A 46th Wedding Anniversary Reflection

Today marks our 46^th wedding anniversary.  Rose and I were married in Chicago at St. Bartholomew’s Catholic Church on the feast of St. Bartholomew.  Since then, we’ve lived in 6 different states, owned and lived in nine homes (not including the condos we live in now), raised 4 kids, and experienced the joy of welcoming 11 grandchildren into the world.  In short, we’ve had a full life and our marriage has been filled with happiness and laughter as well as worry and sorrow, but most of all, it has been a journey of love.  By that, I don’t mean uninterrupted marital bliss, but rather, an ongoing experience of learning and growing in our understanding of the nature and fullness of Love.

At twenty-one years old, neither of us could have imagined the richness and evolution of our love over the years. We were undoubtedly naïve and idealistic, but underneath that young love was an understanding that our marriage was a sacred vow, a sacrament imbued with the love and grace of God.  It has always been God to whom we turned in difficult times, and when facing important decisions.   Our faith has played a pivotal role in our marriage, giving us strength and perseverance during our darkest times, and filling us with joy over and over again. 

Barely adults when we married, I realize now how shallow I must have been.  I was consumed with finishing my education, fulfilling my military commitment, starting a career, managing our finances, and being a good provider.  In retrospect I realize now that for decades I allowed these worldly pursuits to interfere with our marriage and family.  I let pride direct my life in subtle ways that resulted in my rationalizing what I was doing, or feeling sorry for myself when I didn’t get my way.  Nevertheless, God blessed us with children, the product of our love and His grace.  I had always wanted to be a father, and the love I felt for Rose and the kids helped me grow in many ways.  Children have a way of bringing out the best in parents, for example, making sacrifices out of love for the kids.  Wanting to be a good role model also helped me engage in activities that were family oriented.  In short, marriage and family helped me grow up, as God tried to teach me to put the welfare and happiness of others first.  I’m not saying I’ve succeeded in this respect, but I know for sure that without Rose and our kids, I would be a totally different person, one I’m afraid I would not be very proud of.   I cannot believe how blessed I have been by my marriage to Rose. 

The point of all this is that the power of love is transformational.  I believe it is true that “God is Love,” and that all love is from God.  That being the case, I feel the love of God in the intimate embrace of love, I see the love of God in the eyes of my spouse and in the lives of our children and grandchildren.  God created us male and female, each with our own strengths and weaknesses.  More importantly, He created us for one another, as the means by which His love is shared and miraculously, children are born into the world.  His glorious plan is for each of us to be born into a loving family environment with both father and mother who are our first and most important teachers.  As such, marriage is the basic unit of society.  Not only is it the only natural means by which children are conceived, it is the place we grow in love as spouses, as parents, and as children.  Marriage has a civilizing effect on both spouses and creates a stable environment for children to be nurtured. 

It has long been documented that spouses who share their faith and actively practice it are much less likely to divorce and much more likely to report happiness.  Despite these well-documented outcomes, marriage has been under attack for decades.  The very definition of marriage has been re-written to accommodate sexual freedom, with no regard for the effect it has on children.  Not only are children devastated by divorce, they are all too often thought of as property of the parents, not unique human beings with a right to life, and the right to be raised by both of their biological parents.

Not everyone is called to heterosexual marriage, and that’s fine.  But redefining marriage to include no-fault divorce and homosexual relationships is simply a lie about the biological truth of our existence, and it is devastating to children.  As evidenced by that fact that birthrates are now well-below replacement levels in the Western world, we are quite literally destroying our future by handing down unprecedented deficits to a declining population, many of whom have not had the benefit of growing up in families with both father and mother.

The latest blow to marriage was struck last month by our president.  In an executive order signed July 17^th, he single-handedly decided that any employer or agency with federal contracts or grants must comply with new requirements that prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.   The president purposely omitted any exemptions for religious organizations, despite his own director of faith outreach pleading for it.  This means that churches, social service agencies, hospitals, and schools, may lose their federal contracts and grants if they refuse to hire or promote people whose sexual activities are at odds with the moral belief and teaching of that employer.  While the Catholic Church has long taught that homosexuals should be respected for their personal dignity, it cannot condone homosexual and transgender activity, any more that it would condone a libertine lifestyle that included promiscuity. 

A bit of history:  Thirty-eight years ago Sen. Ted Kennedy tried to pass a bill that would have outlawed discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.  He failed, but the bill was rewritten in 1994 and called the Employment Non Discrimination Act (ENDA).   ENDA has been proposed to ten different congresses, and failed every time.  Even though every Democrat who supports ENDA also agrees that it should include exceptions for religious-based employers, the president wrote his executive without any exemptions for religious organizations.   Remember, this is the president whose Justice Department pursued a case all the way to the Supreme Court to force a church to employ a homosexual, and lost that case 9-0.  So if he can’t get his way in Congress or the Supreme Court, he simply writes an executive order that subverts congress and imposes his personal morals on religious employers.

Of course, most religious employers will give up government contracts rather than comply, but this will have a horrendous impact on the poor and the sick who have been served by religious-based schools, hospitals, and social service agencies.   Already, Catholic adoption agencies in San Francisco, New York, Massachusetts, and Illinois have been forced to go out of business rather than change their moral position on marriage and family.  Other Catholic Agencies have lost government funding for refusal to provide abortion counselling, despite being the best-qualified organization to provide the assistance they were giving their communities.   Clearly, our president and his devotees want to punish and re-educate employers who hold traditional sexual values.  In his mind there is no room for religious beliefs that are contrary to his personal ideology and political agenda, even it means dealing another blow to marriage, families, and children, the very heart and soul of civil society.