{"id":4911,"date":"2006-10-30T13:19:22","date_gmt":"2006-10-30T13:19:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/milwaukee-marriage.html"},"modified":"2006-10-30T13:19:22","modified_gmt":"2006-10-30T13:19:22","slug":"milwaukee-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/milwaukee-marriage.html","title":{"rendered":"Milwaukee Marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interesting times:<\/a><\/p>\n

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After Wisconsin’s Catholic bishops weighed in with a letter to support a marriage amendment to the state’s constitution, Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan said he was eager to "encourage, educate and exhort" parishioners without actually instructing them how to vote.<\/p>\n

It turns out even some priests have publicly joined the debate. In recent weeks, a small number of priests have expressed reservations about the amendment, which would define marriage "as between one man and one woman" and deny "a legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals."<\/p>\n

One theologian even called for the amendment’s rejection last month in a "guest opinion" for the Catholic Herald, where Dolan is not only a columnist but the publisher.<\/p>\n

Father Bryan Massingale, an associate professor of moral theology at Marquette University, wrote a lengthy essay in which he struggled with the idea that "the amendment, read in its entirety, poses a dilemma for many faithful people."<\/p>\n

"The amendment upholds certain beliefs about the uniqueness of marriage," he wrote in the Sept. 21 issue. "But it does so at a cost, namely, potentially damaging impacts upon the welfare of individuals and their children."<\/p>\n

He also dealt with the issue of homosexuality.<\/p>\n

"Too often, discussions of this issue treat ‘those’ people – specifically, gays and lesbians – as if they were an alien species," he wrote. "They are not. They are our sons and daughters; our sisters and brothers; our aunts, uncles, and cousins; our friends, neighbors, students and co-workers; our priests, ministers and parishioners. ‘They’ are us!"<\/p>\n

Massingale concluded that "voting ‘no’ on the marriage amendment, in my judgment, is the best way to respect all of our Catholic beliefs and values."<\/p>\n

A reprint of Massingale’s opinion piece was distributed in bulletins at several local churches.<\/p>\n

Since then, Massingale’s words have continued to reverberate within the local Catholic community, his essay providing something of a boost to opponents of the amendment while also angering others who support the measure.<\/p>\n

"I do not see myself as a person in opposition to the bishops," Massingale said Thursday in a telephone interview. "I think we are in agreement about the importance of marriage. But how do you uphold that value without compromising the human dignity of any of God’s people? I think that is the discussion that is currently under way in the church right now."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interesting times: After Wisconsin’s Catholic bishops weighed in with a letter to support a marriage amendment to the state’s constitution, Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan said he was eager to "encourage, educate and exhort" parishioners without actually instructing them how to vote. It turns out even some priests have publicly joined the debate. In recent…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nMilwaukee Marriage - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/milwaukee-marriage.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Milwaukee Marriage - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Interesting times: After Wisconsin’s Catholic bishops weighed in with a letter to support a marriage amendment to the state’s constitution, Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy M. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}