tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post1192938448179013456..comments2024-03-25T19:48:24.624+11:00Comments on Oz Conservative: A different understanding of marriageUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-78728663891250518992015-11-14T13:33:56.413+11:002015-11-14T13:33:56.413+11:00Anon, you would think that the main advantage a Ca...Anon, you would think that the main advantage a Catholic might have is the idea of marriage as a sacrament, which then logically precludes divorce. But Catholic culture has become too secularised for this to hold well. Chances are that a Catholic woman will have exactly the same understanding of marriage as a Protestant one, namely that you marry for love, that you go into a marriage hoping that it will last, but if it doesn't, you conclude it just wasn't fated and you try again with someone else.<br /><br />My own view about what message to push in response to this is obviously different to yours. I think it's a mistake to take an either/or position - that marriage is either about social obligations or about personal fulfilment. I believe the truth to be more complex than this (though I admit that sometimes simple messages work better).<br /><br />If personal fulfilment is thought of only in terms of romantic love, then of course there is a conflict between it and a stable family life. But modernity has pushed aside other aspects of personal fulfilment which do work together with stable family commitments, such as the roles of husband/father and wife/mother, which give us a sense of identity, a meaningful social role, and which fulfil very strong masculine and feminine instincts. It is something to be a husband and father within a family, entrusted with an important role that bears on the well-being of wife and children, community, nation and tradition. The office itself has weight and significance. At the same time, the "loves" also come into it: a paternal love of your children, a husbandly love of your wife.<br /><br />If love is wrapped up in this bigger picture of family life, then it makes sense not to see it passively as something that is either fated or not fated to last, but to be actively oriented to it - to try to nurture it as best you can, because you are committed to the ongoing office of being a husband and father, so you are committed for life so to speak, and therefore you will want to have the conjugal love endure as well.<br /><br />The modern understanding has slipped to a lower level than this, which then allows for a more casual attitude to divorce. As I tried to explain in the post, part of the reason for the slip is that women are no longer raised to believe in the significance of the offices of wife and mother - especially that of wife. Similarly, the higher understanding of family as uniquely embodying a transcendent good - i.e. as having spiritual meaning and goodness attached to it, has also been lost, which then makes the dissolving of families seem less against the order of nature.Mark Richardsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15961688379656119701noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-59728158935451105472015-11-13T21:57:08.486+11:002015-11-13T21:57:08.486+11:00"Romantic love can be experienced as a transc..."Romantic love can be experienced as a transcendent good (finding your "soul mate"), although this is not what anchors family commitments."<br /><br />Romantic love is not a transcendent good and the attempt to define it as such is idolatory. Romantic love is infatuation. True love develops over a long period of shared experience and commitment. A couple at their marriage, can be infatuated, but they cannot love each other in the true sense of the word.<br /><br />The infatuation is dangerous as strong emotion overrides logic and precludes a serious and critical evaluation of a potential spouses' suitability as a life partner. This is the direct cause of the high failure rates of marriage. Emotional highs are not a basis for the formation of stable society.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-8997276448727437742015-11-13T21:46:47.790+11:002015-11-13T21:46:47.790+11:00"I do understand the point being made here. I..."I do understand the point being made here. It is a reaction against the current failing understanding of marriage."<br /><br />This assertion is incorrect and demonstrates your own failure to understand Catholic theology. The view which I put forward was not a reaction against the current state of marriage but a statement of Catholic teaching defined by logos, the word of God, unchanging for all time.<br /><br />The institution of marriage is clearly defined in Catholic theology as a social institution which serves the purpose of God. Its function is to perpetuate and strengthen Christian society by the procreation and enculturation of children, the care of the elderly and the sick. God is therefore the head of the Christian family. Given that marriage is a gift from God, to serve the purposes of God for all time, humans cannot alter or add to this model. Amen.<br /><br />Your attempts to "put forward a different way of framing marriage" are therefore inappropriate and pagan. <br /><br />Furthermore the Church affirms the model family for humanity,as that of Mary and Joseph, a couple of shared ancestry, descended from the House of David and obedient to the will of God despite difficult and hostile circumstances. <br /><br />The Bible further affirms that a man shall seek wives for his sons and fathers of daughters shall give their daughters in marriage. Hence marriage is a contract between 2 patriarchs to give their children in marriage. This is still the norm in traditional Catholic Europe. Marriage, a contract between 2 patriarchs of common ancestry, the sacrament between the bride and groom, given in marriage by their fathers.<br /><br />The contract between the 2 families is essential to support the new family socially, emotionally and often financially. Marital breakdown is rare.<br /><br />The Protestant world redefined marriage in pagan terms as a personal relationship, entered by choice rather than religious obligation and divorced from ancestral bloodlines. Romantic love was its basis and sexual intercourse its holy communion. The result is the social collapse of the Western world, far more serious than its economic and political collapse. Blood lines once destroyed or corrupted can never be recovered.<br /><br />The Gospel demonstrated the fickleness of human emotion and loyalties. When Jesus was crucified, his disciples all left him. Only his blood family remained his supports. This serves as God's demonstration to man that blood ties alone form the basis of human loyalties and non blood relationships will usually collapse at the onset of stress. <br /><br />The Protestant redefinition of marriage as personal relationship rather than a social institution of blood ties, brought about the collapse of family by unleashing human idolatory and sin and subverting the will of God. <br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-2798864205327518112015-11-13T14:52:30.347+11:002015-11-13T14:52:30.347+11:00(Continued)
