'Pondering Marriage' Following The Recent Supreme Court Ruling

“The Church’s opinion is a deeply pondered reflection, faithful to 20 centuries (and many more, since we must go back to Genesis, the first Book of the Old Testament) of religious anthropology.”

The quoted? Patrick Kéchichian, French literary critic.

The subject? Marriage.

The context? Kéchichian’s comments, published in the popular French newspaper Le Monde and reprinted in the semi-official newspaper of the Holy See L’Osservatore Romano, were recently made as the French government debated redefining the state’s definition of marriage.

The essential argument? The Catholic Church has comprehensively meditated and carefully elaborated its teachings on the mystery and God-bestowed gift of the conjugal partnership between man and woman — “not concocted from a caprice, from a whim or from class interests,” Kéchichian reasons, but “born from Divine Revelation itself, passed on to us by Sacred Scripture and by the whole of Tradition” — over the course of 20 centuries. As other “groups and people have not deprived themselves of expressing their opinion, why shouldn’t the Church express her opinion on a subject that is one of her priority concerns?”

Stateside, the faithful can appreciate the seriousness and relevance of Kéchichian’s remarks.  Last week, a majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices 1) decided that one provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that defined marriage as between one man and one woman is unconstitutional; and 2) sent back to lower courts a challenge to California’s Proposition 8, a voter-approved initiative barring same-sex marriage, thereby making it likely that same-sex marriage would once again be legalized in that state.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, chair of the U.S. bishops’ Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, have publicly acknowledged that the Court has “dealt a profound injustice” in respect to DOMA. The justices’ decision on Proposition 8 is “unfortunate.”

Perspective is critical as we negotiate the Court’s rulings. It is helpful to keep in mind the following: First, discord and conflict have always threatened the union of man and woman, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains. Second, the U.S. bishops’ 2009 pastoral letter, Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan, explains that same-sex unions are but one challenge of several that is directed at the meaning and purpose of marriage. Third, while holding that it is not possible for two persons of the same-sex to enter into a conjugal union, the Church likewise refuses to reduce any person to sexual orientation or behavior.  Catholic teaching does not consider a person heterosexual or homosexual, but rather as a creature of God “and by grace, his child and heir to eternal life.” All have dignity by virtue of the fact that God created every person in His image and likeness.

Should Catholics in the U.S. who understand marriage as a vocation and sacrament, as mystery and Divine gift, as covenant and natural institution, be concerned about the immediate and direct impact, as well as the longer-term implications, of Supreme Court rulings? Yes. Cardinal Dolan and Archbishop Cordileone did not exaggerate when they acknowledged that the rulings marked a “tragic day for marriage and our nation.”

Should the faithful “despair?” Never. Why? Listen to Cardinal Dolan and Cordileone: “When Jesus taught about the meaning of marriage . . . he pointed back to ‘the beginning’ of God’s creation of the human person as male and female. In the face of the customs and laws of his time, Jesus taught an unpopular truth that everyone could understand. The truth of marriage endures, and we will continue to boldly proclaim it with confidence and charity.” The Church’s role with respect to marriage, Kéchichian concludes in his article, is to “maintain her watchfulness, an alert state according to the truth that she has received,” and to “defend and explain this truth, everywhere and always, in season and out of season.”