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Glory to Jesus Christ!

In reading the twin threads on homosexuality and marriage, there are two issues that seem to me to be paramount: one concerns the definition of marriage (its ontology, if you will) and the other the use of state power to enforce that definition (whatever it may be). I�d like to concentrate on the first question in this thread, especially because the answer to the second hinges on the idea that marriage can be defined in a particular way.

What is the definition of marriage from the perspective of �mere Christianity,� Orthodoxy, and Roman Catholicism? What do Scripture and Holy Tradition say about its essential nature, meaning, purpose, and destiny?

Can we define marriage from a natural law perspective, i.e., without relying directly on divine revelation? How, if at all, does this definition differ from the traditional Christian (Orthodox and Roman Catholic) view?

Anyone interested in pursuing this question?

In Christ,
Theophilos

Theophilos,

I am no kind of scripture scholar, nor do I play one on TV.

I think we'd be hard put tho' to find any Christian definition of marriage (one with roots in scripture & tradition at least) that wasn't more or less one man + one woman, with an important sidebar about begetting children.

That said, I think we also ought to look at what society, law and custom have decided are rights and privileges that go with a legally recognized marriage. I am NOT talking about sex or gay rights, or any agenda that involves shouting or outrage. I am interested in what people think about things like health care, access to a loved one in certain circumstances (not all hospitalizations are planned) recognition as a family member, et cetera. In some or all of these things, there are some big social justice issues involved.

More and more I find myself trying to form coherent thoughts about some legally recognized relationship - a limited contract if you will - that is NOT marriage, but would enable unrelated persons who cannot marry to be recognized in situations where there is currently no good or compassionate solution, as being linked, for lack of a better term.

Sorry if this isn't responsive to the topic...

Sharon

How about some form of adoption, Sharon? Seriously, I have heard stories about adults being adopted by other adults for the very purposes you mentioned. Perhaps a generous expansion of the adoption laws would be a more practical solution.

Well, I suppose this brings us back to adelphopoiesis.

Dear Sharon,

I seem to be saying this a lot lately. I agree with you. You raise issues that taken together are of real concern to many who are not married.

Perhaps a form of domestic partnership with teeth would work in the areas that you point out.

At any rate, your heart and mind seem to share a clear focus on the good of others.

I'm quite happy to say that I'm with you on this.

Steve

Dear Theophilos,

That's a great place to begin. What makes marriage marriage in our Tradition?

There's a really good study of the Sacraments by Joseph Martos. It is entitled Doors to the Sacred: A Historical Introductionto the Sacraments in the Catholic Church. and was published by Image Book in 1982. It sheds light on the development of the Sacraments.

He deals with marriage in "Chapter IX: Marriage."
It begins on page 397.

On page 399, he begins his examination by saying this:

I found that interesting when I first read it. It appears to give a brief global historical overview from one perspective at least. It is only a brief part of what Martos had to say about marriage as a Sacrament. He continues for about 100 pages.

Hope that others find it interesting also.

Steve

I believe these items can be taken care of through other legal means, e.g. power of attorney for medical decisions, wills, etc. Granted, these things "come with the territory" when married, but require a lot of effort to set up otherwise. Perhaps there can be a simple way to grant these kinds of privileges in a "one-stop shopping" kind of way, with no more burden involved than is required to obtain a marriage licence. Call it a civil union if you will.

If, however, we are as a society going to do make this process as easy as marriage, yet still maintain a distinction between marriage and these other arrangements, then I believe there is a sane and reasonable way to draw the distinction; namely, these unions can not grant any more privileges than is afforded to non-married persons of opposite sex.

By means of a very real and personal example: Shortly after I became engaged, my wife was diagnosed with cancer and was given a 25-50% chance of not surviving. She was also between jobs, had no employer health-care coverage, and no private insurance. My employer had spousal and family health care benefits, but I could not claim them for my fiancee. The fact that we were already committed to a life-long (or possibly life-short) relationship did not matter, and I never thought that I was suffering an injustice of any sort. It was the company's benefit, and they could administer it as they saw fit.

By way of another, hypothetical example. Suppose there is an unwed teenage mother in my neighborhood and I, as a single man, am approaching retirement age but am in ill health. Suppose I am providing a large amount of my income to her out of a sense of charity. I can not direct the Social Security Administration to provide dependent benefits to her children upon my demise, no matter how much I may be currently providing to the upbringing of her children.

