Month: March 2005

A reader writes:

If the groom lusts after the bride at the altar, must he confess before the exchange of vows?

No. Here’s why:

1) It is unlikely that lustful thoughts a conscientious Catholic groom might have at the altar would be mortally sinful. Once the couple actually gets to the altar, things proceed pretty quickly, and the groom is likely to be so distracted keeping up with things that any consent he might give to lustful thoughts would not amount to the kind of deliberate consent needed for a grave sin to turn into a mortal sin. He might have an attack of the scruples that makes him worry that it did, but the odds are that it didn’t.

2) It’s more likely that, in the middle of the wedding ceremony, a groom is likely to be imagining and looking forward to the wedding night. In that case, he’s not thinking about anything illicit. He’s thinking about and looking forward to something that will not only be licit but also expected–and immanently so. It’s not as if it’s months away from the marriage and he’s thinking about being married and having conjugal relations. In that case what he’s thinking about (marital relations) is not in itself sinful, BUT it is likely to put him in the proximate occasion of sin by getting him worked up when he has no morally licit way to act on what he’s imagining. When he’s actually at the altar then he has basically no opportunity to act in appropriately on his thoughts, and by the time he does have the opportunity to act on them after the ceremony, doing so will be licit. He’s thus not putting himself in the proximate occasion of sin if he’s thinking about the wedding night during the marriage ceremony.

3) Even if, by some fluke, he did manage to commit a mortal sin in his thoughts during the ceremony itself, the thing to do would not be to put the ceremony on hold for an emergency confession. The thing for him to do would be for him, to the best of his ability, to make an act of perfect contrition while the ceremony is going on and then exchange consent (and, if it’s a wedding Mass, receive Communion).

This is parallel to when a person is about to receive Communion and has a sudden sinful thought, which is almost certainly not mortally sinful and may be the product of a condition like OCD. Such thoughts, however, may be magnified by a sudden attack of scrupulosity and the person thinks it may have been a mortal sin. The older moralists recognize that in such situations the thing to do is to do one’s best to make an act of perfect contrition and receive Communion, confessing the thought afterwards if necessary.

A reader writes:

I have a close relative who was raised Catholic but has been baptized into the Mormon church. This relative is planning to have a Mormon temple wedding later this year. As I’m not Mormon, the question of whether to attend the wedding itself is moot; non-Mormons aren’t allowed into Mormon temples. I’ve been asked to attend the reception and been invited to be present for photos which will be taken in a public area of the temple grounds. I would like your opinion on whether being in the photos and attending the reception would be problematic.

Feel free to use/respond to this in your blog, and thanks for rule 15!

No problem! That’s what it’s there for!

Regarding the marriage situation, I need to bifurcate the question based on a piece of info you don’t mention–namely, whether your relative is already married to the person to whom he or she is planning to have a temple ceremony with. Often Mormons get married outside a temple first and inside the temple later.

If your relative is already married to the person outside the temple then the temple marriage signifies absolutely no change of status objectively. From God’s perspetive there is no such thing as "celestial marriage" between human couples, distinct from regular marriage. If they are already regularly married then objectively nothing will change about their status if they get married in a Mormon temple.

That being the case, to endorse the marriage with one’s presence (e.g., in photos or at the reception) would be to endorse the idea that God really did something in the rite, which is not the case. It would therefore be a form of false witness and I could not recommend that you participate.

On the other hand, what if the couple is not yet married and the temple marriage will be their first marriage ceremony with each other?

Since your relative has apparently defected from the Church by a formal act (joining the Mormon church as an adult from what I can tell and thereby repudiating membership in the Catholic Church) your relative is not bound to observe the Catholic form of marriage and so a valid marriage will not be blocked from coming into existence due to defect of form.

Assuming there is nothing else affecting the situation (like prior spouses who are still alive), the temple marriage will be presumed valid, although it will not result in the kind of eternal union Mormons think it will, nor will it further the apotheosis of the parties.

Could one then attend the reception and be in the photos without one’s presence testifying to something false?

It is tempting to put this union on the same footing as the situation of a person leaving the Catholic Church for Protestantism and say that, since the marriage will be presumed valid, one can attend in testifying to what God is doing in the ceremony.

But it seems to me that there are reasons that argue against this:

1) Mormons are not Christians. They have invalid baptisms in the Church’s judgment as well as horrendously false doctrine. They are neither Christians in their faith or sacramentally. By endorsing polytheism and the idea that men can become gods with their own planets full of their descendants worshipping them and their wive(s), they have produced a horriffic caricature of Christianity.

