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In this episode, Trent breaks down a recent Tweet and article from Fr. James Martin that spreads misinformation about the Church’s teaching on marriage.
Narrator:
Welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answer’s apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. And today I want to talk about gaslighting from Father James Martin. Gaslighting from Father Martin, who would’ve expected? Well, I have, this has become predictable. You could almost call it the Father James Martin two step. But before I talk about that, I want to thank everyone who supported the podcast. If you’re watching on YouTube, don’t forget to click subscribe to help us to grow, and check out new episodes when they come up. And if you’re watching or listening, be sure to go to trenthornpodcast.com to become a premium member. You get access to our catechism study series, the New Testament study series. That helps us to grow and reach more people, and I’m grateful to all of the support from our patrons there.
So today, let’s talk about this tweet, and then a follow-up article that Father Martin wrote for Outreach, the LGBTQ Catholic Magazine that he supports. So back on January 21st, the Catholic League published this tweet. It was an article about the US Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, who is legally married to another man, Chasten is his name. So what they said in the tweet was, “It is true that Pete Buttigieg is legally married, but that is a legal fiction.” And that’s correct. In fact, back when Obergefell, as you remember in the Supreme Court, handed down its ruling saying that states could not outlaw so-called same-sex marriage. And so when that ruling came down, Obergefell, I remember briefly I used incorrect language and I said that the Supreme Court had redefined marriage. And of course, no, nobody can redefine marriage because marriage is not a human construct. We’ll get to that in a bit when we talk about the catechism.
Marriage is something that God created and wrote into the nature of human beings to seek out. So the state cannot redefine marriage, any more than it could redefine friendship or justice. These are pre-political ideas rooted in the nature of the human person. The state simply doesn’t have the power to do that. So I ended up changing my language and saying that the Supreme Court in Obergefell had legally redefined marriage. And that’s correct. The court had legally redefined marriage and prevented states from passing laws that would prohibit calling so-called same-sex marriage, marriage. And so that’s what the Catholic League is saying here. It’s true that Pete Buttigieg is legally married, but that is a legal fiction. To which Father Martin decides to add this simple forward quote tweet. “Pete Buttigieg is married, period.” Now what Father Martin does, the Father Martin two-step, it goes like this.
He’ll say something controversial that can be read in one of two ways. It can be read in an unorthodox or outright heretical way, or it could be read in an Orthodox way if you really bend and contort very hard and add hidden assumptions. So he’ll put out a simple statement, people will say, you’re unorthodox, you’re heretical. And then he’ll come back and say, “Geez guys, why is everyone so mean to me? Obviously, I was saying the Orthodox thing. How could you have misinterpreted me that way? Oh geez, my critics sure are uncharitable, aren’t they?” Because that is what he goes on to say here in a follow-up tweet the next day. So he said here on January 22nd, “Surprised this got so much attention. Like it or not, Pete Buttigieg is legally married. You may disagree with same-sex marriage or not, but Secretary Pete is married in the eyes of the state and his church, as much as anyone else’s. To claim otherwise is to ignore reality.”
So this is correct, that he is legally married in the eyes of the state and his church. I would love for Father Martin to answer this question point blank. Father James Martin, point blank, is Pete Buttigieg married in the eyes of God? Is he married in the eyes of God to his partner Chasten? The answer is no. But here’s the thing. You can be married in the eyes of God, in the eyes of the church even, even if you’re not Catholic. Because this kind of rhetoric, it feeds into the false idea there’s only two kinds of marriage. There’s legal marriage and then there’s Catholic marriage. And we think that there’s legal marriages, and other marriages, and other religions, and then there’s Catholic marriage. But it forgets, no, no, no, no, no. There are two kinds of marriages. There are good and natural marriages, or valid marriages. Good and natural marriages exist between any time a husband and wife are married, even if they live in different cultures, belong to different religions, they’re married. This is raised to the level of a sacrament when you have baptized Christians involved.
So also before I get into that though, notice that this is such gaslighting that is not what he meant at all. “Guys, I was just saying he’s legally married. It’s obvious.” If Father Martin’s only point was to say Pete Buttigieg is legally married, then he wouldn’t have to say anything here, because the Catholic League is not denying he’s legally married. They say, look, it is true that Pete Buttigieg is legally married, but that is a legal fiction. He’s not really married. To which Father Martin says, no, no, he is married. And then he says, well, he’s legally married. Right, the Catholic League says he is legally married. So you’re just being redundant, and if you say what you mean by married here is legally married, you’re being redundant. There’s no need for you to comment on this. You’re just further confusing people, which is something that you’re good at.
