CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE Covenant in Christ

"Marriage is a holy sacrament. Those baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus are married in his name also. Their love is a sharing in the love of God. He is its source. The marriages of Christian couples, today renewed and blessed, are images on earth of the wonder of God, the loving, life-giving communion of Three Persons in one God, and of God's covenant in Christ, with the Church."

Pope John Paul II, Address at York, 31st May 1982.

The authors: Andrew and Dora Nash, a married couple with a young family, are both Cambridge graduates and qualified teachers. In secondary education and in parish work they are actively engaged in catechesis. Both are involved in pro-life work and also in the formation of young people through the Faith Movement.

Published by Faith-Keyway Trust. Registered Charity No. 278314

Nihil obstat: Anton Cowan, Censor.

Imprimatur: Mgr. Ralph Brown, V.G., Westminster, 10-XI-83.

The Nihil obstat and Imprimatur are a declaration that a book or pamphlet is considered to be free from doctrinal or moral error. It is not implied that those who have granted the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions or statements expressed.

CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE Covenant in Christ

Andrew and Dora Nash

Introduction

Marriage today is in trouble. One in three marriages in Britain ends in divorce, and this is a statistic which we must expect to rise. An increasing number of young couples no longer feel any obligation to marry —a logical step since they do not necessarily intend their relationship to be permanent or at all orientated towards a family. The concept of the family itself is under question: it is said that husband and wife plus children is only one ‘option’; radical feminists reject the role of ‘wife’; homosexual liaisons are claimed to be of equal status with traditional marriage. A vicious circle is created since these anti-marriage concepts have social and medical effects which themselves work against marriage and the family: the child of a one-parent family is less likely to make a lasting marriage, as are children involved in a divorce; promiscuity among young people makes it less likely that they will be able to form stable relationships later.

Where does the Catholic Church stand in all this? Most people know that the Church is ‘against’ these current trends and think that she is rather ridiculously old-fashioned in being so. Even many Catholics are unsure what to think: might not the Church be about to change on some of these issues? What is the justification for the Church's doctrine anyway?

This  pamphlet  aims  to  expound  and  explain  the  teaching  of  the  Catholic  Church  on marriage. Because the Church continues through time the mission and work of Jesus Christ, we begin our discussion with the teaching of Our Lord himself:

Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’ He answered them, ‘What did Moses command you?’ They said, ‘Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce, and to put her away.’ But Jesus said to them, ‘For your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation "God made them male and female". "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder’ (Mk. 10:2-9).

Jesus is responding to a particular question (it was disputed by the rabbis of the day under what circumstances divorce was permissible) but in his reply he goes beyond the categories of legal debate by making a new principle —one which is the heart of the Christian view of marriage. He claims to be revealing here the original plan of God for marriage. Quoting from the Book of Genesis, he refers back to ‘the beginning of creation’. To establish what the ‘original plan’ is for marriage, we too must go right back to the very origins of mankind. We must also ask ourselves some basic questions: what makes human sexuality different from that of the animals? What indeed is fundamentally different about Man?

The nature of Man

The simple answer is that Man has a spiritual dimension to his nature —what we call the ‘soul’. Even the most intelligent ape fills its life-cycle with eating, hunting, running, mating and so on. Its contentment, its law of life, its ‘world’ is made up of purely material things. Men and women, however, show evidence of other concerns: our art and science, and above all our religion, show human beings reaching out beyond their material environment in order to fulfil themselves. Man is seeking after his true environment which is the spiritual one, for his ‘Environer’ who is God1.

With his spiritual nature, Man is made for God. Religion is in this sense natural to mankind, intrinsic to our very being. Everything Man does, therefore, is relevant to his spiritual destiny in God; his whole purpose is to share in God's life, not just after death but in this life now. The Book of Genesis teaches all this when it depicts Man as being given life by the breath of God and then being given the task to ‘fill the earth and subdue it’. To Man is given a God-like dominion over creation. ‘You have made him little less than a god’ wrote the psalmist (Ps. 8:5). Man is, as it were, invited to continue God's work of creation.

Sex and creation

We may notice that in these same passages in Genesis, sexuality is also spoken of in this same context of creativity:

God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply’ (Gen. 1:27-28).

The human sexual faculty of reproduction is then a continuation of God's work of creation. Up to  the  appearance  of  Man  on  the  evolutionary  tree,  all  things  have  simply  reproduced themselves according to the inevitable ‘programmed’ nature of their being. But now God has, through evolution, created a being to whom he gives the essential spiritual qualities of free-will and intelligence. So that human reproduction involves not just a biological act but a personal work between two souls as well as two bodies. A man and a woman freely choose to share in God's creativity. What they create is not just one more member of the species, but a unique and eternal spiritual individual who is made in the image and likeness of God himself.

A great dignity is thus given to sex right at the origins of humanity: to work with God as pro-creators in bringing forth human life. This is certainly the message of the creation story in the Book of Genesis. Of course, we must not read the text too simplistically (as in a ‘fundamentalist’ interpretation of the Bible); we must look for the theology which the Genesis narrative contains. And certainly it is a very profound doctrine about sex which it teaches —so different from the pagan myths of gods and goddesses with their promiscuity and immorality which were the stuff of the other religions which surrounded the People of Israel. We can see what a great achievement the Book of Genesis was in this area —how positive and noble a view of sexuality it takes, relating it to Man's very nature and the purpose of his creation.

Of course, the Book of Genesis also teaches most importantly that something went radically wrong with this original state of Man: that the first human beings sinned, that mankind is ‘fallen’ and we all live in the state of Original Sin. And human sexuality has been affected by this disaster in a very fundamental way. That this is a fact of human nature, we all know from experience; and this teaching about Original Sin helps us to understand our problems in this area. But for the moment let us concentrate on the positive vision of sexuality which we have seen.

