WE COUNT FOR SOMETHING

Friday, February 24, 2012

SHACKING UP vs TYING THE KNOT -- WHAT'LL YOU HAVE?

Attack against marriage?  Really?  Not mine, for sure.  Those who shack up don't do it in my house, so I'm safe.  What about yours?  Do you feel attacked?  It all depends.
These days the language is not quite so crude as that which appears in the title.  These days we are more evasive with our language if not with our morality.  We rarely use the words "cohabitate"or "concubinage" or even just plain old "shack up."  We hear, "Living together."  "Yeah, she and I decided to move in together."  Actually, they moved in under the sheets.  After all, it was Winter.  98.5 degrees of body heat comes free and you have to pay for gas and electric.  It's cohabitation also when two people of the same sex do it together.  That's always interesting, but believe me, it is not an attack on MY marriage.  Nope.  Not for one single minute.  Better than that though is when you hear that two pages from the grammar book move in together.  You know, you have two same gender beings snuggled together on a cute, quiet library shelf.  I wonder what it feels like to have to iron out the wrinkles from the English feminine page so that the Italian pagina feminina  won't be rubbed the wrong way?  That is not an attack on my marriage because in my house we are hot blooded animals with sex on our minds, not grammar.  Ouch! I forgot to mention, we are married too.  None of that cohabitation stuff for us.  Uh, Unh, we have settled down.  It's nice now too, we have the house all to ourselves.  We don't even have to wrap our towel around our wrinkled bodies on the way to the shower.  That's not cohabitation.  That's not concubinage.  That's pure, outright conjugal community life.  Pure sex.  Devoid of grammar.  Morally acceptable, even according to majority community standards.  Not only that, even Catholics can do it and still not feel guilty.  Now ain't THAT something?  Yep.  No scandal there.  Except, of course, if you're against misogynistic matrimony.
That's what we have.  Big word that only means that I "glow in the dark" and she doesn't.
The point here, boys and girls, feminines and masculines, is that any housing arrangement that is not marriage is immoral.  That means that it is wrong.  In Catholic terms, it is a sin.   It is a habitual sin, so it leaves you out of the church's sacramental life.
The attack on marriage is a myth.  The real attack is on the conscience of the population at large.  So many people of good faith are forced to live in the condition of "loving the sinner and hating the sin" that after a while the moral fabric of the entire world starts to wear thin.  That's the attack.
The attack is not even the government's legalizing same sex [same gender?] marriage.  That's a taxation issue on the one hand, and, as such, innocuous enough.  On the other hand, the vicious and dangerous part of it is that the population then forms a conscience about this legalized cohabitation that confuses the righteousness of real marriage with the insane immorality of legalized cohabitation.  [The technical religious moral word for cohabitation is concubinage.]  So, the attack is not on marriage.  That's the wrong language. The real attack is essentially against the collective conscience of the world.
I know.  I communicate with people in several countries.  Slowly but surely the ability to recognize the difference between right and wrong is weakening.  This is true of the ability to recognize objective right and wrong as well as the ability to recognize and accept community standards of right and wrong and match them up in order to manage human life effectively and stay on the path of justice and righteousness.
So, don't try telling me that as a married guy I cohabitate with my wife.  That is pure bullshit.  I am married to my wife.  Twice.  Once in city hall and once in church.  That's enough to confirm me in my community life and save me from concubinage.  it also is enough to confirm us as male and female, not as masculine and feminine.