He turned himself into a pretzel trying to justify a Catholic vote for the abortion candidate, now abortion president, Barack Obama. Latest great idea: he thinks we ought to ditch marriage as a legal institution.
From the Catholic News Service:
"Awkward"? What's awkward is Kmiec's employment at a reputedly Catholic institution. One has to seriously question his Catholic identity and beliefs. Or his sanity.Doug Kmiec, a prominent Catholic who backed Barack Obama’s presidential bid, has endorsed replacing marriage with a neutral “civil license,” a proposal law professor Robert P. George called a “terrible idea” that would make the government neglect a vital social institution.
Speaking to CNSNews.com, Pepperdine University law professor Doug Kmiec said that although his solution to disputes over the definition of marriage might be “awkward,” it would “untie the state from this problem” by creating a new terminology that would apply to everyone, homosexual or not. “Call it a ‘civil license’,” he said.“The net effect of that, would be to turn over--quite appropriately, it seems to me, the concept of marriage to churches and a church understanding,” he said.
Read the rest for his reasoning. More Kmiec-ish ideas: let's pave over our lawns so we won't have to cut the grass, and call everyone Bruce to avoid confusion.
Robert George, noted defender of the unborn, says this:
h/t: K-LoGeorge told CNSNews.com that marriage is not like baptisms and bar mitzvahs but has “profound” social and public significance.
“It’s a pre-political institution,” he said. “It exists even apart from religion, even apart from polities. It’s the coming together of a husband and wife, creating the institution of family in which children are nurtured.”
“The family is the original and best Department of Health, Education and Welfare,” he continued, saying that governments, economies and legal systems all rely on the family to produce “basically honest, decent law abiding people of goodwill – citizens – who can take their rightful place in society.”
“Family is built on marriage, and government--the state--has a profound interest in the integrity and well-being of marriage, and to write it off as if it were a purely a religiously significant action and not an institution and action that has a profound public significance, would be a terrible mistake,” George told CNSNews.com.
“I don’t know where Professor Kmiec is getting his idea, but it’s a very, very bad one.”
Cross-posted and updated in the Green Room. There are some comments over there.
RSM links and comments, contra-Kmiec. Ed Morrissey goes with Kmiec. Unfortunately I won't be around to follow the argument today.
Most recent posts here.
9 comments:
That is insane!
As long as marriage is described as a "sacrament" and the ceremony is couched in terms of "sanctifying this union" you have an inherently religious institution. When it devolves into issues of property entitlement, inheritance, employment benefits, medical information access, etc. you've now gotten into governmental involvement. Detaching the sanctifying from the property rights issues is the first step in understanding what is being talked about.
As for the red herring of procreation and nurturing children, there are many very successful marriages without benefit of offspring and many ludicrously fruitful pairings without benefit of either success in nurturing or sanctification.
As for the red herring of procreation It's not a red herring, it's the essential component of what marriage is about.
Cranky,
It doesn't take government to authorize procreation. With fifty percent of children in America today being born to unwed mothers, it doesn't take religious sanctification either.
Marriage and the commitment which it cements is a wonderful thing and beneficial to society as well as the children, but don't confuse the role of government with the religious ceremony and don't attribute any sort of license for breeding inherent in either.
Fact 1: The achievement of the true married state is uniquely conferred by the reception of the Catholic Sacrament of Matrimony. Thereby the couple receive the power to become one flesh indissoluble for life, as designed by God and taught by Christ.
Fact 2: Other people get married in other places. Some couplings last, some fail.
Fact 3: The governments of most western societies issue marriage licenses to recognize pairings, and they typically bestow certain earthly privileges on these couples.
Holy Church administers the sacrament of Matrimony to her faithful, and as a matter of convenience to the state and the couple, her priests are typically also registered with the state with the authority to issue a marriage "licence", and witness the signatures to the contract.
In some districts, where same-sex pairings are legal, priests are abandoning their secular licensing authority in order to avoid being compelled to perform ceremonies for perverts.
In those locales, a couple must get a civil license from the civil authority, and have some civil authority witness their assent to the agreement. If they desire to receive the sacrament of Matrimony then they are not prohibited from doing so. The state is not a part of that.
What Kmiec proposes is pretty much what is already happening where same-sex pairings are being sanctioned by the state. It is a middle-ground that permits civil authorites caught with diverse and perverse populations to grant coupling benefits to whomever wants them. It doesn't affect Matrimony at all.
Matrimony belongs to the church. We were never actually in the "marriage" business, we just helped out the civil authorities with their licensing. Now they will have do their own work.
Another thought on this.
In the UK a couple of elderly sisters applied to have their cohabitation recognized as equal to being married. They did this in order to smooth out the inevitable inheritance, visiting, end-of-life issues. They lived together their entire lives.
The UK courts refused because they don't have sex.
Marriage must either remain as it always has been, or it must be totally opened up so that any couple or group can obtain licenses registering their association and access the various civil benefits associated therewith.
Homos and lesbos claim their demand is for marriage EQUALITY is a crock.
Folks:
Pepperdine is most closely associated with the Church of Christ, not the Catholic church.
John Hissong
Can't we convince him to pull a Fr. Cutie' and convert?
If only. That is what is particularly galling -- that he is perceived as speaking for Catholics.
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