The fundamental unit of mankind

We notice that in the original plan of God there is a couple, a man and a woman.2 We must again see the teaching which the Adam and Eve narrative is giving us. The sacred writer himself is clearly writing not just to tell a story but to teach a great truth; after the second account of the creation of Man (what most biblical scholars call the ‘Yahwist’ one), or rather more specifically after the creation of woman, he writes: Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh (Gen. 2:24).

Clearly, what is being presented here is not only the original man and woman but also the original marriage. The writer is straight away using the terms ‘man’ and ‘wife’ and referring to marriage. He is assuming a very definite relationship: one that is such a profound union between the two that it can be termed becoming ‘one flesh’. This profound relationship is presented as being the original unit of human society. Marriage is thus fundamental to mankind.

But marriage is not just an appropriate means of allowing biological procreation. It is also the structure which gives rise to the family, the basic social unit within which a person grows up and is educated (in the broadest sense) and introduced to the world. One does not have to accept the Book of Genesis to reason out the importance of the family; it is the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights which states that ‘the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society’ .3

It is in the family that we first learn how to relate to others, and indeed in God's plan it is in the family that we learn how to relate to God. For it is through the family that God calls into being a people for himself. When man and woman co-operate with God's creativity in bringing a family into being they are building up God's people - again, not just in the biological sense but also  in  the  spiritual  sense  of  introducing  the  children  to  God  and  bringing  them  into  a relationship with him which is as natural as the relationship between parents and children. In this way the People of God is called into being.

Marriage and the Covenant

The people whom God formed for himself through history, the People of Israel, were indeed a family; they had Abraham for their father in the patriarchal sense. But, more than this, they saw themselves as God's family. They were, in a sense, married to God. They had a covenant with him, that is a holy alliance in which God promised blessings and protection and Israel pledged faithfulness and obedience. And this covenant was a promise of future growth and increase, for God had said to Abraham: I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you  will  be  a  blessing....  and  by  you  all  families  of  the  earth  shall  bless  themselves (Gen.12:2-3).

Abraham's family had been adopted as God's family - into which eventually the whole world would in some way be incorporated. Much later on in the history of the Old Testament, some of the prophets would describe this relationship between God and Israel as a marriage covenant. For example, the prophet Hosea says: In that day, says the Lord, you will call me ‘My husband’... I will betroth you to me in faithfulness (Hos. 2:16, 20). Isaiah, looking forward to the future messianic age, says:

You shall be called ‘My delight is in her’ and your land ‘Married’; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married .... As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you (Is, 62:4-5).

This is not just a pleasing analogy which the prophet is using here; there is a very profound link between the covenant which God established between himself and his people, and the covenant which he established between man and woman in marriage. In both cases it is an unbreakable bond of love and fidelity. Both covenants have the same purpose: to bring forth and form the People of God. Marriage is, in fact, a sharing in the great covenant between God and Man - the covenant which was to be fulfilled in the New Covenant of Our Lord Jesus Christ. For the Christian then, as for the Israelite, marriage is not only a deeply human act and state but also a fundamentally religious one.

The disfigurement of marriage

So from the very beginning of mankind, and from the beginning of the relationship between God and Man, marriage was established as the fundamental human sexual relationship and the family as the fundamental unit of human society. Such was, and is, God's plan for men and women. But one does not have to look very far to see that the original intention of the Creator for marriage, not only in relation to himself but in the relationship of the partners to each other, has become disastrously disfigured or even lost. We find through history and throughout the vast range of human societies and cultures that this harmonious ideal of a life-long, selfless and exclusive bond in which man and woman are perfectly in tune spiritually and physically with God and with each other is, in practice, in shreds.

In  ‘primitive’  societies,  that  is  to  say  those  lacking  advanced  technology,  complex economics, literature and so forth, the polygamous marriage is often the norm (the polyandrous - several husbands to one wife - is less common) and often prevails for reasons of economy or territorial competition: many wives means many children and therefore cheap labour and easy defence. Some societies prevent fragmentation of or dispute over land by having the husband non-resident with his wife except for brief ‘mating seasons’, the head of the household in this case being the maternal uncle - the mother's brother. Such relationships bear little resemblance to the unit of love and co-operation between two equal, spiritual beings formed by God at the origins of the human race. Much closer to home, in a twentieth century Western context, the same is true of ‘marriages’ where the possibility of divorce is admitted even as the vows are sworn, where the possibility of the procreation of children is excluded, where marital infidelity is no longer censured.

Marriage and Original Sin

The falling away from the divine ideal is due to a flaw in human nature, which has physical repercussions though it has a spiritual origin; this is what we mean by Original Sin. When, at the origins of the human race, the first human beings rejected God, they brought about a distortion in their own natures. The ‘fallen’ state which is the result of their sin is passed on to the whole human race which is descended from them, as if the mould in which all men are cast has become imperfect.

The fall of Man had at the beginning, and still has, dire consequences for the marriage covenant. The tendency to selfishness, to the seeking of inordinate physical pleasure, and the pride of intellect have wrought havoc on the bond which should unite men and women in creative love. The writer of the Book of Genesis was no less sensitive to this than is the Church today. He describes in chapter three how the original union of man and woman, unashamed and harmonious in unity of vocation, is shattered by their severance from God through disobedience: they suddenly ‘realise they are naked’ and make haste to cover up their previously innocent sexuality; the bringing forth of children is now to be a painful experience; the man is to ‘rule over’ his wife and yet she will still desire him; the whole union is now fraught with tension and frustration, desire and dominion.

Many writers and particularly extreme ‘feminists’ of the present day miss the point entirely by blaming the institution of marriage itself for the subjection of women in society. But the Book of Genesis makes clear that this subjection is the result of sin. True Christian marriage is a restoration of the original ideal of God for an equal partnership of such closeness that it gives rise to the expression that the two ‘become one flesh’. It is in fact non-Christian or pre-Christian partnerships, and indeed the current rejection of any permanent partnership at all, which threaten the recognition of the true and original equality of the sexes. Polygamy, promiscuity, divorce - these are what subject women, and they are the result of Original Sin.

