Will The Catholic Church Marry Same Sex Couples?

[truthfinder]

Josh Popes can't just go around claiming things are infallible.  If a Pope tried to enforce heresy he would first be approached by other Bishops and told to stop.  If he persisted past that he would either lose his authority or probably be struck dead by God, which I believe did happen to one Pope?  Anyway  @Nihil Obstat or @truthfinder  I think could clarify it better on what would happen regarding a Pope who holds and tries to enforce heretical teachings.  

In many ways, the belief in infallibility means that it would not even get this far.  But what is declared as infallible is pretty limited.  That is, the Pope (any pope) can swan around saying any heresy he wants and still be a valid pope.  The belief in infallibility means that we believe that the Holy Spirit will prevent the pope from any official pronouncement that contains heresy, that is a proper ex cathedra pronouncement. But it would still be the moral obligation of those around the pope (and even the laity, if we follow Cardinal Newman's understanding), to say what he is saying or proposing to teach is heretical. 

[Ice_nine]

If people don't respond to evangelisation, does that mean we stop evangelising?

No, but that has little to do with withdrawing from the state. I like the idea of building a separate society. I don't think that's fundamentally anti-Catholic. Almost like when you look at the early church who had no power in the prevailing political class until what, 300 ADish? We're certainly losing political power. That's a reality we have to deal with.

[Guest]

Not instantly, no. But such a pope could be deposed if protocols are properly followed.

 

So what if protocols weren't followed? He would just remain Pope? And I would still be called to remain Catholic? I don't know. It seems like one or the other would have to happen. It would be like if a Pope said Jesus wasn't really God. Either that pope would have to be replaced immediately or I have to consider finding a non denominational church. If my thinking is wrong here help me see why. It would be like if Catholicism joined with Islam to form a one world religion together. How could one remain Catholic at this point? What Church would they go to? Or could these scenarios never happen? 

[Papist]

I suspect the church will get out of the civil marriage business. 

Church does not see it as a "business".

[Papist]

well good luck with that. Seems like a failure on instructing either.

Define success on instructing. 

[Nihil Obstat]

So what if protocols weren't followed? He would just remain Pope? And I would still be called to remain Catholic? I don't know. It seems like one or the other would have to happen. It would be like if a Pope said Jesus wasn't really God. Either that pope would have to be replaced immediately or I have to consider finding a non denominational church. If my thinking is wrong here help me see why. It would be like if Catholicism joined with Islam to form a one world religion together. How could one remain Catholic at this point? What Church would they go to? Or could these scenarios never happen? 

One by definition cannot be a formal heretic without the heresy being grave and manifest. This requires judgement on the part of proper authority. 

[Papist]

So what if protocols weren't followed? He would just remain Pope? And I would still be called to remain Catholic? I don't know. It seems like one or the other would have to happen. It would be like if a Pope said Jesus wasn't really God. Either that pope would have to be replaced immediately or I have to consider finding a non denominational church. If my thinking is wrong here help me see why. It would be like if Catholicism joined with Islam to form a one world religion together. How could one remain Catholic at this point? What Church would they go to? Or could these scenarios never happen? 

I suggest not fret over an absurdity that is highly unlikely of occur.

[Nihil Obstat]

 

One by definition cannot be a formal heretic without the heresy being grave and manifest. This requires judgement on the part of proper authority. 

Just for example showing why an investigation is required... Say the pope legitimately did not realize his statements were heretical. John XXII for instance. Perhaps he simply misspoke. But in either case, to be a manifest heretic necessarily requires that the purported heresy is investigated and declared as such by proper authorities. Keep in mind that they judge the statements only, not the pope qua papacy.

The fatal flaw of the sedevacantists is that they do not understand that the judgement of heresy cannot be left to private judgement, no matter how obvious they think it is. Our structures of authority are still required.

[franciscanheart]

One interesting development here in Quebec, where same sex marriage has been legal for a while, is that we're starting to see social rights and responsibilities associated with marriage come to be associated with simply having a baby. Basically marriage is progressively losing ever more of its relevance, so the family has to be protected through new laws that have nothing to do with marriage.

