The Roots of Same-sex "Marriage"

Bishop Thomas Wenski of Orlando really gets it. From the Catholic News Agency:

"(Bishop Wenski) characterized the 'culture wars' as a conflict about 'the understanding of man and his relationship to truth and reality.'

One side, which, he argued, includes homosexual marriage advocates, 'holds that anyone can essentially create his or her own reality. This side holds for a radical autonomy by which truth is determined not by the nature of things but by one's own individual will.'

This position, in the bishop’s view, is a 'recipe for tyranny.'

The other side, the bishop argued, thinks men and women are 'not self-creators but creatures.'

'Truth is not constructed, but received and thus must reflect the reality of things,' he said. This position promises freedom that is achievable only 'through adherence to objective truth which we do not, and could never, invent.'”

We absolutely agree with the good bishop. The California justices’ action presents a foundational challenge to the Catholic Church, and to the civilization she has guided. The teaching of the Church and the civilization on marriage is clear and unambiguous. Marriage is an institution created by God, and a part of created nature: it is the union of one man and one woman. That truth is a revealed truth and a truth of nature.

Thus, the Holy Father has called the protection of marriage as a union between one man and one woman a “non-negotiable” issue. There is simply nothing to “negotiate.” To decide that marriage means a man “marrying” another man is to sever contact with reality. Reality can’t negotiate with non-reality. And when we see a non-reality offered up as something good and valuable, we should know where it ultimately comes from. Same-sex “marriage” is a created non-reality. “A created non-reality” is just another way of saying: “a lie.” Satan has always tried to make non-reality--an autonomous existence independent from God--into reality. Thus, Satan is the father of lies.

The underlying conflict is between reality as something which exists versus reality as being what men think about what exists. So marriage, as understood by the supporters of same-sex “marriage,” is not a thing whose structure has been revealed by God and is a part of created nature; no, marriage is what men think it is. And if men change their minds about what is marriage, marriage changes. This understanding of reality appoints man as Lord of Creation. Again, purely Satanic: “I will not serve.”

A perfectly clear enunciation of this came from Karl Marx. Everybody has heard of Marx’s major works: Das Kapital, and the Communist Manifesto. But not too many know of these very early words, from his doctoral dissertation, written in 1841 when he was only 24: “Philosophy makes no secret of it. The confession of Prometheus: In simple words, I hate the pack of gods [Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound] is its own confession, its own aphorism against all heavenly and earthly gods who do not acknowledge human self-consciousness as the highest divinity. It will have none other beside.”

"Human self-consciousness as the highest divinity, with none beside it." As Bishop Wenski says: it's a 'recipe for tyranny'; as the quote from Marx shows it's already happened and can happen again.

Posted by Gibbons J. Cooney