Pope: Marriage is not an absolute right
January 22, 2011 at 3:23 am in Grand Forks Herald
Vatican concern about annulments largely directed at U.S.Pope Benedict XVI told priests today to do a better job counseling would-be spouses to ensure their marriages last and said no one has an absolute right to a wedding. Continue Reading
“no one has an absolute right to a wedding”
I guess the only thing that’s absolute within the Catholic church is the absolute protection given absolutely despicable pedophile priests.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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No religion has the right to dictate to people what their civil/legal rights are — at least in a secular democratic republic like the wonderful US of A!
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Of course no religion can tell you what your legal rights are. They are there, however, to guide you with wisdom to help decision-making. Unfortunately, wisdom is lost on the “No one can tell me what to do!” attitude. The Church is not trying to “control your life.” It is trying to revive marriage as an institution full of truth and trusting. Oh, what a terrible thing! I challenge the “free thinkers” on here to to think freely and consider that you might be able to get something out of the teachings of the church, rather than automatically jumping to anti-religion rhetoric. I think the Pope’s teachings are relevant whether you are Catholic or not.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Unfortunately Dave, the catholic church does try to control the lives of all US citzens. Have you not noticed the attempts to influence US politics on several issues? Granted it’s not just catholics (Google “Gus Booth” for a local example), but it’s an undeniable reality (unless your faith demands that you deny evidence). When the church and the government become entangled (“theocracy”) look out for your freedoms! If you don’t understand this, then look around the world and see what life is like in theocracies. The framers of the COTUS understood this very well — thank goodness!
Let me paraphrase your words — with some minor changes:
“I challenge the “dogmatists†on here to to think freely and consider that you might be able to get something out of the teachings of free thinkers, rather than automatically jumping to anti-rationalist rhetoric. I think the humanist’s teachings are relevant whether you are religious or not.”
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In fact, I do consider the teaching of free thinkers. I think about the ideas of “what if” we had a world without religion. I think about: would the world be a better place without, for example, Islamic theocracy in Iran? Yes, I think it would. Do I think the world would be a better place without Catholic teachings? No. As a Catholic, I believe our teachings are right, and Islam’s are wrong. I don’t believe in “forcing” religious ideas with the threat of jail or violence, as in Islamic theocracies, but I do believe in the Catholic ideas of simply spreading messages peacefully. “But what about the Inquisition!” you say. The Catholic Church has made mistakes, just like very institution, and it owns up to those mistakes. In the present day, it is working to promote peace and love in the world, which is really what “humanists” believe too, at the core ,isn’t it? So, I do not believe that Catholic teachings will ever turn us into something like Iran, because I differentiate between Islam and Christianity as being very different and causing very different results. As a “rationalist,” I understand that you maybe don’t see it that way. I don’t know if I can convince you otherwise, but I’m explaining myself anyway. The challenge of accepting religion vs pure “rationalism” or “humanism” is in humbling yourself to the fact that, while you of course have “authority” over your own life to do as you please, you aren’t born knowing what’s best for you, and trying to figure out what’s best for you simply through your own human rationale leaves you incomplete. The “humanist” point of view is a hideaway from confrontation in addressing real issues.
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Dave, humanists don’t”do as they please” in life. They construe the implications of their actions to others — so their moral code is “do no harm.” Contrast that to the servility of the religious who need a book written by bronze-age Palestinians to tell them what to do (and look at the murder and mayhem that has resulted through the centuries). In contemporary life, look what your church’s campaign against condom use is doing to third world people. Candidly, the catholic point of view is a servile cop-out to archaic authority — in other words — religious obedience is a hideaway from addressing real issues in the world (and it makes for some terrible moral decision-making).
Apart from that, thanks for stating your point of view in a candid, but civil manner.
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Um let see, the Inquisitions were exactly like how Iran acts torwards their people. The Catholic Church owns up to it’s mistakes, that’s hilarious we know how much they tried to hide almost all their mistakes. Lastly the my religion is better than your religion is exactly what is wrong with all religions
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Keep up the good work Dave. I cannot fully understand how people can be so against Christianity. Some act as if it’s a cult.
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justasec said: On January 22, 2011 at 10:42 AM
“No religion has the right to dictate to people what their civil/legal rights are — at least in a secular democratic republic like the wonderful US of A!”
justasec, you are confusing what states do with what churches do. In the church a marriage is a covenant entered into by a man and a woman before God. If that is not what a couple intends to do, or does not intend to take it seriously, then the church has every right to refuse to marry them. They can then seek another church or a justice of the peace to perform marriage rites. Marriage is not a right. Freedom of association is a right.