I suspect that once the dust settles around the whole "gay rights" drama, a social reflexion will take place where it will be acknowledged that marriage used to serve some important functions in society and that a return to something like that is warranted. But this is going to take decades probably.

Can you explain what you mean about social rights and responsibilities?

https://canonlawblog.wordpress.com/2014/12/04/i-guess-one-in-three-americans-dont-know-a-good-thing-when-they-see-it/ 

I guess one in three Americans don’t know a good thing when they see it

December 4, 2014

The gist of a recent poll is that one in three Americans do not want religious ministers to “sign marriage licenses as representatives of the state” so as to avoid, I guess, a connection between “civil marriage” and “religious marriage”, as if, you know, those are two fundamentally different things. Let me rephrase the poll findings: one in three Americans don’t understand what clergy signing marriage certificates are doing (and aren’t doing!) and so don’t know a good thing when they see it.

The call for ministers to boycott civil wedding certificates proposed under the wrongly-named “Marriage Pledge” (it is actually a Pledge Not to Acknowledge Real Marriages) probably would have gone nowhere except that it found an ally in the journal First Things. Well, that’s their responsibility. Mine is to make sure that as many people as possible see that the Radner-Seitz “Marriage Pledge” rests on a faulty understanding of what makes marriage and, in turn, of what ministers of religion do in certifying that a given marriage took place before them. I am not going to review all of the problems inherent in Radner-Seitz’s proposal, though they are many. Here I address just two points.

In the West (yes, I know Eastern Christianity thinks differently, but that problem is for another day), it has been settled matter among all Christians (though secular elements of the West do not realize that Christian thought has permeated their consciousness, too), it has been, as I say, settled matter in the West that the consent of the parties establishes marriage. If you think that the State made up marriage and confers it on a couple, or if you think that the Church created and bestows marriage on believers, or that God, or Zeus, or the Big Cosmic Other sends this thing called marriage on two people who want it, or if you hold any other theory of marriage whatsoever, besidesthat the consent of the parties makes marriage—then you need to stop reading this blog post and start studying solid treatises on marriage going back to the ancient Romans in some cases, and virtually everything since the 13th century, secular and religious alike.

I’m serious. If you do not really see that the couple’s consent makes marriage then you don’t understand what’s at stake.

Now, for those who do know that the consent of the parties makes marriage, the fundamental supposition of the Radner-Seitz Pledge—namely, that the State has changed the definition of marriage (which itcan’t do and, even by its own count, has not succeeded in doing yet!) and, as a result, ministers who care about real marriage should not confer or cooperate in conferring marriage (as understood by at least some States), that supposition, I say, collapses: The State does notconfer marriage on couples, couples confer marriage on each other! All the State does, and for that matter all the Church does, (and, for that matter, all that God does between baptized persons, but that discussion is more complex and is not immediately relevant to a discussion of Church-State cooperation in the matter of marriage), is to recognize what the couple did, namely, they married. If, therefore, a given couple has entered what natural law knows as marriage (a life-long, sexually exclusive, union of one man and one woman, etc.), it is right and even necessary that the State recognize their consent as initiating a marriage irrespective of whether that marriage was entered into before government officials or—and here we get closer to the concerns of Radner-Seitz—before the officials of a religious body.

But, here’s the key: the role of a state official and a religious minister is, as far as the couple entering marriage are concerned, identical—both are merely public, reliable witnesses of the couple’s action; neither the State nor the Church is the actor or the agent or the instigator behind marriage. The crisis that Radner-Seitz see in ‘civil marriage’ (I’ll use their term for now, though it can be misleading, for I agree with them that there is a crisis in ‘civil marriage’) is that the State also thinks it can witness a ‘marriage’ between two persons of the same sex. That error needs urgent correction, of course. But the mere fact that the State thinks it can witness “same-sex marriages” does not disqualify it from witnessing the marriages of people eligible for marriage! A witness (whether State or Church) is a witness, not an actor or an agent—a role reserved by natural law to the couple in marriage. That the American State accepts, besides it own officers, religious ministers certifying that two people entered marriage before them is a welcome and, these days, rather uncommon accommodation to religious practice (!), but, I say again, whether before a lowly justice-of-the-peace in the town clerk’s office or the Cardinal Archbishop in his cathedral, it’s the couplewho brought about that marriage, and no one else. The witness(es) from city hall or the cathedral, literally, had nothing to do with it!