Even the people of Israel, to whom God continually spoke his life-giving word through history in the Old Testament, suffered from a ‘hardness of heart’, a spiritual distortion which prevented them from seeing the full vision of God's design and adhering to it. As Christ told his questioners, Moses, as God's agent, allowed them a limited use of divorce as they found it apparently impossible to live up to the demands of the true marriage relationship. This was not, however, always to be so: ‘I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone, ’ spoke the prophet, Ezekiel (Ez. 36:26). Israel was to be brought gradually and painfully to a fuller understanding. God was to continue to reveal to his chosen people the whole truth and would at some future time give them also the means to live up to his own plan of perfection. The full and finally physical revelation of this truth, and also the means of divine grace, is Christ himself, ‘full of grace and truth’.

Christ and the restoration of Man

How has Christ ‘restored’ the broken image of the covenant of marriage? What is the image to which it is re-made? What difference does Christ make? We must see the answer to these questions in the context of the whole mission and work of Christ.

Through the very fact of his Incarnation, ‘the mystery which was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed’ (Rom.  16:25),  the  Word  made  Flesh  brings  to  the  human  race  a knowledge of its dignity and its purpose and its final destiny in God. But the disaster of Original Sin has clouded Man's apprehension of God, has distorted his perception of truth and has inflated his self-interest and what psychologists would call his ‘drives’ so that they are no longer under his complete control. Man suffers from ‘concupiscence’ - disordered desire. And so the Incarnation of the Son of God has necessarily a redemptive purpose. As the Church teaches:

‘The Lord himself came to free and strengthen Man, renewing him inwardly and casting out the "prince of this world" who held him in the bondage of sin’.4 Jesus came not only as our Saviour - principle of abundant life for the whole personality - but also as our Redeemer who restores the shattered image in grace and truth by bearing our sorrows and carrying our griefs in his body on the Cross. Jesus is God made man. As the ‘new Adam’, being without sin, he reveals to us our real nature and is our model and example. Through the Paschal Mystery of his death and resurrection he redeems us, enabling us to be re-made in his image.

This then is redemption. Its fruit in us is the re-orientation of the whole person to the perfect mould designed by God and revealed to Man in the person of Jesus Christ. Because of our fallen nature it is inevitably a painful process which we are able to pursue only with the grace of God and by following Christ's own example and teachings, which continue today through the Holy Scriptures and the magisterium (the teaching authority) of the Church he founded. Man moulds himself on the ‘new man’.

Christ and the restoration of marriage

What is true for Man as an individual is also true of the divine institution of marriage now restored by Christ, in and through his Church, to the original plan of God. The true nature of the union as exclusive, indissoluble, pure and fruitful and ordered to a sharing in the creative work of God, is revealed by Christ as the restored ideal. To this ideal, Christian couples must orientate and direct themselves. This will not be without hardship and self-sacrifice, not without the emptying-out of self which Christ underwent on the cross. By sharing in this death to self, Christian married people truly participate in the New Covenant in Christ's blood which has fulfilled and transformed the Old Covenant between God and Man.

Christian married people are, then, called to a new standard of marriage, and in their mutual commitment are immersed in the redeeming work of Christ. This brings, according to St. Paul, a sharing in the mystery of the union of Christ and his bride, the Church, not as a metaphor but as a reality. Thus St. Paul says: Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her . . . He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and

cherishes it, as Christ does the Church, because we are members of his body. ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. ’ This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the Church (Eph. 5:25, 28-32). St. Paul teaches here that there is an intrinsic and real link between the role or ‘office’ of Christ in the Church and the role or ‘office’ of spouses within the covenant of a Christian marriage. He does not, as is sometimes misinterpreted, give a theological excuse for a tyrannical husband, but explains the new level of dignity to which marriage has been raised by Christ: it is a reflection of, but much more a participation in, the holy union of Christ and his people, the Church.

This is the essence of the sacrament of matrimony. The sacrament operates through the ‘outward sign’ of mutual love and total commitment which is a sharing in Christ's giving of himself to the Church at the Last Supper and on the cross. The sign effects the interior reality of the sacrament in which the spouses, now as one flesh, are plunged into the divine life of Christ. The outward, physical sign of the sacrament is the exchange of vows in which the partners, as it were, lay down their lives for one another. The effect is a real sharing in the mutual love and life of Christ and the Church, the profound mystery of which St. Paul wrote.

The total commitment of marriage

Since the covenant of marriage really does reflect and participate in the covenant between Christ and his Church, then it must reflect the way in which Christ gave himself totally and without reserve. The marriage partners must make a total surrender to each other in which they give up everyone else in order to enter into a completely exclusive relationship. This expresses itself in the fact that Christian marriage is monogamous and faithful. To turn aside from one's partner to someone else would be like turning aside from God to worship an idol. We recall again the Old Testament metaphor for abandoning the worship of Yahweh, the one true God: ‘playing the harlot’. And we remember that the sin of adultery is committed not just in the act but begins in the heart. Jesus said: You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Mt. 5:27-28).

The total self-giving of marriage therefore is primarily an attitude of mind and heart, the total commitment of each spouse's whole personality to the other.

It would be foolish to pretend that this is something easy, and even more foolish to pretend that the sensation of ‘being in love’ in a starry-eyed way, though very delightful, will be sufficient to last through all the difficulties of life. Christ's own act of commitment to us led him to the cross; his covenant was sealed with the sacrifice of his life. So too the covenant of marriage will sometimes have to take part in the pain and agony of the cross. But, as St. Paul in another context could say, Christ's grace is enough for us. Christ committed his spirit into the hands of the Father, and in marriage the spouses commit their lives to the Author of Life. The sacrament of marriage gives us the ‘grace of state’, the spiritual gifts which come from sharing in Christ's redemptive power.

