"God must have changed his mind"

Canonist Ed Peters:

Boston politicos Peter & Rosanne Meade woke up one summer morning, saw the sun shining brightly, and concluded that God must have changed his mind about the travesty called "homosexual marriage". The Meades think that because the world did not come to an end when Massachusetts legalized "same-sex marriage", those ignorant Bible-thumpers were wrong about the consequences for societies that continually invent new ways to flout, well, just about everything.

But a pretty sunrise over Boston Harbor is not, in the slightest, a sign that God approves of what the chronically bizarre government of Massachusetts does in regard to "homosexual marriage", or anything else for that matter. Not at all.

The Meades need to read their Bible—no, not the parts about the earth opening up and swallowing sinners or raging floods wiping away the evil, as instructive as those passages might be—but rather, the places where Holy Writ reminds us that, in his wisdom, God lets the sun shine on the good and the bad alike, and that weeds will grow up alongside the wheat until, that is, the Day of Harvest, when the wheat will be gathered into barns, and the weeds torn out and burned.

But the Meades’ opinion column, as bad as it is (consider here provisions such as 1983 CIC 225, 227, and 747), provokes a deeper problem for the Church in Boston: Peter Meade is co-chair of the commission advising Cdl. O’Malley about the complex and crucial issue of parish-closings in the archdiocese.

Now, if one cannot think clearly about something as simple, and as obvious, and as anciently and universally honored as the fact that marriage is a "covenant by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life" (1983 CIC 1055), then how can he or she can be taken seriously as an advisor to ecclesiastical leaders on any topic requiring the exercise of prudent judgment?

By their own words, the Meades have proclaimed themselves unfit to hold a position of influence in any particular Church, let alone one as prominent as Boston. If he won’t resign, Peter Meade should be removed from the cardinal’s advisory commission.

Cardinal Seán on his blog posts about "Disturbing news about marriage." and the statement the diocesan bishops in Massachusetts issued decrying the dominant Democratic legislatures blocking of a Democratic vote. Hopefully the Cardinal will also see that Peter Meade needs to resign.