Essay by Christine Reeves (Communications Class)
The state governing system is dependent on the state of lawful Marriages. We see this playing out all over the world. We witness the breakdown in government and economic systems where abuse of overreach, greed and power of the elected has stripped the middle class into slave labour, reduced the poor and the ill to medical assistance in dying and has achieved murdering babies by the masses. All this is the result of the lack of fruitful love in Marriages. We have demoted ourselves into self-gratifying mirrors of illusory worlds, and identity is lost due to the lack of true marriage.
First, I will examine how the state has become corrupt by its root and how the breakdown in marriages has robbed the human person of love, fidelity, and charity. Let us look at what Marx says to understand how our governing system has collapsed,
“In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure rises and to which corresponds to definite forms of social consciousness.”
(Marx 1859) Easthope, Antony, McGowan, Kate. “A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader”. McGraw-Hill International (UK) Limited, 73 & 85 2009/2012.
In other words, how a person was raised determines their actions, how they cultivate friendships, how they treat others, and how successful they are in dealing with staff, which determines their class and state. Their relationship with family, their economic standards and the ethics they live by directly affect how a system functions as a whole system.
Marriage as an institution has become more about the guests than the promises, and most couples do not fully understand their identity in Christ when professing vows to each other.
Ephesians: 5:28, So [also] husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
Ephesians, CHAPTER 5 | USCCB
“St. Paul says that the husband should love his wife “as himself “. What does this mean? The next sentence says that what follows from this is that the man’s love of himself is the reason for his love of his wife. This means that the union is more than sexual and more than psychological, it is ontological. The man and his wife are one flesh, one natural person. When you love your wife you are loving yourself, just as when you love your body (or your soul) you are loving yourself because you do not have your body (or your soul), as you have your possessions; you are your body (as well as your soul), and when you love your wife you are loving yourself because you do not have your wife, as you have your possessions, you are your wife (as well as yourself). The two really become one. It’s literal.”
(Kreeft, P 169) Kreeft, Peter, “Practical Theology 350+ Ways Your Mind Can Help You Become a Saint, Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas”. Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 169 2014.
This love is charitable towards each other as long as Christ is at the centre, expounds your passion, and the Marriage becomes fruitful, a child is born to the couple, and they are now a family. This is love, self-sacrificing, and self-giving. They want the other to be happy.
“So if you hate your spouse, you are hating yourself, just as when you hate your body (or your soul you are hating yourself.” (Kreeft, p 169)
(Kreeft, P 169) Kreeft, Peter, “Practical Theology 350+ Ways Your Mind Can Help You Become a Saint, Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas”. Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 169 2014.
When we speak of unhappy marriages, domestic violence, or divorced parents, just as unified weddings that are fruitful and have love and fidelity in Christ is beautiful. This has an effect on the state of our institutions, how our government runs the country, and how the world is blessed by such goodness. The opposite is true as well. The collapse of a state system is the symptom of a breakdown in Marriage and family.
We have adopted a belief system that Freud’s model of psychoanalysis had materialized; his findings spread when we were leaving the renaissance and entering into the first wave of feminism. Psychoanalysis had become the new thought system that would change the world,
“Sigmund Freud was one of the first to introduce the notion of the unstable subject, radically and uncertainly divided between the conscious and unconscious. For Freud, this division comes about as a result of the movement of the individual from being into meaning, whereby the raw material of human subjectivity (the infant) encounters the law of culture and the demand to take up a position within the symbolic structures of the culture (Easthope & Kate McGowan 73).”
(Easthope & Kate McGowan P 73) Easthope, Antony, McGowan, Kate. “A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader”. McGraw-Hill International (UK) Limited, 73 & 85 2009/2012.