There are undobutedly a lot of gray areas and prickly details that would complicate any legislation enabling this concept, but I think the core idea is a fair way of simplifying legitimate relational interests, while still protecting the institution of marriage as a special covenant relationship between a man and a woman.

-- Ed

Dear Friends,

While stumbling around the web tonight, I wandered into the following webpage. The material is excerpted from a Byzantine Seminary Press publication. I'm not sure there is anything here we don't already know, but y'all may find a nugget or two here.
Byzantine Marriage [angelfire.com]

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Perhaps I did not make my question sufficiently clear. I'm not asking what a political and legal order ought or ought not do with respect to marriage as a matter of constitutionality, morality, good public policy, or so-called “social justice” (which, incidentally, is a redundancy, since all justice is by definition social).

The prior question is this: What is marriage? Before a polity can instantiate in its laws, and grant privileges to, a particular definition of marriage, it must formulate that definition.

The “traditionalists” have thus far defended their definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman who are not already close blood relatives by appealing to three related forms of authority: (1) historical experience (it's been this way for a very long time), (2) cultural majoritarianism (this is the way most people understand marriage), and (3) divine revelation (God has said that this is a marriage). I don't wish to devalue any of these sources of meaning, especially since I believe that all three are fundamentally true and quite useful in determining what a marriage is.

Yet they are far from unproblematic. Appeals to historical experience are susceptible to the criticism that longevity does not, in and of itself, render a belief correct or valid. Consider the enduring acceptance of the institution of slavery. Appeals to cultural majoritarianism are even less sturdy: just because most people believe X is right does not make X right. The example of slavery is again dispositive.

What about appeals to divine revelation or to a particular religious narrative? The main difficulty with such appeals is that, in a religiously pluralistic society such as ours, many people – or, at least, more than a few – accept different types and interpretations of divine revelation, or deny the possibility of revelation altogether. If people do not share the same religious narrative, is it nonetheless acceptable – i.e., just or charitable or even Christian – to impose a particular narrative on everyone? I submit that a common language or idiom is required in order to define, develop, and legislate a truly common good.

Incidentally, to argue, as some do, that it is licit to legislate the common good based on “Judeo-Christian values” because the United States always has been and is to this day a “Christian nation” simply throws us back to the appeal to historical experience and cultural majoritarianism.

At the same time, those who would expand the definition of marriage – let's call them the “liberationists” – have also failed to formulate a coherent, alternative definition of marriage. They argue, however, that they need not do so, because there is no one definition of marriage (or a family). Given the many different forms or types of marriage, it is unfair and indeed discriminatory for the government to privilege just one form or type. Andrew Sullivan thus asserts that denying marriage to homosexuals is equivalent to anti-miscegenation laws.

To answer the liberationist charge thus requires those who would defend traditional marriage to formulate a definition that is “reasonable.” By this, I do not mean to suggest that the definition needs to meet a quasi-scientific standard of proof (though it would be advantageous if it did). What I mean instead is that the definition should be understandable by all rational men and women of good faith. We need, in other words, to define marriage through a common idiom.

That idiom is human reason, which, from a political perspective, is superior to revelation, experience, and tradition in virtue of that fact that all human beings share it (to varying degrees, of course.) My Hindu friend may not understand me when I tell him that marriage is a living icon of the Holy Trinity that provides a husband and wife with opportunities to practice perfectiveness and work towards deification. But he and I can agree that if all men have bad breath and if Socrates is a man, then Socrates has bad breath.

I must add that human reason is far from perfect, and that our capacity for thought and understanding is limited.

That said, I offer the following as a reasonable definition of marriage: marriage is a two-in-one-flesh communion of persons that is consummated and actualized by sexual acts which are reproductive in type (even if not reproductive in effect).

In other words, a marriage is the state in which two persons become a single entity. Though they never lose their individual personhood, spouses are united at spiritual, dispositional, emotional, AND physical or biological levels. Friends can be united at spiritual, dispositional, and emotional levels, but only the union of a man and a woman is able to form a single biological unit.

