Marriage: What is it? And why

It has been on my mind to create this post for a long time but I have had a hard time finding the time to sit down and think through what I wanted to say. Marriage has been in the news a lot lately and it seems to me that the media and the government want to allow only their definition and call anyone who disagrees a hater or bigoted or worse. I am Catholic so it seems to me that the government is focusing on trying to force the Catholic Church to go along with  the current culture, which it never has in all its years.

And yet, even in the Catholic Church, there are many who want to say that it is our job to be inclusive and the surely Jesus would not have excluded anyone. They are not remembering that he called the Pharisees and Sadducees “You brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?” so he clearly didn't include everyone no matter what they were doing.  Inclusiveness is tantamount to saying that God has no standards and that His holiness can tolerate everyone being welcomed in Heaven. I think it is pretty clear that God does not do that. He says instead, “Be holy as I AM holy.” I heard Mother Angelica at EWTN say that inclusive language is satanic. It seemed an extreme statement but when she explained that it is Satan who wants to separate us from the relationship of father and child that we have with God, I can see her point. If God is feminine or “it” and not masculine, then there can be no familial relationship which is the foundation of Christianity.

When it comes to marriage, God created man and woman in His own image, and said that when they marry, they become one. I do not believe that two men or two women can become one. Neither can they create new life which is one of the essential parts of marriage. My children are adopted so I understand about getting children that way. But with marriage being the foundation of society that it is, marriage can not strengthen society without producing new children. And it has been proven that a solid, healthy family is a family that stays intact, and has a mother and a father for the children. Divorce is the bane of our existence, which is why the Church bans it. The sad reality is that people marry for the wrong reasons and that leads to faulty marriages which were never valid to begin with or which are not strong enough to stand the testing that every family goes through.

Our society, beginning in the 60s with the introduction of contraception, has separated sex from marriage which has not been good for people or for marriage. Men and women are indulging in casual sex and undermining the best chance for a strong marriage by living together first and likely having children first too. The “hook-up” culture demeans the person and makes the frequently resulting baby seem like a mistake. Contraception (which is birth control not birth prevention) says “I do not want babies” and it is a very short step indeed to abortion, which says, “I do not want this baby.” 1.5 million babies are aborted every year in the US and there are twice as many abortions among blacks as among whites.

It takes 2.1 births per couple to maintain the current population but very few countries are maintaining that birth rate due to the high abortion rates and the poor economy. In 2011 the United States dropped to its lowest level ever, below the replacement rate. If it drops to 1.2 the country is in serious decline and no country thus far has recovered from a birthrate of that level. Japan is currently in that place. For comparison, back in the 1950s the birthrate was 5 children per family. The society that figures out how to restore the economic foundation of the family to society will own the future. Right now the Obama administration is working hard to destroy the economic foundation of the family unit so it seems unlikely that the United State will own the future unless things change drastically.

Neither society or the economy can thrive if the family is not strong. And if marriage is not the foundation of society, then the society is crumbling. With the current attack on marriage in the United State, and around the world, it is the very foundations of society that are under attack and society is foundering. Defining marriage as one man and one woman is essential to maintaining the foundations of society.

Another structure of safety

At mass recently I realized that the cross represents another structure where there is safety. To stay within Christ's commands is to live safely.

Worship the idol?

Heather King had a Lenten reflection which said in part, "Much more dangerous is the love of money so overriding that it reduces our very bodies to a marketplace (emphasis added) for pharmaceutical companies, for scientific "progress," for sex." Our bodies as a marketplace really struck me. We do sell our bodies to drugs, to sexual pleasure, to gluttony. And woe to anyone who tries to say that it is not right or shouldn't be done. Voices cry out, "We have a right to..." Our bodies have become idols who must be sacrificed to with every demand of the sensual life. God said early on "You shall have no other gods before me." but sadly, we do in this culture, and it is true all around the world. We have chosen to be slaves to our bodies. St. Paul warned about living in the flesh, which leads to death. What will it take to get us to change our ways?

The Structure of Safety

I was thinking this morning about God's laws and commands and why people for the most part don't want to obey them or even consider them at all. What I see them being like is a very simple structure like the crude one I have drawn here.

It is like the frame of a house and roof but there are only beams in the corners and for the roof. One can easily go in and out of it because there is nothing to stop you. I think it represents God's commandments which are there for our safety and well being. It is just as easy to go in and out of obeying God's commandments because there is nothing to stop us, only our own desire to obey and to stay safe. G.K. Chesterton: “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing—they believe in anything.”

Christ says, “You nullify the word of God in favor of your tradition that you have handed on.” I believe we have chosen to ignore what God has asked of us in order to embrace the tradition that society is pushing: things like - live together outside of marriage, murder through abortion unwanted children, refuse to accept the children God would give us through contraception, refuse to limit what our eyes see on TV and in movies. Basically believe that any limitation is bad, that we should be free to do anything and everything. For the un-churched this is forgivable but for those who call themselves Christian, how dare we say we follow Him and yet do these things?! And for those with high visibility, it is a scandal. Jimmy Akin advises, “While there is no lack of unworthy and traitorous Christians in the Church, it is up to each of us to counterbalance the evil done by them with our clear witness to Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.”