What’s so funny is that I can see Father Martin adopting this kind of argument in another context. So what do we mean by a legal fiction? A legal fiction is when the law proposes a reality that is not literally true, but it is helpful as a legal shorthand. A classic example, this would be corporations. So corporations are legal persons, corporations are persons. Amazon is a person. So imagine if Father Martin, there was a court case involving Amazon and their free speech rights and the courts say, “Well, Amazon is a person and they have the right to free speech to do X, Y, or Z,” and Father Martin disapproved of what Amazon was doing. And I can see Father Martin saying, “It is true that Amazon is a legal person that has free speech rights as a corporation distinct from the shareholders or the board of executives. But that is a legal fiction.”
I’m sure if you tried to give rights to Amazon as a legal person, father Martin would quickly say, “Yeah, it’s a legal person but not a real person. Don’t treat Amazon like a person. Amazon doesn’t have the dignity of a person. It’s a legal fiction.” I’m sure Father Martin would say that in that legal fiction, but that is what is the case with so-called same-sex marriages. They are called marriages in the law, but that is a legal fiction. Other marriages, see the law created same-sex marriages. The law recognizes natural marriages. The government does not create marriage. Marriage creates government. Society doesn’t make marriage. Marriage make society. So when the state issues marriage licenses, it recognizes a natural reality that exists. It does not have the power to create marriage. And in fact, in denying marriage to people, it denies the natural rights they have as man and woman, what marriage is for. So then he goes on to later write this article, when was this, another two days later, January 23rd, writes this article for Outreach.
Like it or not, Pete Buttigieg is legally married. And so he goes and says, “I tweeted what I thought was an innocuous obvious tweet about an ungracious comment about the marriage of Pete Buttigieg, that it was a legal fiction, that the statement was self-refuting, didn’t seem to bother anyone. But to me, it seemed like a gratuitous attempt to denigrate LGBTQ people.” It’s a gratuitous attempt to denigrate LGBTQ people by saying same-sex couples are not actually married? If Father Martin really believes this, if he really believes this, then he has a big problem because in Amoris Laetitia, in paragraph 52 of Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis would be a homophobe under Father Martin’s definition. Here’s what it says in Amoris Laetitia, I’ll bring this up here. So it says in section 52, “We need to acknowledge the great variety of family situations that can offer a certain stability.” But before that, it says, “There is a failure to realize that only the exclusive and undissolved union between a man and a woman has a plenary role to play in a society as a stable commitment that bears fruit in new life.”
So only marriage conserved that foundational role. What is marriage? It is the exclusive and undissolvable union between a man and a woman. “We need to acknowledge the great variety of family situations that can offer a certain stability, but defacto or same-sex unions, for example, may not simply be equated with marriage. No union that is temporary or closed the transmission of life can ensure the future of society,” so it goes on to say, but it’s very clear here when it talks about same-sex marriages or those that are not ordered towards indissolubility or unity, these so-called de facto marriages, mere cohabitation, things like that. But notice what it says for, that same-sex unions may not simply be equated with marriage, full stop. But Father Martin thinks, oh no, it is a kind of marriage. And then he goes on. And then here’s the thing that he does.
By the way, if you’re online, don’t be uncharitable to Father Martin. All you do is give him ammunition. People were calling me apostate, false priest, serpent, Satan, a wolf, the F slur. He thrives on that. You’re not helping. You’re not helping at all by doing this because you’re giving him exactly what he wants. For a brief moment, Father Martin was trending on Twitter, which given that it led people to homophobic comments, did not please me one iota. All right. So he goes on, “Whether you like it, they’re legally married.” But I want to go further down here when this is one of the dopiest, the dopiest part of his reply. He says, “The hysteria continued. One question is why other marriages that are not Catholic sacramental marriages, but nonetheless civilly recognized, are accepted by Catholics as marriages. When a Jewish couple is married by a rabbi in a synagogue, most Catholic guests will say mazel tov, not you’re going to burn in hell. When an atheist couple ties the knot before a justice of the peace, most Catholic acquaintances will say, congratulations, not you’re satanic.”
And so on talks about universal life minister, they’ll say, how was the wedding? It is really hard for me to think that he is this ignorant of teaching, or he’s deliberately ignoring it. I don’t know. But when you go, so we’ll go here to the Code of Canon Law, in 1055 talking about the matrimonial covenant. It says, “Why would I celebrate the marriage of a Jewish couple, or the marriage of an atheist couple, but not the so-called marriage of a same-sex couple?” Well, it’s because I have to use that word so-called, because it’s not marriage, it doesn’t satisfy the definition of marriage that the church puts out. Canon 1056 in the Code of Canon Law says, “The essential properties of marriage are unity and indissolubility, which in Christian marriage obtain a special firmness by reason of the sacrament.”
