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ADDITIONAL ESSAYS II
AN ESSAY ON CATHOLIC
MARRIAGE
"It is no accident, as the Socialists
say, that Socialism and Sex (or "free love") come in together as "advanced" ideas. They
supplement each other. Russian dissident Igor Shafarevich, in his profound book
The Socialist Phenomenon, explains that the Socialist project of homogenizing
society demands that the family be vitiated or destroyed. This can be
accomplished in good measure by profaning conjugal love and breaking monogamy's
link between Sex and loyalty. Hence, in their missionary phases Socialist
movements often stress sexual "liberation," and members of radical
organizations may impose mandatory promiscuity within the group, everyone
sharing a bed with each of the others, each equally related to each. It is the
ultimate in leveling...
Few Americans will buy a bottle labeled
Socialism. The cunning of the Socialist hive has consisted largely in its skill
in piggybacking on the more attractive things. Like Sex.
Joseph Sobran[1]
"Now it is obvious that the Evil one,
who from the beginning has wanted to poison and destroy the work of the
Creator, will rage incessantly against these four - marriage, sexuality, love,
procreation - for he hates everything about them."
von
Kuehneit-Leddihn[2]
"In all times and places it has been
man's delight to think of human love as a type of divine Love and of human
marriage as a type of the marriage of the soul with God"
Eric Gill.[3]
Many marriages get into trouble. The causes of this can be
listed as "the world, the flesh and the devil." This old canard is
not without meaning. The world imposes innumerable pressures on marriage both
by its value system or rather, negative value system, and by the difficulties
of earning an adequate and honorable living. How often our children are
mis-educated and our women forced to work outside the home if the family is to
survive as an economic unit. The flesh relates to those problems that arise
from within ourselves. A marital couple in conflict can truly be said to be at
war - one is reminded of
Catholics are faced with a serious dilemma with regard to
sex. Brought up in an alien culture, bombarded with the distortions of the
media, and strongly influenced by a scientific and biological educational
background based on false philosophical and theological principles, they have
increasingly tended to see sex only in its biological setting. In addition to
such influences, they are also subjected to a variety of distorted opinions on
the subject from supposedly traditional sources. What I hope to do in what
follows is present some insights into the Catholic view of sex based on
documents drawn from the Church's Magisterium.
In order to do this
let us for a moment consider the nature of man - for sex must be placed within
a given context. Unfortunately most of us have been influenced by evolutionary
theory and hence we tend to see Natural Selection as a driving force in our
lives. If man is only a higher form of
animal, the product of natural evolution, then it logically follows that man's
sexual and erotic life is seen in terms of an extension of animal instincts.
The ultimate, positive basis of human eroticism becomes the biological purpose
of the species, usually seen in terms of survival.
Not dissimilar to the purely biological point of view, is
that which embraces the concept that sex is "natural" and that
repressive cultural forces or religious attitudes have distorted our sexual
lives. According to this view, the only normal attitude towards sex is that of
the uninhibited and amoral primitive savage - an opinion that refuses to
recognize that even the most primitive of tribes in
The problem with both these viewpoints is that neither says
anything about love. Without love, sexuality becomes like the activities of the
birds and the bees. Most philosophers
hold that man is distinguished from the beast because of his ability to think
and will; similarly, most philosophers place love within the realm of the will.[4] For
man to reduce sex to a "natural" or "instinctive" act, or
to use the words of
Proof for this contention can be found in the fact that the
false notion of sexual love as a physical need. As Julius Evola points out,
"A physical sexual desire never exists in man; the desire of man is
substantially always psychic, and his physical desire is only a translation and
transposition of psychic desire. Only in
the most primitive individual does the circuit close so fast that only the
terminal fact of the process is present in their conscious as a sharp, driving carnal lust unmistakably
linked to physiological conditional qualities which take the foremost place in
animal sexuality."[5] Nor
can it be claimed that human sex is driven by an instinct for reproduction. As
one wit put it, "when Adam awoke next to Eve, he did not cry out and say
'behold the mother of my children.'
I have said that the problem of the biological or Rousseauian
viewpoints is that while they speak of the emotions, they say nothing of love.
Now, despite innumerable attempts to define the nature of love, none of them
have been wholly successful. This is not
surprising in that there is something mysterious about this
"affliction." However, I believe there are certain characteristics -
perhaps one could say "symptoms" that are fairly universally
recognized. Love by its very nature seems to 1) involve the whole being. No one
ever claimed to love another other than with their whole body, soul, and
spirit. 2) love demands or longs for eternity. A person truly in love wants to
bind himself forever to his beloved. 3) love sees in the beloved, not his or
her faults, but rather his or her perfections. The very names of endearment
speak to this, for the beloved is an angel if not a god or goddess; he or she
embodies - or at least potentially embodies - all the qualities of the divine
prototype - the solar hero, the flawless maiden. 4) both parties to the loving
relationship see their worldly, if not their eternal happiness to lie in the
perpetual enjoyment of each other's company. 5) love requires an act of the
will - a commitment - directed towards what is understood as desirable - an act
of the will which also excludes anything that intrudes upon the unity of the
parties involved. To say this is not to
exclude the emotions, for as has been pointed out above, the act of loving
involves the whole of what one is. It follows then that one who refuses to
commit himself, or who breaks a commitment in order to start another
relationship, fools himself. Such a person confuses the excitement of novelty
with authentic happiness.[6]
What role does marriage play in all this? Borrowing from
von Hildebrand, "marriage is the friend and protector of love. Marriage
gives love the structure and shelteredness, the climate in which alone it can
grow. Marriage teaches spouses humility and makes them realize that the human
person is a very poor lover. Much as we long to love and to be loved, we
repeatedly fall short and desperately need help. We must bind ourselves through
sacred vows so that the bond will grant our love the strength necessary to face
the tempest-tossed sea of our human condition.... Marriage, because it implies
will, commitment, duty, and responsibility, braces spouses to fight to save the
precious gift of their love."