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As I read this release, the Pope wants the clergy when working with couple’s who want to get married, to encourage them to make certain marriage is what they want. Many get married and within a short time they seek an annulment. I can’t see any reason to bash the Church on other matter’s but if you must, than I suspect you will.
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I see the usual suspects are saying the usual anti-Catholic things. For example Chuck is using abused children to bash the Church thereby abusing them again. Justasec is deliberately misstating the article. Or he doesn’t understand the Pope is talking about Catholic marriage. It takes effort to bash the Pope for suggesting that better premarital counseling is a good idea.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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Hmm, I guess zardoz does have a point on that one — although the preface to the article read “directed at US” and said “no one” has the right. In my own defense, having watched the catholic hierarchy try to influence EVERYBODY with their dogma, and having seen them use all sorts of devious and immoral ways to cover up the crimes of their priests, I may be a tad predisposed to assume the worst!
Zardoz, does that ever happen to you?
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That can be the problem with deconstruction and skepticism – it often leads to ill-placed paranoia. A meta-narrative that leads to “assuming” the worst in any other thought process differing from it’s own is a prime example of closed-mindedness.
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…and this is a “prime example” of a Straw Man logical fallacy — just precious coming from the self-styled “Living Logic.”
In case you need more explanation: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html
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If you simply base my response to your one comment above then I can concede the straw-man accusation (though I could get into technicalities, but that would simply distract from the issue at hand). To help clarify, my post was a more general response to your position and not just a response to a single, simple statement you made. I’ve read enough of your posts about religion to see that you appear to be almost paranoid of it. I apologize if that is inaccurate, I can only make assumptions based off you writings, and doing so certainly has it’s limitations. You espouse humanistic dogma to promote your own meta-narrative while appearing to reject any possibility of truth, beauty, or merit of any other world-view beyond the secularist. To me, that seems closed-minded. And you present this all under the guise of “free thinking.”
I have deep convictions regarding Scripture, faith in God, and the Christian world-view. I have studied intensely the faith, and know how it stacks against other religions and world-views. BTW, I am not Catholic and I reject many positions of the Catholic church. Even so, I can see truth, beauty, and merit in other world-views. I certainly do not embrace other world-views completely (for that impossible to do no matter what you believe). However, my beliefs allow me to engage in conversation with others who have opposing set of convictions, and to so freely without fear or intimidation. My faith also challenges me to do so with respect, love, dignity and hopefully in a spirit humility. Forgive me if I have presented myself otherwise.
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First LL, I’m certainly not paranoid — although I’m constantly saddened and dismayed by oppression stemming from religious (and many political) dogmas. Religion would not be a problem if adherents of different sects could manage to refrain from trying to impose their beliefs on everybody else. BTW, I have many religious friends who find it quite easy to manage that.
Second, your use of the term “humanistic dogma” is quite offensive as presented. You either don’t understand how dogma is different from “philosophy,” or “theory,” or your offense was intended. I’ll be charitable, and assume the former.
Third, and following the second point, the epitome of “closed-minded” is refusing to acknowledge evidence that disproves one’s beliefs. Dogmatists call that “heresy” and the penalties are often extreme. Humanists (and scientists) welcome such evidence as valuable new knowledge — so feel free to challenge me with some!
Last, I’m not sure of your understanding of the term “secularist.” It simply means keeping government and church separate. The framers of the COTUS understood the importance of that very well — do you disagree with them.
Although your charges of “paranoia” and “closed-mindedness” could be taken as personally offensive, I’ll be charitable and say I appreciated your candid approach to debate.
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A few things – first of all, thanks for your civility in our dialogue and for your candid yet respectful rebuttal. It is very refreshing to see that on these forums. It actually makes the conversation enjoyable
“First LL, I’m certainly not paranoid…” Thanks for clarifying. And as you will notice in my post I never accused you of paranoia, but only that your posts paint a picture of someone almost paranoid of religious thought. I don’t know you, and cannot make that assessment.
