Catholic Archbishop: Civil Marriage and Church Marriage Are the Same - But Only When Conveninent

The bullshit and verbal diarrhea emanating from the Roman Catholic Church continues to be mind boggling. For non-Catholics, to understand what follows you need to know that the Catholic Church does NOT recognize civil marriages that go against Church dogma on divorce. Indeed, divorced Catholics and those who marry divorced Catholics cannot be married in the Church and their marriages are not recognized by the Church. Yet now, as part of its ongoing theocratic anti-gay marriage agenda, the Church - or at least the Archbishop John Nienstedt of Minneapolis(pictured at right) - is trying to blow a smoke screen and conflate civil marriage with Church/religious marriage. The Church's real goal? To put civil rights up for popular vote and in the process force the Church's religious dogma into the civil laws. And if one is not Catholic and/or doesn't subscribe to the Church's view? Archbishop Nienstedt's response id basically go f**K yourself. Meanwhile, of course, the Church continues to protect sexual predators who rape children and youths. Here are highlights from Minnesota Public Radio:
*
Nienstedt: . . . And I wrote an op/ed piece in the Star Tribune in April calling for a constitutional amendment on marriage to protect marriage as defined as a relationship between one man and one woman. Last year, in the Catholic Spirit, I wrote a column on the reality.
*
Crann: In the DVD, you call same-sex marriage a 'dangerous risk to society.' Those are your words. Why is that?
*
Nienstedt: Because it confuses the very notion of marriage and the complementarity which marriage has always been founded upon between the two sexes, the man and the woman, the husband and the wife. And by expanding the definition of marriage, I mean where do you begin to stop?
*
Nienstedt: There is no difference between the civil and the religious definition of marriage because marriage comes to us by virtue of creation and our creator. And so the state does not establish marriage. Marriage came long before there was any government. And so this is a natural reality, and it's defined by the natural law, what we call the natural law. And so it precedes any government.
*
The archdiocese believes that the time has come for voters to be presented directly with an amendment to our state constitution to preserve our historic understanding of marriage. In fact, this is the only way to put the one man, one woman definition of marriage beyond the reach of the courts and politicians.
*
I left the Catholic Church because I found it to be a corrupt and hypocritical institution. If Archbishop Nienstedt has his way, I will nonetheless have a significant part of my life controlled by Catholic dogma. So much for the U.S. Constitution and my constitutional freedoms.