Almost all cultures initiate and establish marriage with
religious rites. For those that believe in God, knowing how difficult marriage
can be when we lose sight of the inner essence of the beloved and see only his
or her outer accidental qualities, realizing that they have made a commitment
or a vow made to God, and asking a higher power to succor their weakness,
becomes an inestimable source of strength; a means of renewing their commitment
and of assuming their responsibilities which not infrequently take on the form
of a cross. Marriages involve commitments "in illness and in health, for
better or for worse."
Religions tend to view marriage as a contract.[7] This
in no way is meant to exclude love, regardless of whether that love has led to
the marriage, or the arranged marriage has opened the door to love. This is not
only because every commitment has a contractual aspect to it, but also because
religions tend to see marriage in a broader context - that of society as a
whole, and therefore as directed towards what philosophers call the
"common good." Whereas modern social theory tends to view each individual
as tied to the state, traditional societies tend to see the family as the basic
building block of society. The very word economia means family, and so
it is that both religion and traditionally minded governments do everything possible to
maintain and foster the integrity of the family.
If marriage is a contract, it is not a contract in the
ordinary sense of the word. It is not a contract in which man's subsidiary
goods - his house or property - are transferred, but one in which it is his and
her very person which is transferred. No man or woman has the right to say of
another that "you are mine." Two beings alone can say this to one
another because they have truly and freely given themselves to one another.
What is exchanged is their will and consent, and this, unlike any other
contract, irrevocably. "This is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh...
what God has joined together let no man put asunder." And subsequent to
this proclamation God instructs the couple to "increase and multiply."
To speak of family is to speak of progeny.[8] Now
there is no question but that, as
"Christian marriage is a life-work. It is
easy only in ideal circumstances. Fidelity to
the end, St. Seraphim taught, is essential to happiness. If Christians find
they cannot live together, they go on living together for their homes, their
children, for the Church and for God. It may mean much suffering, but this
married life is the way to heaven. For only those who take up the cross can
follow Christ."[11]
All of us are
familiar with the arguments against remaining married when the interpersonal
relationship breaks down. Always rooted
in this breakdown is self-will or selfishness. (If as discussed below, the wife
is obedient and the husband an alter Christus, there is no real
possibility of divorce.) Even apart from
the spiritual effects on the partners, one must consider the devastating
effects of divorce on children. One has only to consider the studies of
Wallerstein to see the long term effects. And so it is that religions either
forbid divorce, or make it extremely difficult to obtain. Obtaining a Gett in
Judaism is, I am told, almost impossible. In Islam where divorce is allowed,
there is a Hadith or teaching of Mohammed to the effect that "God hates
nothing more than divorce." Among Hindus, divorce is forbidden in the
higher castes, though allowed for the "untouchables," who are those
considered outside the pale of religion and hence those not held to high moral
values. Before we raise objections to the concept of untouchables, let me
remind you that from the orthodox Hindu point of view, those that are not born
and do not live in accord with Hindu moral principles are all untouchables.
But the religious outlook on marriage is by no means limited
to strengthening its contractual character or safeguarding its social or
unitive purpose. Orthodox religion places marriage in the overall context of
what, for lack of a better word, I will call "salvation." Religion
desires for all men and women, regardless of their state of life, sanctity and
ultimately the beatific vision. Morality is not an end in itself, but only
predispositive to the sanctified life. And with this in view it encourages each
and every person to love Truth, Beauty and Goodness, the essential qualities
and names of God. It sees human love as a reflection of divine love and human
marriage macroscosmically as a reflection of the relationship between the soul
and God; microscosmically as the relationship between what spiritual writers
have called the lesser self and the greater Self or spiritual center of our
being. This moral and spiritual outlook is clearly stated by
"Let women be subject to their husbands as to the
Lord: Because the husband is the head of
the wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the savior of his body.
Therefore as the church is subject to Christ, so also let the wives be to their
husbands in all things. Husbands, love your wives as Christ also loved the
church, and delivered himself up for it, That he might sanctify it, cleansing
it by the laver of water in the word of life... so also ought men to love their
wives as their own bodies... For this cause shall a man leave his father and
mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh. This
is a great sacrament..." [12]
This is by no means the only place where Scripture teaches
the hierarchical nature of marriage. Leaving apart the passage in Genesis II:24
and innumerable examples of the relationship of men and women in the Old
Testament, let us turn to the new dispensation. In the First Letter to the
Corinthians Paul treats of abuses in divine worship in this manner: "But,
I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of
the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. Every man praying or
prophesying with his head covered, disgraceth his head. But every woman praying
or prophesying with her head not covered, disgraceth her head... The man indeed
ought not to cover his head, because he is the image and glory of God; but the
woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman, but the woman
of the man. For the man was not created for the woman, but the woman for the
man. Therefore ought the woman to have a cover over her head, because of the
angels" (XI: 3-10). The Apostle Paul here confirms again the teaching of
the submission of the woman to the man. He holds this submission to be important, and under the inspiration of
the Holy Ghost, institutes a sign of recognition for this submission. The woman
should cover her head during worship services, so as to honor her head, that is
to say, her husband.
A little later in the same Epistle St. Paul writes again on
the subject of divine worship: "Let women keep silence in the churches;
for it is not permitted them to speak, but to be subject, as also the [old] law
saith. But if they would learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home.
For it is a shame for a woman to speak in the church... If any seem to be a
prophet, or spiritual, let him know the things that I write to you, that they
are commandments of the Lord" (XIV:35). This law of the Lord is addressed
above all to women, who should keep silent during divine worship. And from this
we have to conclude that liturgical functions, such as lector or priest, are
forbidden to them according to divine law. To consider that the submission of
the wife to her husband is an order from God appears to us to be a proximate
notion. For the law states that they ought "to be subject" not only
in Church, but everywhere, as for example in the family.
The Apostle Paul also confirms his teaching on the
submission of the wife to her husband in his Epistle to Timothy (II: 9-15). It
would be erroneous to assert that this teaching is exceptional and only
presented by
The position taken by the popes on the question as to who
is head of the family is likewise very clear. Leo XIII's Encyclical Arcanum
divinae sapientiae states: "The husband is the chief of the family and
the head of the wife. The woman, because she is flesh of his flesh, and bone of
his bone, must be subject to her husband and obey him; not, indeed, as a
servant, but as a companion, so that her obedience shall be wanting in neither
honor nor dignity. Since the husband represents Christ, and since the wife
represents the Church, let there always be, both in him who commands and in her
who obeys, a heaven-born love guiding both of their respective duties."
