Why All This Fuss About Marriage and Its Definition?

Among the many things that work against those of us opposed to the redefinition of marriage are two in particular that are troubling, apathy and ignorance.  One we can do nothing really about.  It's largely the byproduct of a selfish mindset indicative of a serious lack of character.  The other however can be overcome.

Colin Corcoran is attempting to overcome the ignorance out there on why marriage is such a big deal for believers and for society:

Coercion takes many forms. Banning religious symbols in the workplace lest they offend someone is no less than a gag order. Funny how we can do that to our own people while giving religious extremists arms and support to slaughter Christians wholesale for opposing a government that would make the possession of a Bible or just being a Christian a capital offense. Here though we do no less. The fight for rights has been hard fought by many subgroups (including various Christian ones), and that fight was protected by the very constitution those now deemed politically correct seek to shred via legislation, in the hopes that the inevitable swing of the pendulum will not erase their gains. Hoping that by making it a hate crime, forbidden speech, or heavily punished speech that they will be able to subvert not only God’s plan, but the pendulum that allows some form of balance. Any historian can see the repeating pattern from the roaring 20′s to the tent revivals of the early 50′s – but this time we have allowed the game to change by criminalizing thoughts and words, not actions. Their idea seems to be to push the pendulum so far in one direction that it sticks.

Marriage is the purview of those churches who manage covenants between God and Man, civil unions are the purview of the state. I have no issue with civil unions regulated by the state, but the current ruling as I read it, is a small step onto a slippery slope which aims to turn churches into “hate groups” when they fail to marry some due to the sex of their chosen partner or partners. Never-mind that the Catholic Church already refuses marriage to divorcees, couples not intending offspring, and non-Catholics unless marrying a Catholic and agreeing to raise the children in the Catholic faith. Redefining marriage has opened a Pandora’s box of consequences, as if it can be redefined to include two women then why can it not be redefined to include two women and a man? Or two men and a woman? Why not three? Four? Five? More?

You see there is a difference between a marriage and a civil union, one is a sacrament of God and one is a legal construct of man. One is indissoluble by man and one is not. One is a sacred vow before and to God with specific promises between the man and woman exchanged just as he ordained, and one is not. The sacrament of marriage is unique in that husband and wife enter into a covenant with each other with God as their witness and in doing so are making a sacred promise to honor that covenant not just to each other but to God. For Catholics, matrimony or marriage is one of the seven sacraments on which our faith is grounded. Any erosion of those sacraments constitutes an erosion of the faith, and thereby a direct attack on the Church.

He's just warming up.  Finish with him, then pass that wisdom along.

It's good, thoughtful and necessary stuff.

Carry on.