I believe that someone in the ‘sphere has linked to this before, but I don’t think I’ve feature it on my blog so its about time. Monseigneur Charles Pope from the Archdiocese of Washington asks if we should stop using the word “marriage” when referring to sacramental unions. A few snippets:
It is a simple fact that word âmarriageâ as we have traditionally known it is being redefined in our times. To many in the secular world the word no longer means what it once did and when the Church uses the word marriage we clearly do not mean what the increasing number of states mean.
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So the bottom line is that what the secular world means by the word âmarriageâ is not even close to what the Church means. The secular world excluded every aspect of what the Church means by marriage. Is it time for us to accept this and start using a different word? Perhaps it is, and I would like to propose what I did back in March of 2010, that we return to an older term and hear what you think.
I propose that we should exclusively refer to marriage in the Church as âHoly Matrimony.â
According to this proposal the word marriage would be set aside and replaced by Holy Matrimony. It should be noticed that the Catechism of the Catholic Church refers to this Sacrament formally as âThe Sacrament of Matrimony.â
You can read the rest here.
I think that there is some strong merit to his proposal. Distinguishing ourselves from the secular individuals around us is important right now. Restoring the full meaning of the Sacrament and what it encompasses should be a vital task of the Church at the moment.