Pius XI was also strongly attached to this principle. In
his famous Encyclical on marriage, Casti connubii, he states:
"domestic society being confirmed therefore, by this bond of love, there
should flourish in it that 'order of love,' as
"This subjection, however, does not deny or take away
the liberty which fully belongs to the woman both in view of her dignity as a
human person, and in view of her most noble office as wife and mother and
companion; nor does it bid her obey her husband's every request if not in
harmony with right reason or with the dignity of a wife; nor, in fine, does it
imply that the wife should be put on the level with persons who in law are
called minors, to whom it is customary not to allow free exercise of their
rights on account of their lack of mature judgment, or of their ignorance of
human affairs. But it forbids that exaggerated liberty which cares not for the
good of the family; it forbids that in this body which is the family, the heart
be separated from the head to the great detriment of the whole body and the
proximate danger of ruin. For if the man is the head, the woman is the heart,
and he occupies the chief place in ruling, so she may and ought to claim for
herself the chief place in love."
"Again, this subjection of wife to husband in its
degrees and manner may vary according to the different conditions of persons,
place and time. In fact, if the husband neglects his duty, it falls to the wife
to take his place in directing the family. But the structure of the family and
its fundamental law, established and confirmed by God, must always and
everywhere be maintained intact."
I have reproduced this passage in its entirety because Pius
XI comes to an important conclusion, the content of which is the basis for the
document: the submission of woman to man is the fundamental law of the family
established and fixed by God.
Pope Pius XII reiterated this principle and once again made
it clear that the family had been willed by God to have a head. "This head
has authority over the one who has been given to be his companion... and over those who, when the Lord gives his blessing,
will be multiplied and rejoice like the luxuriant shoots of an olive
tree." When asked whether or not this teaching was still relevant for
modern families he responded: "We indeed know that, just as equality in
studies at school, in the sciences, sports and other competitions, gives rise
to sentiments of pride in the hearts of many women... All about you many voices
will portray this subjection as something unjust; they will suggest to you a
prouder independence... Be on your guard against these words of the serpent, of
temptation and of lies: do not become other Eves, do not turn away from the
only road which can lead you, even from the here and now, to true
happiness." One last quote taken
from Scripture: "authority as head of the family comes from God, as
formerly God had accorded power and authority to Adam, the head of all mankind;
Adam should have transmitted all these gifts to his descendants. For Adam was
formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not
seduced; but the woman being seduced... fell into disobedience" (I Tim.,
II:13-14).
We
will see later that marriage must be entered into with the proper intentions.
At least one Catholic theologian has opinioned that the acceptance of a
hierarchical relationship in marriage is requisite for the intention to be proper.
According to Moersdorf, a marriage is realized through uniformity of the will
of both people. Both parties to the marriage have to be in agreement in order
to affirm "the essential content of the marriage contract, which is to say
the one who wishes to conclude a marriage must be ready to accept the three
characteristics of marriage. These are" the right to the body, the
indissolubility of marriage and the unity of marriage. The unity of marriage
signifies, according to this author, the union of one man with one woman, and
therefore a single couple, and that the man and women be united in a
hierarchical order by a holy unity. According to Moersdorf, for the realization
of a valid marriage, it is indispensable that the contracting parties recognize
and fulfill these conditions. "If the necessary understanding and will for
the conclusion of a marriage are seriously lacking, the marriage will not be
valid."[13]
Obedience and the acceptance of a hierarchy of authority
are difficult for moderns to bear with.[14] How
are such concepts compatible with the principles of freedom equality and
brotherhood?[15]
Well clearly they are not. But before wives get too upset about the need to
obey - a Fiat reflective of that made by the Blessed Virgin, and
implicitly one made by the Church, let us consider the far heavier obligation
on the husband - namely that he love the wife as Christ loves His Church.[16]
Note here the seemingly double command - to be alter Christus or another
Christ and to love as Christ loves. Now such is no easy task, and what woman
would not want to be married to such a man? Even God has limits, for He cannot
be other than what He is - He cannot be other than love. And there is yet
another mystery involved - one that becomes present when the marriage is
blessed with children. Consider how it is that God is called Father, the priest
is called father and is truly father to the community; and finally, the head of
the family is also called father - for all three share in authority, in
procreativity, and in love. I will speak in the following passages of
"procreativity, " because,
just as the fruit of God's love is his creation, so also the fruit of the couple's
love is fecund, not apart from God, but because the couple participate in God's
creativity.
Custom recognizes this in the practice of the husband
carrying the wife over the lintel into their future home. The husband is a
psychopomp - a guide of souls to the other world. The lintel or door through
which the wife is carried represents an entrance into that state of unity where
the two are joined in one flesh. In this relationship the husband bears a
spiritual as well as a material responsibility for his wife and offspring - one
he will ultimately have to answer to God for.
Marriage is ultimately a rather serious affair.
The acceptance of these principles makes Marriage a
spiritual path. St. Alphonsus Liguori clearly states that for someone called to
the state of marriage to become a priest is to risk damning his soul - he says
the same with regard to someone called to the priesthood entering marriage.[17] Let
me stress the word "called." This in Latin translates as vocation.
Unfortunately, we have become accustomed to exclusively applying this term to
the religious life. But such is not the attitude of the saints. St. Francis de
Sales once exclaimed "O how agreeable to God are the virtues of a married
woman, for they must be strong and excellent to survive this vocation."[18]
Similarly, Pope Pius XII spoke to newlyweds on
Vocations are of course, a means to an end, and thus
ultimately they are a means of sanctification, for sanctification is the true
goal which God wishes for all of us. As St. Therese of Liseaux wrote to Mme.