I remember hearing years ago on Focus on the Family about a playground study. What they found was when there were no fences, the children stayed close to the center, well away from the edges. But when there were fences, they played right up to the edge of the playground because the place of safety was clearly marked. I think the commandments of God are like the playground fences. They actually give us more room, not less, because we can freely use the whole area of our lives within that structure of safety.

In Galatians 6:14 St. Paul says he is crucified to the world and the world to him. That means to me that he has decided to live within the structure of safety, God's commands, and what is outside is as if it doesn't exist, is dead to him. This is what God wants for us, that we chose to believe that He does have our best interest at heart (aren't we the apple of His eye?) and that the limits (structure) He imposes actually give us more freedom, not less. Does your pride prevent you from really being free as God desires, not as the world tempts you to be? I hope not.

Baal in Our World

I listened to Glenn Beck and Rabbi Daniel Lapin last night. They were talking about the God of this world, Baal, the ancient (pre-biblical) god of war, weather, sex and the body. I see that what I was writing about in my last post really was about Baal's influence on our societies now, in this present age.

They presented the idea of going up in an elevator and how much energy it takes to go up. To go down takes no energy at all - you can slide down to the basement before you know it.

God in his wisdom has said that in order for people to do well and be the best that they can be, they need to work on it and they need to have some things that they just don't do because the end results are bad. Baal, on the other hand, says “if it feels good, do it!” And we have been doing what feels good from about 1960.

What changed in the 1960s? Well contraception came in and separated sex from marriage. And like pornography, enough is never enough, sex outside of marriage has gotten to the point of casual hook-up, devoid of meaning but injurious to the woman who is still seeking relationship, and she may get pregnant as well. What to do with all these unintended babies? Well, not take responsibility for the life created but rather seek to kill the person who shows so clearly what one has been doing. Make no mistake, this is a separate person whose life is ended, not some blob of tissue. Before the woman even knows that she is expecting, the baby's heart is beating. Check out this video on YouTube, Genesis by Ramos David  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iItjtWd0SpE&list=FLsjCPNdB-A2aGj6V-e_-FnQ&index=1&feature=plpp_video

So we in the last 50 or so years have taken the easy road, the wide road that leads to destruction. Many are worried and anxious about where the world is going. But are we worried and anxious enough to change our lives? To begin the hard work of moving up, not to a better life but to a secure one, guaranteed by God?

Mary at Medjugorje had this to say recently:
Dear children;  I am with you for so much time and already for so long I have been pointing you to God’s presence and His infinite love, which I desire for all of you to come to know.  And you, my children?  You continue to be deaf and blind as you look at the world around you and do not want to see where it is going without my Son.  You are renouncing Him - and He is the source of all graces.  You listen to me while I am speaking to you, but your hearts are closed and you are not hearing me.  You are not praying to the Holy Spirit to illuminate you.  My children, pride has come to rule.  I am pointing out humility to you.  My children, remember that only a humble soul shines with purity and beauty because it has come to know the love of God.  Only a humble soul becomes heaven, because my Son is in it.  Thank you.  Again I implore you to pray for those whom my Son has chosen - those are your shepherds.

I think Mary is giving us good advice. Not easy advice but life-saving advice.

Obedience?

This morning I was reading the scriptures for Mass and one part of the scripture, below, leaped out at me: “The body is not meant for immorality...”

1Corinthians 6:13-20
[13] ....The body is not meant for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
[14] And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power.
[15] Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!
[16] Do you not know that he who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, "The two shall become one flesh."
[17] But he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.
[18] Shun immorality. Every other sin which a man commits is outside the body; but the immoral man sins against his own body.
[19] Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own;
[20] you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. 

That set my mind to musing on what has been going on in societies all over the world. Pretty much everywhere people have decided that they can do whatever they want, very little is considered  immoral, and certainly almost nothing concerning the body and sex. Sadly, even Christians seem to act this way. Since the 1960s when so called sexual freedom became the norm, people have done what ever they wished with their bodies, the above scripture forgotten, God's injunctions against sex outside of marriage forgotten, consequences forgotten. Each one decided they knew best, an attitude God allows when people are willfully sinful. So sleeping around, bootie calls, living together, friends with benefits became accepted practice in societies around the world.


And the chance of pregnancy or the pregnancies that resulted from this immoral behavior were dealt with by birth control and abortion. I have always felt that it is a very short step from contraception’s “I don’t want babies” to abortion’s “I don’t want this baby,” which tie the two behaviors together. So now the people have forgotten that they are members of Christ and that everything they do in their immorality, they make Christ do. No longer do they glorify God in their bodies. Abortion has almost become birth control. Women are told it is a blob of tissue but science advancements have shown that at no time is the unborn baby a blob of tissue, the DNA is always human. Before the woman even realizes that she is pregnant, the child looks human and has a beating heart. Talk about the miracle of birth - what sort of miracle could it be that at the moment of birth this blob of tissue becomes a human child?! Women are mislead into killing their babies. There is no other way to look at it. Mothers (and, yes, they are mothers from the moment of conception) willfully murder their children and society says it is fine to do that.


