Should church return provincial licenses?

There was a small item entitled, "Bishops appeal to parishioners in campaign against same-sex marriage," in Canada's National Post, Jan. 5, 2005, referring to a forthcoming call, according to Archbishop Gervais of Ottawa, for all the Bishops of Ontario to write to their Catholic parishioners asking their support to protect marriage as being distinctly between a man and a woman.

My question is this: if the Bishops of Canada are serious about this, why have they still not asked their priests to return their provincial licenses and civil registers and disentangle the church completely from being de facto agents--of the state?

In many places around the World only, state officials can legalize a marriage, not clergy who are only permitted to witness the sacramental union of the spouses, since, as we know, it is not the priest who 'marries' the couple, but the baptized couple who confer the sacrament upon each other.

Are the bishops fearful of losing a lucrative source of income? I ask this question because those Catholics who are non-practising or lukewarm would probably not bother to ask the church' to witness "just" a sacramental union.

Being freed from acting as agents of the state would eliminate any danger of a same-sex couple challenging the church. Essentially the clergy would now be presiding over a sacred religious ceremony, that would essentially be protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. No court would force the church to perform a same-sex "marriage", as this would be an outright conflict between the so-called rights of the "couple" and the religious freedom of the church.

In two Canadian provinces, the state has made it clear that marriage commissioners must resign their commission if they are not willing to perform same-sex "marriages." Where does this leave clergy who are also marriage commissioners for those provinces?

John Everett

St. Albert, Alta.

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