Bishop [Thomas] Tobin has found strong support for his position on same-sex marriage in Episcopal Bishop Geralyn Wolf and in Imam Farid Ansari, of the Muslim America Dawah Center of Rhode Island and the Rhode Island Council for Muslim Advancement.
“As Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of Rhode Island, I firmly support the traditional definition of marriage as the union between one male and one female,” Bishop Wolf said in a statement released to Rhode Island Catholic in January. “I believe that Holy Matrimony is a sacred religious rite, whose definition should not be re-interpreted by legislation or civil courts.”
According to a statement released by the Media Committee of the Rhode Island for Muslim Advancement, the Islamic community of Rhode Island “affirms the standards set forth in the Torah, Gospel and Holy Qur’an on the issue of same-sex relationships and marriage.”
This is a blessing, to hear a diverse group speak out and say that marriage is a spiritual union and therefrore a proper institution for a church. There should be no such thing as civil marriage any more because there is no need for it. Civil unions provide the civil guarantees that homosexuals maintain they need. Well, fair enough. But this means that marriage properly so called need no longer be derailed and compromised by civil categories. Marriage is not a civil contract, it is a set of vows, and the vows are all matters of the spirit. Larry
So does this mean, as it seems to imply, that RI Roman Catholics can now marry Muslims without special dispensation?
Meanwhile, the highest court of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has ruled that it cannot discern what Christian marriage is, and therefore dismissed charges against a minister who conducted same-sex marriages.
#1, you can be assured that these religious leaders except, perhaps, Wolfe, do not believe that marriage is just a “spiritual union.” Marriage has always been an important civil institution. These leaders are speaking out in favor of the civil institution of marriage. Civil unions only obscure what interest society has in promoting intact families, that is families in which children are raised by their biological fathers and mothers.
#2, can you point out one statement in this article that has to do implicitly with marriage between Catholics and Muslims?
“I believe that Holy Matrimony is a sacred religious rite, whose definition should not be re-interpreted by legislation or civil courts.â€
So by implication, wouldn’t that mean between baptised Christians for the purpose of procreation? Not just any man or woman. One either has it as a “sacred religious rite” in the Christian biblical sense (no divorce, no sex outside of or before marriage) or one does not. And what Jews and Muslims did or did not think about that is pretty irrelevant. Or alternatively, it’s a civil issue open to legislation and input from many (all) citizens. Some seem unable to actually make up their minds on this point.
No Phil not any more. There is no longer any reason for civil marriage since civil partnerships now present all the civil benefits. This is now a fundamental, and essential change in the definition of marriage – one long over due. In the past, to get all the civil benefits, one had to marry, whether in a church or before JP. No longer. This is so obvious I fail to understand why it it is taking so long to sink in.
To simplify, let us take all the spiritual elements out of civil marriages. Is what remains a marriage in any recognizable sense? Now let us take all the civil elements out of a religious marriage. Is what remains a marriage in a recognizable sense? The answer is clear: The latter is a marriage; the former is not. The former is simply a civil arrangement for constitutional benefits like any other legal partnership. The latter is the product of a set of vows which are far beyond anything civil law can touch (or should).Allowing the state to regulate love is clearly a legal absurdity and a First Amend. violation. And think how absurd it is for a religious ceremony to guarantee civil benefits – which is presently the case. Separating the civil from the spiritual is not rocket science, and the only issue is why we have waited so long. We have the homosexual agenda to thank for allowing us to see and permit the division.
Marriage is not first and foremost about biological parents raising children. It is about creating a spiritual bond greater than mere practicality, a synthesis, not a partnership. The bond PRECEDES the children, and so it should, for children should be the product of the husband and the wife cleaving to each other to make a bond greater than mere cooperation. All evolution tells us that this bond is what it takes to create a society capable of surviving the shocks and horrors that evolution sets before us to test our fitness. All our history tells us that a man and his woman, a woman and her man, bound to each other, and the children thereof, joined with other identical units, are great enough to survive for thousands of years. It isn’t civil marriage that took us out of the trees and the caves. Larry
I’m from the diocese of Rhode Island, and following this issue carefully (or so I thought). If Bp Wolfe’s comments were more widely reported in the media here, I’m very surprised to have missed it; in fact, I think her comments aren’t well-known in the state. I’m surprised (and disappointed) to first read this in an RC paper, quoted on T19!
I strongly suspect that Thomas Tobin couldn’t care less what Geralyn Wolfe thinks about almost anything. So his trumpeting her “support” in his paper is just cynical; does her opinion really matter otherwise?
Her objection to same-sex marriage was well-known and clearly stated before this. But now she’s given aid and comfort to someone who really doesn’t wish her church well (in fact probably despises it) and embarassed our new governor (Lincoln Chafee, an Episcopalian). What she says really doesn’t address the legislation under consideration, nor does it care to reflect the simple fact that in this diocese people of conscience are coming to different conclusions about civil marriage.