Pottier, a married woman with children: "So for both of us the blest days
of our childhood are over! We are now in the serious stage of life; we are
following very different roads, but the end is the same. Each of us must have
but one same purpose, to sanctify ourselves in the road that God has marked out
for us.[19] Vocations can be seen as existing on several
levels of reference - for example, one's state in life, and one's means of
making a living. Strictly speaking, we should all be artists and make our
livings by some craft. The craftsman makes useful objects - consider the stone
mason who, parallel with his work fashions his soul in view to uniting it with
God. How sad that in our day, most of us are denied the opportunity to follow a
craft. By practicing one's vocation, one practices the virtues, or more
precisely, one eliminates the vices which are their opposite.[20] The obligation to sanctity falls upon all of
us. When some of the laity protested to St. John Chrysostom that they were not
monks, he responded that "all the precepts of the Law apply equally to
monks and to the laity, with the exception of one, celibacy."[21] And
who of us can dare to proclaim that the sexual act precludes the possibility of
sanctity, especially when this act in its proper setting, as will be shown, is
a reflection of the true relationship between God and the soul. To speak of
vocations however is not to say they are all of equal stature. Just as a loving
father provides each of his children with what is necessary for their proper
development, so also does Our Lord provide each of us with a vocation suitable
to our needs and abilities. A surgeon is a higher calling than that of a
plumber - though both can perfect their souls by the manner in which they
practice their calling. And so it is that the religious life in which the
individual is "married" to Christ, is a higher calling than the
married state.[22]
We of course know that there have been many married saints.
St. Marcarius and St. Anthony of the Desert both sent postulants to learn from
people in the married state. Unfortunately however, many authors writing about
married saints convey to us the message that such individuals were saints, not
because they fulfilled the obligations of the married state with heroic virtue,
but rather, despite the fact that they were married. Sometimes, when I look at
the clergy and know that some priests have been canonized, I am inclined to
suspect that their sanctity was also achieved despite their vocations. But such
is equally absurd.
Allow me to string together a few quotations from St.
Francis de Sales addressed to women in the married state: "You must not
only be devout, and love devotion, but you must make it amiable, useful, and
agreeable to everyone one. The sick will love your devotion if they are
charitably consoled by it; your family will love it if they find you more careful
of their good, more gentle in little accidents that happen, more kind in
correcting, and so on; your husband, if he sees that as your devotion increases
you are more devoted to his regard, and sweet in your love to him; your parents
and friends if they perceive in you more generosity, tolerance and
condescension towards their wills, when not against the will of God. In short,
you must as far as possible, make your devotion attractive.... Oh my daughter,
how agreeable to God are the virtues of a married woman, for they must be
strong and excellent to last in that vocation.... Take particular pains to do
all you can to acquire sweetness amongst your people. I mean in your household. I do not say that
you must be soft and remiss, but gentle and sweet.... My God, how holy, my dear
daughter, and how agreeable to God we would be if we knew how to use properly
the subjects of mortification which our vocation affords; for they are without
doubt greater than among religious; the evil is that we do not make them useful
as they do..." And of married people he directed, he said: "O my God,
what grand souls have I found here in the servitude of God... the state of
marriage is one which requires more virtue and constancy than any other; it is
a perpetual exercise of mortification..." He adds an important caveat
which we must all take to heart: "And what is it that makes [the
commandments of the vocation of marriage] burdensome to you? Nothing in truth
save your own will which desires to reign in you at any cost... a person who
has not the fever of self-will is satisfied with everything, provided that God
is served."[23]
St. Lewis of
The passage from
The human being as individual is also a hierarchy in which
the higher powers should have authority over the lower ones. Consider the
Lord's prayer. "Thy Kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven." That
heaven is described as a hierarchical structure is not a historical accident.
Nor is it a manifestation of
On the microcosmic level - on the level of each of our
lives, we are constantly faced with a need to choose between centering our
actions and our being - if such were possible, on our little selves or egos, or
on God which dwells within us. This is the battle against self love - or if you
prefer, selfishness. It is not God - the Holy Spirit - that imago dwelling
within our hearts that is selfish, hurt, angry, resentful or unforgiving - but
rather our egos, our little selves. We are constantly at war or as the
psychiatrists would put it, in conflict with ourselves. And thus it is that we
say to the unruly child or adult, "get hold of yourself."
It is important then to realize that there are a series of
hierarchies involved. There is God and his bride the Church; There is the husband
and his bride or wife, and there is the Spirit of God that dwells within us,
and our psycho-physical nature. In each of these there is a hierarchy to which
we must conform ourselves. These three hierarchies are intimately entwined.[27]
Consider the following exposition of the Parable of the woman by the well to
whom Christ offered the water of eternal life. When the woman asked for this
water Christ told her to call her husband. John Scotus Erigina explains the
mystical meaning of this parable:
"The woman is the rational soul [anima], whose
husband [literally vir or 'man' (with the connotation of 'active power')
not maritus or conjunx] is understood to be the animus,
which is variously named now intellect [intellectus], now mind [mens],
now animus and often even spirit [spiritus]. This is the husband of whom the
Apostle speaks "the head of the woman is the man, the head of the man is
Christ, the head of Christ is God." I other words, the head of the anima
is the intellectus, and the head of the intellectus is
Christ. Such is the natural order of the human creature. The soul must be
submitted to the rule of the mind, the mind to Christ, and thereby the whole
being is submitted through Christ to God the Father... Spirit revolves
perpetually about God and is therefore well named the husband and guide of the
other parts of the soul, since between it and its creator no creature is
interposed. Reason in turn revolves around the knowledge and causes of created
things, and whatever spirit receives through eternal contemplation it transmits
to reason and reason commends to memory. The third part of the soul is interior
sense, which is subordinate to reason as the faculty which is superior to it,
and by means of reason is also subordinate to spirit. Finally, below the
interior sense in the natural order is the exterior sense, through which the
whole soul nourishes and rules the fivefold bodily senses and animates the
whole body. Since, therefore, reason can receive nothing of the gifts from on
high unless through her husband, the spirit, which holds the chief place of all
