|
47. The well-being of the individual person and of human and
Christian society is intimately linked with the healthy condition of
that community produced by marriage and family. Hence Christians and
all men who hold this community in high esteem sincerely rejoice in the
various ways by which men today find help in fostering this community of
love and perfecting its life, and by which parents are assisted in
their lofty calling. Those who rejoice in such aids look for
additional benefits from them and labor to bring them about.
Yet the excellence of this institution is not everywhere reflected with
equal brilliance, since polygamy, the plague of divorce, so-called
free love and other disfigurements have an obscuring effect. In
addition, married love is too often profaned by excessive self-love,
the worship of pleasure and illicit practices against human generation.
Moreover, serious disturbances are caused in families by modern
economic conditions, by influences at once social and psychological,
and by the demands of civil society. Finally, in certain parts of the
world problems resulting from population growth are generating concern.
All these situations have produced anxiety of consciences. Yet, the
power and strength of the institution of marriage and family can also be
seen in the fact that time and again, despite the difficulties
produced, the profound changes in modern society reveal the true
character of this institution in one way or another.
Therefore, by presenting certain key points of Church doctrine in a
clearer light, this sacred synod wishes to offer guidance and support
to those Christians and other men who are trying to preserve the
holiness and to foster the natural dignity of the married state and its
superlative value.
48. The intimate partnership of married life and love has been
established by the Creator and qualified by His laws, and is rooted
in the jugal covenant of irrevocable personal consent. Hence by that
human act whereby spouses mutually bestow and accept each other a
relationship arises which by divine will and in the eyes of society too
is a lasting one. For the good of the spouses and their off-springs
as well as of society, the existence of the sacred bond no longer
depends on human decisions alone. For, God Himself is the author of
matrimony, endowed as it is with various benefits and purposes.[105]
All of these have a very decisive bearing on the continuation of the
human race, on the personal development and eternal destiny of the
individual members of a family, and on the dignity, stability, peace
and prosperity of the family itself and of human society as a whole.
By their very nature, the institution of matrimony itself and conjugal
love are ordained for the procreation and education of children, and
find in them their ultimate crown. Thus a man and a woman, who by
their compact of conjugal love "are no longer two, but one flesh"
(Matt. 19:ff), render mutual help and service to each other
through an intimate union of their persons and of their actions.
Through this union they experience the meaning of their oneness and
attain to it with growing perfection day by day. As a mutual gift of
two persons, this intimate union and the good of the children impose
total fidelity on the spouses and argue for an unbreakable oneness
between them.[106]
Christ the Lord abundantly blessed this many-faceted love, welling
up as it does from the fountain of divine love and structured as it is
on the model of His union with His Church. For as God of old made
Himself present[107] to His people through a covenant of love and
fidelity, so now the Savior of men and the Spouse[108] of the
Church comes into the lives of married Christians through the
sacrament of matrimony. He abides with them thereafter so that just as
He loved the Church and handed Himself over on her behalf,[109] the
spouses may love each other with perpetual fidelity through mutual
self-bestowal.
Authentic married love is caught up into divine love and is governed
and enriched by Christ's redeeming power and the saving activity of
the Church, so that this love may lead the spouses to God with
powerful effect and may aid and strengthen them in sublime office of
being a father or a mother.[110] For this reason Christian spouses
have a special sacrament by which they are fortified and receive a kind
of consecration in the duties and dignity of their state.[111] By
virtue of this sacrament, as spouses fulfil their conjugal and family
obligation, they are penetrated with the spirit of Christ, which
suffuses their whole lives with faith, hope and charity. Thus they
increasingly advance the perfection of their own personalities, as well
as their mutual sanctification, and hence contribute jointly to the
glory of God.
As a result, with their parents leading the way by example and family
Prayer, children and indeed everyone gathered around the family hearth
will find a readier path to human maturity, salvation and holiness.
Graced with the dignity and office of fatherhood and motherhood,
parents will energetically acquit themselves of a duty which devolves
primarily on them, namely education and especially religious
education.
As living members of the family, children contribute in their own way
to making their parents holy. For they will respond to the kindness of
their parents with sentiments of gratitude, with love and trust. They
will stand by them as children should when hardships overtake their
parents and old age brings its loneliness. Widowhood, accepted
bravely as a continuation of the marriage vocation, should be esteemed
by all.[112] Families too will share their spiritual riches
generously with other families. Thus the Christian family, which
springs from marriage as a reflection of the loving covenant uniting
Christ with the Church,[113] and as a participation in that
covenant, will manifest to all men Christ's living presence in the
world, and the genuine nature of the Church. This the family will do
by the mutual love of the spouses, by their generous fruitfulness,
their solidarity and faithfulness, and by the loving way in which all
members of the family assist one another.
