Quote of the Day

. . . [I]n denying the sanctity of love between same-sex couples, the [Roman Catholic] Church privileges its own institutional traditions over the lives of real people trying to find meaning in their most intimate relationships. Legitimizing same-sex marriage enlarges the concept of marriage without negating the prior meaning. It makes marriage more like the Church, open to all people regardless of gender preference. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

As Bishop [Edward] Burns notes, the Church defines marriage as “a sexual union.” No one who has ever been married would define marriage that way. As the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid writes of marriage, “All’s far from done when pleasure’s over.” And the task of marriage isn’t just to create babies; all living things reproduce. Marriage is a mutual commitment of two people to create themselves – to forge in their love and loyalty to each other an atmosphere where each can discover all the inchoate power of his or her own soul. It’s demanding, to be sure; it asks of us a certain largeness of heart that we may not always be comfortable with or even capable of. But that’s love – and in the end that’s the only thing that makes a marriage sacred. The God that I believe in cares all about love – all love, the fecundity of the spirit as much as that of the body – and doesn’t really give a damn about the shape of a couple’s genitals.

– Jim Hale
"Marriage, Gender and Religion"
Junea Empire
August 13, 2013

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Daniel Helminiak on the Vatican's Natural Law Mistake
Relationship: The Crucial Factor in Sexual Morality
Marriage: "Part of What is Best in Human Nature"
The Many Manifestations of God's Loving Embrace
Making Love, Giving Life