Which brings me to point two: as it is the couple who brought about their marriage, the minister’s refusal to confirm for the State that they are married is, first, to deprive the State of information it has a right to have (the just regulation of marriage is a civil responsibility), and second, it is at least to importune the couple with the obligation of a second ceremony if they wish to enjoy the benefits and protection that the State accords married couples. More gravely, though, bifurcating the ‘spiritual marriage’ from the ‘secular marriage’ introduces serious problems in determining which wedding ceremony actually united the couple in marriage—and that’s assuming all couples undergoing one ceremony will undergo two. And for what? A minister’s refusal to certify a couple’s marrying before him does not harm the State, it does not send some bold message of defiance, it does not do much of anything, except deprive a truly married couple of the benefits that would have been accorded—and still are accorded to other couples whose ministers decline Radner-Seitz’s proposal—simply upon the minister’s declaration that what really happened really happened.

Scholion on the phrase: “By the power invested in me by the State of [whatever], I now pronounce you husband and wife.” This line is recently being quoted by some as a sort of ‘gotcha’ to prove that religious ministers are acting as state officials in conferring marriage. Hardly.

First, as would have been apparent had this proposal undergone any serious ecumenical discussion prior to appearing in First Things, Catholic wedding rites feature no such language. This phrasing is, therefore, solely a non-Catholic minister problem.

Second, recalling that the couple’s consent makes marriage, the phrase can (if others insist on using it) easily and rightly be understood to mean that “I, a religious minister, am recognized by the State as being able to verify for it that this man and this women entered marriage, and that they have done exactly that before my eyes” etc. The State does not have the power to marry people, so it cannot confer that power on others; the State does have the power to witness to the marriage of people, and it can confer that power on others. Ministers using this language are simply declaring that they have the power to witness and communicate to others that two people married.

At this point, I don’t think that there’s much to be gained by discussing with Radner-Seitz proponents a list of “what if” and “what then” scenarios regarding where marriage seems headed in America (they have their hunches, I have mine, and our lists likely overlap in many places), not until we get settled about who brings about a marriage between two people eligible for it, and what the role of the witness(es) to that wedding really is. If folks aren’t clear on that, well, … + + +

Do you have a tl;dr version of your doc dump?

[Nihil Obstat]

 

Can you explain what you mean about social rights and responsibilities?

Do you have a tl;dr version of your doc dump?

That is the equivalent of about two pages of a trade paperback. Lol. TL;DR: Civil involvement in sacramental marriages is a tacit recognition on the state's part of the truth of the Church's claim of jurisdiction over marriage. The Church acting as witness for the state is nothing more than the recognition of the existence of a valid marriage contracted under Her moral authority. To refuse this recognition means refusing to acknowledge to the state the truth of our claim of authority over marriages. Acting as witness in this case does not imply in any sense a recognition of immoral unions.

[franciscanheart]

 

That is the equivalent of about two pages of a trade paperback. Lol. TL;DR: Civil involvement in sacramental marriages is a tacit recognition on the state's part of the truth of the Church's claim of jurisdiction over marriage. The Church acting as witness for the state is nothing more than the recognition of the existence of a valid marriage contracted under Her moral authority. To refuse this recognition means refusing to acknowledge to the state the truth of our claim of authority over marriages. Acting as witness in this case does not imply in any sense a recognition of immoral unions.

That was perfect. Thanks.

[little2add]

I wonder why or if a true  practicing Catholic's would really be interested in a church wedding.   

 It is illogical