The Usurpatious State and the Dictatorship of Relativism

What is marriage anyway?  How would one define it?

Marriage: A political football used by a degenerate society to undermine traditional morality.

At this point, I think it is a fair definition.

Here in England, as in America, those who are hanging on to shifting rocks on the eroding face of the institution of marriage are trying to figure out how to survive in the emerging political and legal wasteland.  As Fr. Tim Finigan points out, the Church has always maintained the right, independent of the State, to regulate marriage. It was the Protestants who argued that the State should regulate marriage.

The problem is both the Church and the State have had a vested interest in marriage for the same reason: there are men and women and when they come together as a couple they create families.  The stable marriage (family), legally and publicly recognized, both by the Church and the State, is good for everyone, especially children.  The Church offers the further good of the sacramental bond, which in former days the State valued as well. Continue reading

Pope Benedict on Religious Liberty

The Holy Father just finished his address to the United Nations General Assembly. My friends we need to take this to heart. Don’t let the secularists shut you up.

It is inconceivable, then, that believers should have to suppress a part of themselves – their faith – in order to be active citizens. It should never be necessary to deny God in order to enjoy one’s rights. The rights associated with religion are all the more in need of protection if they are considered to clash with a prevailing secular ideology or with majority religious positions of an exclusive nature. The full guarantee of religious liberty cannot be limited to the free exercise of worship, but has to give due consideration to the public dimension of religion, and hence to the possibility of believers playing their part in building the social order. Indeed, they actually do so, for example through their influential and generous involvement in a vast network of initiatives which extend from Universities, scientific institutions and schools to health care agencies and charitable organizations in the service of the poorest and most marginalized. Refusal to recognize the contribution to society that is rooted in the religious dimension and in the quest for the Absolute – by its nature, expressing communion between persons – would effectively privilege an individualistic approach, and would fragment the unity of the person.