nature, the woman or anima is rightly ordered to call her husband or
intellectus with whom and by whom she may drink spiritual gifts and without
whom she may in no wise participate in gifts from on high. For this reason
Jesus says to her, 'Call your husband, come hither.' Do not have the
presumption to come to me without your husband. For, if the intellect is
absent, one may not ascend to the heights of theology, nor participate in
spiritual gifts."[28]
It is in the light of such understanding that the
theologians have said that all creation is feminine to God.[29]
Yet another way of envisioning the relationship between man
and women is to recognize that man manifests his "Christic" nature as
Warrior (Hero, King) and as Ascetic (Priest), which is to say, in the realms of
Action and Contemplation. (Christ is both King and Priest). The woman realizes
herself, raises herself to the level of the "man" as Ascetic or as
Warrior, insofar as she is either Lover or Mother. In the words of Evola,
"as there is an active heroism, so also there is a negative heroism - they
are the two sides of one and the same ideal; there is the heroism of absolute
affirmation and that of absolute dedication, and the one can be as luminous as
the other. It is these differentiations of the heroic concept that determine
the distinctive characteristics of the ways proper to men and to woman thought
of as types. To the act of the warrior and the ascetic, accomplished in the one
case by pure action and in the other by detachment, whereby these are
established in a life beyond mere living, there corresponds in the woman the
heroism of total self-surrender to another being, of existence altogether for
the sake of another being - whether a beloved man (if she is a Lover) or a
child (if she is a Mother) - in which she finds the meaning of her own life,
her own delight and her own justification."[30]
***
We are all aware of how love can be a transforming
experience - even the love of a child for a dog - and certainly the love of one
human being for another. "In a moment," as C. S. Lewis has pointed
out, love "has made appetite itself altruistic, tossed personal happiness
aside as a triviality, and placed the interests of another in the center of our
own being. At one bound, it has leaped over the high wall of our selfhood. We
find ourselves as regards the other person really fulfilling the law, really
loving another as ourselves. But having done this, the mere falling in love
will do no more. Eros has done his stuff.
He will not extend this selflessness to others beside the beloved. He
may do quite the opposite. He will not even perpetuate it towards her. He will
not of himself remain in that relationship and continue to be the sort of lover
he promised to be. He may not remain any sort of lover at all. He may simply
die. For of course, as we all really know, mere spontaneous feeling will not
keep any pair in love even for a few months or weeks. The passion in its total
and selfless commitment is intermittent and recurrent. The old self, as after a
religious conversion, soon turns out not to be so dead as it seemed. In both
the old self may for a moment be knocked flat, but it will soon be up again, if
not on his feet, at least on his elbow. If not roaring, at least back to his
old surly grumbling or mendicant whine. The corruptions return. Venus may
sometimes slip back into mere sexuality, but what is ten times worse, that
desire for the beloved, for total unity, may take on a morbid form. It may come
to be a sort of imperialism, a desire for absorbing without being absorbed,
possessing without being possessed, making the beloved's every thought, wish
and interest, a mere reflection of oneself. And since the beloved may often
have exactly the same program for you, success, which would be infamous if
achieved, is not very probable. At this stage the couple are almost fortunate
if they fall out of love altogether, but they may remain in it, in that sort of
love which is increasingly a sort of hatred... jealous, exacting and
resentful."
C.S. Lewis continues: "My point is not that these
dangers cannot be averted. They are averted daily by thousands of couples, but
they are not averted by Eros - by love - itself. If love is to remain, it must
be supported by outside help.... You need a firm will to justice, you need a
will already pretty well formed or disciplined. In the long run you need the grace
of God.... Its rather like a garden. A garden is a glorious thing, full of
life, and giving us life. But you must not trust your garden to weed itself or
fence itself, or prune itself, or anything of that sort. It hasn't got that
kind of goodness. A garden left to nature will soon not be a garden. It is the
same with our passions. They also are life giving. But when God planted that
garden, he placed a man over it to dress it and set the man under
Himself."[31]
For most of us, being in love is often the best experience
of our lives, precisely because the state excludes vileness and involves a
surpassing of our lesser selves. Unfortunately our egos rapidly come to the
fore and the relationship becomes riddled with habit and triviality. Retaining
a sense of the mystery in marriage requires both nobility and a sense of the
sacred. As another author has said, "a profane man may look back on his
youthful love and think that now he is 'beyond' such 'illusions of youth'; but
in fact it is he who has succumbed to the illusion and triviality of profane
life, whereas in his youth he tasted something of greatness and nobility which
he ought to have tried to maintain by leading a spiritual life." Man
cannot easily escape the temptation to humanize the sacred rather than
sacralize the human.
Plato uses many words that we have translated as love.
There is storge, best translated as "domestic love"; there is filia,
translated as "friendship"; there is Eros, or human love,
there is Agape, often translated as "selfless love," or
"charity"; and there is epithumia which is "lust."
In the Symposium Plato calls Eros a "mighty daemon... being an
intermediate between the nature of a god and the nature of a mortal." That
Eros should have two sides results from the fact that Aphrodite, the goddess of
love, has two aspects, labeled Aphrodite
Urania and Aphrodite Pandemia. The first embodies love of a divine
nature; the second profane love.[32]
Now marriage as a vocation or way to perfect one's soul
requires precisely the commitment and fight not to let the first kind
deteriorate into the second. It involves the constant choice of love over
selfishness, of giving over taking. Despite its joys, marriage is a life of
continuing sacrifice - of destroying the old man that the new man might live.[33] Any
father who faces the daily task of earning a living will be acquainted with
sacrifice; as indeed, any woman who gets up in the middle of the night after a
long day, to breast feed her child. To live in the married state without anger,
impatience, resentment, selfishness is extremely difficult - witness the fact
that marriages end up in divorce in over 60% of cases and beyond this, even
those where the partners stay together, true love not infrequently dies. Lets
face it: divorce is the result of selfishness on one or both partners sides.
"Marriage is a great sacrament." Notice that we are not taught that
there is a sacrament in marriage, but that marriage itself is a sacrament. As
the Council of Trent taught, "it is a grace which perfects natural love,
strengthens the union into an absolute indissolubility, and sanctifies the
persons married." Grace, you will remember from your catechism, perfects
nature. Without the sacramental graces,
it is a wonder that any marriage survives. With sacramental grace every
aspect of marriage can be sanctifying.
