We Need another Word for Marriage

The post-Christian secular world has highjacked the word “marriage,” so we need another word.

On September 27, Deacon Omar Gutierrez spoke on DiscerningHearts.com about Marriage, the foundation of the family in the Compendium of Social Doctrine of the Church.  In modern culture, marriage has been reduced to simply a de facto union he says. Quoting the Compendium promulgated in 2004 by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Gutierrez reads how de facto unions, “are based on a false conception of an individual’s freedom to choose and on a completely privatistic vision of marriage and family” (par. 227).

Gutierrez says, “If we redefine marriage, then you give me another word, another institution, that expresses the kind of love we all know exists and has to exist” (7m:45s)   A real family must be founded on an individual, longlasting commitment.  The host and Guiterrez discuss how simple happiness cannot be the basis for one’s commitment and intact married families are better for children and the whole community. It is an injustice to deprive children of a real family – that must be based on married long lasting commitment.

Full podcast available HERE

With the new privatistic vision of marriage and family, marriage has become something that can be “broken whenever we want” says Gutierrez. Something is wrong in the civil forum and Guitierrez read from the Compendium, “The solidity of the family nucleus is a decisive resource for the quality of life in society, therefore the civil community cannot remain indifferent to the destabilizing tendencies that threaten its foundations at their very roots” (par. 229). These statements are rooted in Saint JPII’s Evangelium Vitae and Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae.

Gutierrez understands the problem of unilateral no-fault divorce and the current redefining of marriage is a social injustice. “The bigoted approach today is in trying to redefine marriage away from something that it is – the institution that it really is — trying to redefine it into something that is merely willful that can be absolved or dissolved at the whim of one of the partners” (18m:35s).

The Compendium did not discuss the mineshaft in which the civil community has sunk with unilateral no-fault divorce. The whim of one partner is all it takes for the government to take over the family’s property and children.  If the defendant doesn’t agree to a separation plan proposed by the person wanting divorce, the government courts will take thousands and tens of thousands of dollars from the defendant with court-ordered payments for custody evaluators, court psychologists, business valuators, court appointed children’s attorneys, and the like.  Unfortunately, with no-fault divorce, even if one needs to separate to ensure one’s safety, the civil forum often leaves one worse off after divorce that prior to it.

Deacon Omar Gutierrez works in the Diocese of Omaha, is the President at Evangelium Institute, and a graduate of Franciscan University of Steubenville with a BA in Theology. He studied at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome (the Angelicum) and completed his MA in Theology from the University of Dallas.

Mary’s Advocates shows abandoned spouses how to petition the Church asking for proper pastoral care in which abandoners are admonished to uphold their marriage promises.