Posted on 04/27/2013 2:48:00 AM PDT by markomalley
THE future of Roman Catholic weddings in England and Wales is now in doubt because of David Cameron’s gay marriage bill, the church’s chief legal adviser on the issue has disclosed.
Prof Christopher McCrudden said that there are serious questions over whether the 120-year-old legal basis on which 8,500 Catholic weddings a year are performed can even “survive” the passage of the bill currently before Parliament.
He told MPs and peers that, unless urgent changes are made, Catholic bishops may have to reconsider whether priests can carry on performing weddings, in effect, on behalf of the state.
The barrister said his advice to senior bishops is that proposed protections for churches against legal challenges under human rights or equalities laws for refusing to marry gay couples completely overlook the position of Catholics and other denominations.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Yep, execute a legal marriage contract at a state office.
Let me explain.IMO the central issue is an effort by the forces of depravity to damage the Church (or any faith that acknowledges God's word on the subject of marriage).In that effort they hope (it would seem to me) to get all such churches out of the marriage "business" or force them to join twelve men,fifteen women and three goats in "Holy Matrimony".IMO there's a relatively easy way around that effort,as I've already described.Yes,you are correct to call for decent people to stand up for marriage...as it's been known since the dawn of civilization because,apart from God's teachings,it's simply the reasonable,decent thing to do.That's a "philosophical" position.It's the practical aspects of this issue that I'm addressing.
I think the practical aspects can’t be divorced from the philosophical here. It may be practical - but that’s far from saying it’s the correct move here.
What reason would we have for supporting the state in such a division?
What advantage would we gain from such? Absolutely nothing. The argument, “but the state would force us to do something we hate” is bullocks.
Let them sue the Church into oblivion.
Let them try. They will stir up the hurricane if they try to impede the sacraments. We will fight it and we will win.
Why, please explain. Thank-you.
The State can only recognize marriage. The State cannot deny something that they did not give in the first place.
Let homosexuals ‘invent’ a word to describe their actions, but the word “marriage” has already been defined.
Just like the Boy Scouts, homosexuals want to redefine something already existing instead of creating their own.
There'd be no support whatsoever involved here.Speak out for *real* marriage as a matter of common decency while,at the same time,recognizing that this legislation is likely to be enacted.Remember,a few years back a law was passed in Britain saying that *all* adoption agencies must place kids into homosexual "families".When the Catholic Church (and,I assume,others as well) demanded an exemption they were turned down.The result was that the Catholic Church shut down all their agencies in the country.That's how far ahead of us Britain is in the race toward Sodom and Gomorrah.
It would help if the protestants fought with us instead of against us, btw. We are few and you are many, but that will change and rather quickly.
They can attempt to impede the sacraments, it will fail. Even the last time they did this.
Marriage predates the state. It predates ‘America’. It even predates ‘England’.
There were dioceses, bishops and priests all performing marriage.
Arguing that marriage depends on the state creates the wrong relation - the ‘infrastructure’ as it can be put was there before, sometimes long before the state, and long before the nation state concept of Westphalia.
Long before separation doctrines under Locke came about. It was revolutionary in the 18th century.
In other words, the state does not ‘define’ marriage, nor does it ‘create’ marriage. The state merely recognizes marriage.
At present, the relationship is marriage -> state. The priests marry someone and the state recognises it. This leads to conflict with gay marriage, which is attempting to invert the relationship to:
State -> marriage.
So rather than fight this battle over rightly ordered priorities, the fight is to
State || Marriage.
What that leaves is a vacuum. The State needs marraige, so if we divorce sacramental marriage from the state, the state will fill that void with ‘something else’.
When it does - it will also eventually demand recognition of said ‘marriage’, which is the same boat we are in.
Except then - the state just has to bar recognition of Catholic marriage. Since you’ve conceded that the state can do whatever it wants wrt marriage - it can do just this.
It won’t take very long. The real battle is the first one. Gay marriage proponents want to divorce the state from sacramental marriage. They can’t do that unless they get this separation doctrine to divide us.
When it comes to the sacrement of marriage, the clergy are a WITNESS to the couple who is getting married. The couple peform the marriage.
I wonder if Muslim clerics will be performing gay Muslim weddings?
The reason why marriage came before the state is because the countries came from the families that formed the countries.
But do you say this based on “facts” or “your opinion?”
The French idea my not be bad. Besides, the clergy are just witnesses, the couple are the ones performing the marriage.
The State cannot conduct a marriage ceremony. The State can only recognize it. A judge may officiate a wedding which makes him/her nothing more than a public notary witnessing the event.