Now society is looking at marriage. Already weakened by divorces brought on by failure to understand the sacredness of a union where two become one, and the inevitable cheapening of marriage by, in some cases, years and years of living together, the institution, which is the foundation of society, is crumbling. With sacred marriages on the wane, society has looked at the institution and said, “Why limit this sad affair to a man and a woman?” Anyone can be married to anyone if they but “love each other.” Beware! the worst has not yet come.


Soon there will be pressure to say that several may be married, as Mormons formerly did and some cults still do. And why not a man and a boy? How about a woman and her monkey? Why not two men and two women? They “love each other” and isn’t that the defining criteria for marriage? Can “love” be limited?


So where does this leave God? Must He stand by while we ignore His commands? How long will He wait to chastise us for our sins? What will we have to say for ourselves at the final judgement? Just what are your excuses for doing as you pleased with your body and your life? And if you call yourself Christian, even more so, what will you say to your Lord when you see Him face to face?


If societies all over the world are crumbling, facing degeneration, disaster and war, financial ruin, seemingly unexplained  natural disasters- tsunamis, hurricanes, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, etc - can it be that God is expressing His displeasure? Will His people continue on their merry way to the end of time? I hope not, I pray not!

Everything old is new again

I recently found an April 5, 1943 issue of Life magazine among my mother's things. It was the year she married, the year my sister was born. Two ads jumped out at me.

The first was put in by American Locomotive

EVER FACE A FIRING SQUAD?

Take a good long look. This is what a condemned man...or woman... sees at twenty feet. No one has ever come back to describe that last moment before the scene is suddenly blacked out with a rattle of fire and a burst of lead.

    But even a brave man or a courageous woman facing such a scene must hope feverishly that this is all just a bad dream from which there will be an awakening...a  vision from a remembered movie in which someone will come, will come, in time. But no one comes.

    Thousands....hundreds of thousands...of human beings, like yourself, have had just such a last glimpse of life during the past few years. And they, too, have hoped it was a dream. But it wasn't.

     How far removed do you think you are from playing the star part in such a  performance as this? Two years, three years, maybe four years...if the Japs and Nazis win.

    And don't think that you can talk yourself out of it if the time comes. Don't think that you can turn coat; that begging for mercy on bended knees will spare you; that promising to be good, to cooperate, will help. Some patriot in your neighborhood will kill one of their officers in the night, and the next day you will be rounded up with nine or nineteen or ninety-nine others...to be shot.

    This is something for all of us to think of...to dream of while we can still awaken to the clean air of freedom.

    It is something to make all us of resolve that all our waking will be bent to the one job of winning the war...that whatever we know we can do, we will do...and that whatever else we can find to do, we will also do.

    For unless all of us put the winning of this war before everything else, a lot of eyes that now look on this page may face the same scene in reality,

    Not somebody else's eyes, yours...

There is a global Muslim group active in the US which would like very much like to completely destroy American freedom as we know it. Hizb ut-Tahrir rejects democracy as a western system and un-Islamic despite aspects of it such as elections existing in the Islamic political system. Hizb ut-Tahrir argues democracy as a system is

“the rule of people, for the people, by the people. The basis of the democratic system is that people possess the right of sovereignty, choice and implementation. ... it is a Kufr system because it is laid down by man and it is not from the Shari'ah Laws.”

If the current climate of revolution prevails, and the radical Muslims gain the upper hand because of their prior organizing, there is no doubt that they will indeed be killing people who will not agree to live under Shari'ah law. There are 2.6 million Muslims now but even without revolution, there are predicted to be 6.2 in 10 years. There are 2000 mosques already.

As Christians we are to be civilly responsible. We are not to be angry or fearful. We are to be as wise a serpents but as gentle as doves. We must however open our eyes and be aware of the work that is being done to remove America's freedom, a freedom that is unique in all the world. We have taken it for granted I'm afraid.

The Second Ad

The Magazine Publishers of America

If, they win

....only our dead are free

These are our enemies. They have only one idea—to kill, and kill, and kill, until they conquer the world. Then, by the whip, the sword and the gallows, they will rule. No longer will you be free to speak or write your thoughts, to worship God in your own way. Only our dead will be free. Only the host who will fall before the enemy will know peace. Civilization will be set back a thousand years. 

    Make no mistake about it—you cannot think of this as other wars. You cannot regard your foe this time simply as people with a wrong idea. This time you win—or die. This time you get no second chance. This time you free the world, or else you lose it. Surely that is work the best fight of your life—worth anything that you can give or do.

There are some words of truth for this age in these words. The fight we are in now is not yet fought with guns and bullets but the enemy would take away your freedom just as surely. The socialists, communists and anarchists, together with the radical, jihad Muslims are waging a war against America, against our way of life, against our freedom. Things are not perfect by a long shot but we are as yet a free people. Open your eyes and slumber no longer. Be responsible for yourself, your family, your neighbor. Give what you can, do what you can. But please, don't just ignore the battle which is beginning to rage about you.