The sacrament of marriage

The Twin Cities mainstream media have been abuzz all weekend, because the national Episcopal church is meeting here, and one of the discussions underway has to do with an official service for blessing same sex unions; another has to do with affirming the election of the first openly gay, partnered bishop. I hope they vote to do both — but I’m not Episcopalian, so my own hopes have little consequence. In my church, that is, in the Roman Catholic community of faith, the Vatican took this opportunity to issue further clarification of the church’s teaching on the question — to wit, the church does not support such unions. Respectfully, carefully, and thoughtfully I have to state that I think our church is wrong on this issue. As much as I try to remember that people still find the notion of blessing such partnerships problematic, I really can’t imagine the full force of their feelings. It just seems so obvious to me that we should do this! And on some very basic level, so conservative (in the best sense of that word) to provide religious and legal support for making life-long promises of monogamy. Years ago Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen wrote a quite beautiful pastoral letter on the sacrament of matrimony that made some important points about the sacramentality of it. Among them was the recognition that the “sign” of this sacrament was the love flowing outward from it. He was careful not to suggest that the sacrament should be extended to same sex couples, but I can see no obvious reason why not. The argument the church uses so often — that only different sexed couples can be procreative — is such a limited definition of “procreativity”! I think our church actually has some beautiful and powerful things to say about marriage as a sacrament, and we ought to be taking such statements about “right relationality” to their obvious conclusions and extending the kind of support that is necessary to live in right relationality. If you’re interested in this issue, you can find a whole range of resources in support of giving equal access to marriage at the “Freedomtomarry.org” site.