There are two things nagging at my brain at the moment. Maybe you can help me with one of them.
The other day, I watched a toddler toddle down the street holding on to Mom's hand with one of his hands, and Dad's hand with the other. He was between a man and a woman. But I cannot believe he is a marriage.
Likewise, at a wonderful Italian dinner I sat across from the hostess. There was a table between us. Is the table a marriage? When I wave at a female friend, is whatever is between us a marriage?
I ask because I keep hearing that "marriage is between a man and a woman." The estimable Joanna Kakissis, in reports for NPR over the weekend, talked about how some Romanians attempted to stuff that law -- it is a law there -- into their constitution so it won't go away, as it has elsewhere. They lost.
But "marriage is between" is not just a Romanian idiom. I have heard it in English from the ambo, from the hustings and from the Vatican.
"Is," as I learned it, is a "linking verb" joining two nouns "Marriage" is a noun. "Between" is a preposition. A lot of nouns can be between a man and a woman -- (bad) blood, love (for opera), politics. Sometimes the "between" indicates a divide, and sometimes it indicates sharing, which makes it an ambiguous, one might say slippery, word to use in a definition anyway.
But whatever it means, it isn't a noun, so it is not what marriage "is."
People say that "most people" understand "a contract" before the word "between." I don't think the Church wants to go there. Contracts can be broken unilaterally, and as soon as either side gets a little antsy, you have to get lawyers. Besides pre-nups are not marriages.
I've tried sticking "a sacrament" in there. But that not only is not what "most people" understand to be there, it stretches the standard definition of a sacrament.
I know, we all know, what they think they mean when they say "marriage is between a man and a woman." But, technically, that is not what they are saying; if it is, the dinner table qualified.
Well, anyway, that bothers me.
My other nagging question is, why did Brett Kavanaugh have to take the oath three times? Wouldn't the first two stick?
The legalization of same sex marriage has been a great boon to me. Now when someone asks me why I never got married, I just say "marriage is for gays".
ReplyDeleteStanley, LOL!
DeleteAbout the whole gay marriage thing, lightning will strike me, but I don't see why allowing it under civil law is such a non-negotiable. Civil law doesn't follow a theological definition of marriage; it's more or less a contract. Civil law allows courthouse marriages with only a three day waiting period, and also marriages of multiple -times divorced persons, with no ecclesial i's dotted or t's crossed. None of which would qualify as a marriage blessed by the church. But the attitude is live and let live about that, with the church continuing to preach its truth. Why can't we be live and let live about gay marriage?
The church recognized our civil marriage when we cinverted, so perhaps that's a sticking point; is recognizing civil unions for heterosexual tantamount to sanctioning gay unions?
DeleteSome really nasty things can happen to gay partners without benefit of a civil contract. Distant blood relatives will come out of the woodwork when a
partner dies to contest the will with disastrous results.
Homosexual couples and their children should have next of kin rights.
Katherine - I think, if the church had its druthers, civil society would freely agree to conform civil law to church moral and social teaching. Given that civil society currently lacks the necessary consensus to make that happen, the church, out of respect for human freedom and the goods of civil society, will make prudential judgments regarding what it resists and how hard to resist.
DeleteAnd that judgment flows in the other direction, too: as some segments of the larger society are actively hostile to church social and moral teachings, the church (rightly) decides what and how hard to defend.
... and Jean makes a great point: the church can reflect and learn from innovations in civil law, if it is not too proud.
DeleteWell, if you want to get technical...
ReplyDeleteHere's what's missing around "between" (borrowing liberally/plagiarizing from the Catechism here): Marriage is an intimate communion of life and love, between a husband and wife, which has been founded and endowed with its own special laws by the Creator. Among them is that it is ordered to the procreation of children.
The contract language is not completely wrong: marriage is a covenant whose bond is established by God. This is why what God has joined, people must not sunder. A marriage is dissoluble only by the death of one of the spouses.
I suppose we knew all that already.
"An intimate communion."
DeleteWell, I suppose maybe. But that's the part the Romanians -- and everyone else -- leaves out. Is that omission ignorance, mischievousness, subterfuge?
Btw, I have never heard that from the ambo or the hustings.
I liked that, too: "... an intimate communion of life and love".
DeleteI don't think you come to that notion of sacramentality immediately, and not without a lot of chafing in the harness.
DeleteOur old priest used to preach about marriage and family a lot. He said there are sometimes long years when you aren't in love and don't feel that intimacy, but in a Christian marriage, those are the years when you act as if you did.
Marriage can be a joy, comfort, and slog. Sometimes all on the same day. You learn to make.adjustments and compromises. You learn to pick your battles. And you accept that you will lose half those battles.