A couple of items in yesterday’s Journal & Courier, my local newspaper, caught my eye for some reason.
The Right Revererend Mariann Edgar Budde, Episcopal Bishop of Washington DC, “decided in December to allow an expansion of the Christian marriage sacrament” in churches of the diocese, including the Washington National Cathedral.
I don’t know what “Christian marriage sacrament” she’s referring to (or the paper is referring to, paraphrasing her). Here’s the one I know:
Your wife shall be as a fruitful vine on the sides of your house.
Your children like young olive plants around your table
…
Yea! You shall see your children’s children …
That there may be given unto them soberness of life, and fruit of the womb as may be most expedient for them; let us pray to the Lord.
That they may rejoice in the beholding of sons and daughters; let us pray to the Lord.
That there may be granted unto them the happiness of abundant fertility, and a course of life blameless and unashamed; let us pray to the Lord.
O God most pure, Author of all creation, Who through Your manbefriending love transformed a rib of Adam the forefather into a woman, and blessed them and said, “Increase and multiply, and have dominion over the earth,” and, by the conjoining, declared them both to be one member, for because of this a man shall forsake his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and the two shall be one flesh ‑ and whom God has joined together let not man put asunder;
Who did also bless Your servant Abraham, and opened the womb of Sara, and made him the father of many nations; Who bestowed Isaac upon Rebecca, and blessed her offspring; Who joined Jacob and Rachel, and from them made manifest the twelve patriarchs; Who yoked Joseph and Asenath together, and as the fruit of generation did bestow upon them Ephrem and Manasse; Who accepted Zacharias and Elizabeth, and declared their offspring the Forerunner [i.e., John the Baptist];
Who out of the root of Jesse, according to the flesh, produced the Ever‑Virgin Mary, and from her were Incarnate-born for the salvation of the human race; Who through Your unspeakable Grace and plentiful goodness were present in Cana of Galilee, and blessed the marriage there, that You might show a lawful union, and a generation therefrom, is according to Your Will; do You Yourself,O Most Holy Master, accept the prayer of us, Your servants; and as You were present there, be present also here with Your invisible protection.
Bless (+) this marriage and grant unto these Your servants … a peaceful life, length of days, chastity, love for one another in a bond of peace, offspring long‑lived, fair fame by reason of their children, and a crown of glory that does not fade away.
Account them worthy to see their children’s children.
…
Remember, O Lord our God, Your servant (Name) and Your servant(Name), and bless them. Give to them fruit of the womb, fair children, concord of soul and body. Exalt them as the cedars of Lebanon, and as well‑cultured vine; bestow on them a rich store of sustenance, so that having a sufficiency of all things for themselves, they may abound in every good work that is good and acceptable before You. Let them behold their children’s children as newly planted olive trees round about their table …
Holy God, Who fashioned man from the dust, and from his rib fashioned woman, and joined her to him as a helpmate for him, for it was seemly unto Your Majesty for man not to be alone upon the earth, do You Yourself, O Sovereign Lord, stretch forth Your hand from Your holy dwelling place, and join* together this Your servant (Name) and Your servant (Name), for by You is a wife joined to her husband. Join them together in oneness of mind; crown them with wedlock into one flesh; grant to them the fruit of the womb, and the gain of well favored children, for Yours is the dominion, and Yours is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory: of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, both now and ever, and to the ages of ages.
You can bowdlerize that. You can impiously parody it by pronouncing it over two men or two women. But you cannot “expand” it. Sorry, Right Reverend.
The Editorial Board of the paper urges slowing down and caution, surprise surprise, on two legislative measures they oppose.
They think the legislature, first, should wait for the Nine Robed Masters in Washington DC (to tell us whether same-sex marriage shall join abortion on demand as the uncontroversial law of the land, found lurking in the penumbra of emanations of multiple items of the Bill of Rights) before going forward with a proposed Indiana Constitutional Amendment to bar SSM in Indiana (partisan source). They urge that even though two successive legislatures must pass it before it goes to the voters.
They think the legislature, second, should wait for the five Justices of the Indiana Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of our school voucher system before expanding it.
I’m all for due deliberation, even in the face of crises, but I’d bet I’ll find an editorial to the effect that Congress must do something, anything, immediately on faux crisis X (say, guns) sooner than 30 days from now.
The principle of prudence seems somehow unprincipled at times.
Nobody was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame this year. You see, the “voters sent clear message on steroids by electing nobody.”
It’s always a bit tricky, it seems to me, to get such a specific message out of yes votes like 36.2% and 37.6%. But then I never was into numerology. (In fairness, it is a bit puzzling to figure out why Barry Bonds and Roger Clements should not be voted in; even I have heard of their athletic exploits.)
The same seems doubly or orders of magnitudely more true, by the way, of glib daily stock market wrap-ups telling us why the market did this or that. If there’s anything a stock market doesn’t do, it’s providing its own play-by-play (or trade-by-trade) commentary.
This seems to me to be Just-So stories, and I try to disregard it. But the older I get, the more I recognize that much of TV is faux experts telling us stories to make us feel like we “get it.”
Except for Honey BooBoo, of course, which syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker finally relented and watched. She’s one up on me.
It is a source of near-despair for me to think that people once watched executions, or dwarf-tossing, for entertainment, and that now they watch this kind of thing. (And don’t tell me that I’m not entitled to an opinion if I haven’t watched.)
Now midget tag-team wrestling is totally different. Not like that at all.
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Tipsy Teetotaler ن 