In family, Agape, Storge, Philia and ...(Continued)<br /><br />In family, Agape, Storge, Philia and Eros are appropriately ordered and attached to the relevant office in considered measure. This is probably more Catholic in sentiment, but it does capture the order of love in family. The secular world seems not to understand how unconditional and conditional love work concurrently. I think this is the direct result of the "flattened" understanding of love and relationships in the modern era (love is love is love – well…no!). I think this “flattened” understanding of love leads to confusion, especially where Eros is the order of the day. For example, the man who loves the child thinks there is nothing wrong with some sexual expression to this. Interestingly the father-daughter bond is 35-40 times less likely than stepfather-daughter bond to lead to incest. Thus, the blood bond ordinarily establishes strong bonds, but simultaneously strong boundaries. Blended families lose that blood bondage, and so lose the blood boundaries.<br /><br />Back to marriage! When the husband leads IN LOVE, and the wife submits IN LOVE, the idea of headship is sacrificial (family first, self last), and submission similarly so. It's a bottom-up structure which the secular does not understand, for it applies negative connotations to the two keywords- headship and submission. The bottom-up structure is how the family runs in practice, but in the relationships hierarchy of office is still retained. Thus, biblical Christian marriage is highly nuanced, probably too nuanced for the liberal mind to fully grasp; I think that happens because a rightly focused Christian marriage is 'other' focussed, when secular relationships are predominately self-centred. Marriage is about putting in, not getting out! I love to paraphrase JFK, “ask not what your marriage can do for your; ask what you can do for your marriage.”<br /><br />Traditional Marriage is three-dimensional, not the one-dimensional (it's only a piece of paper) argument as expressed from the SSM advocates. They just don't get the holistic, layered construct of family: marriage, procreation, parenting with obligation and responsibility. They often criticise traditional marriage advocates of using circular arguments, which frustrates them no end. But of course it is a circular argument, for marriage and family is a circular, layered and three-dimensional construct all rolled into one. I picture marriage and family as at least three interwoven Möbius strips. Fulfilled properly (for it is challenging to the best and worst of sinners), it is highly robust. <br /><br />A marriage is greater than the sum of its parts - at least in a relatively healthy one. The SSM debate disaggregates marriage from family. When your starting point for arguing in favour of traditional marriage is purely legal (as a counterpoint to the SSM debate), I think it will always miss the robustness of marriage. You don’t bring a knife to a knife fight; you bring a sword! <br /><br />I am not a fan of 'soul-mate', which, as far as I'm concerned, projects a perfect match concept. Biblically we understand as husband and wife, that we are not perfect (still sinners), and that we need to be sculpting each other (potter & clay imagery) to look more Christ-like on this journey of married life. Thus, for husband and wife, marriage should be part of our sanctification in our Christian lives. <br /><br />The “raised by the village” argument, from a biblical perspective, is that the “village” is Family (first and foremost), Christian Education (Private- or Home-Schooling), and Church.<br />Mattnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-17189515075772756212015-11-13T14:50:04.000+11:002015-11-13T14:50:04.000+11:00Hi Mark, you wrote: "Even so, I'd like to...Hi Mark, you wrote: "Even so, I'd like to put forward a different way of framing marriage, one that ties together the personal and the social."<br /><br />Certainly I would argue that this approach as more biblical, for Ephesians 5:21-33, for one thing, very clearly marks the relationship between Jesus and the Church as the pattern for marriage, not Mary and Joseph (which is probably a more Catholic thought.). Mary was pregnant with Jesus (immaculately) before she and Joseph were in fact married, so somehow I don't think they present as a good model couple for marriage! Based on the Jesus model a Christian marriage must, primarily, be personal (vertical), then secondarily social (horizontal). The social aspect is established in the manner we make our vows. We make the commitment in marriage, in front of witnesses, who acknowledge the sealing of bond. <br /><br />The social aspect says we have marked these witnesses as our community and that we rely on them to keep us from stumbling in our marriage. Thus, the social aspect (especially within the church community) is a support network, centred around faith and Christ. We wear each other’s ring to symbolise the two becoming one concept. <br /><br />As Bible believing Christians, divorce should fundamentally be off the table, for Jesus says in Mark 10:9, “What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder.” It is passages with this sentiment that make divorce and remarriage such a problem in Christian circles, for we have made the commitment before God of “’til death do us part”, but in reality there is tension between canon law and secular law. I have a friend who attests to the veracity of divorce being worse than death, as he has experienced both. The death of a wife is a sharp severance; a divorce is a massive untangling.<br /><br />Jesus to father to mother to children, establishes the hierarchy and roles/offices you have already described. Thus, if my child asked who I loved most, I would say Jesus then mummy, then them. There should be no “friendships” in family (for friendships remove distinction). To my wife I am her husband, and to my children I am their father - very distinct offices f rom friendship. My children are sons and daughters, and between themselves brothers and sisters. The use of "partner" irks me no end; it’s ambiguous about which office. The secular world seems to think that everyone is everyone else's friend. That merely flattens the hierarchy and offices already discussed, making life in general very one-dimensional, and confusing too. <br /><br />(to be continued)<br />Mattnoreply@blogger.com