Rob Colquhoun

 

Christ raised the community of life and love (marriage) to the dignity of a sacrament. But John Paul II recognised the dignity marriage had before the time of Christ, calling it the ‘primordial sacrament,’ ‘willed by God in the act of creation’ and ‘interiorly ordained.’

 

Today there are many challenges and snares against the wonderful dignity of marriage. Augustine reminded us that “Nobody can love the king (Christ) if he abhors his commandments.”[1] De Facto unions present a serious objection to marriage. They can possess a serious lack of mutual commitment, a paradoxical desire to maintain autonomy of one’s will and no trusting openness to open life together. The widespread fear of being parents has helped to herald a demographic winter, an aging population with unforeseeable moral, civil and political dangers. In other circumstances parents have renounced their roles only to be friends to their children, refraining from correcting them. John Paul II believed that the future of humanity passes by way of the family, and the future of the family passes by way of adequate preparation. This preparation involves children being conceived in the context of total human self giving, an indispensable prerequisite for their peaceful and harmonious growth.

 

Cultures whose juridical institutions sever sexuality from procreative significance have a subliminal death risk. So called ‘gay marriage’ has sought to be assimilated into the institution of civil marriage. It is based upon a anthropology that is radically different to Christian culture and attempts to subvert and evacuate the meaning of the institution. The intrinsic otherness of sexual difference is denied in a gay marriage and as a result sexual relations all become androgynous. Existence is more that a set of experiences and pleasure. It is grounded in tradition and the continuation of culture for other generations. The family embodies and guarantees the continuation of culture in history. The sexual difference of parents communicate what it is to be human, how to love, bow to belong to society and live in a culture. In this way a child learns that life is something larger than himself.

 

Pope John Paul II recognised that many would openly attack the family. He said, “Frequently man lives as if God did not exist, and even puts himself in God’s place. He claims for himself the creator’s right to interfere in the mystery of human life. He wishes to determine human life through genetic manipulation and establish the limit of death. Rejecting divine law and moral principles, he openly attacks the family. In a variety of ways he attempts to silence the voice of God in human hearts; he wishes to make God the ‘great absence’ in culture and consciences of peoples. The ‘mystery of iniquity’ continues to mark the reality of the world.”[2] Amidst these attacks, God has shown he has a wonderful design for all of our lives; this is like a path planted with temptations, but never without divine grace and hope. With a freshness and enthusiasm of love, the taste for beauty, the desire for open dialogue and hope for tomorrow we can overcome the cultural challenges to family in the twenty-first century to inaugurate a new springtime of love.

 

Marriage complements and is closely related to virginity. It is the Blessed Virgin Mary who imitates the inseparability of both virginity and marriage so closely. In the early Church virginity was associated with immortality. St John Chrysostom states, "Whoever denigrates marriage also diminishes the glory of virginity. Whoever praises it makes virginity more admirable and resplendent. What appears good only in comparison with evil would not be particularly good. It is something better than what is admitted to be good that is the most excellent good."[3]  Marriage and virginity as a sacrament and a state are receptive to the fecundity of divine blessing. A healthier society would protect women from premarital sexual experience because it leads to the hatred of women.[4]

 

Wendy Shalit belives that modesty is a great weapon in rejuvenating our culture to restore feminine mystique. The sexual revolution failed because it ignored female modesty and the difference of the sexes, bringing us harassment, date rape, stalking, eating disorders, dreary hook ups and the great ‘gain’ of divorce.  Modesty, for Shalit, is proof that morality is sexy and is likely to enkindle eros. Modesty may even be a proof of God, because it means “that we have been designed in such a way that when we humans act like animals, without any restraint and without any rules, we just don’t have as much fun.”[5] Modesty, falsely associated with prudery, is far more exciting than promiscuity because it restores the dignity given to femininity. Kierkegaard believed that “What distinguishes love from lust is the fact that it bears an impress of eternity.”[6] And modesty combined with motherhood helps to form part of the salvation of mankind (cf. 1 Tm 2:15).

 

Tertullian beautifully described the beauty of marriage in the Church. He wrote, “How can I ever express the happiness of the marriage that is joined together by the Church, strengthened by an offering, sealed by a blessing, announced by Angels and ratified by the father… They are both brethren and both fellow servants; there is no separation between them in spirit or flesh. Christ rejoices in them and he sends his peace; where the couple is, there he is also to be found.[7] If we are captivated by the beauty and pleasure of God’s way, refusing the counterfeits of this world, we see the goodness and beauty of marriage as fulfilling and creative.

 

The most essential components of a Catholic marriage are that it is free, faithful, total and fruitful. The rights and duties of marriage bring responsibility and stability to counteract the pragmatism and hedonism of our age. As the family is written into the constitution of most of the world’s countries, it is clear that God put in men and women the vocation, capacity and responsibility of love and communion. Life and freedom are inextricably linked to the freedom to love.