2) The doctrine of celestial marriage–the kind of marriage performed in a Mormon temple–is central to the Mormon doctrine of apotheosis: If you don’t have a celestial marriage, you can’t be a god. The marriage thus represents not just a ceremony in which God is doing something (validly joining the couple), it is overlayed with the horrible blasphemy that this rite will further the godhood of the participants.

3) It thus seems to me that Mormon celestial marriages, even though they presumably result in a valid union, are not analogous to the marriages of other Christians. Instead, they are more analogous to an extra-marital affair that results in the conception of a child. God steps in to do his part in the conception of the child (endowing it with a soul), but the mere fact that he does this does not mean that the human parties have not introduced into the situation a gravely evil overlay that prevents the event from being an occasion of celebration.

Once can certainly celebrate the birth of a child, even one conceived out of wedlock, but one cannot celebrate the adulterous act by which the child was conceived. In the case of such a pregnancy, there is the passage of time between the adulterous act and the birth of the child, making it possible to untangle the two in terms of celebration, but in the case of the temple marriage the objective good (the valid union of the couple) and the objective evil (that this rite will further the godhood of the participants) cannot be untangled. There isn’t nine months of development between the two things.

Your Mormon relative could say to you: "Hey, I know that you’re Catholic and that you don’t believe that this will further my godhood, so I don’t expect you to be joyful about that."

To which I personally would feel compelled to reply: "No, but you believe that this furthers your godhood, and as long as that horrible blasphemy is part of your joy, I cannot join you in it."

The relative might then reply: "Hey, I doubt that I’ll even make it to godhood."

To which I in your place would reply: "I’m sorry, but your church teaches that this rite objectively furthers your chance of becoming a god with countless billions worshipping you, and as long as it teaches that, this rite has a sacrilegious character that prevents me from having anything to do with it."

Which raises one last point:

4) By becoming a Mormon your relative has not simply joined a schismatic church or a heretical church. The relative has, in fact, become an apostate–a person who has completely repudiated the Christian faith. Worse, because of the nature of Mormon teaching, the relative does not realize that this is what has happened because, even though the Mormon church has totally repudiated the Christian faith, it continues to talk about Jesus in a way that deceives its members into thinking that they are Christians when they are not.

The situation of a Mormon is objectively the same as that of a Hindu who is prepared to accept Jesus as "a god" but not as the God. Both are non-Christians who continue to talk about Jesus and his divinity in some way, but neither has embraced the Christian faith. The difference is that the Hindu does not typically claim to be a Christian.

(NOTE: Some might argue that embracing a non-Christian religion is not itself sufficient for apostasy if one still insists on applying the word "Christian" to oneself. If so, then we just need a new word for a person who leaves Christianity for a non-Christian religion. Until we have such a word, I’ll continue to use "apostate" since the two acts of defection are nearly identical in moral character.)

By leaving Christianity for Mormonism, your relative as become an apostate who is more unfortunate than the Hindu just mentioned in that he doesn’t realize that he is not a Christian (or she, if your relative is a woman).

As a result, your relative is in a most unfortunate position and there can be few spiritual priorities more urgent than helping the person realize his objective spiritual status.

If it were me, I would have to say to such an individual, in the most sorrowful, compassionate way possible: "I’m sorry, but by rejecting the Triune God and joining a church that believes in polytheism, you have rejected the Christian faith. I simply cannot celebrate any rites performed by a body that teaches what the Mormon church teaches about man and God. I recognize that you disagree, but I hope that you can respect the fact that my conscience requires me to refuse attendance at any of the festivities."

20

Down yonder, a reader writes:

If you have a cohabiting couple that aren’t engaging in conjugal relations, do they become morally responsible for the misperceptions of others?

To which another reader responded:

If the "misperception" is reasonable and they do nothing to correct it, then yes.

This is correct except for the scare quotes around "misperception." If an individual acts in such a way that his behavior reasonably leads others to believe something that is false and he takes no steps to correct it, he becomes responsible for others believing something that is false. He thereby does damage to that person’s doxastic structure (i.e., his belief system).

People don’t often think about it, but doxastic damage is real damage. It isn’t just a place where we don’t know something about the world; it’s where our beliefs are out of alignment with the way the world is. That is an evil in and of itself, and it becomes worse if the falsehood that the person has been led to include in his belief system has a practical impact on his behavior. The problem is most acute if he is led into sin as the result of the false belief.

That being said, people have fallen intellects and, even under the best of circumstances, they will misperceive things and form false beliefs as a result. Often false beliefs result from misperceptions that are not reasonable.

