Our human civilization in crisis

Last week, Friday, June 26, 2015, the US Supreme Court, voting five to four in Obergefell v. Hodges, redefined the nature and meaning of marriage, by declaring that two persons of the same sex have a right to contract it. A few weeks earlier, in previously Catholic Ireland, 62 percent of 60 percent of the voters who turned out in a referendum on “same-sex marriage” voted in favor of the proposition: “Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex.” This, in the view of many, has no basis in moral law, religion, science or reason. I share this position.

Neither the US judicial ruling nor the Irish vote is a reflection of an American or Irish national consensus. Although the distinguished American ethicist and papal biographer George Weigel points out that “the marriage battle was lost in the culture long before foundations of our culture have eroded,” the pro-life and pro-family movement in the US had been continuously reporting victory after victory in the United Nations and in many US states before the Supreme Court cataclysm came. This means that the majority of the American and the Irish peoples may not be entirely supportive of same-sex “marriage,” except that a small legal majority is empowered to give it legal effect.