Some angry emails that I am letting the side down over the Holy Father's marriage of cohabiting couples.
A word to the wise: you are turning into Anglo-Catholic traditionalists. Not necessarily on this issue, but in your general approach.
Don't.
And certainly don't expect me to come with you if you do.
Don't.
And certainly don't expect me to come with you if you do.
There is also more than a touch of Jansenism. And indeed of Gallicanism: the sense that you are autonomous, especially of the Pope. Again, that is very Anglican.
In your own 1950s Golden Age, it was widely said that, "First babies are always early."
In your own 1950s Golden Age, it was widely said that, "First babies are always early."
Marriage, like any sacrament, is a means of grace. Because we all need grace.
They are married now.
The idea that the Pope can just make it up as he goes along because he is the Pope is an interesting departure from the teachings of Christ. But it's nothing to do with Christianity (just think of some of the Popes we've had over the past few centuries!).
ReplyDeleteIn an age when marriage is breaking down at a catastrophic rate (and Britain is the single mother capital of Western Europe) it would seem to me that people look to the Church for an alternative to the liberal majority not an endorsement of it.
The Church isn't meant to reflect society as it is but seek to make society reflect God.
The Anglican plan to have joint baptisms and wedding ceremonies suffered from the same problem-it crossed the line between acknowledging human sin and endorsing it, thus getting more of it.
Whenever you give people an inch...
There is no change involved in any of this.
DeleteNor, now that you mention it, is there historically novel about joint weddings and baptisms. That practice has a very long history.
If we are now in a context of missionary re-evangelisation, then we had better get used them. Indeed, they might prove very useful.
On either side of the Tiber, anything up to half of brides in the 1950s, and forever before that, were pregnant.
The difference is that in the 1950's, they still got married. Teen pregnancy rates were actually similar then to now-but only one in six teen pregnancies happened outside marriage in the 1950's. It's nine in ten now.
ReplyDeleteThat's the difference.
I know the stats on the catastrophic breakdown of marriage so don't try and fob me off.
Why is endorsing cohabitation bad, you might ask?
42% of cohabiting couples have already parted by the time their child is five. Just 12% of married couples have ( even in this age of easy divorce). That's why.
Cohabitation means insecurity and fatherlessness.
It is the act of giving official Church sanction (and Papal sanction) to cohabitation-or to joint weddings and baptisms-that is the difference.
Such things were always acknowledged to happen before but never endorsed by the Churches and that makes all the difference.
History shows whenever you endorse sinful behaviour you get more of it. That's what happened in the 1960's (Peter Hitchens The Abolition of a Britain and Ferdinand Mount's The Subversive Family are peerless on the effects of moves to normalise illegitimacy by the 1960's Left).
I understand that the Pope merely asked to bless 40 marriages of people from "different social backgrounds".
One hardly needs to revive the Victorian notion of the undeserving poor to wonder why it never occurred to the Pope to check whether those people might have contributed to their own deprived circumstances?
Particularly as they included a single mother who had another kid from a previous unmarried relationship...
Does personal responsibility no longer matter in our left wing world?
It's like Tourette's with you, isn't it?
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