Anarchy?

In an address last night at St. John Lateran, Benedict spoke on the family:

What he said:

  He starts by saying that "the human being has been created in the image and likeness of God and God Himself is Love. Thus, the vocation to love is what makes man the authentic image of God. ... From this basic link between God and man comes another: the indissoluble link between spirit and body."

  "The totality of man," he continues, "includes the dimension of time and man's 'yes' ... means 'always', it is the space of fidelity. Only within it can one grow in faith." He adds that "the greatest _expression of freedom ... is the capacity to choose a definitive gift in which freedom, giving of itself, fully finds itself. Concretely, the personal and reciprocal  'yes' between a man and a woman ... is destined to the gift of a new life" and it is also a "public 'yes' with which the spouses take on the public responsibility of fidelity."

  Benedict XVI underscored that "the various forms of dissolving marriages today, as well as the free unions and the 'trial marriages', including pseudo-marriage between people of the same sex, are, rather, expressions of an anarchical freedom, which passes itself off, wrongly, for a true liberation of man. Such pseudo-freedom is based on making the body banal, which inevitably includes making man banal."

  Marriage and the Family in the History of Salvation.

  The Pope recalled that "biblical revelation, in fact, is above all the _expression of a story of love, the story of the covenant of God with man; therefore the story of the love and union between a man and a woman in the covenant of marriage was able to be assumed by God as a symbol of the history of salvation."

  "In the same way that the Incarnation of the Son of God reveals its true meaning in the cross, authentic human love is the giving of oneself and cannot exist if a person wishes to rid himself of the cross."

  The Holy Father underscored several negative tendencies that are in opposition to "the profound link between God and man, between God's love and human love. ...The depreciation of human love, the suppression of the authentic capacity to love is revealed, in fact, in our times as the most adept and efficacious arm to remove God from man, to distance Him from man's gaze and from his heart."

  Children.

  "Even in generating children marriage reflects its divine model, the love of God for man. In man and woman, paternity and maternity, as the body and as love, do not let themselves be limited to the biological: life is given entirely only when, with birth, love and the sense that make it possible to say yes to this life are also given. Precisely in this way does it become clear how contrary to human love, to the profound vocation of a man and a women, it is when the union is closed to the gift of life, or worse yet, suppresses or manipulates unborn life. ... For this reason the building of every single Christian family is placed within the larger context of the great family of the Church, which sustains it and bears it within itself."

Andrew Sullivan bristles:

But at first blush, I would think that "anarchy" would better describe a world in which gay people have no context for their relationships, no social support for connecting sex with love, no chance of being fully a part of their own families. But I'm hardly surprised by the inflammatory rhetoric or the contempt for modernity and for human freedom voiced by this Pope. We knew what we were getting. Is he persuasive? Well, for that he would need an argument, an engagement with the social forces that have propelled gay relationships to the forefront of contemporary debate. Easier to pontificate and condemn. And he sure knows how to do both of those. Meanwhile, Europe continues to ignore him. Close to 60 percent of the Swiss just voted to allow gay couples to have most of the rights and responsibilities of civil marriage. If I'd stayed in Britain, I'd only have to wait a few months for full legal marriage rights. Maybe if the Pope voiced a little more charity and listened a tiny bit more, more people would listen back.

What Sullivan, as many other commentors don't or choose not to understand is the context and meaning of "anarchy" here. The simple version is: once you have untied marriage from the vision of Genesis: male, female, (even within the context of Old Testament polygamy) created by God to be fertile and multiply and be companions, imaging God's love....where are the boundaries? On what are any boundaries based? There are none. Once marriage is no longer about male and female as rooted in God's intentions for his creation...on what do you base the definition?

Now, if you are not of this Judeo-Christian worldview, and are rooted, instead, in contemporary Western secularism, that's another thing entirely. Such a worldview doesn't make gay "marriage" necessary, but I suppose it makes it possible. Then, I supposed, untethered by that you may define this thing called "marriage" any way you like (although that's still questionable, historically speaking), between any individuals you choose. But - in the Judeo-Christian vision that his deeply, historically rooted and takes revelation seriously and as definitive and authoritative, to attempt to define marriage any other way does, indeed, pave the road for anarchy - as in any or all definitions are fair game.

Oh, and one more point: Benedict speaks about...oh, materialism, sometimes. The vast majority of Catholics (ahem) totally ignore him, as we pursue Our Stuff. So? Does that mean he should like, "listen" to us and get on board and proclaim that it's all good?

Update: Obviously, I felt the comments thread here had run its course. If anyone has something really substantive to say, or would like, for example to respond to the post of David Delaney, near the end, with specifics, let me know via email, and I will gladly post it.