The proof for this claim is that reproduction empirically becomes a single principle or function ONLY through the union of male and female gametes. The joining of the reproductive organs of husband and wife, in other words, REALLY unites them biologically and makes them one reality. Masturbatory, sodomitical, and other sex acts cannot unite persons organically in this same way.

If the biological matrix of marriage is removed, the union is no longer marital. It becomes something else.

Does this mean that the marriage of a sterile couple is not really a marriage, because sterile couples cannot form a true single reproductive principle?

No, because the genitals of men and women are always reproductive organs – even if one or both are sterile or intermittently infertile. So long as their sexual acts fulfill the behavioral conditions of reproduction, they are acts of the reproductive-type even where the non-behavioral conditions of reproduction do not happen to obtain.

Your thoughts, questions, or criticisms – malicious or otherwise?

In Christ,
Theophilos

Theophilus,

Nice post. You make a distinciton between relationships that are, potentially, transforming versus those that are also, potentially pro-creative; the latter being a marriage, and the former "something else".

I guess that the political quesion that we will have to face is really this: will this something else have a name, will it have a privleges and responsibilities obtained through one-stop-shopping. Or is this to be resisted in toto? Can this whoe issue be considered in a manner that does not focus on sexual aspects. ISTM, for example, that issues of hospital visitation etc., might be faced by members of monastic communities. Are there legal precedents here?

I like to consider another tangent. There is a recurring metaphor likening the relationship between God and the Church to marriage. Is your definition compatible with this metaphor? Beyond our transformation, our theosis as individuals is there an analog to pro-creation? What does this teach us about the Church?

Dear Theophilos,

Just an aside to an aside. You posted this comment "....or so-called “social justice” (which, incidentally, is a redundancy, since all justice is by definition social).

This may be true in some sense. Yet in the Harper Collins Encyclopedia of Catholicism, in an entry entitled "social justice" (pp. 1203 - 1205) social justice is defined as

"virtue pertaining to the structural requirements for a just society focused on the human rights and needs of each person. The paradox of the concept of social justice is the major role it has in the Chruch's life and ministry contrasted with its recent appearance in Catholic teaching. The paradox is resolved when its (sic) is understood that the idea of social justice has an ancient lineage in the Catholic tradition,but its precise designation is found in Pius XI's encyclical Quadregesimo Anno (1931)." (p. 1203)

Just wanted to draw attention to this aspect of the Church's teachings. The article makes clear that the "decisive contribution of Pope Pius XI to Catholic teaching on justice was the way in which he replaced the idea of legal justice with that of social justice.... Pius XI took over the notion of legal justice, i.e., its focus on the common good, and then focused social justice on the assessment of the structural organizatin of society...." (p. 1204).

It seems to me that Sharon is correct in pointing out that the issues she raises are a matter of social justice in the light of Catholic teaching on the matter. The term is not redundant, at least I don't think so. It enables us to look at the issues in another way.

Thanks for hearing me out.

Steve

Dear Theophilos,

Good posting. Your summation of the difficulties of the use of historical experience, cultural majoritanism, or divine revelation to provide the basis for the definition of marriage is succinct.

You have proposed that the common idiom for the definition is human reason. Makes sense to me for the reason that you suggest.

I wonder if it would not be useful to delineate the characteristics that would enable one to judge that human reason as the idiom of definition building is being used in an objectively verifiable way. Wouldn't that be something that it would have to be used for others to agree with the definition?

What's the standard?

I'm not attempting to be obstructionist, because I agree with you. I'm trying to understand how each side of the ensuing debate (that's an assumption that I make, we're talking the political arena here) would explain to the citizenry in relatively uncomplicated terms that its definition was a good example of something that met the standard.

The definition that you propose seems reasonable to me. That doesn't guarantee that is is. :rolleyes: I'm not the guantor of logic in thought.

Thanks,

Steve

PS For example, is there an element of the definition that you gave that would be used to exclude persons in other kind of whatever we call it (another assumption where there's a group getting a tax break, others will want it) from achieving the ecomomic benefits granted to those who are married just because they are living together, share a house, etc. I have this nagging feeling that I'm not making myself clear again.

I hope that you understand my point. Could you let me know what it is? Just a joke people, just a joke!

Glory to Jesus Christ!

djs:

A relationship between two people that is potentially transforming but lacks – necessarily or by choice – the biological unity of marital sex (i.e. sex which is actually reproductive in type or potentially procreative) does have a name: friendship, which is a great human good in and of itself.