For example, some folks out of anti-Southern bigotry may conclude from the way I talk or dress that I am of substandard intelligence and a racist. Neither of those things is a reasonable inference to draw simply from the fact that a person is Southern. Consequently, I am not responsible for suppressing the way I talk or changing the way I dress in order to keep others from thinking these things. Indeed, if anything I would regard it as more incumbent on my to openly display these things as a way of helping to break the stereotype that is at the core of anti-Southern bigotry.

There also can be situations in which individuals may reasonably misperceive a situation in which a person does not have an obligation to correct the misperception for another reason.

For example, suppose a brother and a sister are living together for economic reasons. Those in the neighborhood may suppose that they are not brother and sister but husband and wife and that they are sleeping together. This is a misperception resulting in a false belief, but it is not reasonable to expect the couple to either (a) stop sharing quarters and incur greater financial hardship or (b) go door-knocking in the neighborhood to make sure everyone knows that they’re brother and sister. The thing to do would be to simply mention the fact if the topic comes up in conversation with neighbors and hope the neighborhood gossip net will take care of the rest.

One aspect of this situation is that, since folks are assuming they’re married, they’re also assuming that the conjugal relations they believe them to be having are marital relations and thus morally licit, so no scandal is being given.

On the other hand, if a couple is living together in a way that reasonably leads others to believe that they are engaging in sinful behavior, even though they are not, then we are in the general territory of the sin of scandal. Conveying a public image of sinfulness weakens society’s moral fabric and encourages others to actually engage in sinful behavior by making it seem socially acceptable. Thus, even if a cohabiting couple is not having conjugal relations, the fact that they are reasonably presumed to be having them can lead others to view cohabiting-with-conjugal-relations as acceptable and engage in it themselves. The number of people and the likelihood that they would be drawn into sin as a result determines the gravity of the scandal.

Down yonder, a reader writes:

If you have a cohabiting couple that aren’t engaging in conjugal relations, do they become morally responsible for the misperceptions of others?

To which another reader responded:

If the "misperception" is reasonable and they do nothing to correct it, then yes.

This is correct except for the scare quotes around "misperception." If an individual acts in such a way that his behavior reasonably leads others to believe something that is false and he takes no steps to correct it, he becomes responsible for others believing something that is false. He thereby does damage to that person’s doxastic structure (i.e., his belief system).

People don’t often think about it, but doxastic damage is real damage. It isn’t just a place where we don’t know something about the world; it’s where our beliefs are out of alignment with the way the world is. That is an evil in and of itself, and it becomes worse if the falsehood that the person has been led to include in his belief system has a practical impact on his behavior. The problem is most acute if he is led into sin as the result of the false belief.

That being said, people have fallen intellects and, even under the best of circumstances, they will misperceive things and form false beliefs as a result. Often false beliefs result from misperceptions that are not reasonable.

For example, some folks out of anti-Southern bigotry may conclude from the way I talk or dress that I am of substandard intelligence and a racist. Neither of those things is a reasonable inference to draw simply from the fact that a person is Southern. Consequently, I am not responsible for suppressing the way I talk or changing the way I dress in order to keep others from thinking these things. Indeed, if anything I would regard it as more incumbent on my to openly display these things as a way of helping to break the stereotype that is at the core of anti-Southern bigotry.

There also can be situations in which individuals may reasonably misperceive a situation in which a person does not have an obligation to correct the misperception for another reason.

For example, suppose a brother and a sister are living together for economic reasons. Those in the neighborhood may suppose that they are not brother and sister but husband and wife and that they are sleeping together. This is a misperception resulting in a false belief, but it is not reasonable to expect the couple to either (a) stop sharing quarters and incur greater financial hardship or (b) go door-knocking in the neighborhood to make sure everyone knows that they’re brother and sister. The thing to do would be to simply mention the fact if the topic comes up in conversation with neighbors and hope the neighborhood gossip net will take care of the rest.

One aspect of this situation is that, since folks are assuming they’re married, they’re also assuming that the conjugal relations they believe them to be having are marital relations and thus morally licit, so no scandal is being given.

On the other hand, if a couple is living together in a way that reasonably leads others to believe that they are engaging in sinful behavior, even though they are not, then we are in the general territory of the sin of scandal. Conveying a public image of sinfulness weakens society’s moral fabric and encourages others to actually engage in sinful behavior by making it seem socially acceptable. Thus, even if a cohabiting couple is not having conjugal relations, the fact that they are reasonably presumed to be having them can lead others to view cohabiting-with-conjugal-relations as acceptable and engage in it themselves. The number of people and the likelihood that they would be drawn into sin as a result determines the gravity of the scandal.