Here’s Father George Rutler (pastor of Our Saviour Church in NYC, occasional contributor to NRODT, columnist for Crisis, book author, among many other things) on John O’Sullivan’s marriage piece today, from e-mail correspondence he was kind to let me share:

The economic chaos that would follow redefined marriage or household partnerships is not a peripheral concern: it bespeaks the confusion that would attend any aberration of the natural law. Marriage pertains to natural law, and the state has not the right or authority to abrogate it. It is simple as that. Were the state to attempt such, the cultural consequences would be drastic (as with contraception and abortion and the consequent moral degradation of society and the de-population and economic catastrophe now looming in Europe and soon to be realized here). John has one good point, and it is this: these assaults on moral reason will force the Church to position herself as counter-cultural, and that posture has always been a strength. It will also require expulsing decadent elements such as the “cafeteria Catholics” and those merely cultural Catholics who are essentially “suburban atheists.” This will be a leaner and stronger Church. It already is happening in the removal of incompetent bishops. The bureaucracy which appointed them has not changed; reality has simply rendered a final accounting. This is the dynamic of natural law fortified by grace: when one denies reality, reality perdures, but the one who denies it self-destructs. “Qui mange du Pape meurt.”