This God-strengthened commitment is of the very essence of married love. It finds expression in the act of sexual union of the husband and wife: ‘Married love is uniquely expressed and perfected by the exercise of the acts proper to marriage’ teaches the Church.5

As we meditate on this we realise how wrong it is for sexual union to take place outside of marriage. The unmarried couple who have sex are negating the whole meaning of the sexual act. If there is no marriage there is no commitment, no bond, no covenant. Such sexual acts are clearly not intended to lead to a family - the act itself is therefore a contradiction of everything that marriage means. It is in fact a sacrilege against the whole meaning of human sexuality as created in man and woman in the beginning.

Marriage is indissoluble

If, for the baptised Christian, marriage is a covenant which mirrors, shares in and draws life from the New Covenant of Christ, and if Christ is truly divine and his love is eternal, then surely the marriage covenant must also be ‘to the end’. The commitment is as irreversible as the death and resurrection of Jesus. The consent of the couple is explicitly stated in the marriage vows to be irrevocable, and their total fidelity, in the manner of Our Lord, is demanded. Indissolubility is thus ‘a fruit, a sign and a requirement of the absolutely faithful love that . . . the Lord Jesus has for the Church. ’ 6

The Christian husband and wife must therefore be faithful to their vocation even unto death - divorce is simply not an option for the Christian. We have already seen how the question of divorce  was  posed  for  Christ  and  how  he  emphatically  denied  its  possibility  (to  the consternation of even his disciples, we should note) for those who had become ‘one flesh’. His words, ‘What God has joined together, let not man put asunder’, are repeated by the priest in the Marriage Rite itself - not as the external imposition of something, but as a witness on the part of the Church of the irrevocable nature of the vows which the couple themselves have freely made.

This demand of Christ for indissolubility finds ready opponents outside and even inside the Church   as   being   unrealistic,   unreasonable,   lacking   in   compassion,   perhaps   even ‘culture-bound’. It is, however, intrinsic to the very nature of the bond as a vocation in Christ. How can a union, a self-giving, be total if the possibility of an end is admitted? The very fact of the possibility of divorce not only destabilizes marriage as an institution but, if accepted by an individual couple, negates their covenant. And it certainly does not allow the covenant to persevere through storms until love proves itself in faithfulness. Young Catholics entering into marriage  are  by  no  means  immune  from  the  attitude  of  the  world  around  them  towards marriage; such pressure makes it increasingly difficult not to accept, albeit unconsciously, the secular thinking about divorce. We need today to present with greater clarity than ever the participation in God's unchanging love which the Christian marriage bond is.

So important does the Church regard the bond of marriage that it is always presumed that the couple actually mean what they say in their marriage vows and that the bond is thus real. On occasions, however, for certain reasons there may arise a genuine doubt as to the validity of a marriage bond. For instance, the consent of one or both partners may not have been freely given; one or both partners may not have truly intended to make a real marriage with all that it entails. There can be other specific reasons.7 In such cases the Church examines the situation in a diocesan marriage tribunal (court) where the evidence is rigorously scrutinised. If it is thereby proved that the marriage was never a valid one, the Church may grant a decree of nullity, an ‘annulment’. This is not divorce (though the couple will obtain a civil divorce) but an official recognition that the marriage bond never existed. A person who has obtained a nullity in this way is, of course, then free to contract a valid marriage. But we should always remember that, as the Church states: Marriage enjoys the favour of law. Consequently, in doubt the validity of a marriage must be upheld until the contrary is proven.8

Sometimes, if a Christian couple find it impossible to live together harmoniously, the Church may approve their ‘separation of bed and board’ - that they live apart for a while or even indefinitely. But this serious step is no divorce: the couple are still validly married and cannot ‘remarry’ anyone else.

Love and sex in marriage

The covenant or bond of marriage creates a community - two people living in love and mutual reverence - a communion of life and love. Married love, the Church teaches, is ‘an eminently human love because it is an affection, rooted in the will, between two persons and it embraces the good of the whole person’.9 All love is in fact a sharing in God's love. It is this capacity to love which shows us that Man has a spiritual dimension, and it is in his spirit that Man is most like to God. As Pope John Paul says, ‘God created Man in his own image and likeness: calling him to existence through love, he called him at the same time for love. ’ 10

Because Man is both body and soul ‘love includes the human body, and the body is made a sharer in spiritual love’.11

But we must beware of simply equating love with sex. Christ lived a life of complete sexual celibacy, and yet he loved as no man has ever loved - as he told his disciples, ‘Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends’ (Jn. 15:13). Love has its origin in the ‘heart’ of Man, not the sexual faculty. The ‘heart’ of marriage too is love which comes from the spirit of a man and woman. Sex does not create love in marriage. Rather, the spiritual love of husband and wife for each other is expressed in their sexual intercourse for the purpose of creating a family. Love, in other words, is expressing itself through the function and privilege which is proper to marriage - procreative sexual union.

So  when  a  Christian  couple  express  their  love  for  each  other  procreatively  they  are expressing in their bodies the ‘nuptial meaning’ for which the Creator has made them. There is no ‘puritanism’ in the Catholic view of sex; the Church is reaffirming the goodness of God's creation and the dignity of humanity when it teaches: ‘The acts in marriage by which the intimate and chaste union of the spouses takes place are noble and honourable; the truly human performance of these acts fosters the self-living they signify and enriches the spouses in joy and gratitude’.12 Because of the reality of Original Sin, however, we must always admit that there is a tendency in ourselves not to respect .this nuptial meaning but to seek instead

selfish gratification - in a word, give way to lust. In marriage the Christian couple learn to control their fallen nature because their sexual ‘drives’ are given meaning and also their correct proportion by fulfilling their procreative purpose. This gives a deeper meaning to what was meant by the old phrase which described marriage as a ‘remedy for concupiscence’.

