Truth and Lies about Marriage

I do think that we Catholics are losing the battle in the public forum when we try  defend authentic marriage, as opposed to the merely legal construct that most people think it is. We need to refuse to buy into the definition of marriage as a merely legal reality.  Marriage is primarily not a legal institution, but a social and cultural reality that exists  prior to legal regulation.  In the same way that land-use laws make sense only if there is land to regulate, laws which regulate the institution of marriage only makes sense if there is a preexisting reality to regulate.  We are treating marriage in America, however, as if it were a merely legal and contractual reality, which it is not.  The reason for this is that marriage is a fundamental necessity for healthy social life in every culture.  It exists prior to and independently of any civil laws. Marriage has existed long before there were laws and legislatures. It's a problem for our particular culture, because we commonly tell and believe two lies: first of all, that marriage it is about couples, not families;, and secondly, that same-sex relationships are the same thing as marital relationships.

Marriage is the institution that blends and propagates families.  When I perform a marriage ceremony, the first and immediate effect of it is that most people in the church walk out with a new set of relatives. The lie we are telling ourselves is that  marriage is only about the two parties, and is a matter of love and romance, which is far from its primary purpose.  The first purpose of marriage is to connect two families of different bloodlines to each other, and then to continue and propagate that family life by birthing children, and nourishing, educating, and settling them in life both in in body and in soul. The family is the first school for children in social, moral, psychological, and emotional development; dysfunction in the parents breeds dysfunction in the children.  This is why we recognize that families broken by divorce, or single parent situations are not optimal conditions for children's flourishing.  Their development is shaped  profoundly by the relationship of the mother and father to each other as husband and wife; children learn love, not so much by the relationship they have with their parents, which is always based in inequality, but by the relationship of their mother and father to each other.  They learn to relate, well or badly, to the the rest of the human race as men and women though the unique relationships they learn with and through each parent. They learn what it is to have uncles and aunts, cousins and grandparents.These are relationships both in body and in spirit, and for that reason an authentic marriage is marked both by a vow to persist as husband and wife for life, as well as being sealed by the act of marital union that naturally brings children into being. Since sexual union is aimed by nature at procreating, sexual union outside of the marriage vow of husband and wife  of any kind is is marked by a certain irresponsibility and immaturity, whether or not this is consciously realized.  This is the basis of traditional sexual morality.

Human law does not create marriages, but recognizes and regulates them.  A legislature can no more create a marriage than it can make a mountain to exist by legal fiat.  Laws that would change the basic structure of marriage - including divorce laws, can neither make or unmake a marriage.  To try to do so is as ridiculous as legally denominating a mountain as a river, and then expecting it to actually flow into the sea.