First of all, the collapse of state systems is because of years and years of state systems of education teaching us concepts and theories from older men who have not had much success in their personal lives and not much success in their marital lives. They did not follow a set standard of faith, yet their models for psychoanalysis and capitalism have not aided our society in any way. We are not material; the material is something that science can use; we are spiritual, eternal, beautiful, and made in God’s image and likeness. Once we believe this to be true, state systems will begin to lift from the greed and obsessions for power and dominance to the fruits of the Holy Spirit in love are: 1-Charity, 2-Joy 3-Peace 4-Patience, 5-Kindness, 6-Generosity, 7-Faithfulness, 8-Gentleness, 9-Self-Control. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians%205:22-23&version=RSVCE
St. Francis de Sales writes,
“Above all else, I exhort married people to have that mutual love which the Holy Spirit in Scripture so highly recommends. O you who are married, it means nothing to say, “Love one another with a natural love”—two turtle doves make such love. Nor does it mean anything to say, “Love one another with a human love”—the pagans have duly practiced such love. With the great apostle I say to you, “husbands, love your wives as Christ also loved the Church,” and you wives, love your husbands as the Church loves her Savior. God brought Eve to Adam, our first father, and gave her to him in Marriage. It was God too, my friends, who with an unseen hand tied your holy marriage bond and gave you to one another. Why then do you not cherish each other with a completely holy, completely sacred, and completely divine love?.”
(Sales, 221) de Sales, Francis. “Introduction to the Devout Life”. Image Books A Division of Doubleday & Company, Inc. Garden City, New York, 221 1972.
There is much domestic violence, a lot of pride and selfishness. More people are concerned about pleasure-seeking the body without realizing how it affects the mind and spirit. Abortion is a solution the state government allows to provide a ‘fix’ to a problem. A baby is not a problem. The choices of pleasure and sexual gratification without Marriage are self-seeking, for satisfying the body, they become a killing machine to murder their own baby because they did not think things through ahead of time. This causes long-lasting effects on state systems and violence in our world.
The collapse and breakdown of the government, our culture, and the rise and fascination with the culture of death are the cause and effect that have constructed the tornado effect, and its destruction affects all aspects of creation.
Lacan writes,
“The sufferings of neurosis and psychosis are for us a schooling in the passions of the soul, just as the beam of the psychoanalytical scales, when we calculate the tilt of its threat to entire communities, provides us with an indication of the deadening of the passions in society.”
(Lacan P 85) Easthope, Antony, McGowan, Kate. “A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader”. McGraw-Hill International (UK) Limited, 73 & 85 2009/2012.
Marriage in Holy Matrimony is the union of fruitful love; when this union multiplies in the laws of human ecology, then our culture and our charity will override all aspects of murder, violence, pornography, addiction, slavery, suicide, and global environmental issues.
A beautiful excerpt from St. Francis de Sales,
“As to other things, then, mutual support must be so great that they will never be angry with each other at the same time and hence quarrels or disputes will never be seen between them. Honeybees cannot remain in a place where there are echoes, loud noises, and resounding voices, nor can the Holy Spirit remain in a home where there are quarrels, recriminations, and echoing sounds of scolding and strife”.
de Sales, Francis. “Introduction to the Devout Life”. Image Books A Division of Doubleday & Company, Inc. Garden City, New York, 221 1972.
We can build a better economy, sound culture, and a healthy world by keeping Christ at the centre of Marriage, and those who are married, what a gift to the world and all living creatures. Marriage is worth more than gold. I will end my essay with a poem I wrote about a Marriage that was torn apart by addiction:
Two by each travelling by
summer’s heat and winter’s freeze
spring blossomed, and fall got cold
long before we knew it so
Marijuana haze, eyes a glaze
simple loving became a craze
of one by one each alone
united by love
addiction transpired
nothing is what it seems
I longed for dreams of white
satin laces
warm nights in a loving embrace
walks and journeys, expeditions long overdue
I never knew of these
My soul reaches for the little boy
long bitter heart controlled
emotions rise and rejection soar
long before we knew for sure
love has split and broken
I meant my words on that simple
day, before God, I sat and prayed
a will and a hope of love to stay
that only winter’s freeze took away
promises and calming hugs
never an action to make it okay
I began to yearn for the day
the wounds of loss on that fateful night
would shed the pain and healing might
restore your faith again
I miss my dreams of all we had
all the loving shared that mattered
it seems to me I hold a candle and understand
what it means to stay lit in the face of disaster
Anniversary’s come every year
love passes some with cheer
ours has broken from lack of mirror
the actions hurt confusion and denial
power and less nothing can resolve
an empty nest
Love remains the same
love doesn’t change
selfish means rip apart
what golden rings meant from the start the beginning of a white wedding.
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