Letter to the Editor: The great and shining tent
Fr. Barry Bercier, A.A.
Issue date: 4/8/09 Section: Viewpoint
In a recent letter to the editor here I made a brief and unremarkable argument reaffirming the universal understanding of mankind that marriage is the union of the sexes as recognized by law. It was an argument based on common sense. I said that the effort of academic elites and their disciples to obscure this ancient understanding and to remove reference to the duality of the sexes from our laws concerning marriage represents a breathtaking abandonment of common sense.
As if to prove me right on this score, in the most recent issue of the Provoc, 12 of Assumption's own academics have stepped out onto the stage to display for us their own reckless abandonment of common sense. Dr. Schultz, in a separate letter, suggests that I should just laugh it off over "a drink of really good scotch." Dr. Schultz teaches in the political science department here and so he ought to know better: this is no laughing matter.
Think. For all the higher life forms and for ourselves among them, individuals are incomplete. They are biologically incomplete. By themselves they cannot reproduce and, if left by themselves, they would go swiftly extinct.
This incompleteness is what we call "sex."
"Sexual union" brings the incomplete individuals together, and from them makes the complete whole. Like it says in the Bible, "Male and female he created them," and "it's not good for the man to be alone." So, "the two become one flesh." This sexual union is good in itself-it's good to be whole-and it's good also because it makes continued life itself possible.
All life comes from the union of the opposite sexes. Everything comes from this; the whole human world comes from this. From other sorts of sexual behavior there is no union and no life comes.
It's nature itself that makes this so.
Reasonable human laws and traditions concerning marriage only acknowledge what nature here has decreed. Laws don't set down the rule for nature. Human law is not absolute, and human government is not absolute, but is limited by the structure of human nature which law and government are to serve. Laws are good, right and just when they aim at what we call "natural right." Laws make sense and have value when they defend the "rights" we have because of our human nature, or, as our Founding Fathers put it, our rights as "endowed by our Creator."
As if to prove me right on this score, in the most recent issue of the Provoc, 12 of Assumption's own academics have stepped out onto the stage to display for us their own reckless abandonment of common sense. Dr. Schultz, in a separate letter, suggests that I should just laugh it off over "a drink of really good scotch." Dr. Schultz teaches in the political science department here and so he ought to know better: this is no laughing matter.
Think. For all the higher life forms and for ourselves among them, individuals are incomplete. They are biologically incomplete. By themselves they cannot reproduce and, if left by themselves, they would go swiftly extinct.
This incompleteness is what we call "sex."
"Sexual union" brings the incomplete individuals together, and from them makes the complete whole. Like it says in the Bible, "Male and female he created them," and "it's not good for the man to be alone." So, "the two become one flesh." This sexual union is good in itself-it's good to be whole-and it's good also because it makes continued life itself possible.
All life comes from the union of the opposite sexes. Everything comes from this; the whole human world comes from this. From other sorts of sexual behavior there is no union and no life comes.
It's nature itself that makes this so.
Reasonable human laws and traditions concerning marriage only acknowledge what nature here has decreed. Laws don't set down the rule for nature. Human law is not absolute, and human government is not absolute, but is limited by the structure of human nature which law and government are to serve. Laws are good, right and just when they aim at what we call "natural right." Laws make sense and have value when they defend the "rights" we have because of our human nature, or, as our Founding Fathers put it, our rights as "endowed by our Creator."
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