Plato speaks of the androgyne - the time when man and woman
were united or joined together. They decided however that they would attack the
gods and Zeus in his anger split them apart. Now the understanding of Greek
mythology is not easy. This mythological story drawn from Aristophanes may well
relate to a time before the fall with the female soul was united to the
"male" image of God or the divine indwelling. This unity was lost
with the fall. And the attraction towards the partner which is said to have
resulted from this division - the seeking of "wholeness," is but
another way of describing the desire of the psyche-soul to be united with the
indwelling spirit. Ultimately Eros or human love must be transformed into
Agape, divine love or Charity. The risk is that it will degenerate into mere
passion or worse.
While in the realm of mythology it is worth considering the
story of St. George and the dragon and a host of variations in which the
loathly princess is kissed by the solar hero and restored to her rightful
place. St. George slays the dragon, thus liberating the princess. Snow white,
poisoned by the apple, is "cured" by the kiss of the prince. We are
all in need of this "kiss" which derives from slaying the dragon of
self-love.
Some of you will remember the novel 1984 which describes
the new socialist world of future. The story speaks of the reverse possibility.
In it a couple make the terrible mistake of falling in love. The state has no
objection to their having sexual relations - the children of course to be
brought up by the state. However, having fallen in love the couple proffer
their loyalty to each other. This the
state cannot tolerate. In order to correct their errors they are separately
tortured. The inquisitor declares himself successful when the individuals
concerned come to the point of wishing the suffering on their partner rather
than desiring to suffer the torture for the sake of the partner.
I have many Catholic patients come to me as a psychiatrist
who complain of having a poor self image. How is this possible if we are made
in the image of Christ. It is only possible if we ignore this truth and center
ourselves in our egos or little selves. And this brings me back to one of the
most horrible confusions imposed upon the Catholic faithful by Vatican II. I
say horrible because it fosters and approves the satisfying of this little
self.
You will immediately think of the heresy of religious
liberty - and indeed in a sense you are correct. For the concept of religious
liberty fundamentally teaches that we - our little selves - are the source of
truth. This, incidentally, according to the Jewish fathers, is the worst form
of idolatry. However, the heresy I am referring to is one which affects us, if
possible, even more directly, for it enters into and influences our married
vocation from the moment of its inception until death do us part.. It is the
heresy about the ends of marriage.
The traditional teaching regarding the ends of marriage is
encapsulated in Canon 1013 of the Code of Canon Law (1917). Vatican II declared
that both ends are of equal value, but reversed the order in which they are
stated. It further declared that the priest was obliged to make reference to
this in his sermon and admonition at the marriage ceremony. [34]
The traditional teaching states:
"The primary end of Marriage is the procreation and
education of offspring, while its secondary purposes are mutual help and
allaying (also translated "as a remedy for") concupiscence. The
latter are entirely subordinate to the former."
Pius XII commented
on this in a clear manner in his address to midwives on
This doctrine was declared de fide by the Holy
Office with the approval of Pius XII (AAS 36
(1944), 103) Let us look at what the change in this teaching leads to:
it opens the door to artificial forms of birth control, infidelity and divorce.
The traditional view demands that even the unitive ends of marriage must be
sacrificed for the sake of the children. The new view declares that selfishness
- for as has been made clear above, it is fundamentally selfishness that
disrupts both love and marriage - has the right to sacrifice the children for
its goals. And make no mistake about it. The psychiatric literature is replete
with evidence of the effects wrought on the children by divorce, and that
children would prefer to have their parents stay together even if their
relationship is far from ideal. And to compound this terrible error, the new
Church has made divorce easy by declaring that psychological immaturity is
grounds for annulment - as if anyone other than the saint is psychologically
mature.
But what of this "mutual help"? This does not
mean help in any worldly sense - the saving of money for retirement or
succoring each other in illness - though
of course such is by no means excluded. Rather, it is that mutual help in
gaining paradise. It often seems that the Church is only concerned with the
children - that she says little about the "unitive" ends of marriage.
Let us then look at this aspect of the married vocation with a little more
care. I have already several times pointed to
It is pertinent that the minister of the sacrament of
marriage is not the priest, but rather the couple involved and their reciprocal
acceptance of each other.[36] The
priest acts as the Church's witness. Now a minister of a sacrament is but a
simple instrument in God's hands. He and she pronounce the words which signify
the grace proper to the Sacrament, but it is God alone Who produces such a
grace, using man only as a minister acting in His name. Even non Catholic
marriages have about them a certain sacramentality - that is provided they are
entered into with the proper intention.[37] And
thus the non-Catholic marriage for those whose ignorance of the faith is
invincible becomes a source of grace. In fact, when a Protestant couple become
Catholic, they do not receive a second sacramental marriage; rather, just as their entire life becomes
sacramentalized, their marriage is automatically raised to the level of a
Sacrament,. They may receive a "nuptial blessing," but the blessing
is a gift of the Church not intrinsically necessary to the marriage.
Von Hildebrand likens marriage to Holy Orders: "with
regard to its sacramental character, marriage must be compared to Holy Orders.
Leaving aside the internal holiness of the functions implied in the idea of a
priest (which of its very nature calls down meriting graces), the priesthood -
in its character as a Sacrament - is a source of specific graces, a dispenser
of graces. The same applies to marriage. Holy Orders not only carries graces
with it, but produces grace and is the channel of special graces. In the same
way, marriage has been honored in becoming one of the seven mysterious sources
of participating in the divine life. Perhaps marriage as a Sacrament shows the closest affinity to Holy
Orders, since it does not effect a rebirth
(as do the Sacraments of Baptism and Penance) nor a perfection of this
rebirth and a union with Christ (as does the Sacrament of the Eucharist). Like
Holy Orders the Sacrament of Matrimony is at the disposal only of certain
people who receive a special vocation to it.