49. The biblical Word of God several times urges the betrothed and
the married to nourish and develop their wedlock by pure conjugal love
and undivided affection.[114] Many men of our own age also highly
regard true love between husband and wife as it manifests itself in a
variety of ways depending on the worthy customs of various peoples and
times.
This love is an eminently human one since it is directed from one
person to another through an affection of the will; it involves the
good of the whole person, and therefore can enrich the expressions of
body and mind with a unique dignity, ennobling these expressions as
special ingredients and signs of the friendship distinctive of
marriage. This love God has judged worthy of special gifts,
healing, perfecting and exalting gifts of grace and of charity. Such
love, merging the human with the divine, leads the spouses to a free
and mutual gift of themselves, a gift providing itself by gentle
affection and by deed, such love pervades the whole of their
lives:[115] indeed by its busy generosity it grows better and grows
greater. Therefore it far excels mere erotic inclination, which,
selfishly pursued, soon enough fades wretchedly away.
This love is uniquely expressed and perfected through the appropriate
enterprise of matrimony. The actions within marriage by which the
couple are united intimately and chastely are noble and worthy ones.
Expressed in a manner which is truly human, these actions promote that
mutual self-giving by which spouses enrich each other with a joyful and
a ready will. Sealed by mutual faithfulness and be allowed above all
by Christs sacrament, this love remains steadfastly true in body and
in mind, in bright days or dark. It will never be profaned by
adultery or divorce. Firmly established by the Lord, the unity of
marriage will radiate from the equal personal dignity of wife and
husband, a dignity acknowledged by mutual and total love. The
constant fulfillment of the duties of this Christian vocation demands
notable virtue. For this reason, strengthened by grace for holiness
of life, the couple will painstakingly cultivate and pray for
steadiness of love, large heartedness and the spirit of sacrifice.
Authentic conjugal love will be more highly prized, and wholesome
public opinion created about it if Christian couples give outstanding
witness to faithfulness and harmony in their love, and to their concern
for educating their children also, if they do their part in bringing
about the needed cultural, psychological and social renewal on behalf
of marriage and the family. Especially in the heart of their own
families, young people should be aptly and seasonably instructed in the
dignity, duty and work of married love. Trained thus in the
cultivation of chastity, they will be able at a suitable age to enter a
marriage of their own after an honorable courtship.
50. Marriage and conjugal love are by their nature ordained toward
the begetting and educating of children. Children are really the
supreme gift of marriage and contribute very substantially to the
welfare of their parents. The God Himself Who said, "it is not
good for man to be alone" (Gen. 2:18) and "Who made man from
the beginning male and female" (Matt. 19:4), wishing to share
with man a certain special participation in His own creative work,
blessed male and female, saying: "Increase and multiply" (Gen.
1:28). Hence, while not making the other purposes of matrimony
of less account, the true practice of conjugal love, and the whole
meaning of the family life which results from it, have this aim: that
the couple be ready with stout hearts to cooperate with the love of the
Creator and the Savior. Who through them will enlarge and enrich
His own family day by day.
Parents should regard as their proper mission the task of transmitting
human life and educating those to whom it has been transmitted. They
should realize that they are thereby cooperators with the love of God
the Creator, and are, so to speak, the interpreters of that love.
Thus they will fulfil their task with human and Christian
responsibility, and, with docile reverence toward God, will make
decisions by common counsel and effort. Let them thoughtfully take
into account both their own welfare and that of their children, those
already born and those which the future may bring. For this accounting
they need to reckon with both the material and the spiritual conditions
of the times as well as of their state in life. Finally, they should
consult the interests of the family group, of temporal society, and of
the Church herself. The parents themselves and no one else should
ultimately make this judgment in the sight of God. But in their
manner of acting, spouses should be aware that they cannot proceed
arbitrarily, but must always be governed according to a conscience
dutifully conformed to the divine law itself, and should be submissive
toward the Church's teaching office, which authentically interprets
that law in the light of the Gospel. That divine law reveals and
protects the integral meaning of conjugal love, and impels it toward a
truly human fulfillment. Thus, trusting in divine Providence and
refining the spirit of sacrifice,[116] married Christians glorify
the Creator and strive toward fulfillment in Christ when with a
generous human and Christian sense of responsibility they acquit
themselves of the duty to procreate. Among the couples who fulfil
their God-given task in this way, those merit special mention who
with a gallant heart and with wise and common deliberation, undertake
to bring up suitably even a relatively large family.[117]
Marriage to be sure is not instituted solely for procreation; rather,
its very nature as an unbreakable compact between persons, and the
welfare of the children, both demand that the mutual love of the
spouses be embodied in a rightly ordered manner, that it grow and
ripen. Therefore, marriage persists as a whole manner and communion
of life, and maintains its value and indissolubility, even when
despite the often intense desire of the couple, offspring are lacking.
