Why the Catholic Church Defined Marriage

Given that the state has now taken upon itself the power and authority to redefine marriage, it’s a very good time to ask why the Catholic Church defined marriage to begin with.
Now it might seem nonsensical to say that the Catholic Church defined marriage, as if no one had ever heard of marriage until about 2000 years ago. But in a very real way, that’s true. Marriage defined in terms of lifelong, heterosexual, sexually exclusive monogamy was a Catholic invention, in somewhat the same way that the university itself, as an institution, was a Catholic invention.
This is a very important point. We tend to think that the particular definition of marriage we affirm—again, lifelong, heterosexual, sexually exclusive monogamy—has been shared by all cultures up until very recently. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, we’ve got the sexual revolution in the 1960s, which in turn leads to the redefinition of marriage to include gay marriage in 2015.
On this view, nearly all of history holds the right and obvious definition of marriage, and only within the last year has marriage become derailed.
But that is not true. The truth is, more or less, the opposite. Marriage defined in terms of lifelong, heterosexual, sexually exclusive monogamy is the historical odd bird, so to speak. That is, the Christian definition of marriage is the exception, not the rule . . .

Read the rest at the ncregister.com.