“Religion would not be a problem if adherents of different sects could manage to refrain from trying to impose their beliefs on everybody else.” But everyone who feels that their worldview/meta narrative is true does this to some degree. Are you not on here defending and imposing your worldview by stating your opinion as superior? And I don’t say that condescending. We all are doing just that. And if someone honestly thinks their meta-narrative is true, shouldn’t they want to share it with others and defend it?
“Second, your use of the term ‘humanistic dogma’ is quite offensive as presented. You either don’t understand how dogma is different from ‘philosophy,’ or ‘theory,’ or your offense was intended. I’ll be charitable, and assume the former.” Thanks for assuming my response wasn’t to be offensive because that was not my intent by any means. I clearly understand that the word “dogma” is linked to religious thought and doctrine. I should have explained myself more clearly and I apologize for my lack of clarity. It is my personal opinion (and I know my view isn’t held by all circles of academia), that humanistic or rationalistic world-views mimic religious world views in many ways (assume their view is superior yet take major faith assumptions, have gatherings to promote their thinking, challenge society to conform to their thinking, etc.). Humanists often “dogmatically” share their views (much like so many others) as superior while ignoring the major faith assumptions they make. Perhaps this was too strong of assertion, and I apologize if it was (and still is) offensive to you. By coining the phrase “humanistic dogma” I was attempting to draw comparisons regarding how humanistic thought processes are similar to the religious thought processes – they both require elements of faith in something that cannot be entirely proven as absolute while essentially shunning all other beliefs. And humanists (in the general term) can very much indeed be dogmatic. Anyone who doesn’t believe as they do are often labeled as ignorant, uneducated, irrational, misguided and have no welcome at the table of sincere debate on societal issues. A brief preview of these forums provides ample evidence of this.
I’m enjoying the discussion, and hope that you can sense my posting is done with sincere respect.
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LL, thanks for your civil and respectful comments ! I want to clarify that a “dogma” refers to a set of beliefs that people have faith in. As such, dogmatic people tend to defend those beliefs, including resisting attempts to test them, and ignoring or denying evidence that disproves them. Note that a more (science-based) humanistic perspective actually welcomes challenges to its theoretical-philosophical views. In such cases these challenges are not seen as “heresy,” but rather, are opportunities to learn and improve.
The common assertion that “humanistic thought processes .. require elements of faith” deserves comment too. LL, absolute proof of most things is virtually impossible — but disproof is much easier (that’s how science works!). But, consider the dogmatist’s cliche: “You can’t prove it’s not so!” Well, if the claim is extraordinary, the onus is on the claimant to furnish extraordinary evidence. On the other hand, the mantra “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” (also used by dogmatists) is also an illogical cliche (if evidence that should be there is absent, it IS evidence of absence!).
I hope these examples are helpful. BTW, if I witness somebody claiming to be a humanist (or atheist) acting dogmatically, I’ll challenge them myself. After all, the bottom line is that all our lives could be improved if we use logic and evidence to rationally solve our problems.
Can we agree on that?
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justasec, let’s unpack your thoughts on faith and logic by using the origin of life. Atheists/humanists/evolutionists often exert their theory of the origin of life as fact. If you really break down the probability that life just happened through unguided natural processes it seems highly unlikely. Isn’t this an example of absence of evidence? Sure you can see life transform and evolve…but the origin of life cannot be measurable nor reproduced (that is the forming non-living material to create life). In fact, this theory requires faith in something unprovable. I mention this because it seems improper to require more evidence for other world views than your own. Critical thinking requires one to scrutinize all world views without bias right? We both agree on this point.
A critically thinking person can look at the world using logic and reason and conclude that the world’s complexities, beauty, and order all point to an origin that didn’t include random, unguided chance. For example, someone can bring me a car to examine. I can look at it, see it’s complexities, and conclude that there was an automobile maker who produced this car. It simply didn’t evolve by random chance. Someone made it. That is not an illogical conclusion. Yet, I’m supposed to believe that mankind (which the simplest cell in the human body is far more complex than an automobile) somehow happened by random chance through natural processes. To me it seems obvious, it requires more faith to believe that the car was built by random processes in nature than to believe someone made it.
Enjoying the discussion!
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LL, I replied this morning, but it vanished into cyberspace?
Short version: You appear to be conflating origin with evolution of life. Answers to the former aren’t easy, but science is getting close! I’ll defer to better qualified sources — so I recommend you read Victor Stenger’s work. He has a great web site, and his most recent book really gets to grips with the absence of evidence topic.
We’ll debate more on a future thread!
