The Vatican’s latest affirmation of marriage as the lifelong union of one man and one woman is presented as an unfeeling even judgmental rejection of the love of same sex couples. It is however just a re-iteration of the Church’s well considered understanding of what Scripture and Jesus have to say on the subject. The Catholic Church, like other churches and their various denominations, has its own well reasoned interpretation. There has been some development over the centuries as the criteria for a valid marriage and for annulment evolved. However, the fundamental understanding on marriage and divorce has held firm.
What the modern world does not get, and that includes many within the Church itself, is that the Church does not ‘keep step with the times’. Developments in the Church’s thought and teaching tend to resist currents of contemporary culture rather than fall in with them. That is how it always has been. Indeed the Church has often been criticised, sometimes quite rightly, for its failures to stand up strongly enough to anti-human ideologies throughout history, held to account by its own standards, the standards set by its founder and the Gospel he preached. Yet, when the Church defends what it sincerely and humbly believes to be Christ’s teaching on marriage, what can reasonably be understood as, at very least, a defensible interpretation of Scripture, it is castigated for being out of step with worldly notions.
The current conflict arises from two very different understandings of marriage. One is the traditional Christian understanding, which the Catholic Church continues to preach and promote, and the other a post-modern understanding. The first is one that sees marriage as the bedrock of family. It is the institution that leads both the people of God and human society alike down the generations. It provides the natural setting and nurturing place for children. It gives them identity within the generational flow of human history and enables them in turn to continue the narrative within the supportive milieu of a family community. While not all marriages produce children, openness to children is a condition of Catholic marriage. The post-modern view of marriage is much more plastic. In theory, it can embrace not only same sex unions but polyamorous unions too. It may embrace polygamy. It may define itself as lifelong or open-ended, exclusive or open to other relationships. The couple often write their own vows. What it celebrates in common with traditional Christian marriage is sexual love.
But marriage, whatever one’s understanding of it, is now seen by many as a measure of equality between same sex couples and heterosexual couples. For equality to be equality of course, it must tick all boxes on both sides of the equation. While no one can credibly argue about the value of one kind of love over another, there is a real basis for argument when it comes to the value and importance of parents. There are real and serious questions about models of parenting that deliberately erase either mother or father from a child’s life. For the Catholic Church and other defenders of what is often described as traditional marriage, this is the core of the issue. During the marriage referendum in 2015, those who raised this argument were accused of muddying the waters, confusing the issue. Marriage equality campaigners insisted that the debate was about affirming the love and commitment of every couple, irrespective of gender. No more or no less.
This may have been so in a strict legal and constitutional sense. However, that alone would not deliver equality and those who opposed the referendum foresaw, correctly I would argue, that a new understanding of not only marriage but family and parenthood itself would in time emerge from the constitutional redefinition of marriage. At the time, these concerns were either summarily dismissed, or characterized as ‘slippery slope’ speculation or even scaremongering.
The new and emerging legislation around surrogacy and gamete donation substitutes ‘parent one and parent two’ for mother and father. Usually, either ‘parent one’ or ‘parent two’ will be the natural parent which shows that natural ties count, at least for the adults concerned. Those who consider ties to both natural parents a matter of justice for a child -and clearly the current controversy around adopted persons’ rights to trace birth parents shows that many of us do- reflect the concerns of those who opposed the 2015 referendum and the concerns of Pope Francis and the Church. It is not so much a slippery slope argument as a seamless garment argument. Equality campaigns only reach their end point when all inequalities are erased or at least somehow smoothed over. That is not always possible without creating other inequalities, glaring contradictions and absurdities.
Despite what critics of the Vatican statement assert, this is not a new turn in the Pope’s thinking. He has repeatedly upheld the value and interconnectedness of the natural family unit and traditional marriage in homilies and papal exhortations alike. There is no inconsistency in his position. He is not reneging on his refusal ‘ to judge’. Nobody can judge another person’s moral and life struggles but God alone. That is not the same as denying what the Church clearly understands as the teaching of Jesus in Scripture. What it honestly believes is the path to human flourishing.
Marriage and family are themes that run throughout all Scripture. In St John’s Gospel, the ministry of Jesus begins in Cana at a wedding. So many biblical characters are defined by their place within their family, as brothers, fathers or mothers, as orphans or widows. The relationship of God and his people is expressed in terms of a father’s care for his child. Jesus in several parables speaks about his own union with his Church in spousal terms. One of the 10 commandments concerns the special obligations of children to their parents. Jesus added more about the duties of children to parents. St Paul added much more about the reciprocal duties of each to the other. The whole story of salvation begins with a man and woman, not a tribe or a people. Marriage, family, the ties of blood, personal identity, self-understanding are all indissolubly tied together. For the Church, the defense of marriage is the defence of all this and more.
Yes, there are other points of view. People may differ on many things. Not all Christian churches agree. There are those within the Catholic fold who do not agree. Those who do and that includes the Church’s leadership, not just now but throughout its history, also have a claim to integrity and respect. Their arguments deserve to be heard, not dismissed as bigotry.