Right to Marriage?

by Christine
Today I received a personal message on Facebook from a long time friend from France.
This friend has 4 grown children, but he has never married and has lived his whole adult life in cohabitation. He's always been on the far left side, ecologist, rebellious to any faith, religion, law, etc.. A pure product from 1968 who stayed stuck there.
His message was a "comic" showing 2 men hand in hand saying:
"It is sad that nowadays people demonstrate not to gain rights but to make sure other people do not get rights."
It made me really sad... but after all, what does he know about marriage?
He has always seen marriage as an alienating institution, an absurd and outdated heritage from a traditionalist society. Our French president, by the way, must think the same with 5 children from 2 different women he never married, and living now with a not-yet-divorced woman! Isn't it paradoxical to hear them support "gay marriage?" Why would someone who has always rejected marriage defend and support "gay marriage?" "Gay marriage" is NOT marriage, it just mimics marriage. And we know well that anything that mimics something good has evil roots.
We are often accused of 'intolerance.' Yet those who prone "tolerance" are the ones who rudely and aggressively throw garbage at us for speaking the truth. Marriage cannot be reduced to a mere legal right.

Tous pour le Mariage Facebook profile picture

The same day, we also received a short video of a drunkard at the French demonstration who was yelling: "A father, a mother, it's not complicated! IT'S NATURAL! Everybody wants a father and a mother! I want a father and a mother! I'm not going to go home and say Hi dad! Hi dad! Everybody wants a home with a dad AND a mom!..." In his drunkenness he was much wiser than our ecologist friend who should at least understand the "natural" aspect of the whole thing.

Still the same day, I received another short note, from a French psychoanalyst friend this time:
"The probable unconscious fantasy of homosexuals is a fantasy of omnipotence. To get married you need two different people. Or getting married with the same is like getting married with oneself. It says I refuse to be in need of another..."

The question of equal rights is for the "feel good-do good" and it causes much damage. As I said above, marriage is not a question of rights, and deep in our hearts, we all know it.
So what is behind all this? As Gilles Bernheim says: the goal is to undermine the foundations of the individual and the family.
I guess our civilization is on the verge of disappearing.  It's not rocket-science, just look back at the Greeks and the Romans... "When anthropologist J. D. Unwin studied the origins and development of eighty civilizations, he discovered a profound connection between the vitality of a society and the strength of its marriages and families. He concluded that any society that did not direct its sexual energies toward the good of marriage and family would not last." (Jason Evert-2004- citing Donald DeMarco, 1999)

Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris

For those of you who speak French, here is the complete essay from Gilles Bernheim, Chief Rabbi of France.

Healing in the Sacrament, Part 1

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By Christine

Sacramental marriage is losing ground. 

Tying the knot

In the last 35 years, the amount of people getting married in a church has dropped 70%, and continues to decline by 5% each year. More and more young couples prefer cohabitation to a church wedding. It seems like marriage is only attractive to homosexuals now!

In our own family, most of our nephews and nieces, and even one of our daughters, have settled for cohabitation. What is their motive? Fear of the life-commitment? Rejection of the Church and institutions in general? Fear of divorce? They can’t even say they want to be different because everybody cohabitates! The ones who are different are the ones who marry.

I want to scream at them that what they reject is exactly what could make them happy; happy beyond anything they could imagine! What they reject is precisely what they long for. They have preconceived ideas about marriage, clichés that are conveyed by our culture. If they only knew what the grace of the Sacrament of Matrimony represents. They’re all enthusiastic about superhero movies, special effects defying all natural laws, magic, and the extraordinary, but they don’t know that the grace of the Sacrament of Matrimony beats them all!

Avengers: http://picsmixer.blogspot.com/2012/05/blog-post_08.html

I feel compelled to write about it, to yell on the rooftops that Christ’s grace is incredibly powerful, efficient in very concrete ways, and the best thing that can ever happen to anyone! I can affirm it because Christian and I experience it daily in our marriage! I want everyone to know that marriage rocks!

Of course, we didn’t know much about marriage either when we said yes on July 2^nd, 1977. We didn’t receive any marriage preparation and had been cohabiting for almost three years. Still, we didn’t think cohabiting could be a permanent solution, and we wanted to seal our love in marriage. We wanted to have children, and we instinctively knew that only a Catholic marriage would give our family the solid foundations it would need.

July 2nd, 1977

Now, 35 years later, we are in awe at what Christ accomplished in our relationship.

We wrote about the day we met on November 27^th, 1974. What we haven’t told you yet, is how broken and wounded we both were, and how we added to our brokenness through our three years of cohabiting. 

Christian and his mother

Me as a girl scout

Christian had lost his mother to cancer just the year before; his girlfriend had aborted their baby without even giving him a choice, a few months later. For me, I was craving to be loved. My year as an exchange student in Indiana had messed my moral and spiritual compass up. Everything I had believed in before Indiana was shaken. 

I had dreamt of giving myself only to the one who would be my husband. I had dreamt of strong Catholic values, and even though the dreams were still deep inside me, my actions had twisted everything upside down. This is who we were when we met: two hurt and lost kids! (to be continued).