But a friendship, by definition, has no biological or physical unity through which two friends become one flesh or a single principle. A friendship between a male and a female has the potential to become a marriage. But a friendship between two men or two women does not have that potential. It can never be more than friendship with a non-marital sexual aspect.

But don't non-marital sex acts create some kind of physical unity, or express in a physical way the unity that exists, between two people?

No. If the integrity of a person, i.e. treating the human person as an end and never as a means, is a “basic human good” – I refer here to the essentially Thomist idea that there are certain ends or purposes that are self-evident reasons for action and need no further justification, such as life, knowledge, play, sociability, and aesthetic experience – then non-marital sex is fundamentally contrary to human flourishing because it destroys the integrity of the persons engaging in it. How so? Because it treats the body – one's own or one's partner's – as a means to some other end (pleasure, expression of feeling, etc.). Non-marital sex acts can thus NEVER contribute positively to the common good of a friendship because they are intrinsically self-alienating and disintegrating.

By the way, I believe this also holds for heterosexual sex that has as its end procreation, the avoidance of sin (cf. 1 Cor. 7.9), or some other goal extrinsic to the marriage itself. Here, too, sex is instrumentalized, and, to that extent, it is non-marital.

Only marital sex has as its end the marriage itself. The point of penile-vaginal sex between a man and his wife is marriage. It alone is truly unitive.

Steve:

Again, pace the Catholic Encyclopedia and Pope Pius XI, all justice is social. I do not know how one can distinguish between legal and social justice. Justice is justice. It is giving to each what each truly deserves. It necessarily involves more than just one subject.

That said, I understand the reason for the concept. But I think it redundant, and in fact dangerous. Justice doesn't require that we feed the hungry or shelter the homeless? But “social justice” does?

As for your second post, I confess that I do not understand your point. Are you saying that we need to define why reason is or should be our common idiom? Based on what? Reason? You see where this is heading, yes? One cannot use reason to justify using reason.

We have two choices: use reason, on the assumption that all human beings share this capacity. Or become skeptics. In which case, I don't see the point of talking to anyone.

Could you explain your point a bit more clearly? Is it that we need some sort of rule for determining what is reason(able) and what isn't?

When I say that human, or practical, reason ought to be our common idiom, I don't mean rationality, the idea that only a priori claims are valid. I mean to include logic (deduction and induction), sense experience, and even intuition. I don't think human life is reducible to the laws of mathematics: defining marriage is not as simple as adding 2+2.

In Christ,
Theophilos

Dear Theophilos,

Thanks for your response. Sorry to be so long in answering. Yes, that was the point, thank you.

Let me raise another issue.

Is using the common idiom of reason different from consensus building to come to a common understanding? If so, what's the difference?


As far as the issue of social justice, the entry that I cited earlier does address the fact that the pope dealt with the issue of legal justice. Legal justice, distributive justice and commutative justice were defined as the three kinds of justice.

The pope "took over the notion of legal justice, i.e. its focus on the common good, and then focused social justice on the assessment of the structural organization of society. the fruit of these two notions is that social justice is designed to evaluate and redirect those public institutions of society that hinder the achievement of the common good. Just as commutative justice is focused on the contractual relationship between individuals, so social justice is focused on the functioning of major public institutions of the social, legal, economic or political orders." (Harper Collins Encyclopedia of Catholicism p. 1204)

Hope this makes sense.

Steve

Steve:

Glory to Jesus Christ!

I don't understand what you mean by consensus-building. Using reason as our common idiom is intended as a means, ideally, to building consensus. At the very least, its goal is mutual (non-exclusive) understanding.

Does anyone have any criticisms of the definition of marriage I offered? I'm not trying to goad anyone into a fight, but, if the definition is true, then it would seem to me that a government cannot grant the privilege of marriage to people who cannot, by definition, be married.

Or, if the definition is reasonable and is not based on any exclusive religious claims, then the government has met its prima facie case for privileging the instiution of marriage over friendship. That is, there is something special and unique about marriage that renders government attempts to treat it as special and unique legitimate.

That, however, does not necessarily mean government SHOULD privilege marriage but not friendships.

Any thoughts?

In Christ,
Theophilos