Today’s Blended Family Landscape,” All About Families, April 26, 2000, 1-2; Lynn K. White and Alan Booth, “The Quality and Stability of Remarriages: The Role of Stepchildren,” American Sociological Review 50, no. 5 (1985): 689-98; Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., “Divorce and the American Family,” Annual Review of Sociology 16 (1990): 379-403.
  47. C. Bagley and P. Tremblay, “Suicidal Behaviors in Homosexual and Bisexual Males,” Crisis 18 (1997): 24-34.
  48. R. A. Garofalo et al., “The Associations Between Health Risk Behaviors and Sexual Orientation Among a School-Based Sample of Adolescents,” Pediatrics 101 (1998): 895-902.
  49. R. Herrell et al., Archives of General Psychiatry 56 (1999): 867-74; D. M. Fergusson, J. Horwood, A. L. Beautrais, “Is Sexual Orientation Related to Mental Health Problems and Suicidality in Young People?” Archives of General Psychiatry 56 (1999): 876-80; M. J. Bailey, “Homosexuality and Mental Illness,” Archives of General Psychiatry 56 (1999): 883-4.
  50. P. Cameron and K. Cameron, “Homosexual Parents,” Adolescence 31 (1996): 757-76.
  51. Ibid.
  52. Laura Dean et al., “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Health: Findings and Concerns,” Journal of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association 4, no. 3 (2000): 101-51.
  53. Ibid.
  54. Ibid.
  55. A. P. Bell and M. S. Weinberg, Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978).
  56. Ibid.
  57. Ibid.
  58. J. B. Lehmann, C. U. Lehmann, and P. J. Kelly, “Development and Health Care Needs of Lesbians,” Journal of Women’s Health 7 (1998) 379-88.
  59. S. Sarantakos, “Same-Sex Couples: Problems and Prospects,” Journal of Family Studies 2 (1996): 147-63; P. Tjaden, N. Thoennes, and C. J. Allison, “Comparing Violence Over the Life Span in Samples of Same-Sex and Opposite-Sex Cohabitants,” Violence and Victims 14 (1999): 413-25.
  60. Stanley Kurtz, “What Is Wrong with Gay Marriage,” Commentary, September 2000, 35-41.
  61. Andrew Sullivan, Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1995).
  62. D. M. Buss, The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating (New York: Basic Books, 1994); D. Symons, The Evolution of Sexuality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); M. Ridley, The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature (New York: Penguin, 1993); S. Goldberg, Why Men Rule: A Theory of Male Dominance (Chicago: Open Court, 1993).
  63. See references 44 and 45 above.
  64. R. Green et al., “Lesbian Mothers and Their Children: A Comparison With Solo Parent Heterosexual Mothers and Their Children,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 15 (1986): 167-83; P. A. Belcastro et al., “A Review of Data Based Studies Addressing the Effects of Homosexual Parenting on Children’s Sexual and Social Functioning,” Journal of Divorce and Remarriage 20 (1993): 105-22; B. Hoeffer, “Lesbian and Heterosexual Single Mothers: Influence of Their Child’s Acquisition of Sex-Role Traits and Behavior,” (dissertation, University of California), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1979; D. L. Puryear, “Familial Experiences: A Comparison Between Children of Lesbian Mothers and the Children of Heterosexual Mothers,” (Dissertation, University of California), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1983; J. D. Kunin, “Predictors of Psychosocial and Behavioral Adjustment of Children: A Study Comparing Children Raised by Lesbian Parents to Children Raised by Heterosexual Parents,” Dissertation Abstracts International, 59 (1998): (6-B), 3094; G. A. Javaid, “The Children of Homosexual and Heterosexual Single Mothers,” Child Psychiatry and Human Development 23 (1993): 235-48; K. Lewis, “The Children of Lesbians: Their Point of View,” Social Work 23 (1980): 198-203
  65. P. Cameron and K. Cameron, “Homosexual Parents,” 757-66; P. Cameron and K. Cameron, “Homosexual Parents: A Comparative Forensic Study of Character and Harms to Children” Psychological Reports 82 (1998): 1155-91.
  66. Waite and Gallagher, op. cit., 124-40.
  67. Popenoe, op. cit., 139-63.
  68. Ibid.
  69. Ibid.
  70. Ibid.
  71. Stanley Kurtz, “What Is Wrong with Gay Marriage,” 35-41.
  72. Stanley Kurtz, “Beyond Gay Marriage,” The Weekly Standard, August 4-11, 2003, 26-33.