It is certainly quite wrong to say, as some people do, that once a couple are married there is suddenly no more need for self-control. We still have our disordered desire, but in marriage, the school of chaste love, Christian couples learn to respect each other and experience not just physical pleasure but the joy of sharing in God's creative plan through their surrender to each other and to God. The sacrament gives the couple the graces to grow in authentic love which will always include mutual respect. Of course there will be occasions of failure and selfishness, but such is the whole of the Christian life - it always has to include penance and forgiveness. In this sense, marriage is redemptive in a most real, psychological and ‘existential’ way. Through

their living out of the sacrament husband and wife are re-orientated to the original nuptial meaning of human sexuality.

This concept of marriage giving sex its correct proportion in our lives is very important. It is possible  to  give  sex  a  ‘religious’  dimension  in  the  wrong  way:  even  some  well-meaning Christian writers ascribe a mystical experience - a holy glow - to sexual intercourse as if the physical joy were to be identified with the divine ecstasy of, for instance, a saintly mystic. Yes, the joy which God has given us in sexual union is ‘religious’ just as the whole of the Christian's life is religious - just as a mother's and father's joy in their child is religious. But we must be careful we are not being humbugs about this, claiming that our pleasure in sex is somehow ‘better’ just because we are Christians. It is only better in so far as we consciously strive to put it in the context of the covenant and sacrament which Christ has given us. There is also a danger of becoming too earnest and solemn about all this. Sex is not actually the single most important part of married life at any given moment. Love is. And sometimes it will have to include saying ‘no’ to oneself. At such times we are in fact saying ‘yes’ to that covenant of love we entered into at the altar.

Marriage is fruitful

We have seen how God, at the origins of our race, as the Genesis writer explains, gave man and woman a procreative vocation, that they should ‘be fruitful and multiply’, and in so doing, build up a people for him. In this way, God elevated man and woman to the dignity of sharing in his own work of creation in love. We have seen too how Christ has restored the union of man and woman to perfection as a sacramental participation in his own love for the Church; and this too has profound implications in Christian marriage. Christ gave his body at the Last Supper and on Calvary with no reservations, and the Church still brings forth sons and daughters and presents them to her bridegroom. This is no sterile, selfish partnership, but one which bears ‘fruit that will last’. The covenant of Christian spouses mirrors that of Christ only if their love does not end with them, only if they are willing to accept from God the children who are their ‘crowning glory’.13 The desire for fruitfulness should be at the heart of Christian married love.

As is obvious from nature, sexual union is ordered to the procreation of children; that is, its function is the initiating of the generative process. As is also clear from human nature, this physical union of man and woman is designed to give a most intense experience of intimacy and bonding. Indeed, the Book of Genesis describes this union as a re-joining of the sexes as‘one flesh’. This is what the Church has called ‘the unitive purpose’: sexual union within marriage is an expression of self-giving; it fosters mutual trust and exclusive love; it unites the two as one.

These two purposes of sexual union between married people - the procreative and the unitive - are intrinsic to the act, that is, they are part of its very being, not optional extras. They are inseparable from it and from each other. Just as it is abhorrent to think of an act of sexual intercourse from which love is excluded - such as rape - because the act is intrinsically unitive, so sexual union is denied its very nature when it is not at least potentially procreative. This is what Pope Paul VI meant when he wrote in Humanae Vitae (n.11) that ‘each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life’. This does not, of course, mean that any act of intercourse which does not result in a baby is wrong. As we know medically, only a few days in a woman's reproductive cycle are potentially fertile. The Church has repeatedly commended the use of the infertile times as harmonious with her moral teaching.14 The point is that these natural phases of infertility are part of the design of the human body; the use of a contraceptive drug or device to produce infertility is a direct frustration of this design and is therefore unnatural. Pope Paul further notes that to use the ‘divine gift’ of human sexual intercourse: whilst depriving it . . . of its meaning and purpose is repugnant to the nature of man and woman, strikes at the heart of their relationship and is consequently in opposition to the plan of God.15

In the context of Christian marriage, artificial contraception is a kind of lie: a dishonest use of what ought to be a precious sharing in the work of God. Sexual intercourse is only truly unitive when it is also ‘open to life’, that is, open to the natural processes which can result in life. The ‘unitive’ is therefore defined through the ‘procreative’. In Familiaris Consortio (n.32), Pope John Paul II examines with great insight the psychological effect of contraception on the marriage relationship when he says that the use of contraception overlays the expression of ‘total self-giving’ with something completely contradictory: ‘not giving oneself totally to the other’. He calls this physical and psychological reservation a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called on to give itself in personal totality.

That is the whole point: a contraceptive relationship is not a total self-giving in the manner of Christ, and no amount of ‘conscientious’ dissent from the teaching of the Church will ever make it so.

Responsible parenthood: using the patterns of human fertility

Emotive claims that the Church forces women to wear themselves out having annual pregnancies take no account either of the wholeness of the Church's teaching on love and sex or of Nature itself.

Far from imposing a moral obligation to have large families, the Church asserts the rights of parents to make their own decisions about family size and the spacing of births. Christian married people must exercise their conscience about how many children they can honestly manage, not in any selfish way with one eye on material advancement, but generously and responsibly. This is the area of planning a family in which conscience legitimately presides, not, as is sometimes wrongly suggested, in decisions about the actual means of planning births. Artificial  birth  control  is  not  a  conscientious  option  for  the  Catholic.  The exercise of responsibility is a positive duty. If a couple choose to have a large family, their generosity and courage are highly praised by the Church in the Second Vatican Council .16

It is perfectly obvious that conception does not result from every single act of intercourse: the reproductive system is such that most days in a woman's cycle are infertile. In recent years, great strides have been made in discovering ways of identifying these infertile times so effectively that supercilious remarks about ‘hit and miss’ techniques are completely ridiculous.

