Sacramentality of Marriage and Gender Ideology

Marriage is a sacrament.  All Catholics know that.  But what does it mean?  Well, recall Ephesians 5.  Marriage is a sacrament of the relationship between Christ and the Church.  This means that the marriage covenant (the relationship between husband and wife) represents the relationship between Christ and the Church.  St. Paul says that the man represents Christ and the woman represents the Church.  But, the sacraments are not mere signs.  They effect or cause the very thing that they signify (Baptism signifies washing and it causes a spiritual cleansing).  So, the marriage relationship between the husband and the wife increases the bond between the persons in it, and the Church as a whole, with Christ.  Each Christian sacramental marriage increases the Church’s union with Christ.  Marriage divinizes its members (the particular couple) and the entire Church.  So, marriage is a communal affair (which is why the marriage ceremony requires witnesses and is typically a public ceremony), in that it sanctifies the whole Church. 

            In each marriage, the wife represents the entire Church standing before Christ.  On the day of the marriage great care is usually taken to beautify the bride.  This isn’t just for the sake of pictures and vanity, but to be beautiful for her beloved in order to please him.  This is why people often look at the groom’s face as the bride walks down the aisle, to see his reaction and joy at seeing his beautiful bride.  Sacramentally, this reveals to us how Christ sees us.  He delights in us and our gradual sanctification by union with Him.  Christ rejoices to see us joining the Church (He died so that we could be united to Him in the Church as members of His Body).  Since they are united to Christ, Christians have the duty to live a moral life of faith, hope, and charity.  St. Paul typically presents his moral exhortation as a response to union with Christ (see in Ephesians 4:17-24, Ephesians 5:1-20, Roman 8:1-17, and Colossians 3:1-17).  Since the bride wishes to be and to remain united to the groom, she lives a certain way due to that union – the faithfulness and exclusivity of marriage.  So, we must live a certain way because of our union with Christ. The husband, on the other hand, since he represents Christ not the Church, must seek to lay down his life for his beloved, for her good and sanctification.  The husband’s role is to suffer so that his wife may be holy, and to lead her into holiness as Christ teaches us to be holy. 

            This sacramentality relies on the natural effects of marriage, specifically the mutual benefitting of the couple.  Yet, it also relies on the sexual difference and complementarity of the male and female.  Christ and the Church are different, and Paul writes that only the woman in the marriage represents the Church, not the man, and that only the man represents Christ, not the woman.  Modern gender ideology which denies not only the complementarity of men and women but they very existence of the sexes therefore also denies the sacramentality of marriage.  It destroys the natural basis for the sacramental sign and thus seeks to make Ephesians 5 mute.  All this does is to reduce the nobility and effectiveness of our sexual powers.  It reduces them from natural ways we grow in virtue and union, and supernatural ways we grow in holiness (St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that the marital act itself is a source of grace for the married couple), to a mere recreational tool or form of self-expression (whatever that means).  If the supreme dignity of marriage comes from its sacramental nature, elevating it from a natural good to a supernatural good, then gender ideology attacks this too.