Stuart Koehl, in FT: Same Stuff, Different Day

In the last two posts, to my thinking, we've been having a conversation about the nature of Catholic faith.  Some have argued that the Church is so damaged that we need to withdraw from the institution to practice our faith in the integrity of our individual selves (see my previous two entries, on Charles Pierce's recent essay in the Boston Globe magazine).  I have disagreed, saying that no matter how damaged the institution, it is vital to the very nature of Catholic faith; that Catholic faith is inherently sacramental, communal and "ordered."  In this sacramentality, I'd like to further argue, it is also profoundly "public."

Here comes another way of thinking about the same principle, from a different quarter.  In today's "On the Square" entry at the First Things blog, Stuart Koehl suggests, in "An Independent Witness to Marriage," that, to solve the problem of the state increasingly favoring same-sex marriage, the church should stop co-operating with the state as a partner in the process of marriage.  Marriage by the state and marriage by the church would simply be separate things.

Koehl argues that this would free the Church to hold fast to its belief that marriage is to be reserved for heterosexual unions.   It would be free to "witness" to a specific understanding of Catholic marriage that is counter, perhaps in many ways, to the understanding of civil marriage.  It would be free to set its own standards, and -- though he doesn't say this -- it would make sacramental marriage a much more freely (though perhaps even less frequently chosen) sacrament.   All that freedom, what American could object?