The calendar or ‘rhythm’ method used by many Catholics in the past had its disadvantages: being simply a matter of counting a certain number of days after menstruation as potentially fertile, it relied on the woman having a regular cycle. The development of the Temperature method brought an enormous improvement. This is based on the fact that, at ovulation, a woman's  ‘basal  body  temperature’  rises;  three  consecutive  days  of  a  raised  temperature indicate that ovulation has taken place and that the long post-ovulatory infertile phase has begun.

Over the last twenty years, however, an even more reliable and versatile method of Natural Family Planning has been discovered. The Billings Method relies on the recognition of two types of mucus produced by the cervix. By learning to interpret this symptom and apply a few simple rules, couples can identify the infertile time after menstruation, the approach of fertility and ovulation itself as well as the late infertile days. Consequently, this method can be used .in ‘irregular’ circumstances such as during breastfeeding or the menopause. Perhaps most significantly, the Billings Method can also be used to achieve as well as to avoid conception.

Fertility awareness is a very different thing from contraception.17  The use of natural methods depends, of course, on the ability of the couple to practise periodic abstinence and as such it cannot be a ‘moral’ appendage to an otherwise pagan partnership; in a Christian marriage it stems from the couple's spiritual relationship and their perception of themselves as one flesh in Christ. To refer to Natural Family Planning as ‘a method of contraception’ is to miss the point entirely. A couple using a natural method may certainly intend to avoid conception, but they completely accept the natural result of their sexual union, whatever that may be. If, in a given situation, they feel unable to accept this, they will abstain. So this mentality, and the way of life produced by this mentality, are completely different from that of a couple who are absolutely determined that their union must not result in life. The natural couple are in tune with the Natural Law in their bodies, whereas the contraceptive couple are disrupting nature by the imposition of their own will. Moreover, using the perfectly natural times of infertility, whilst freely choosing  tender  abstinence  at  other  times,  is  profoundly  different  psychologically  from suppressing the natural processes cold-bloodedly by a device or a drug so as to be constantly sexually available.

This difference in mentality is highlighted by Pope John Paul II when he writes that those using a natural method respect the inseparable connection between the unitive and the procreative meanings of human sexuality . . . acting as ‘ministers’ of God's plan whereas those resorting to contraception act as ‘arbiters’ of the divine plan and manipulate and degrade human sexuality . . . altering the value of total self-giving.18

The couple using natural means put love before sex; they learn to free themselves from an addiction to sex and an obsession with their physical relationship. They also share the responsibility for their fertility. The couple who use contraceptives risk making sex supreme in their relationship - developing a ‘contraceptive mentality’; 19 and as often as not it is the woman who bears the burden of fertility control. Although many women claim to be liberated by contraception, the more reliable methods such as the Pill and the intra-uterine device (the ‘coil’) can have serious adverse side-effects on the user's health.20 But the sexually addicted couple are unable to abstain, so the woman must risk health hazards in the name of pleasure and freedom; it is really a new kind of oppression.

That the contraceptive mentality can and does lead to an anti-life mentality is frighteningly obvious. A couple whose contraceptive fails feel that they have a right not to have the child so conceived - thus they have the right to abort it. Abortion is indeed openly offered as a ‘long stop’ for contraception. Moreover, some so-called contraceptives are in fact abortifacients, that is, they act by causing a very early abortion. The coil always works in this way and the Pill often does.21 The ‘morning after’ post-coital pill is obviously abortifacient by definition. It is marketed as a contraceptive through the fiction that a fertilized embryo does not count as living until it has implanted in its mother's womb-lining. Biology has to be rewritten to fit the contraceptive mentality.

There are, of course, other subtle ways in which a respect for nature and for all human life is undermined by the use of artificial birth control: procreation is devalued, pregnancy is regarded as  a  preventable  disease  and  having  children  as  an  infringement  of  rights.  Once  sex  is supreme, life takes second place.

Married spirituality

When we think about the high ideals of commitment, fidelity, purity and fruitfulness to which husband and wife are called in Christian marriage, we begin to realise why the Church reminds us of the ‘graces of state’ which spouses receive in the sacrament of Matrimony. We need to remember that when the spouses make their vows at the altar it is not just their own individual act of commitment: a sacrament is a sacred action in which Christ Our Lord really acts. His action is not limited to the moment of the vows: being married is a state and Christ continues to be dynamically present in that state ‘until death do us part’. ‘He abides with them’ so that ‘married love is caught up into divine love and is directed and enriched by the redemptive power of Christ . . . Spouses are fortified and, as it were, consecrated for the duties and dignity of their state . . . Spouses are penetrated with the spirit of Christ and their whole life is suffused by faith, hope and charity’.22

Husband and wife must actively cooperate with this dynamic presence of Christ in their marriage. They should ‘minister’ Christ to each other not only in their mutual love and service but also by sharing their spiritual lives. Apart from both private and family prayer, the primary way Christian spouses can do this is by taking part in the Eucharist. For the Sacrifice of the Mass precisely is the celebration of the New Covenant of Christ: it is ‘the great mystery which he left us as an everlasting covenant’.23 Pope John Paul writes:

The Eucharist is the very source of Christian marriage. The Eucharistic Sacrifice, in fact, re-presents Christ's covenant of love with the Church, sealed with his blood on the Cross. In this sacrifice of the New and Eternal Covenant, Christian spouses encounter the source from which their own marriage covenant flows, is interiorly structured and continuously renewed.24

Seen in this light, the act of ‘going to Mass’ as a couple and as a family has a much greater significance. Speaking of this ‘unique relationship between the Eucharist and marriage’, the Pope says: To understand better and live more intensely the graces and responsibilities of Christian marriage and family life, it is altogether necessary to rediscover and strengthen this relationship.25

This is why the Church urges couples to celebrate their Wedding in a Nuptial Mass, because in their gift of themselves they are taken up into the offering of Christ our Eucharist. The Postcommunion Prayer of the Nuptial Mass in fact expresses the relationship between Holy Communion and Marriage very beautifully: As you have made N. and N. one in this sacrament of marriage and in the sharing of the one bread and the one cup, so now make them one in love for each other.26

By receiving Holy Communion, husband and wife can strengthen and nourish their mutual love and commitment. Every Mass can be ‘nuptial’ for Christian spouses.

