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Karl Denninger |
From the Desk of Karl Denninger
April 6, 2005
Most Reverend John Ricard
Post Office Drawer 17329
An open letter to the
Dear Reverend Ricard:
I write today as an update to a letter I sent to you in March of 2002 (found at http://childrens-justice.org/papers/Catholic/2002-03-03-Pensacola.htm) , lamenting both the Church’s support of a law in Florida that allowed for the unilateral abandonment of infants by their mothers and the sad state of marriage today.
As you are no doubt aware the Catholic Faith in
Yet during the same time growth of evangelical church membership has continued.
Why?
If you actually analyze these developments, you find that it comes back to three areas - family, family and family.
Three
areas in which the Catholic Church has refused to lead.
There are many who
are calling for the Church to become more “liberal”, as if somehow
allowing women to be priests, or allowing priests to marry, will solve the
problem. It won’t, and
doctrinally it is incompatible with the Catholic Faith. Our late Pontiff was
exactly correct in his refusal to bow to these demands, which are driven by a
desire to secularize the Church.
But the question
continues - is the Catholic Faith as serious about its congregation as its
doctrinal roots? And is the Church truly
serious about doctrine – or is it just the public appearance of
doctrine that is important?
Thus, we get to
the gist of my letter.
Does the Church want its Congregation Back?
If so, then in the
I speak, of
course, of the second point I raised in my 2002 letter – that of the
sacrament of marriage within the Catholic Faith.
Here’s a
simple truth – marriage as a social institution was formed to protect all
three parties to a marriage – the husband, wife, and children –
from both outside interference and from the potential ill acts of either
of the adults.
Marriage as a sacrament
is similarly designed to protect the next generation – to fulfill one of
the founding principles of Christ’s ministry – that of protection
of those who are unable to protect themselves.
In this the
formation of the social and sacramental institutions aligned.
However, today,
the social institution of marriage does anything but protect the next
generation, along with the parties to the agreement. Indeed, marriage today in the secular
sense is a joke. It has been under
assault since the 1950s, and now that assault continues with a push to
recognize “gay marriage”, as if somehow extending a bankrupt
institution to a new group will solve the fundamental, underlying problem.
Marriage as a
social institution protected women in that historically speaking they were
unable to find parity in the workforce.
In addition, for a woman who had children, marriage protected her
ability to nurture and raise those kids.
For men, marriage
protected his ability to have and raise children, since men are
incapable of gestation. Only
through marriage was a man able to insure that he would be able to have progeny
of his own.
Finally, for
children, marriage protected their right to be raised by both a man and
woman in a stable household. Every
study conducted on the matter has concluded the same thing - children fare
best when raised in such a two-parent household.
As a sacrament,
marriage is of course tremendously important. It is one of the sacraments you can only
receive once, and it finds its roots in the Bible. It is, indeed, what God has expressed as
his desire for men and women who choose to propagate humanity.
So why would the
Church refuse to take concrete, available steps to radically strengthen
marriage, when such steps are doctrinally appropriate and as a convenient
“side effect” would bring huge numbers of new and returning members
to the Church?
One
wonders…..
Simply put, Bishop
Ricard, the Church can take the following position:
1.
Couples
desiring to be married in the Catholic Church must enter into a binding
contractual agreement between them and the Church defining their marriage and
the conditions under which it can be abrogated. They must agree to submit all disputes
that would otherwise be handled through the legal system to mediation and
ultimately arbitration via and through the Church, with said tribunals being
bound by canon law, irrespective of either celebrant’s prior or later
acts, with the costs of same taxed to the celebrants (just as an annulment is
today.) A person who attempted to
go “outside” of this agreement would run the risk of their actions
being ruled improper by the Church with the material and possibly emotional
costs being turned into a monetary judgment against them – a powerful
incentive to not attempt it. This sort of pre-dispute binding agreement
is common in other areas of your life and is completely legal – just try
to buy a car or have a stock market account without agreeing to this.
2.
The
Church will provide sacramental marriage only. Those who wish to have a “state
sanctioned” marriage may obtain one separately; the Church will not be a
party to signing a document which does not conform to its doctrine.
This sort of
development would bring me back to the Church immediately. It would provide myself, along with
millions of other men and women who have been left “for another”
without recourse of any sort, the comfort of knowing that if we were able to
obtain an annulment we could marry in the Church and both have ourselves and
our offspring protected. It
would further bring me the comfort of knowledge that should my daughter
choose to marry in the Church in the future, she and her children
would likewise have that same essential protection for herself and her
offspring.
It would make both
“marriage of convenience” and “marriage for the purpose of
fraud” highly unprofitable ventures, and essentially stop both of those
practices immediately.
It would give
young people a real incentive to save themselves for marriage, in that
they would finally have protection for themselves and their offspring if
they were to do so – protection currently unavailable by any other means.
It would bring a
pool of over seventeen million adults
(those who have been abused by the current state marriage system) who currently
are not Catholic a tremendous reason to look seriously at the Catholic
Church for their faith needs – finally, they could find a place where
their beliefs were expressed in the form and substance of doctrine.
It would be 100% compatible with Catholic Doctrine on
marriage, families and children.
It would immediately
remove the current hypocrisy of signing state “marriage
certificates” by the clergy which do not conform in any material respect
to the Catholic Doctrine.
It would
demonstrate that the Church walks the talk when it comes to marriage,
families and children.
So why, Bishop Ricard, has not the Church undertaken such a thing? What prevents you as the Bishop
of the Archdiocese, from implementing this here? What prevents the Church from
doing so worldwide?
I see no
impediment in either the law or doctrine; indeed, my study of doctrine leads me
to believe that this position is mandatory for the Church to take.
Your friend in Christ,
Karl Denninger