51. This council realizes that certain modern conditions often keep
couples from arranging their married lives harmoniously, and that they
find themselves in circumstances where at least temporarily the size of
their families should not be increased. As a result, the faithful
exercise of love and the full intimacy of their lives is hard to
maintain. But where the intimacy of married life is broken off, its
faithfulness can sometimes be imperiled and its quality of fruitfulness
ruined, for then the upbringing of the children and the courage to
accept new ones are both endangered.
To these problems there are those who presume to offer dishonorable
solutions indeed; they do not recoil even from the taking of life.
But the Church issues the reminder that a true contradiction cannot
exist between the divine laws pertaining to the transmission of life and
those pertaining to authentic conjugal love.
For God, the Lord of life, has conferred on men the surpassing
ministry of safeguarding life in a manner which is worthy of man.
Therefore from the moment of its conception life must be guarded with
the greatest care while abortion and infanticide are unspeakable
crimes. The sexual characteristics of man and the human faculty of
reproduction wonderfully exceed the dispositions of lower forms of
life. Hence the acts themselves which are proper to conjugal love and
which are exercised in accord with genuine human dignity must be honored
with great reverence. Hence when there is question of harmonizing
conjugal love with the responsible transmission of life, the moral
aspects of any procedure does not depend solely on sincere intentions or
on an evaluation of motives, but must be determined by objective
standards. These, based on the nature of the human person and his
acts, preserve the full sense of mutual self-giving and human
procreation in the context of true love. Such a goal cannot be
achieved unless the virtue of conjugal chastity is sincerely practiced.
Relying on these principles, sons of the Church may not undertake
methods of birth control which are found blameworthy by the teaching
authority of the Church in its unfolding of the divine law.[118]
All should be persuaded that human life and the task of transmitting it
are not realities bound up with this world alone. Hence they cannot be
measured or perceived only in terms of it, but always have a bearing on
the eternal destiny of men.
52. The family is a kind of school of deeper humanity. But if it
is to achieve the full flowering of its life and mission, it needs the
kindly communion of minds and the joint deliberation of spouses, as
well as the painstaking cooperation of parents in the education of their
children. The active presence of the father is highly beneficial to
their formation. The children, especially the younger among them,
need the care of their mother at home. This domestic role of hers must
be safely preserved, though the legitimate social progress of women
should not be underrated on that account.
Children should be so educated that as adults they can follow their
vocation, including a religious one, with a mature sense of
responsibility and can choose their state of life; if they marry, they
can thereby establish their family in favorable moral, social and
economic conditions. Parents or guardians should by prudent advice
provide guidance to their young with respect to founding a family, and
the young ought to listen gladly. At the same time no pressure,
direct or indirect, should be put on the young to make them enter
marriage or choose a specific partner.
Thus the family, in which the various generations come together and
help one another grow wiser and harmonize personal rights with the other
requirements of social life, is the foundation of society. All
those, therefore, who exercise influence over communities and social
groups should work efficiently for the welfare of marriage and the
family. Public authority should regard it as a sacred duty to
recognize, protect and promote their authentic nature, to shield
public morality and to favor the prosperity of home life. The right of
parents to beget and educate their children in the bosom of the family
must be safeguarded. Children too who unhappily lack the blessing of a
family should be protected by prudent legislation and various
undertakings and assisted by the help they need.
Christians, redeeming the present time[119] and distinguishing
eternal realities from their changing expressions, should actively
promote the values of marriage and the family, both by the examples of
their own lives and by cooperation with other men of good will. Thus
when difficulties arise, Christians will provide, on behalf of family
life, those necessities and helps which are suitably modern. To this
end, the Christian instincts of the faithful, the upright moral
consciences of men, and the wisdom and experience of persons versed in
the sacred sciences will have much to contribute.
Those too who are skilled in other sciences, notably the medical,
biological, social and psychological, can considerably advance the
welfare of marriage and the family along with peace of conscience if by
pooling their efforts they labor to explain more thoroughly the various
conditions favoring a proper regulation of births.
It devolves on priests duly trained about family matters to nurture the
vocation of spouses by a variety of pastoral means, by preaching
God's word, by liturgical worship, and by other spiritual aids to
conjugal and family life; to sustain them sympathetically and patiently
in difficulties, and to make them courageous through love, so that
families which are truly illustrious can be formed.
Various organizations, especially family associations, should try by
their programs of instruction and action to strengthen young people and
spouses themselves, particularly those recently wed, and to train them
for family, social and apostolic life.
Finally, let the spouses themselves, made to the image of the living
God and enjoying the authentic dignity of persons, be joined to one
another[120] in equal affection, harmony of mind and the work of
mutual sanctification. Thus, following Christ who is the principle
of life,[121] by the sacrifices and joys of their vocation and
through their faithful love, married people can become witnesses of the
mystery of love which the Lord revealed to the world by His dying and
His rising up to life again.[122]
|
|