UK National Marriage Week (3)

The first and second posts in this series are here and here. This series of posts is an attempt to recognise that National Marriage Week provides an opportunity for a "catechetical moment" with regard to the Catholic Church's teaching on marriage.

Marriage is open to the gift of life

According to Catholic teaching, sexual intercourse is only exercised morally between a man and a woman who are married. Outside of marriage, the virtue of chastity is equivalent to an expectation of celibacy or virginity. This allows for the married couple the possibility of having children, and then the responsibility of educating and caring for them.

This possibility is part of the purpose of marriage, and is a part of what is expressed in the vows that a man and woman make to each other in getting married. A circumstance where the openess to the possibility of life is deliberately and decisively excluded from the start is sufficient to make the marital covenant invalid.

In order to successfully live out this teaching, married people, and those preparing for marriage, need to recognise two things:

1. Sexual intercourse is not intended to be a form of recreation, a way of achieving enjoyment in the same way that playing sport or going out for a day is a form of recreation. It is something with a serious meaning and intent.

2. Within a married relationship, the aspect of sexual intercourse needs to be "integrated" and lived, not just as a separate end of its own, but as a part of a whole inter-personal relationship. The bodily aspect of intercourse itself needs to be lived as an expression of relationship that is essentially a relationship of persons, in which the body plays its part but is not the "whole". This allows for moments when the bodily aspect might defer to the more strictly "personal" in the relationship, as well as for moments where the bodily aspect might rightly play a full part.

These two points might be termed "living chastely within marriage", and they have a practical demand of exercising self-control which applies to both the husband and the wife.

The idea of openess to life is expressed in Catholic teaching that the use of artificial means of birth control is not morally permissible. Contraception is a denial of this idea of an openess to life that is expressed in sexual intercourse. However, if we recognise that an integrated married life has its moments where the "personal" takes a kind of precedence over (but does not deny) the "bodily", and its moments where the "bodily" takes a kind of precedence over (but does not deny) the "personal", then this teaching becomes quite reasonable.

To go back again to my talk to parents of children preparing for First Holy Communion, the following passage and testimony appear relevant to a reflection on openess to life.

...be explicit about putting Jesus at the centre at key moments of your family life. This comes first between the parents. When you encounter difficulties or important decisions it means sitting down and, together, placing Jesus at the centre of that situation and referring your choices to him. The following testimony is from the diary of the parents of a girl called Emmy Maria, who died from a severe kidney problem when just three months old.

“It was quite extraordinary what such a small child could feel and notice, and how we could tell what she felt…..The last few days our child was given to live among us were hard for the human heart to bear, yet extremely great and powerful, filled with promise because of the nearness of Christ.

“It was remarkable that each time we interceded for Emmy Maria and gathered ourselves inwardly, the powers of death withdrew and she revived. Whereas before she lay there apathetic and unresponsive, with half-open eyes, shallow breath, and a very weak pulse, she would suddenly open her eyes, look at us, cry, and drink, moving her hands and turning her head when she was gently touched: she would come back to consciousness. Sometimes such a transformation came within seconds.

“There was a special atmosphere of love in her room. It went out from her and filled the whole house, and united us in special love to each other….” [From the diary of Emmy Maria’s parents, quoted in Johann Christoph Arnold A Little Child Shall Lead Them p.53-54.]

This testimony reminds us that, as well as having a natural implication, openess to life also involves a supernatural dimension, an openess to the possibilities of grace.

PS. I think I had better take back my promise of shorter posts as the week progresses ....