Catholic Marriage & Antecedent and Permanent Impotence

My new roommate, Erin, and I were discussing the issue de jour: homosexual marriage. During the conversation, I mentioned how consummation was an imperative for the Sacrament of Marriage in the Roman Catholic Church. Meaning, for a marriage to be valid, the couple must have sex.

She then theologically stumped me: “What if you couldn’t have sex? What if you were a quadriplegic?”

Initially, I thought the Catholic Church would insist on consummation, and hence those unable to have sex would not be able to partake in a Catholic marriage. However, I was far from sure.

The next day, I was talking to my good friend Andy who suggested that maybe the consummation was an ethical suggestion, but not an absolute imperative; something akin to the ethical equation: ought equals must.

A little research, however, provided me with Roman Catholic Canon 1084 §1. It states that “antecedent and permanent impotence” is a diriment impediment. Simply put: if your junk don’t work, you can’t tie the knot. This fascinating little ordinance is found in Book IV, Part I, Title VII, Chapter III of the Roman Catholic Canon.

Of course, this is classical Catholic doctrine. Catholic marriage requires consummation. So, if one cannot commence the marriage through consummation, then the marriage is invalid. The Church is at least consistent.

There is, however, a question of formally granted dispensation. For instance, dispensation is now granted regularly for ‘mixed-marriages’ – meaning marriages between a Catholic and a non-Catholic Christian or Jew (thank you, Vatican II).

I suspect that most bishops would grant special dispensation to those who may have antecedent and permanent impotence, but I myself am confused by what the rationale might be. Canon 90, found in (Book I, Tit. IV, Chp. V) states, “One is not to be dispensed from an ecclesiastical law without a just and reasonable cause…” Of course, it is not clear what a just and reasonable cause may constitute, though.

However, if I were a bishop – and hell, I’m not even really Catholic – the decision would be easy. If I found two people who loved each other and wanted to marry – despite the sobering matrimonial-actuary tables and the reality of a spouse with antecedent and permanent impotence – I wouldn’t just grant dispensation, I would offer blessings.

Addendum: My friend Ramil, made an excellent point. How would a 'good' Catholic even known they had antecedent impotence. Premaritial sex by yourself or with a partner is off limits. Plausibly a good - if not a perhaps somewhat naive - Catholic could never have an erection before marriage and just assume that all the plumbing begins to work when you marry... Anyways, thanks Ramil for the thought.

Agnostic Prayers

Two agonostic prayers from "Death Be Not Proud" and Vonnegut's "Slapstick".

Johnny Gunter's agnostic prayer "Death Be Not Proud"

Almighty God
forgive me for my agnositcism;
For I shall try to keep it gentle, not cynical,
nor a bad influence.

And O!
if thou art truly in heavens,
accept my gratitude
for all Thy gifts
and I shall try
to fight the good fight. Amen.

Kurt Vonnegut's suggestion for agnostic prayer from "Slapstick".

The old man is writing his authobiography. He begins with the words which my Uncle Al told me one time should be used by religious skeptics as a prelude to their nightly prayers.
These are the words: "To whom it may concern."

Liberalism’s Orthodoxy: Or Why We Should Defend Miss California

Dr. Stephen Long wrote in his book, The Goodness of God, “Liberalism has now become a dogmatic form of orthodoxy incapable of change.” Indeed, consider this for a moment. Theological liberalism seems to have no room in the inn for its own virtue of tolerance, only canonized dogma: God must suffer to love, missiology is eschatology, biblical miracles are literary myths, newer is better, and of course women and homosexuals must be able to be ordained or the Church is both oppressively patriarchal and an apostate.

Indeed, liberal theology has indentified numerous inviolable theological planks, crafting, slowly, a dogmatic platform. It has becomes an ideology demanding capitulation to hold-outs who have not yet converted. Outside of theology, we see that secular liberalism demands this same type of iron-clad orthodoxy. Recently, if not also infamously, Miss California was asked if she supported the recent ruling in Vermont that allowed for same sex marriages. Before answering that she in fact did not agree with same sex marriages, she opined, “Well, I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land where you can choose.” Indeed, while Aquinas thought a democracy was only a moderate well functioning government, as it was slow to act toward the good, and could only be moderately assured to enact the good, it nevertheless, was also slow to enact evil. More importantly, where is the well-spring of tolerance for Miss California that liberals so often demand be extended to everyone (and everything) else. Instead, the reaction was indignation. A particularly – if not peculiarly – urbanized cry of, “she didn’t, did she?!” was heard round the blogosphere.

