Beheading Marriage
October 5, 2014
Salome with the Head of John the Baptist; Lucas Cranach the Elder
TODAY, when the NewVatican’s Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Family opens in Rome, revolutionaries who reject (without coming right out and saying it) Catholic teaching on marriage and family will have their heyday at last. The theme of the two-week Synod, which will begin a two-year process, is “the pastoral challenges of the family in the context of evangelization,” which might be rephrased as “the challenges of filling pews when the Protestant church down the road accepts the divorced and the cohabiting and those openly practicing homosexuality and never, ever preaches against contraception even though we don’t preach against it either” or “the pastoral challenges in a world so depopulated by contraception that we are scrambling for bodies.”
Over the course of the next two years, the Synod will soften the minds and consciences of the faithful with extraordinarily ambiguous propaganda and will subject the Church to extraordinary persecution from within — and do it all under extraordinary secrecy. Marco Tostati of La Stampa wrote:
For the first time in its decades-long history a Synod of Bishops will be held mainly behind closed doors. The public could not be present even at the many Synods in the past, but ALL of the reports, from those of the Archbishop of Milan to the last diocese in Patagonia, were published daily, either in detail or in a summary.
Instead at this Synod none of the presentations will be made public.
Yes, the Synod, or Nod-to-Sin, promises to be extraordinary. It’s a continuation of the revolutionary program of Vatican II couched in so much Catholic-sounding language that many Catholics will not see it for all that it is, until someday they are sitting next to a man or woman who has openly cheated on his spouse and who walks up to the altar with full approval by purported bishops. Already the revolutionaries have so marginalized the Church’s teaching on contraception that churches and schools close virtually every day for lack of bodies. The most serious innovations under consideration would essentially regularize divorce within the Church, hedging it all under various administrative formalities, and, while denying full and open approval to these things, possibly give the subtle nod, through so much confusing language, to contraception, cohabitation and even homosexual liaisons, so much so that these things would essentially be accepted, as they already are by many who call themselves Catholic.
John the Baptist, who condemned the adultery of King Herod and was beheaded as a result; millions of Catholics who over the course of 2,000 years have denied their own happiness and contentment to pursue the hard way; and Pope Clement VII and St. Thomas More, who refused to approve the second marriage of King Henry VIII of England, already married to Catherine of Aragon, will all be rendered ridiculous figures in the eyes of these Nod-to-Sin revolutionaries. Which is why we know that this whole extraordinary affair has nothing to do with the indefectible, sacred Deposit of Faith, which cannot change and will ever and eternally be ridiculous in the eyes of the world because of its immutable dogma that the fundamental bond of human society cannot be broken and is made primarily for the creation of life. Eternal life.
The leading advocates of “reform” include especially “Pope” Francis, and German Cardinal Walter Kasper, who has outlined an ingenious program for overthrowing dogma on divorce and remarriage. The Church has always approved separation for couples with serious, irreconcilable conflict, but not divorce. The divorced and remarried are considered adulterous and are denied Holy Communion. Kasper’s reasoning is the same brand of logic used by Vatican II theologians and it boils down to embracing the secular world’s demand that life not entail suffering. The bishops in advance distributed surveys to Catholics asking them their opinions on cohabitation, divorce, homosexuality and other family issues. The survey itself was an extraordinary innovation that should be seen less as an attempt to gather information as an effort to bend consciences and promulgate the idea that morality is established by democratic consensus, not God.
It’s the easiest thing to ignore or forget the example of John the Baptist. No one wants to be a killjoy. No one who is normal takes pleasure in standing against the modern world and its endorsement of serial polygamy. No one likes to lose friends and the support of family. It’s an extremely awkward and lonely position. Marriage undeniably causes serious unhappiness for some. This fact places those who reject divorce in the awkward position of seeming to condemn happiness itself. They are ostracized within their own families for upholding loyalty above all else.
There is no happiness, no eternal happiness, outside the laws of God. Those who condemn divorce love the unhappy and are even willing to sacrifice their own social happiness to support these basic truths. “Whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” These are the words of Jesus Christ himself. The bishops lack the authority to overturn God. They also have the duty to preach the truth openly, not to hedge it in ambiguities. For marriage was created not by man, but by God. At this time, it is worth cherishing the words of Pope Pius XI, who wrote in 1930, in his Encyclical on Christian Marriage, Casti Connubii:
How great is the dignity of chaste wedlock, Venerable Brethren, may be judged best from this that Christ Our Lord, Son of the Eternal Father, having assumed the nature of fallen man, not only, with His loving desire of compassing the redemption of our race, ordained it in an especial manner as the principle and foundation of domestic society and therefore of all human intercourse, but also raised it to the rank of a truly and great sacrament of the New Law, restored it to the original purity of its divine institution, and accordingly entrusted all its discipline and care to His spouse the Church.
2. In order, however, that amongst men of every nation and every age the desired fruits may be obtained from this renewal of matrimony, it is necessary, first of all, that men’s minds be illuminated with the true doctrine of Christ regarding it; and secondly, that Christian spouses, the weakness of their wills strengthened by the internal grace of God, shape all their ways of thinking and of acting in conformity with that pure law of Christ so as to obtain true peace and happiness for themselves and for their families.
[…]
5. And to begin with that same Encyclical, which is wholly concerned in vindicating the divine institution of matrimony, its sacramental dignity, and its perpetual stability, let it be repeated as an immutable and inviolable fundamental doctrine that matrimony was not instituted or restored by man but by God; not by man were the laws made to strengthen and confirm and elevate it but by God, the Author of nature, and by Christ Our Lord by Whom nature was redeemed, and hence these laws cannot be subject to any human decrees or to any contrary pact even of the spouses themselves. This is the doctrine of Holy Scripture;[2] this is the constant tradition of the Universal Church; this the solemn definition of the sacred Council of Trent, which declares and establishes from the words of Holy Writ itself that God is the Author of the perpetual stability of the marriage bond, its unity and its firmness.[3
— Comments —
Dan R. writes:
It’s difficult to think of a greater conquest in the “long march through the institutions” than the Catholic Church. I wouldn’t expect the Left to win at this stage, but we can be certain they will return for another assault, since they always do. After all, it’s a “long march.” Gramsci must be smiling.
