Filipino Families of Skokie

What is true femininity? What is authentic beauty in a culture that so often confuses and crushes the dignity of women? Thérèse Nichols interviews several women including Genevieve Kineke, author of the book; “The Authentic Catholic Woman” to discover the essence of the Feminine Genius.

Thanks to  Salt and Light TV You Tube Channel

Donna-Marie Cooper O’Boyle talks about carving time for prayer.

Donna-Marie Cooper O’Boyle talks about carving time for prayer.

When President Obama announced his support for same-sex “marriage” it’s big news in the media. But how should we understand marriage? Nice piece from CatholicVote.Org.

Credit: CatholicVote.Org, photo: St. Joseph Catholic Church

Is Marriage Any of the State’s Business to Begin With?

CatholicVote.Org., by Stephen White, May 10, 2012

Why does the Catholic Church demand that the (necessarily coercive) civil law reflect a Catholic understanding of marriage?

The short answer—and this may surprise some people—is that the Church doesn’t demand that the civil law reflect a fully Catholic understanding of marriage.

What the Church does insist is that the state recognize and protect the natural institution of marriage—an institution that exists prior to and independent from the state. The state doesn’t have to take a sacramental view of marriage, but neither is the state free to pretend that marriage is simply “whatever the state says it is.”

So what defines marriage? What separates marriage from all other social institutions, including all other arrangements of sexual relationships, such that the state should show it special preference? The answer to that question is, and has always been, that marriage is directed towards the begetting and rearing of children.

That marriage is essentially ordered to procreation may explain, at least for our purposes, why no homosexual coupling could ever constitute a “marriage,” but it doesn’t fully address the question of why the Church demands that the state take sides on the matter. Why not keep the state out of it all together?

The first reason that the state is obliged to protect marriage is that marriage is an institution that promotes the common good, for which the state bears special responsibility.

Because marriage is a boon to children’s welfare and, as the foundation for stable families, a boon to society as a whole, the state has a legitimate interest in marriage. (And that, precisely as ordered to procreation and family life.) This is probably the most promising ground on which to make a public defense of marriage, in part because arguments from public utility resonate more with our culture than do arguments from, say, natural law. But the state’s obligation to respect and protect traditional marriage goes beyond the social utility of the institution.

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