As the Pope upholds traditional marriage with zeal,
the US Supreme Court takes on two cases that may
well decide the immediate future of this issue
By Russell Shaw
January 24, 2013
Defenders of traditional marriage may not believe it, but the Supreme Court's apparent intention to decide two important same-sex marriage cases by midyear may be a stroke of good fortune for their side.
This timing means the Supreme Court's first head-on tangle with this issue almost certainly will come
before President Obama gets an opportunity to nominate another justice for the court and thereby probably tip its balance in favor of gay marriage.
True, it would be foolish to predict what the court as presently constituted will do with the two cases now before it--one of them focused on the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the other on California's Proposition 8 barring same-sex marriage in that state. As so often before, Justice Anthony Kennedy appears to be the swing vote, and how Justice Kennedy will swing on DOMA and Proposition 8 is anybody's guess.
Still, it's at least a possibility that the court will opt for a local option solution, leaving it to states to decide this question for themselves.
Even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the senior liberal among the justices, has said she thinks the Supreme Court erred back in 1973 in abruptly imposing abortion on the entire nation instead of allowing a consensus to jell. Ginsburg and others might well say the same thing of gay marriage today.
The court will hear oral arguments in the two cases in just a few weeks. Its decision, as noted, is expected around the time its term ends in late June. Legal and constitutional considerations will naturally predominate in its deliberations. But important as these are, even larger issues are at stake.
Just how large was suggested by Pope Benedict XVI in his annual pre-Christmas address to the Roman Curia. The Pope obviously wasn't thinking only about the U.S. (same-sex marriage is a red-hot issue in France just now), but what he said does apply here as much as in France or anywhere else.
The central question in this dispute, he insisted, is whether the fundamental nature of gender, personhood, and marriage is forever fixed or forever in flux.
In making his argument, Benedict turned to remarks by the Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, an opponent of gay marriage. Rabbi Bernheim quoted an aphorism by Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), the French proto-feminist who was the mistress of existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre: "One is not born a woman, one becomes so" (
On ne nait pas femme, on le devient).
[Great slogan, but inherently and ultimately senseless. No mother in human history has not known whether her newborn child is a boy or a girl! (With the very rare exceptions of babies with ambiguous genitalia)]
As a feminist battle cry opposing social conventions of her day, this makes sense of a sort. But as a statement of timeless fact, it's the deconstructing of gender and gender-based relationships. Here, as Pope Benedict observed, is the foundation for "a new philosophy of sexuality."
Its central premise is that sexual identity is not "a given element of nature" but a role people decide for themselves. Formerly, the role was imposed by society, but today, de Beauvoir would have it, individuals do it on their own, and the words of Genesis, "male and female he created them," are irrelevant. "From now on," Pope Benedict said, "there is only the abstract human being, who chooses for himself what his nature is to be."
But if gender is something individuals choose for themselves, variations on the theme of marriage and family must include whatever preferences and whims suit particular individuals, with same-sex unions one. In an earlier, more clear-thinking time and place, this was what people called playing God. Does the Supreme Court really wish to join that game?
Russell Shaw was secretary for public affairs of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops/United States Catholic Conference from 1969 to 1987. He is the author of 20 books.
This started out being a brief comment on how Benedict XVI has found himself the first paladin and de facto general of the armies in the secular war on marriage and the family, but it inevitably took on a wider perspective and sort of wrote itself while I was watching EWTN's coverage of the March for Life in Washington (always a moving experience). But I am glad to get these thoughts off my chest, but not off my mind...
Some thoughts on
the burdens of Benedict XVI
It's been said often enough as to make it almost seem meaningless that Benedict XVI and the Church are facing 'a completely new world' compared to what it was for John Paul II. But it is never pointed out that the difference is not just the inevitable incremental changes brought on by the decades that separate 1978 when John Paul II became Pope, and 2005 when it was Benedict XVI's turn.
The changes brought on by leapfrogging technological progress and the growing influence of media, new and old, to shape public thinking and mores, have produced a quantum mutation in the natural evolution of society such that the last three decades of the 20th century now seem utterly retrograde and quaint compared to the present.
The challenges faced by Benedict XVI and the Church today are not just generational - as, say, Marxism and Communism were globally, and the priesthood crisis was in the Church, in the final half of the 20th century - but 'civilizational', to use an analogous term.
Islam is openly challenging Christianity not just as the world's dominant religion but in ways intended to subjugate it and the whole world under a universal caliphate. Not that Marxism-Communism did not aim for the same thing (only, the global village would have been one giant gulag-commune, rather than a caliphate) nor that atheist materialism was any less fanatic and life-engulfing a 'religion' as Islam. But Marxism-Communism did not have the centuries-old durability of the latter - it still had to stand the test of time, so to speak, and as it happens, failed it spectacularly after less than a century.
At the same time, the forces of secularism against civilization-as- we-have-always-known-it, have marched on relentlessly and, it seems, with giant strides, in their determined assault on the basic institutions of marriage and the family. Concepts of nature and natural law that have never been questioned before in the cultures of the world are now under threat of being overturned, or have already been overturned in some European countries and in some states of the USA. The shame is that this is happening in countries that were once proudly Christian (Europe and Latin America) or still mostly Christian (the USA).
Benedict XVI, who cannot be voted out of office but who is mortal and will soon be 86, remains the only world leader capable of leading the defense of civilization and its traditional institutions and values. During which he must also restore the primacy of God and a sense of ethics to Western societies, while seeking to rebuild and renew the Church that has been so eroded in the past five decades. In all this, he has led constantly, consistently, unequivocally. With no arms but the truth and his power of expression, but with the authority of the Vicar of Christ, and the grace and protection of the Lord himself.
But media, starting with the Vaticanistas, fail to see the vastness of the panorama that Benedict must deal with, in their preoccupation with the mundane and meaningless trivia of cheap thrills like Vatileaks or perverted priests as being the 'crisis' or 'the main problem' besetting Benedict. Such tunnel vision is appalling and inexcusable.
It is as if they are subconsciously resisting the idea that Benedict XVI actually has to deal with far greater challenges than anything John Paul VI had to face in 26 years. As if they cannot accept the reality that this octogenarian, who is so mild-mannered and very modest (despite all his obvious great gifts and already considerable achievements as Pope), everyone's grand-daddy, could be capable of leaving his mark on history - one that will be, at a minimum, no less consequential than his great predecessor did.
In short, there seems to be a deliberate shunning of the idea that the adjective 'great' could ever be used for Benedict XVI the way it was evoked so much for John Paul II even before he died. An obvious bias from the beginning that I could never understand, considering that Joseph Ratzinger had the most distinguished CV of any cardinal in the past two centuries before becoming Pope.
Against all such media perversities, on top of all the global adversities already weighing down the Cross he must bear daily, God grant our Holy Father many more fruitful years to carry on, and may new capable leaders emerge to back him up.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 26/01/2013 00:11]