Marriage is in Catholic eyes, indissoluble.[38]
Such inevitably follows from the fact that it reflects - or should reflect -
the divine or metaphysical principles on which it is based. Can the Church be
divorced from Christ - Can Christ abandon the Church? Impossible! It is because
marriage is a sacred state reflecting a divine prototype that it is
indisolvable. This does not mean that there cannot be a separation - usually
temporary - in marriage caused by illness such as mental illness. But such a
separation is not a dissolution or divorce. And always it becomes another
cross. Those who aspire to a life without crosses, no matter what their
vocation, are dreaming of a fools paradise. Once again, to quote St. Seraphim
of Sarov:
"Christian marriage is a life-work. It is
easy only in ideal circumstances. Fidelity to
the end, St. Seraphim taught, is essential to happiness. If Christians find
they cannot live together, they go on living together for their homes, their
children, for the Church and for God. It may mean much suffering, but this
married life is the way to heaven. For only those who take up the cross can
follow Christ."[39]
But what of the phrase that the couple are joined together
"until death do us part." Is not ideal human love eternal? The answer
is no. Human love is both a beautiful and at the same time, a pale reflection
of Agape or divine love. It is only divine love that is eternal. And so it is
in marriage that one must accept the painful fact that the most beautiful and
perfect of marriages, like life itself, must see its termination, and that our
eternal life is ultimately not of this world.
I have already alluded to the fact that theological writers
are prone to admit sanctity is possible in the married state, but almost always
imply that this occurs despite marriage and not because of it. When we come to
the matter of sex, this becomes even more striking. In fact they almost never
write of sex except to warn us that it is corrupted by concupiscence and hence
indulgence in the sexual act almost always involves a venial sin.[40] The
idea that the grace of the sacrament stops at the sanctuary of the bedroom door
is patently absurd.[41]
Let us pause for a moment to state that if marriage is a
sacred state reflecting the unity of Christ and the Church, and microscomically
of our souls with that Christ that lives within us, than the same must also, by
the very nature of things, be true of the sexual act. There is perhaps nothing
with which we can better compare the 'mystic union' of the finite with its
infinite ambient, than the self-oblivion of earthly lovers locked in each
other's arms where "each is both," or to use the Scriptural phrase,
"united in one flesh." [42] So
much is this the case that in a Mediaeval Nuptial 'Ceremornarium' it is ordered that when a
newly married pair are got to bed, the priest and acolytes shall enter, with
censer and Holy Water, to give the Church's blessing on their union.[43]
Sex has in every religion been surrounded by a host of what
the anthropologists call taboos. We tell our children in a thousand ways that
sex is somehow evil or dirty, and unfortunately many - both lay and cleric -
carry this attitude over into marriage. Sex is not evil or dirty, but rather
sacred, and that is why it is surrounded with taboos. Sex is beautiful, and as
. St. John Chrysostom teaches that "thanks to love,
the man and the woman are drawn to the eternal life and moreover always attract
to themselves the grace of God... [marriage] is the sacrament of love" (Hom.
3 on Marriage). St. Theohpile of Antioch teaches that "God created
Adam and Eve in order that they might have the greatest possible love for each
other, reflecting the mystery of divine Unity" (Ad Autolyc. 2.28).
The German mystic von Baader said that "the purpose of marriage is the
reciprocal restoration of the celestial or angelic image as it should be in the
man and woman." In the life of Saint Ida of Herzfeld, the wife of Count
Egbert (Xth century), we find the following statement: "at the moment when
the two are united in one flesh, there is present in them a single and similar
operation of the Holy Spirit: when they are linked together in each others arms
in an external unity, which is to say, a physical unity, this indivisible
action of the Holy Spirit inflames them with a powerful interior love directed
towards celestial realities." And finally, St. Bernard in his commentary
on the Song of Songs says that sexual intercourse (carnale connubium)
between married spouses is the reflection of the spiritual marriage (spirituale
matriomonium) which unites the soul with God."[44]
St. Thomas Aquinas confirms this doctrine, while specifying
the proper conditions involved:
"The marriage act is always either sinful or meritorious in one who
is in a state of grace. For if the motive for the marriage act be a virtue,
whether of justice that they may render the debt, or of religion, that they may
beget children for the worship of God, it is meritorious. But if the motive be
lust, yet not excluding the marriage blessings, namely that he would by no
means be willing to go to another woman, it is a venial sin; while if he
exclude the marriage blessings, so as to be disposed to act in like manner with
any woman, it is a mortal sin... "if pleasure be sought in such a way as to exclude the honesty of
marriage so that, to wit, it is not as a wife but as a woman that a man treats
his wife, and that he is ready to use her in the same way if she were not his
wife, it is a mortal sin.... if he seek pleasure (as its own end) within the
bounds of marriage, so that it would not be sought in another than his wife, it
is a venial sin." [45] [46]
I have said above that part of the discipline of marriage
is the giving of oneself to the other - this is the "heart to heart"
aspect of marriage as opposed to the "ego to ego" aspect. When we
give to the other we suppress our little selves by always putting the other
first and by doing everything in our power to please the other. When we make of
the marriage act a selfish act; when we seek in it our own pleasure rather than
the pleasure of our partner, or when one or both partners seek pleasure as an
end in itself, we act in a selfish manner. Yet how difficult it is to always be
without at least some admixture of self-love. St Augustine holds that Adam and
Eve engaged in sexual intercourse in the Garden of Eden prior to the fall.
There was no venality in their act.[47] The
venality of self love is the result, not of the act, but of the fall. Our
problem is that we have been wounded by the fall and few if any of our acts are
free of self-love. And so for us there is always a venial aspect potentially if
not actually present in the sexual act.
It is pertinent that Canon 1013 speaks of marriage
as a "remedy" for concupiscence. Note that it doesn't say, as a means
of indulging concupiscence. A remedy is a cure, and pray God we may all be
cured of self love.[48]
This does not mean that one should derive no pleasure from
the sexual act. To again quote Pius XII:
"The same Creator, Who
in His bounty and wisdom willed to make use of the work of man and woman, by
uniting them in matrimony, for the preservation and propagation of the human
race, has also decreed that in this function the parties should experience
pleasure and happiness of body and spirit. Husband and wife, therefore, by
seeking and enjoying this pleasure do no wrong whatever. They accept what the
Creator has destined for them."[49]
God would hardly create a necessary act - necessary for the
preservation of the species - an act ultimately aimed at producing saints - an
act from which we inevitably derive a certain pleasure and then make it sinful
for us to enjoy that act. Who can eat, read a book, or do anything else without
a certain pleasure. It is my belief that God actually wants us to enjoy our
lives - to enjoy all that we do, providing we do it IN HIM, and not as an end
in itself. As Peter Lombard, the master of the sentences and the teacher of St.
