Bishop Drainey defends Marriage
Blogged by James Preece on 6th June 2012
I'm going to risk a run in with Terms and Conditions Man to bring you the following from Bishop Terence Drainey of our very own Middlesbrough Diocese...
Recently you will have seen, heard and read much about the “consultation” the Government is holding in order to change the legal definition of marriage so as to open the institution of marriage to same sex partnerships. You will also have listened to the Pastoral Letter sent out on behalf of all the Bishops of England and Wales concerning the Catholic vision of marriage. As your Bishop I think it is important that you know and understand the Church’s teaching on marriage and that you share some of the concerns that are implied by changing the definition of marriage. Many people ask why does this concern you? The Government is only talking about civil marriage. I would reply simply by saying marriage is marriage. You can enter it by a civil or a religious route, but it is the same thing. My concern is for the good the institution of marriage delivers to society as a whole: I don’t just care about Catholics. If you change the definition of marriage so that it no longer involves any consideration of children or the family as a unit, bonded across generations, you are embarking on an extraordinary social experiment with consequences that no one can even guess at.
In a marriage the relationship is oriented to and uniquely apt for the coming into being of children. It is because the meaning of marriage holds together both the couple and the openness to children that society places such value on it. There are many sorts of relationship – business partners, friendships, colleagues – but marriage has a special place in culture and society because of what it stands for. Many young people aspire to marriage, because they see this.
It is the job of Parliament to make the laws and in doing so it has the duty to make an informed judgement. What the Church is doing now is to help inform that debate. It is important to remember that this proposal was not in the party manifestos at the last election. There has been no real consultation on whether people want such a change in the law at all. There has been no Green Paper or White Paper to explore the issues. Instead we simply had a party conference announcement, backed by the Prime Minister, that the Government were simply going to do this anyway, subject only to a consultation on how to do it, not whether we should do it.
When people complain that the Catholic Church is making a fuss about matters that don’t concern it, my bottom-line is this: This is not about ‘religious’ marriage; this is about the meaning of civil marriage for the whole of our society. Marriage has always meant a bond of one man and one woman, for life, creating the best environment in which their children can learn to become adults. Marriage exists not just for the couple, but for the common good of society; it is popular because it works. The Government should leave it alone. The meaning of marriage embraces not just the couple but also their children. We should value and treasure marriage as it is because it is key to family stability. There is no need for change.
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My thanks to Bishop Drainey.
Reader Comments
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Chrysostom said...
Well done, that bishop! But why silence from most of the other bishops?
And why silence on this matter - and also on abortion - from the many Diocesan JusticenPeace commissions who are so concerned that we drink awful coffee that has been grown in socialist co-operatives rather than by families?
And where is the Bishop of Brightonnarundel who thinks the worst issue of our time is that Catholics say the Hail Mary during the bidding prayers?
Our Lady Help of Christians - pray for us.
St Athanasius - pray for us
All Ye English Martyrs - pray for us.
St. Charles Lwanga and Companion Martyrs of Uganda, who died resisting homosexuality - pray for us.
Happy Feast Day - today is really the Feast of Corpus Christi throughout the Catholic Church, moved to Sunday by the out-of-touch English bishops.
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Catherine said...
There has NOT been silence from most of the other Bishops
1. the fact that the main pastoral letter from Archbihsops Smith and Nichols was approved by ALL the Bishops prior to being issued and read means ALL the 22 diocesan bishops including the bishopric of the Forces shared its sentiments and teaching by allowibg it to be issued in all of thier canonical jurisdictions
2. quite a numberof dioceses now have annual Masses to bless andf celebrate the fidelity of married couples commemorating jubilee anniversaries [indeed Southwark started the custom over 15 years ago and Westminster (which gers more publicity) began the custom 5 years ago (than ks to the initiative of Edmund Adamus Director for Marriage and Family Life in Westminster)
3. All the Catholic press as well as the Daily Telegraph reported the most recent Westminbster annual mass of thanksgiving for Matrimony along with the homily of Vincent Nichols.
4. The teaching of this homily is unquestionably soound and no doubt in response to the speech of of the Apostol9ic Nuncio to the E and W Bishops after Easter that the February Pastoral Letter was good but that "more must be done"
5. Bishop Mark Davies has just preached a superb homily in support of marriage and admonishing the Government during the 25th anniversary pilgrimage of the National Assoc of Families at Walsingham
of course each bishop should and can do more but lets not ignore what has happened so far
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epsilon said...
Well done Bishop Drainey!
How many people here have managed to stomach filling in the government's "consultation" questionnaire (they're not asking whether you agree, just how it should be implemented):
The very detailed guidelines from spuc:
http://spuc-director.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/spuc-launches-briefing-to-guide.html
The government online response form is here (under layers and layers of diversion tactics on the government "equalities" website):
https://www.homeofficesurveys.homeoffice.gov.uk/v.asp?i=48356xhlqw
You've only another few days to fill it in for what it's worth!
Wonder whether our anti-spuc ever-so-vocal "Catholic" friends have filled it in?
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New Friend said...
Your Bishop stays true to the party line. No original thinking or deviation in those words, just a re-working of an all too familar theme. Just because it is familar does not make it correct though and the big lie can be found in this quote:-
"The meaning of marriage embraces not just the couple but also their children."
