Matrimony in the Post-Collapse

The news that Cdl. Burke and his now-two compatriots are slowly moving forward with the process of the dubia has us traddies in a tizzy about how slow the whole thing is, as if the Vatican has ever moved in a good direction at anything higher than a glacial pace. I do not know if the cardinals will get this declaration of orthodoxy signed or clearly rejected before the Fatimaversary is through, but doing so would help calm a lot of people down.

Meanwhile, my own experience with the married seems to be ever-increasing in variety and alarm. I know those once-divorced, once-separated, and constantly online-dating; those hastily wed after a pregnancy; those in active concubinage; those with children and an annulled marriage; and those young, in love, and getting engaged against the judgment of their parents (God bless them). Marriage is an increasingly messy proposition, but it is still the natural end of healthy adulthood. One not vowed to celibacy nor afflicted with some serious disability finds his proper and natural end in marriage and child-making, and woe to those who put stumbling blocks along the way of those who seek it.

That goes double for vocation-obsessed busybodies who demand years of prayer and preparation for the common state of life in which God created our race. "It is not good for man to be alone" is not a complex maxim, and derailing a young man or woman seeking marriage with vocational retreats and the accompanying scrupulosity is to create an occasion of sin.

It is also true for those who spread cynicism about marriage as such, frightening young men with horror stories of ex-wives taking everything in the divorce and encouraging a culture of mistrust. Serial fornicators are made of such stuff as this.

And I think it is true also of the matrimonial spiritualists, those who elevate marriage to a state of life equal to the religious and contemplative. There is a theology of matrimony, it is true, but mostly marriage is practical, down to earth, and humble. Catholic apologists do not need to spice it up with charismatic pretensions. Even the old manualist definition of the home as the "Domestic Church" veers off the rails when it recommends a pseudo-monasticism instead of the perpetuation of folk traditions.

But from the beginning it was not so.

We live in an unthinkable age when people suffer simply for marriage. Chinese wives have their bodies invaded to slaughter the children within. Wedding planners and chefs are financially ruined for not supporting perversion. Governments encourage a great burden of collegiate debt on young people who simply wish to work and support a family. Subhuman fools deride mothers of more than 2.5 children publicly in the supermarket.

"Adulterers, know you not that the friendship of this world is the enemy of God?"

Now, blind clerics lead blind adulterers to the cliff. Would that Henry VIII had lived in our times, he would still be a proud papist! When Elias returns in the final days, do we think he will be condemning the Antichrist for his Satanic pacts, or will he perhaps rather be condemning him for his three divorces? Like the Forerunner who came in his spirit, Elias might very well be martyred for defending the primordial state of marriage.

"It is not good for man to be alone.... It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife." Those are two hills worth dying on.