More Thoughts on Civil and Sacramental Marriage

Hello All,

An interested reader of my earlier post sent some helpful thoughts that I thought I would share, then quickly -- and again tentatively -- respond to.

Here is what he wrote:

"I think, however, that some of the concerns you raise derive from a watered-down view of civil marriage, or at least what it should be.

"Civil marriage is an institution derived from the complementarity of the sexes that exists when one man and one woman commit themselves, before the community, to each other and the possibility of children. Because the institution is rooted in the community and serves as the basis of the family, it is an essential component of the common good. The State has legitimate, indeed compelling, interests in ensuring a stable legal and societal framework for the creation of healthy families, providing a suitable environment for the development of children and in promoting social investment in the community. 

"Admittedly, the trend away from this natural law concept of marriage to a contractual notion of marriage has led to the very question you raise.  From a Catholic natural law perspective, civil marriage is and should be different viewed by the state as different from sacramental marriage.  Taking complementarity, and community-interest part out of it, however, exacerbates the differences even more, leading the questions you raise.

"I guess what I am saying is that marriage is one institution, with two distinct aspects, civil and sacramental, but we are losing sight of the true nature of the civil aspect."

 

 

 

Here are my tentative reactions:

 

I think these points are well taken, but one riposte that I imagine some would make is that as a political society the US no longer has (if ever it had) that form of "unity" upon which is predicated any "community" that can be expected to share a thick, nonwatered conception of civil marriage.  The man/woman complementarity and possibility-of-children understandings, for example, might be thought by some to exclude marriage between people too old to bear children, while permitting committed polygamy of the Old Testament variety.  Yet US law has never been less than friendly to marriage between people with no intention of bearing children, while also being remarkably hostile to Old Testament style polygamy.  I remain a bit less than certain, then, that civil marriage in the US ever has ever been other than either watered down, or expressive of the sacramental conceptions of some (principally mainline Protestant) religious traditions at the frequent expense of other, quite venerable religious traditions.

 

It might be, then, that contemporary, more even-handed American society is more aptly characterized not so much as a "community" than as a sort of *confederation* of communities, each of which is founded upon an ecclesial or other subculture which speaks to those matters of heart, mind and spirit that are often the province of our religious traditions.  In such case that which would unite our multiple communities would be a shared minimal core of values of mutual respect or "tolerance," with which values many marginally differing views of sacramental marriage, but only a fairly thin view of civil union, might be consistent. 

 

The picture just hurriedly sketched is of course a familiar one, more or less constituting as it does a staple of "classical liberal" political thought.  Hence if now equally familiar "communitarian" and cognate objections to the longterm sustainability of liberal confederation are by and large right, there might be good reason to doubt we can draw as sharp a cut between sacramental and civil marriage as I am wondering about.  (This is another way of saying, I suppose, what I suggested on Friday -- that what I'm floating here might involve more disentanglement of politics and culture, more "compartmentalization," than can plausibly be expected of real live human beings.)

 

Incidentally, my understanding (admittedly thin here!) is that Rousseau advocated a kind of thinned out "civil regligion" that would be publicly observed society-wide, and would coexist with thicker, traditional religious communions within such civil society.  R's motivation in proposing this, presumably, would have been that even a loose confederation of distinct religious traditions must share some basic values that are themselves "religious" or perhaps "metaphysical" in character in some plausible sense.  If he was right about that (and if I'm right about him!), then perhaps civil marriage would likewise have to be "civilly religious" in some sense, even while leaving the thicker, more sacramental nature that marriage has within specific religious traditions, to those traditions.  Maybe this is why the mayor or other official who officiates over the "civil" weddings that preceed church weddings always seems to wear a big bright red sash!

 

Anyway, still pondering all of this.  Thanks for listening.