POULAR POSTS:

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Tom Dibble November 18, 2008 at 6:28 pm

“The Catholic Church takes a very high view of marriage and human sexuality.”

And, they can keep it to themselves and their congregations.

The Catholic Church ALSO has a very high view of holy communion and Last Rites, but they have no right dictating the ability for other faiths to administer the sacraments.

Marriage in the Church, no matter which religion you hold to, is a sacrament. The Catholic Church is in no way obligated to acknowledge sacraments made outside its rules. In fact, the Catholic Church is in no way obligated to acknowledge any sacraments, including the ones it administers! Moreover, the Catholic Church is fully within its rights to REFUSE any sacrament or ceremony to any member or non member, with or without reason.

The LDS Church (I am a member) has LONG used this authority, refusing Temple Marriage to any “unworthy” members. The rules for this are fairly well laid out (and practicing homosexuals are specifically banned). There is NO WAY either the LDS or Catholic Churches would ever have been forced to either:

1. Administer a gay marriage ceremony
2. Acknowledge a gay marriage as valid in the eyes of God

“Marriage”, as redefined in Prop 8, is the SECULAR definition of marriage. Unfortunately, it shares a name with the spiritual ceremony most Churches observe. However, it is a complete error to believe that Prop 8 affected in any way, shape, or form what the Catholic Church observes, believes, or acts on with respect to marriage.

The REASON the churches backed Prop 8 is the same reason they would back any proposition enforcing their particular morality on the general populace. In this case, there is enough confusion in the populace about what “marriage” means when it appears in the state code that their efforts bore fruit. However, it is no more “right” for them to foist this morality on the general populace than it would be for them to require that all last rites be administered using specific Catholic prayers.

Reply

2 armchairmba November 18, 2008 at 6:39 pm

We live in a democracy. A church should be free to tell their members that look to them for leadership views on social issues-or any issues for that matter. Anything less is censorship.

Should the churches that told their members to vote against proposition 8 be told the same thing?

We have seen the people speak, by their votes, and it is more representative than a few judges making a decision for all.

Reply

3 Tom Dibble November 18, 2008 at 11:19 pm

I don’t recall hearing of any church telling their congregation that the church would be destroyed if Prop 8 passed. In fact, I did not hear of any major churches campaigning against Prop 8 at all (aside from a mention or two from a pulpit here and there, which is FAR from what both the LDS Church and to a lesser extent the Catholic Church did).

The fact that the “Yes on 8″ propaganda was all demonstrably FALSE doesn’t help your cause. EVERY major church has a fundamental law along the lines of “thou shalt not lie”.

Please, educate me. Which major church threw its entire weight behind DEFEATING Prop 8?

In any case, the point stands: despite the false propaganda from the Yes on 8 campaign, NO RELIGIOUS INSTITUTION WAS THREATENED by the California Constitution as it stood. It remained the Church’s right to decide which couples it was to marry, and which benefits it would give to couples married by other denominations. No church risked losing tax-exempt status for not marrying gays (notable fact: the LDS Church didn’t lose its tax-exempt status despite YEARS of bucking general civil rights trends with respect to race and not admitting blacks to the priesthood).

Frankly, this article is based on the false premise, as much of Prop 8’s literature is, that churches were somehow threatened with being shut down if gays were allowed to call their unions “marriage” instead of “domestic partnership”. This is patently false, and the rest of it fails due to a wholly invalid premise.

Reply

4 armchairmba November 19, 2008 at 2:30 am

If you are a member of the church, why are you an outspoken critic?

I have seen a few ads from both sides, not all of them. And I do not know what they say in their pulpits.
However, even if the message is false, the ballot’s language is agreed upon by both sides prior to Election Day to avoid lawsuits. Does your premise undermine the American people, by assuming they cannot read the ballot and make a discerning choice?
Furthermore, across America, similar measures were put to the test with overwhelming support for the sanctity of marriage. How can you explain that phenomenon? I know it was on the ballot here in Florida, and the Mormons did not run any advertising. Yet it passed by an even wider margin than Proposition 8.
The Fact is: This is what the American people want—Marriage to be defined between one man and one woman.
I understand the LDS Church made concessions on polygamy. Do you also believe marriage should also include multiple wives? Husbands?
I think it is great that people, in a democracy, can congregate and support the direction of government they feel will best suit their needs. I commend the LDS Church and Catholic Church for their strong support of their beliefs. It tells me they stand for something—and are not afraid to face public scrutiny for an unpopular view—a huge plus in my opinion.

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