Of course, the reason for the intolerance was that she was intolerant. And only intolerance can be matched with more intolerance. Here we realize the impossibility of diversity (liberalism). That no political claim can equate to perfect tolerance. That all beliefs – even beliefs in tolerance – are ultimately divisive. Otherness (diversity, liberalism) only identifies by being separate. The problem of perfect liberalism also makes us equally realize the impossibility of unity. No taxonomy will be able to perfectly organize everyone (and everything) into a single category. This is the problem of relationships – and it is also the mystery of Trinity and the Incarnation. We are the same and we are different. Oliver O’Donovan offers the term ‘pluriformity’. It offers to explicate the paradoxical claim that we are all one and all other. We realize that particularity rents violence in its necessary act of exclusion, but our limitedness – our humanness – does not offer recourse. Pluriformity is an anthropology for understanding theology that need not capitulate to late modern liberalism (our difference unites us), or conservative theology (our correct belief unites us), but rather a way to recapture the theology of the Body of Christ as the body of believers that are both diverse and universe.

We live in the tension between diversity and unity. However, I think some of my friends would argue that perfect diversity and unity come under God. And, I hope, they are correct. But it is an eschatological hope. Fidelity may hold more promise than either equality (liberalism) or certainty (conservatism).

Woody Allen on God (aka Mr. Big)

Last night I couldn't sleep so I pick up an old favorite: Woody Allen's Getting Even. It's one of my favorite books of short stories. Anyways, I reread Mr. Big; an over-the-top detective styled story with all the trappings of a Philosophy 101 class. It seemed particularly relevant as Allen takes a swipe at logical positivists!

Here's a taste:

"Well, she's lying. She's a teacher at Radcliffe. She was mixed up with a philosopher for a while."
"Pantheist?"
"No. Empiricist, as I remember. Bad guy. Completely rejected Hegel or any dialectical methodology."
"One of those."
"Yeah. He used to be a drummer with a jazz trio. Then he got hooked on Logical Positivism. When that didn't work, he tried Pragmatism. Last I heard he stole a lot of money to take a course in Schopenhauer at Columbia. The mob would like to find him - or get their hands on his textbooks so they can resell them."
"Take it from me, Kaiser. There's no one out there. It's a void. I couldn't pass all those bad checks or screw society the way I do if for one second I was able to recognize any authentic sense of Being. The universe is strictly phenomenological. Nothing's eternal. It's all meaningless."


Click here for the rest of Mr. Big.
Near the bottom of the page is a button, "Show full text"
9/10ths from the bottom of that page is the story, Mr. Big

If it's a symbol, to hell with it.

“I was once, five or six years ago, taken by some friends to have dinner with Mary McCarthy and her husband, Mr. Broadwater… She departed the Church at the age of 15 and is a Big Intellectual…. Toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. Mrs. Broadwater said when she was a child and received the host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the most portable person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one. I then said, in a very shaky voice, Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it. That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.” - Flannery O'Connor

What a joy to read such a statement of faith. And isn't this the statement of faith said when one partakes in the Eucharist?
'The Body of Christ.'
'Amen.'

And the Eucharist and the the Resurrection are tied to together.
The real presence of the Eucharist is the parallel claim of the historical resurrection, which is of particular importance during the Lenten season. Both are declaration that God is not silent. That God works with and within the world. It proclaims that God's action are mediated through immediacy.

However, we are incredulous toward the Real. Instead we allow our post-modern sensibility to transfix us in the infinite regression of meaning through symbol and myth. And if this is true, Joseph Campbell is the false savior of our time. He offers a translation of meaning and existence through 'universal' symbols, but which can never answer the metaphysical. Such a project can only defer meaning, which is exactly what philosophers like Derrida would like us have to believe.

What is more troubling are those happy fools in theology who still wittingly align themselves with Tillichian and Bultmannian philosophy. No two theologians have done more theological damage in recent decades, as they have persuaded many that the Eucharist, the Virgin Birth, the miracles, the Resurrection are nothing more than mere symbols. Fantastic, helpful, 'meaningful' symbols, but symbols nonetheless. They are merely powerful earthly representation that help translate the world, but they don't represent the Real. They defer meaning. They merely translate. Tillich and Bultmann were crass logical positivists dressed in theologian garb.

A few months ago a few friends and I were discussing Borg. We decided that Borg’s resurrection was metaphorical. That deeply troubled a friend of mine. Days later he returned to me, and said Jason, you know why a metaphorical resurrection bothers me? He answered his own question, “Because I am not going to metaphorically die! I am going to actually, factually die! And I want a savior who actually saved me from sin and death!” Bultmann seems to be offering something similar, but instead of a metaphor, it’s a myth.

So, if it's only metaphor, if it's only myth, or if it's only symbol then to hell with it. To hell with a religion that is merely 'trying its best' to translate the world. To hell with a religion that can be construed into a spiritual 'preference'.

But, if it is the Eucharist that translates the meaning of the world, and not the world that dictates the meaning of the Eucharist, then perhaps the only word appropriate is 'amen'.