Think about this for a moment. There are already many marriages which do not, and never will, involve children. Couples who cannot have children, because of the age of the woman. Couples who cannot have children because of the infertilty of one partner. (Like myself following cancer). Couples who do not want to have children.
We don't ban these couples from marriage because of their inability to procreate, so why should we ban same sex couples for this reason? The truth, of course, is this is not the real reason. You want to ban them from marrying because no same sex couple could ever have children of their own, and you object to a sex act without a pro-creation possibility. But as that actually is also true of the other couples too it really is naked discrimination of the kind that our society is gradually eliminating. Society is wiser now and this move will eventually be made, whether it succeeds now or not.
Whether the introduction of the idea has been done in a politicallly sound way is another matter entirely and clearly open to question.
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Morpork said...
New Friend misses an essential point of opposition to same-sex marriage that many of us, Catholic or no, believe: that no Government has the power to legislate on such a matter. By that, I do not mean that it purely the province of the Church, because we know from archaeological records that unions between male and female predate all written records, secular or religious. In other words, the institution of marriage as a union between male and female occurred in prehistoric times, and gradually become celebrated and later sanctified and legalised as the forms of human society evolved in their myriad ways.
So the union we call "marriage" as a union between man and woman was there from our dim, distant beginnings. And as far as the written record stretches back (and the oral record stretches even further back, though we have only the later written record of them), by about the time of the Sumerians and Hittites, we know that marriage had taken on both a religious and legal aspect. Now, New Friend may argue, it might not have been marriage in the way it is viewed now: the marriages may have been polygamous, bigamous or incestuous. Well, yes, we wouldn't be human with free wills otherwise. Diff'rent strokes, as they say, and societies develop their own cut rules according to the cloth of their needs.
But consider: throughout this time, the institution - the idea - of marriage remained the same: it was a union of man and woman. Alexander the Great, for instance, is thought to have married three times, most famously Roxana of Bactria (you know, where the camels come from), though some historians say the real love of his life was the nobleman Hephaestion. Maybe, but what we do know is that Alexander didn't marry him. Similarly, the Roman emperor Hadrian: the great love of his life was the Greek youth Antinious, who, though Hadrian later deified, as was the Roman way, he didn't actually marry.
And so on and so forth, until suddenly, in the second decade of the 21st century, Mr Cameron and his Notting Hill dinner-party cabinet suddenly decide there is an immediate need for same-sex marriages. It's hard to fathom the timing of it. It's not as though there's been a massive public outcry for it: civil partnerships already give those who want to legalise a same-sex union all the legal benefits and penalties that apply to the blessed or state-sanctioned unions of heterosexual unions.
So I guess what's at the crux of the matter is the very word "marriage". The Government wants to legislate to control the meaning of the word "marriage". And that's where, as Laurence Rees might say, we get a warning from history - or rather, two warnings.
One comes from several thousands years ago from a wise old Chinaman who said, in effect: "Above all, call all things by their correct name". He then goes on to detail what happens when legislators (whom he is addressing) do not call things by their correct name, but instead twist words to fit their own agenda. Much mayhem and misery of the common people ensues. Google Confucius if you want the full story.
The other warning comes, inevitably, from George Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four, although not so much the book itself, but the Appendix, which hardly anyone reads. It's worth ploughing through though, because it explains exactly how Newspeak (War=Peace etc) evolved and how politicians try to undermine the everyday words we use - and which in fact we have known within our bones from seemingly primordial times - to hollow them out and implant different, even contradictory meanings.
This is, I realise, an entirely secular argument, but I hope it is one that New Friend might see some merit in. I do, as a Catholic, have religious -based views, as outlined by the bishops. But my greatest fear is that once the Government succeeds in redefining "marriage" it will not stop there. Because we all know, with Government, the appetite grows in the eating.
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New Friend said...
Morpork
May I firstly say what a pleasure it is to read a reasoned and reasonable response. It makes a pleasant change from the usual rehash of the standard lines. You suggest that marriage has always meant the union of one man and one woman, but also admit that in the past this has not always been so. Indeed in some societies that remains true today and this fact proves, for me at least, that the argument put forward by those who oppose an extension is built on the sands of prejudice.
The crux of the matter is whether we accept that equality attitudes, and resultant legislation, trumps tradition. Whether we believe that we should extend the same opportunities to everyone, irrespective of race, colour, gender or sexual orientation. No-one proposes forcing Catholic same sex couples to marry, if they don't want to. No-one proposes forcing Catholic churches to marry same sex couples. No-one proposes forcing Catholics to view their own religious marriages as equal to a civil marriage of a same sex couple. All that is proposed is to allow a same sex couple to feel equal to everyone else by calling their union by the same name. Calling it a "civil partnership" automatically stigmatises it and this is unfair and unreasonable in 2012. It might be only a name, but the principal behind it is important. I am quite sure it will happen. Maybe not now. Maybe not for several years, but eventually. Then like most equality issues which were unpopular at the time, and drew opposition from the ignorant masses, it will soon be accepted as normal and after a while we will wonder what all the fuss was about. I see this on the same level as votes for women and equality for people of colour. No-one sensible objects to these any more and in time nor will they to same sex marriage.
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