Marriage as a ‘ministry’

Indeed  the  whole  of  Christian  married  life  is  ordered  towards  the  Sacraments.  Every Christian receives a certain ‘priestly’ character at Baptism because of our incorporation into Christ our great High Priest; we are ‘a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people’ (1 Pet. 2:9). It is this ‘priesthood of the laity’ which bridegroom and bride exercise when they make their marriage vows on their wedding day: it is the bridegroom and bride who are the ministers of the sacrament - not the priest; he is a witness for the Church. And this ministry on the part of the couples continues throughout their lives. Not only are husband and wife ministers to each other, but they exercise a natural ministry towards their children, and indeed generally in the world. Parents certainly have a kind of natural priesthood towards their children: they bring them into the world physically and then they bring them into the Church when the baby is baptised. There is a natural progress from the womb to the font.

This is what is meant when the Church teaches that ‘marriage and married love are by nature ordered to the procreation and education of children’.27 The ‘education’ of the child does not just mean schooling; it means first and foremost education in the knowledge and love of God; it means the introduction of the child into the sacramental life of the Church, starting at Baptism and soon flowering into First Confession and First Holy Communion and later Confirmation. The first prayers which a Christian child learns to say are taught him or her by Mummy and Daddy. ‘Mother's knee’ is actually the best place to learn the most important things of life. At Sunday Mass, the parents, as the apostle Andrew did for his brother Simon, are bringing their family to meet Jesus.

Such ‘education’ is not all a matter of talking. Child psychologists now emphasise what common sense has always known: a baby ‘learns’ from its parents' behaviour and attitudes from the very beginning. In a Christian family, the child draws in the life and love of God with its mother's milk. In fact research is beginning to suggest that the mother's attitude towards her child, and thus her relationship with it, affects the baby in all kinds of subtle ways even in the womb.  One  begins  to  see  how  closely,  indeed  intrinsically,  connected  procreation  and education are. It also makes one wonder what damage can be done to the sensitive psychological development of a child by an anti-life, anti-marriage, contraceptive mentality on the part of parents. All of this brings home how great are the responsibilities of parents. But such awesome responsibility is what justifies calling marriage a ministry. Christian marriage is not just a private affair for the couple, in an introverted way. It is, rather, a participation in the life and work of the whole Church. Indeed the Christian family is not only a microcosm of the Church and a living model of what the Church does, it is the ‘domestic church’28, raising up sons and daughters, bringing to birth the new People of God.

This ministry of family life is of course not confined to the years when the children are young. Most young couples have themselves started out their married life with the substantial help, often financial, of their own parents who are now not only counsellors but wise friends.

And when the grandchildren are born, the role of these grandparents reveals yet another dimension  of  the  familial  love  which  springs  from  the  sacrament  of  marriage:  the  warm friendship which children can have with their grandparents is unique and highly formative, and adds vitally to the parent-child relationship. This family cohesion is a precious fruit of the marriage covenant of faithfulness and fruitfulness which lasts down the years. One should mention here also the significance of the extended family, which has always been a great strength of Catholic life and source of Christian solidarity.

The married apostolate

But it is not only within the family that married people can exercise their ministry; of course, there are cases of couples who are unable to conceive a child - such marriages are not in any way deficient or substandard. Married people with or without children have, by virtue of their ‘office’ in the Church, an important apostolate. The Christian married couple should feel that they have the special task entrusted to them by Christ of spreading the family values of love and life. The experiences and graces of married people are especially needed in apostolic work concerning the family and children. The pro-life movement in particular - defending the unborn, counselling and assisting mothers-to-be, protecting children from harmful influences - should be the work of married people. In our day it is urgently necessary that marriage and the family be defended in the political arena. Pope John Paul challenges us: Families should grow in awareness of being ‘protagonists’ of what is known as ‘family politics’ and assume responsibility for transforming society; otherwise families will be the first victims of the evils that they have done no more than note with indifference.29

Such political action obviously needs family organizations and action groups. There is great scope for work with sympathetic non-Catholics too. A particularly vital work is the spreading of knowledge about Natural Family Planning. This is pre-eminently married people's work in our society: the credibility which a Christian wife or husband can have in explaining how NFP works is unique. It does not need specialist medical expertise, either. Indeed, although married couples are always grateful for medical help when it is needed, they today need to reassert that control of their fertility is a matter for them and them alone. By spreading awareness of natural methods of birth control, Christian couples can free people from the outside interference which artificial contraception brings.

In many of these areas of the apostolate, husband and wife will be working together, giving a witness of their partnership in Christ. But perhaps it ought to be added that the married apostolate does not always necessitate joint activity. In fact, in most families there is always going to have to be one parent at home to look after the children! It would be quite wrong if the enthusiastic pursuit of a joint apostolate ended up in the couple's primary ‘work’, their children, being neglected. Nor is there any merit in husband and wife making an overt display of sentimental ‘togetherness’ as they go about their apostolate. Each partner will have his or her own area of competence. The approach should be that, even when married people are doing individual apostolic work, a husband or wife brings to that work the strengths, insights and graces which he or she has from their marriage covenant.

