Does this post title shock you? It is a hard teaching. Who could accept it? I too was taken back when I first heard it from someone else, but it didn’t take long to see the logic. Heterosexuals have been watering down the true meaning of marriage for decades. A slippery slope need not be as fast as the metaphor implies. A lava flow can be slower than 1km/hour, but will destroy everything in its path.
The foundation for the marriage slope was laid by ending the idea of “permanent”. No fault divorce laws coincided with a message that marriage is a mere convenience, an institution that exists only for the personal happiness and pleasure of two individuals. For no fault divorce, it's basically enough to declare that a couple is no longer happy (irreconcilable differences). There is no need to “work things out”. We can hardly blame the gay community for this. In the eyes of God however, divorce doesn’t really exist. A couple may need to be legally parted in the case of abuse or other intolerable circumstance (CCC 2383), but once God joins a valid one-flesh-union, it exists. There is no way to make it stop existing. Consider your life. Once you are conceived, you exist. Nothing that happens down the road will change this.
If no fault divorce is the foundation, artificial contraception/sterilization raised-up the angle for the sliding slope of marriage. Homosexuals have no use for contraception or sterilization, so don’t blame them. If marriage is for the personal happiness and pleasure of two individuals, then children are obviously an unnecessary by-product. Contraception blows apart the triune nature of marriage, sex & procreation, furthering the idea that marriage is about mutual gratification and sex is for anyone’s pleasure, married or not. Once the rationale is fragmented, the gay community can easily pick-up the scattered pieces of marriage and reform them into something “else”, something that does not reflect the image & likeness of God.
My wife and I help with the marriage ministry at our parish. One thing we do for the engaged couples is give a talk on sex & intimacy in marriage, which relates to the theology of the body, which relates to the image & likeness of God, which relates to the way God loves. From the eternal love between the Father and the Son proceeds a third person called the Holy Spirit. In a similar way, the love between a husband and wife helps to create a third person called a baby. Consider the Catholic wedding vows as well:
Ø Have you come here freely?
God loves freely, so we should love freely. Love is an act of the will that cannot be forced.
“No one takes it from me, but I lay it down (my life) of my own accord..." (John 10:18)
Ø Will you honor each other as man & wife for the rest of your lives?
God holds nothing back in loving us totally and permanently.
“…he loved them to the end.” (John 13:1)
“…And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Mat 28:20)
Ø Will you accept children lovingly from God?
God’s love is always fruitful and brings life. Marriage does the same.
“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)
"Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.” (Gen 9:1)
Procreation is an indispensable part of marriage and the one flesh union should always be something totally self-giving that holds nothing back; it should be God-like. Catholics call this being “open to life”. Whenever procreation is mentioned as part of marriage however, infertile couples are called on the carpet. If infertile couples can marry, why can’t gay couples? We must remember that an infertile male/female union is still of the same procreative “type” just like any male/female union.
Consider a baseball analogy. A baseball team is orientated to winning baseball games. Even if they NEVER win a game, no matter how much they try, they are still a baseball team and are always allowed on the baseball diamond. A football team also NEVER wins a baseball game, but a football team is not relevant to winning baseball games, neither is a soccer team, or any other kind of team other than a baseball team.
It is really heterosexuals that built the slow sliding slope that leads directly to gay “marriage”. True marriage reflects the image & likeness of God. It is meant to be unitive, procreative, mutually exclusive and permanent and none of these aspects can be intentionally separated. This is not true because the Catholic Church teaches it. The Catholic Church teaches it because it is true!