For example, a birth certificate recognizes the fact the a birth has occurred. The State can only record that the event happened.
Many of the priests and deacons where I am located have said when it comes to this situation, the Catholic Church should get out of the civil marriage business and conduct only the sacrament in church, and let the government handle the “contract”.
Deacon Francis
Seems like the only answer
But the gay lobby and the neocommunists do not want mere separation of church and state - that would be coexistence and no idealogue of totalitarian would allow for an institution (like the church) to exist outside of the state. No, the churches will be forced to have gay clergy and be forced to perform gay “marriage” ceremonies and non-conforming churches will be shut down. The neocommunists want to either abolish churches or co-opt them so a church just becomes another state organization. Probably there will be a situation like in China where there is an official church that is severely compromized and there are underground churches. You already hear leftists talking openly about not needing a Constitution or the Bill of Rights. So that is the future if we let them have their way. It is no wonder they want to know who owns guns!
If we were in a Catholic state.
However, we are not.
Pope Leo XIII addressed the problem of involvement of a secular state in the Sacrament of Matrimony in his 1888 encyclical, Arcanum Divinae. He decried the State's involvement:
Neither, therefore, by reasoning can it be shown, nor by any testimony of history be proved, that power over the marriages of Christians has ever lawfully been handed over to the rulers of the State. (§24).
He identified civil marriage with the prince of darkness:
16. Yet, owing to the efforts of the archenemy of mankind, there are persons who, thanklessly casting away so many other blessings of redemption, despise also or utterly ignore the restoration of marriage to its original perfection. It is a reproach to some of the ancients that they showed themselves the enemies of marriage in many ways; but in our own age, much more pernicious is the sin of those who would fain pervert utterly the nature of marriage, perfect though it is, and complete in all its details and parts. The chief reason why they act in this way is because very many, imbued with the maxims of a false philosophy and corrupted in morals, judge nothing so unbearable as submission and obedience; and strive with all their might to bring about that not only individual men, but families, also-indeed, human society itself-may in haughty pride despise the sovereignty of God.
17. Now, since the family and human society at large spring from marriage, these men will on no account allow matrimony to be the subject of the jurisdiction of the Church. Nay, they endeavor to deprive it of all holiness, and so bring it within the contracted sphere of those rights which, having been instituted by man, are ruled and administered by the civil jurisprudence of the community. Wherefore it necessarily follows that they attribute all power over marriage to civil rulers, and allow none whatever to the Church; and, when the Church exercises any such power, they think that she acts either by favor of the civil authority or to its injury. Now is the time, they say, for the heads of the State to vindicate their rights unflinchingly, and to do their best to settle all that relates to marriage according as to them seems good.
18. Hence are owing civil marriages, commonly so called; 'hence laws are framed which impose impediments to marriage; hence arise judicial sentences affecting the marriage contract, as to whether or not it have been rightly made. Lastly, all power of prescribing and passing judgment in this class of cases is, as we see, of set purpose denied to the Catholic Church, so that no regard is paid either to her divine power or to her prudent laws. Yet, under these, for so many centuries, have the nations lived on whom the light of civilization shone bright with the wisdom of Christ Jesus.
(You might wish to read the whole thing at the link above)
You will note the casualness that I gave to the civil "ceremony," when I said (in post #15): You can consider going to the JP just a licensing thing. To get the State to acknowledge what has already happened in truth.
I am not suggesting a dual ceremony. I am merely suggesting the signing of papers. As a civil marriage is no marriage at all: it is just a set of signatures on a piece of paper that grant certain financial benefits to those who sign. It's not worth much more than that.
Oh I realize there’s no constitutional document per se phrasing “separation of church and state”...but what the Homos are doing are attempting to get the state to “rewrite” church policy.
If it was only about “marriage equality” then the state could de-authorise churches to issue official certificates of marriage and leave the churches to perform what-ever services they wanted leaving the homos out in the cold if they wanted. Since couples of all sexual orientations could only be ‘civilly married’ to enjoy what ever tax and dependent benefits that such a civil arrangement would afford then the homos should be convinced to leave the churches alone who don’t want to spiritually solemnize anything but heterosexual marriage.
Do understand I am writing the above with the most certain of suspicions that the homos won’t be satisfied with such a public policy that would leave the churches to continue in their own spiritual practices without government interference.
Welcome to Mexico!
You described it to a "T". In Mexico, a couple will wed in front of a registrar on Saturday, then have the big wedding Mass on Sunday in the Church. The State doesn't recognize the Church wedding, and vice versa.
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