Conclusion

It is more urgent today than ever before for Christians to show to the world the goodness and joy of Christian marriage and family life. Throughout this discussion of marriage we have tried to present the Church's teaching as coherent, rational and fulfilling of human nature. The Church teaches what she does about sex and marriage not as an arbitrary set of rules which humble mortals cannot understand. She believes that it is the expression of the Natural Law within which the entire universe is framed in wisdom and harmony. For this reason, the Church is never afraid of the results of scientific investigation into areas of human sexuality and relationships. Indeed, the social and educational sciences in particular are increasingly bearing out the wisdom of traditional Christian teaching about the importance of a stable marriage for the growing up of healthy, happy children. The Catholic philosophy of love and marriage is absolutely not, therefore, just a series of ‘club rules’ for Catholics. The Church offers the teaching of Jesus Christ to the world because she ‘is convinced that she is contributing to the creation of a truly human civilization’.30

It is not irrelevant to mention in conclusion the fact that the most characteristic image or icon to be found in Catholic Christianity, after the Crucifix, is that of the Virgin Mother and her Divine Child. The role of Our Lady is central to the Faith, and her role is precisely that of mother. The prominence of such a mother image in Christian art and thought is very significant. The Church believes that the very coming of God into this world as Man hinged on a woman: ‘we can say that the mystery of the Redemption took shape beneath the heart of the Virgin of Nazareth when she pronounced her "fiat"’.31  It is no mere sentiment for the Christian couple to keep before their eyes the image of the Immaculate Mother of God as an effective and powerful sign of God's union with mankind, a union in which husband and wife can share through the covenant of Christian marriage.

FOOTNOTES

1 The whole subject of the spiritual nature of Man and his evolution is dealt with in detail in Catholicism: A New Synthesis by Edward Holloway, S.T.L. (Faith-Keyway, 1976), ch. 8 and 9; for a briefer discussion of the question, see Evolution and Original Sin by Roger Nesbitt (Faith Pamphlets).

2 It is sometimes debated whether the first humans were indeed a literal couple or perhaps a group of couples. For a discussion of the Church's teaching on this point, see Evolution and Original Sin.

3 Article 16.3.

4 Vatican II, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, n.13.

5 Gaudium et Spes, n.49.

6 Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation on the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern

World, Familiaris Consortio, n.20.

7 See the new Code of Canon Law, canons 1095-1103.

8 Ibid., canon 1060.

9 Gaudium et Spes, n.49.

10 Familiaris Consortio, n.11.

11 Ibid.

12 Gaudium et Spes, loc. cit.

13 Ibid., n.48.

14 Interestingly, the first official response of the magisterium to the question of the use of the infertile period was in 1853 - long before the existence of the modern contraceptive movement. The major statements of the Church on this subject are: Pope Pius Xl, Encyclical Casti Connubii, n.59; Pope Paul Vl, Encyclical Humanae Vitae, n.16; Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, n.32.

15 Humanae Vitae, n.13.

16 Gaudium et Spes, n.50.

17 For further information about this means of Natural Family Planning, contact N.A.O.M.I. (The National Association of Ovulation Method Instructors), 47, Heathhurst Road, Sanderstead, Surrey. The most comprehensive book on the subject, which is available now in paperback, is The Billings Method by Dr. Evelyn Billings and Ann Westmore (Penguin, 1982). The World Health Organization trial of this method (1978) concluded that it has a success rate of

97-99% .

18 Familiaris Consortio, n.32.

19 The phrase used by Pope John Paul lI in his address at York on the family during his visit to England, May 1982.

20 The important and little-known facts about this are detailed in Is the

Contraceptive Experiment Over? by Dr. Peter Doherty (Faith Pamphlets).

21 Cf. Doherty, op.cit., pp.9,23-4; Billings, op.cit., pp.142-3.

22 Gaudium et Spes, n.48.

23 The Roman Missal, Eucharistic Prayer IV.

24 Familiaris Consortio, n.57.

25 lbid.

26 The Roman Missal, Nuptial Mass A.

27 Gaudium et Spes, n.50.

28 Cf. Vatican II, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, n.11.

29 Familiaris Consortio, n.44.

30 Humanae Vitae, n.18.

31 Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Redemptor Hominis, n.22.

Some comments on this pamphlet

"Cordial thanks for sending me copies of Christian Marriage: Covenant in Christ. You have tried to formulate the doctrine of the Church on Holy Matrimony in attractive prose and I note with pleasure your familiarity with and loyalty to even the latest teachings of our Beloved Holy Father, of his immediate predecessors and of the Vatican Council II on the subject. I warmly bless your efforts to remind young people that true love is understood only from the fact that God loves us. When they understand that people's love for each other becomes easy."

Cardinal Silvio Oddi, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Clergy, Vatican City.

"The Pontifical Council for the Family has examined your pamphlet carefully and would like to commend you on your fine work and commitment to communicating the Church's authentic teaching about marriage and the family. We will mention your pamphlet and where available in our Newsletter"

Bishop Francisco Jose Cog Huneeus, Secretary, Pontifical Council for the

Family, Vatican City.

"I am very interested in this pamphlet. I think it is most timely"

Archbishop Michael Bowen, Archbishop of Southwark,

"I found Christian Marriage: Covenant in Christ very impressive and helpful. I am sure that many others will find it to be helpful. There is so much ignorance and despair about the ideals of  Christian  Marriage  today  that  there  is  great  need  for  the  positive  presentation  of  our teaching. This I think you have achieved "

Bishop James O'Brien, Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster.

"I hasten to congratulate you on the best brief commentary on marriage that I have read in years. It is so refreshing to read a text so thoroughly Catholic in its approach and outlook. I will be recommending it to the priests of the Archdiocese. I feel that a copy in the hand of each person who comes to the priest with a view to marriage will give them much food for reflection. It is so encouraging to discover couples who can be articulate in expressing the true mind of the Church. With every blessing and a very sincere ‘Thank you’ for the benefit you have offered young couples today. "

Cardinal Thomas J. Winning, Archbishop of Glasgow.

www.faith.org.uk

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