St. Paul Ephesians 5 and Same-Sex Marriage^

St. Paul, Ephesians 5 and Same-Sex Marriage^

Pentecost – send us the Spirit of Truth – www.cinopsbegone.com – Sunday, June 12th, 2011

Preface: In the name of common sense and natural law, please send a postcard or a petition of names dated Pentecost, 2011, to: “Most Reverend Tod D. Brown*, D.D. Bishop of Orange, Please censor Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez. She supports same-sex marriage. Over all she is a CINOP (Catholic-in-name only politician). Also implore her not to use the Catholic label when she runs for office.”

^Pauline texts can help ground a natural defense of marriage (note: a literal translation of Eph 5:21-33 is provided at the end of this article by Dr. Mary Healy, Homiletic & Pastoral Review, May 2011)

“Paul then begins to draw an analogy between the wife’s relation to her husband and the Church’s relationship to Christ: “for a husband is head of his wife as Christ is head of the Church” (5: 23)… As Pope John Paul noted, the precedence suggested by “head” is an order of precedence in the giving and receiving of love: …

“A different but related analogy is presented in 5:27-28, where Paul compares a husband’s love for his wife to a person’s care for his own body: “for no one ever hates his own flesh but nourishes it and cares for it.” The Hebrew notion of “flesh” signifies not merely the physical body but the bond of kinship, which extends to the members of one’s family (Gn 29:14; Is58:7) or tribe (2 Sm5:1), and ultimately to all humanity (Gn 6:12; Lk 3:6). A husband is to seek his wife’s well-being as much as his own because of the intimacy of their kinship bond…

“At the climax of his exposition Paul cites Gn 2:24: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh,” quickly adding: “This is a great mystery for I am speaking of Christ and the Church.” Paul thus brings the institution of marriage to a completely new level of significance. Marriage is not only part of God’s original design for humanity, it is a mystery, a sacramentum in Latin, that from the beginning of time pointed in a veiled way to the fullness of God’s plan of salvation…

“Here God first creates the male alone, and breathes into him the breadth of life (cf. Gn 2:7). The divine remark, “It is not good that the man should be alone: I will make him a helper fit for him” (Gn 2:18) is in striking contrast to the repeated refrain affirming the goodness of creation in chapter 1: “God saw that it was good.” It is an emphatic assertion that human beings are not made for solitude; essential to human nature is interpersonal communion…

“It is no coincidence that human society has always recognized marriage a having an inherent and unchangeable structure corresponding to the nature of the human person, embodied as male and female… The concept of “homosexual” as a category of persons is, in fact, a modern construct, invented by those who sought to overturn sodomy laws in the 19th century. We must admit that this movement has been enormously successful in transforming societal perceptions…It follows that the existence of a strong, overwhelming or persistent sexual desire is no argument for the righteousness of satisfying the desire. Otherwise there would be no moral grounds to judge adultery, incest, bestiality, polyamory, pedophilia or other forms of sexual disorder as wrong…

“Scripture illuminates the natural law by articulating truths about human nature… & offers a vision for marriage that is compelling attractive in its own right … corresponds to the deepest longings of the human heart…”

George H. Kubeck, *Marywood Pastoral Center, PO Box 1419, Orange, CA 92863-1595 – (714) – 282-3000