The Host of the Faithful Married

Several weeks ago a small crowd appeared outside the Cathedral of St. Paul. They held up a tied dyed bed sheet reading “EQUALITY. They were protestants, (small p-), accent on the second syllable. As reported in the local paper, “Some of those gathered outside wore T-shirts stating, ‘Marriage is a human right. Not a heterosexual privilege.” Actually is it neither. As the Priesthood is a vocation, so is marriage a vocation. A calling. And the One making the call is not wearing a T-shirt. Or if He is, it is purple. Many hundreds of years of tradition separate marriage from this “I want it, and that makes it right!” T-shirt denomination. They believe marriage can be altered with the ease of ordering lunch, “I’ll have the fish instead”.

“Brian McNeill, a protester, said that by supporting the proposed amendment, Flynn ‘broke the long tradition of this archdiocese…to defend the civil rights of those who are marginalized in society.’ “

Irony, thy name is protester. Which victim group is more marginalized, the mainstream homosexual fringe or the married faithful? The spectacle of a crowd of (I presume) atheists, the irreligious, nature-pagans, vegans, other flavors of –ans and assorted denominations of progressives, outside the Cathedral of St. Paul’s Catholic church, invoking ‘civil rights’, in the name of homosexual behavior, should have caught the protestant’s attention (small p-, accent the second syllable) by its bright irony. Civil Rights? Civil rights are not premised on behavior. In my memory picture, civil rights marchers included many men wearing the white collar, linked arm in arm. They were working for equality in voting rights, not marriage privileges for men desirous of linking up with other men’s body parts. Along the curbsides, in the hire of whichever southern small town, were armed, blue shirted police forces, a phalanx of the ignorant, poised to intimidate. The men with the white collars stayed inside this day. And I saw no Benedictines or Poor Clares on the curb, armed with spiked censers or lead weighted Rosaries, ready to charge these protestants, (accent second syllable…) Does Brother McNeill admit to the chance Bishop Flynn is defending some other tradition? Of course some will have said to any who challenged them, “But I am a person of faith.” Or, “I am a Catholic.” Based upon what I ask? Another sidewalk passion display of the ever more tiresome liturgy, “We are outraged!”

Marriage changed utterly will spawn foul creatures. This ‘protest’ is not a call for justice but irrationality on parade. Its mendicants are everywhere. Gay parades, anti-war parades, (which ought always to be called not against the war, but against winning it), anti this and anti that parades. Like Mephistopheles in Faust, these are the spirits that always deny. The T-shirts might just as well have read, “Sodomy for all” or, “Hey, at least we don’t make babies.”
Insisting that a Bishop of the Catholic Church abandon a much longer tradition in the Name of a Behavior, insists he abandon Christianity as well. Curious that these odd secular faithless would believe some validity could be obtained by forcing a Church they disagree with to agree with them. If the ‘rules’ can be altered on the whims of the moment, why argue with such mutable authority? What the Catholic Church represents and what Catholics believe do not swim on whims of volition. The Church rests on the Rock of St. Peter, not the authority of a mood swing. These protestants, (small p-, accent second syllable), are insisting an authority they neither recognize nor agree with, should disregard centuries of tradition and belief about the Sanctity of Marriage and, for the sake of a tie dyed bed sheet, toss it all away. This asks much of a Bishop of the Catholic Church who raises the Host into the air, and sends prayers aloft.