Here’s the thing. A same-sex couple is not ordered towards unity. Sticking one body part inside of another body part does not make you one flesh. When the doctor puts his hand in my abdomen for a surgery, we do not become one flesh. Inserting one body part into another does not make you one flesh. That is not the unity being discussed here, that unity is achieved, however, in a valid marriage that has been consummated. In fact, Canon Law, if we go down here more, it’s very specific about that it, actually. It’s very specific in Canon 1061. “A valid marriage between the baptized is called ratum tantum if it has not been consummated. It is called ratum et consummatum if the spouses have performed between themselves in a human fashion a conjugal act, which is suitable in itself for the procreation of offspring, to which marriage is ordered by its nature, and by which the spouses become one flesh.” So what does that mean? When you’re married in a church, you are married, Joseph and Mary were married, but they did not have an indissoluble marriage, okay?
The marriage becomes indissoluble when you become one flesh. So you are married, when you go to the reception, you can say, congratulations, you’re married. It is a valid marriage, ratum tantum, but it’s ratum et consummatum, you are not one flesh until you have engaged in the marital act in a human fashion, which what most people would say what that means is that it’s consensual. It’s not rape, for example, not just having sex. You’re engaging consensually in the marital act that is suitable for the procreation of offspring, so you’re having vaginal intercourse, okay? And then you become one flesh. So this satisfies the definition of a non-Christian couple, a Protestant couple, a Jewish couple, an atheist couple. They’re a man and a woman and they have at least unity and indissolubility. At least they’re aiming for that. At least they say till death to us part, that lifelong union is some kind of an ideal, then it is a good and natural marriage.
So much so that if you get a divorce and then remarry, let’s say you’re going to marry a Catholic, you have to have that marriage annulled, because it is still considered to be a valid marriage. What God has joined, let no man tear asunder. But this is important, going back to what God says. Let me bring this up here. Let me try to bring this up in the catechism. I just got to shrink this a little bit, see if we can get it up in here. This is important. The catechism paragraph, especially 1603 through 1605, marriage in the order of creation, marriage in God’s plan. This is just important to remember. Let me highlight this part right here, in paragraph 1603. “The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution, despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes.” It is not. It is something that God created.
“God who created man out of love also calls him to love the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being.” It talks about later how God created marriage. And he has this plan for human beings, and marriage has been raised to the level of a sacrament for the baptized. And so these kinds of marriages between baptized Christians, they are indissoluble, okay, that’s clear, catechism 101 here. And we go back to Father Martin, and he does this all the time. Why would you, if a Catholic high school is going to fire someone in a same-sex union, why aren’t they firing unloving people or people using contraception? Well, if a person is actively promoting the use of contraception in a high school, they should be sacked. But usually the use of contraception, people don’t even know about it because it’s not a public sin that causes scandal, so you wouldn’t even know about it.
But if someone is married to a person of the same sex that is cause for public scandal and sets a bad example for the students of the school. Same here, well, why aren’t you getting mad about a Jewish couple getting married? Why would you say mazel tov instead of you’re going to burn in hell? Because they are fulfilling, that Jewish couple are fulfilling the vocation, what is written in their human nature, to seek out marriage that has been given to them by God. It is a good and natural marriage. So-called same-sex unions are not marriages. They can never be called that. Same-sex couples do not have sex. There are opposite sex couples who do not have sex. You call things like oral sex, that’s not sex, that’s sexual activity, okay? Sex, by its definition, is that one flesh union that only exists between man and woman, that is done in a way that is open to life.
And so there may be other sexual activity people do with their genitals, but that’s not sex, it’s definitely not the marital act. And if that is the only kind of union you were… Sorry, if that is the only kind of behavior you can engage in, if that’s the only kind of behavior you can engage in, sexual behavior rather than the sexual act, you can’t perform the marital act. If you can’t engage in the marital act, in principle, because you simply have the wrong anatomy, you’re incompatible in that way, you are not married. That’s not marriage. And so it’s important for us as we talk about this, we should be charitable. Now, I’ve been firm in my opposition here to Father Martin, but I’m also charitable. I haven’t called him names, like what he complained about in his article.
I do say that I do believe that he is acting either out of ignorance, or it could be a kind of deception. It’s one of the two. He’s certainly ignorant of Catholic teaching if this is the argument that he’s making, so I will launch that criticism against him. But we should just remember that when we engage others on these important issues where souls are at stake in their understanding of church teaching, and how people live out their moral lives, I will firmly, charitably, but firmly, engage those who would confuse people, and confuse them in a way that could lead them to perpetual destruction. So I hope this is helpful for you all. Thank you guys so much for listening. And yeah, I hope you just have a very blessed day.
Narrator:
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