Bulletins
February 15, 2015
Download the Bulletin as a PDF“I now pronounce you partners forever” said the “Reverend” after witnessing a civil wedding of two women in Birmingham, Alabama, a few days ago. He might as well have declared them to be Wonder Twins since he has not the ability to declare two females to be each other’s wives let alone the authority to impart to anyone anything pertaining to the realm of the eternal except for a valid baptism.
The federal courts have imposed on the Commonwealth of Virginia and other States in the Union the ridiculous notion that society may not have any standards for marriage. The US Government might as well declare that “marriage” turned out to be a fiction that progressive society should jettison altogether. That might suit the needs of a genuine antiestablishment establishment. But the anti-marriage movement wants to unseat Christianity and force it to approve of their sin. Unwittingly it has grossly expanded the role of government in the process.
Now we are supposed to believe that marriage is about the freedom of pleasure as opposed to the irrevocable commitment of conjugal love between a man and a woman. This is not just a voluntary exchange of promises but also involves the natural and necessary obligations to each other and to their possible children when they begin a life of intimacy.
Ironically people seem to think that the government has the power to grant or withhold permission to marry. Perhaps the Catholic Church is partly responsible for this confusion. Members of the Church need their wedding vows to be witnessed by a representative of the Church in order to be valid but there should be no confusion about who imparts marriage to whom. This ecclesiastical law evolved a little over five hundred years ago to protect the spouses and children of men who were abandoning their families and claiming never to have been married since their vows had never been witnessed. So called “clandestine vows” can be valid now only when the husband and wife know that a priest will not be in their locale for at least six months.
So let us be clear, a minister or a judge does not impart the state of being married to people. This distorts marriage into nothing more than a legal institution. What a totalitarian nightmare! Rather, spouses marry each other when they exchange wedding vows. A well-informed government should be able to verify who is successfully married. Whether or not our government acknowledges it should be the least of their concerns. When a State so easily permits divorce, its certificate of marriage becomes almost meaningless anyway.
To be continued...
God bless us everyone!
Fr. Christopher J. Pollard