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Catholics can revere or even worship the Pope–I don’t care. Being non-Catholic, I don’t consider him to be any more an expert on matter of than Pee Wee Herman.
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“For example Chuck is using abused children to bash the Church thereby abusing them again”
Again, Zardoz uses falsehoods to further his agenda. If you’ll look at my post, I never said anything about “abused children”. Never even referenced them. I did, however, use the term “pedophile priests”, which has nothing to do with the victims, but rather the perpetrators.
My point was that the pope has done little to address the problem of abusive priests (and as has been recently shown, has actually acted on their behalf) yet wants to take the moral high ground on marriage annulments. He should take my mothers advice: clean your own house first, then criticize the condition of others.
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Oh gba, I’ll pray for you tonight.
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Just, yeah I tend to see atheists in a negative light almost automatically now. Gee, wonder why.
chuck, we know what you were doing. Don’t try to con me. I didn’t see you post about Skins on MTV. Those who decry pedophile priests are oddly silent on that program.
The whole article here misrepresents what the Pope said. Go to zenit.org to read his whole address.
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Part of being able to think critically involves the capacity to recognize your own biases. Then you can dispassionately consider logic and evidence on a topic.
I admitted that my “predisposition” (given the history) affected my initial view of this thread — but how about you? Is a new more open-minded zardoz about to emerge?
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Zardoz is celebrated for his open mind and fairness.
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Sorry, Zardoz, I don’t watch MTV. Therefore, even if I did see the thread you were referencing, I could not have offered an informed opinion. I’m guessing that you never actually saw that show either.
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If you haven’t heard about it you obviously don’t pay attention to news very closely.
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I don’t think Pope Benedict went far enough with his remarks. More annulments were requested in America than the rest of the world combined. Why? In my opinion, it’s because too many Americans are unprepared for the reality of married life. Since the Catholic Church has to fix all these broken marriages, doesn’t it make sense they should be directed to make sure these unions are secure before they start? We all take a vow to love someone until death – we should be forced to deal with the consequences, especially when children are added to the mix. As the general manager of this religion, he is simply telling his subordinates to be more diligent in their selection process. No one has a right to be married in a Catholic Church. If you’re not Catholic, don’t worry about it. The Pope has no authority over you. If you are Catholic, you’re used to living by the rules of the faith, and this is just one more. I don’t see what’s so newsworthy about this statement.
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The article was clear that the Pope was referring to marriage within the church. Any church should have an absolute right to determine whom it will allow to marry. In no way is this imposing the church’s doctrine upon society. I cannot understand the criticism.
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Glenn, the article then was wrong. Read what the Pope actually said.
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Absolutely Glenn. The church could decide to only marry people who are of a certain age, or those with blonde hair, or people who are good looking, or people with purple polka dots, the church makes its own rules. Isn’t that the other side of the separation of church and state coin?
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Now it’s clear why more more pre-marriage counseling is needed for the religious — it’s to counter the effects of it: http://www.dailytexanonline.com/content/conservative-christians-divorce-more-study-says
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I thought their ‘reasons’ for the higher rate were not complete. I’d add familial pressures to marry to the list, and I think that would be more important than the other reasons.
The non-religious love to point to these types of statistics.
Only a liberal could expect a human being to be perfect. Being perfect isn’t really what Christianity is about, if you look at who Jesus associated with I think maybe it is the opposite. Jesus sought the adulterer, the thief, the tax collectors, etc.
One thing that could lead to this is the culture within conservative churches that encourages their congregants to ‘show’ a perfect life, but discourages real problems from coming to the surface and hence the possibility that support and healing for these problems then dissappears.
Really, your study only points out why it was even more appropriate for the pope to address the problem.
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No rights to get married, so it must be a privilege. Wow. Who the hell thinks of marriage as a privilege? Must be outside your mind! Only a madman would consider it a privilege!
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Evidently you haven’t met my wife.
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There isn’t any person, man or woman, in this universe or any other that I would consider giving 50% of my stuff to. No matter how attractive or “good” someone is, someone, somewhere, is sick and tired of putting up with their ****.
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I am honestly amazed that people continue to live their lives based on some mythological ideology, with a decrepit, out of touch supreme leader. The legal union between partners is separate from the charade inside the church, so given that a wedding ritual at a church is voluntarily, the church should have the right to submit people to whatever “counseling†they deem necessary.
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