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The last month has seen some extraordinary and unprecedented activity by the Cardinals of the Church during the Synod on the Family. In order to clear up the confusion and lack of clarity and direction that seems to have been left in the wake of that synod, today we’ll look at the ends or purposes of marriage and the family. Two definitive documents on marriage are Pope Leo XIII’s and Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Casti Connubii, which summarized and repeated the constant teachings of the on Marriage and the family.

First, what are the ends or purposes of marriage? To answer that, we have to know what is Marriage? Marriage is defined as a legitimate agreement between a man and a woman who are juridically capable, conferring to each other mutual rights, for life, to acts suited to the begetting and education of children, and to a society of common life… It’s an agreement between a man and a woman conferring rights to each other for the purpose of procreation, and to a common life (Casti, #17). God sends children to men and women who are married so that they can raise up a family. This agreement or contract was raised by Our Lord to the dignity of a Sacrament; so as a Sacrament, it confers grace for the proper fulfillment of the duties of matrimony.

So from this definition we get the two ends or purposes of marriage – one primary, or more important end, and one secondary, or subordinate end. Pope Pius XI also explains the secondary ends; “In matrimony as well as in the use of the matrimonial rights there are also secondary ends, such as mutual aid, the cultivating of mutual love, and the quieting of concupiscence, which husband and wife are not forbidden to consider so long as they are subordinated to the primary end and so long as the intrinsic nature of the act is preserved.”

In the book of Tobias, in the O.T., St. Raphael told Tobias that the devil has power over those who receive matrimony while giving themselves over to their lust (Tob 6:17). This book in Sacred Scripture makes it clear that he who marries “not for fleshly lust…but only for the love of posterity [children]” (Tob 8:9) is rewarded with a happy marriage indeed.

So according to the natural law, as well as the 4th Lateran Council, the Council of Trent, and the inspired word of God, the purpose of marriage is children – the family.

Children, who are persons who will be making moral decisions, having souls that will live forever, need to be properly formed. Children need lessons that they can only learn from a father and other lessons that they can only learn from a mother. For this reason children have a right to be born into the stable environment of having two parents who already have the graces and stability of a sacramental marriage. This is why is mortally sinful. In fact, one grievously steals something that does not belong to him when he makes any use of marriage or the elements that are essential to marital rights, outside of a union between one man and one woman that is solemnized before God Himself before a deputed minister of God. For Catholics to attempt marriage without two witnesses and a deputed minister of the Church would not be a real marriage at all.

How seriously does God take marriage, once it has truly been contracted between a man and a woman? He tells us in Mark 10:9-12, “What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder… Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another committeth adultery against her. And if the wife shall put away her husband and be married to another, she committeth adultery.” Adultery is a mortal sin, and people in mortal sin cannot receive Holy Communion.

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For this reason a man who civilly divorces a person that he was validly married to, and then lives as though married to another person (while that original marriage is still recognized by the Church as the valid one), cannot receive Holy Communion. If this is shocking it should be, for it should wake the people who are living in a state of adultery up to the frightening reality that they cannot have communion with God in that state – which also is a caution that if they die in that state, they will go to hell. It is from that horror that the Church wants to save these people from, and not make them believe that they can stay in the state they are in without condemning their soul, and for this reason she gives them this merciful caution.

Divorce destroys families. Let’s look at what else does – these new Civil unions: Did God create man’s physical capacity to marry or did the government? Since God created man’s physical capability to marry, the purpose of marriage and the possibility of entering into marriage was determined by God and not the government. The nature of marriage, and therefore God’s purpose in marriage, is seen by the very compatibility between man and woman that is there in nature and the fruitful result of this.

Does the government have the right to pass a binding law that declares that God should not be God? No – because the government has no right to declare that God is not what He actually is by Nature. Does the government have the right to pass a binding law that declares that a man is not a man? No – because the government has no right to declare that a man is not what he actually is by nature. So just as the government has no right to declare that something is not what it actually is by nature, in the same way it has no authority to declare that marriage is not what it is by nature.

So if the government doesn’t have authority to change the nature of marriage, how is it getting away with this today? It is because most Christians in the West have left themselves without a way to logically argue against these civil unions. Once one believes anything that goes counter to the nature of marriage can somehow be allowed in a marriage, one has no logical argument against what follows when one wants to use marriage for anything at all or with anyone at all. Did you know that the Christian world was once united in its opposition to contraception? Up until 1930, every single Christian denomination opposed contraception as something sinful and unnatural. But then, in 1930, the dam broke at the Anglican Lambeth Conference. The Anglican denomination broke ranks and said, incorrectly, that contraception was acceptable, and since then, every single Christian denomination has given in and changed its mind, including the Orthodox Church, to say now that contraception can be used – and today the one solitary exception, the one Church that continues to hold what at one time every Christian held is the Roman Catholic Church, that contraception is a grave sin because it opposes God’s purpose in marriage. If one accepts contraception, a use of the marital rights while excluding the purpose that God intended in those marriage rights, making such a union unnatural, then such a one has no logical argument against unnatural unions of any kind. If one approves of some acts that go contrary to the purpose of marriage in one way, such as contraception, then one is left with no logical defense against other acts that go contrary to the purpose of marriage in other ways, such as these unnatural unions.

Why is it in the devil’s interest to foster this unnatural civil-union pandemic in the world today? It’s simple – God has His Sacraments, and the devil has his. The use of marriage and marital rights for anything but procreation is a distorted imitation of the sacrament of Matrimony and the symbolism that God is trying manifest in the union of a husband and wife.

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What is really behind this trend of politicians and even people in the Church ingratiating themselves to these unnatural, civil unions that are in the world today? The reason is twofold: fear and a lack of faith. Fear: People fear to be different – it has happened before: “the children of Israel followed the nations that were round about them… and the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them from His sight.” (4 Kings 17:15, 18) Some are afraid to speak the truth.

A lack of faith: Some people in the Church either believe that the power of evil and sin is more powerful than the truth, or they don’t believe that sin and the sin of adultery is all that evil. Some don’t believe that the natural law is all that binding, or that there really are evil and grave effects which come from ignoring the natural law. Some people don’t believe in the power of grace which will help people live faithful to their marriages

But why live in fear and a lack of faith? Let us recall that adultery and unnatural sins against marriage distort the image of what God is trying to prepare us for: the coming of the Lord when He will take the Church, His Bride, to Himself in the eternal heavenly marriage celebration. And armed with the truth about marriage, we will not follow the trendy opinions of the nations, holding to the command of Our Lord in Exodus 23:2, “Thou shalt not follow the multitude to do evil: neither shalt thou yield in judgment, to the opinion of the most part, to stray from the truth.”