Thomas Aquinas said:
"Thus if there is any sin in sexual relations, it is
due, not to the pleasure, but to some disorder in the way that pleasure is
experienced."[50]
The pleasure shared in sexual giving involves the entire
person - body, psyche and spirit. It is or should be, as I have said, an action
that is not just physical, not just psychic, but also an action that is
"heart to heart". But that
pleasure must not be indulged in as an end in itself.[51] And
certainly, sex must never be used as a tool for reward or punishment. Now the
problem with sex is that, in its proper place and usage, it is one of the most
sacred of acts, one from which as St. Thomas teaches, we derive abundant grace;
it is also one of the most easily perverted of acts. The very word perverted is
of interested. It means to turn something intrinsically good to an improper
end. When we make of sex a satisfying of our own pleasure, an act of taking
rather than an act of giving, we pervert or misuse one of the greatest gifts of
God. If this is true within marriage, and certainly true outside of marriage.[52]
During coitus a man can loose his individuality - forget
himself or his little self - in two opposite ways. This dis-individualization
can occur in two directions - the anagogical ascent above individuality and the
catalogical descent below.[53] The
parties involved can give or take - in giving transcending themselves; in
taking becoming less than human or merely animal. Let me give an analogy which
may make this clearer. A policeman enters a house of ill fame as part of a
raid. He commits no sin because he is protected by the graces of his function.
The same policeman enters the same house on his own time. His act of entering
the house has a certain neutrality. But his intention - the ends for which he
acts - are sinful. Similarly with beauty. When one sees the beauty of a woman
(or music) as a reflection of God's beauty, one can only praise its source.
When one sees it as a end in itself - something to be enjoyed for its own sake
- then its seductive rather than its redemptive character becomes manifest. One
and the same beauty can lead us to, or away from God.[54]
Nor is the sexual act irrevocably tied to procreation. As
St. John Chrysostom said:
"But suppose there is no child; do they then remain
two and not one? No; their intercourse effects the joining of their bodies, and
they are made one, just as when perfume is fixed with ointment."
Puis XII said:
"To reduce the common
life of husband and wife and the conjugal act to a mere organic function for
the transmission of seed would be but to convert the domestic hearth, the
family sanctuary, into a biological laboratory."[55]
Further proof of this lies in the fact that the Church has
never invalidated or impedimented marriages where sterility is known to exist
or prohibited the sexual act when the woman is beyond the child bearing age.
(In passing you may be interested to know that St. Cammilus's mother was 65 and
not on any hormone therapy.) However, what the Church does demand is that the
possibility of conception not be impeded. How so. Well consider the couple that
engages in sex with the express and only intention of enjoying the pleasure. To
do so is to make the pleasure - even if reciprocal - its own end. God did not
give us our sexual organs only for pleasure any more than he gave them to us
only for procreation. And so it is that when adequate reasons are present, the
parents may use the so-called rhythm
method - better called periodic abstinence - but can never use other methods of
preventing birth than abstinence.
The use of periodic abstinence does not absolutely preclude
the possibility of conception. When the sexual act is performed in so-called
safe periods of the woman's cycle, one remains open to the divine will. Quite
the opposite is the case when the possibility of children is absolutely
precluded. To quote Father Planque, "to refuse to let one's love result in
children, is to commit oneself to the path of egotism, a path which can only
lead to the death of love."[56]
Moreover, shared abstinence is the only form of "birth control" which
demands mutuality or a sharing of the sacrifice involved; and shared sacrifice
always deepens love. Every other form of birth control is both unilateral and
carries with it significant medical risks.
Allow me to take this opportunity to strongly disagree with
Solange Hertz, a woman for whom I have a great deal of admiration. The first
point of disagreement is fundamental. She states that "Ascribing
sacredness to the sex act is a Judaic heresy. It partakes of the talmudic
mysticism taught in the Zohar, where the union of man and wife on the Sabbath
is seen as a ritual representation of the union of the male and female aspects
of God." I have already given the evidence necessary to contradict this;
and further, I believe she misinterprets the Zohar, for the Jewish fathers,
basing them selves on the Song of Songs, clearly saw the sexual act as
reflecting the unity of the soul with God precisely along the lines discussed
above.
The second point is perhaps more important, for it is her
contention that the "abomination of desolation is contraception... most
particularly as practiced... in the guise of so-called 'natural family
planning' or 'natural birth regulation.'" In so stating her case, she
directly contradicts Pope Pius XII who holds that the use of this method under
the right circumstances is entirely legitimate. To quote him directly, "We
affirmed the legitimacy and at the same time the limits - truly very wide
(my emphasis) - of that controlling of births which, unlike the so-called
"birth control," is compatible with God's law. It can be hoped that
for such a lawful method a sufficiently certain basis can be found, and recent
research seems to confirm this hope." Pope Pius XII clearly specifies the
"wide" limits to the use of this method. A marriage entered into with
the express intention of excluding the payment of the marriage debt - as the
sexual act is called - during fertile periods is invalid because implicit to
the contract is that this debt should be paid whenever asked for and because
the intention is to preclude the primary purpose of marriage. It is very much a
matter of the morality of the intention involved. Thus he states that "The
mere fact that the husband and wife do not offend the nature of the act and are
even ready to accept and bring up the child who, notwithstanding their
precautions, might be born, would not be itself sufficient to guarantee the
rectitude of their intention and the unobjectionable morality of their motives.
. to embrace the matrimonial state, to use continually the faculty proper to
such a state and lawful only therein, and, at the same time, to avoid its
primary duty without a grave reason, would be a sin against the very nature of
married life."
However, "serious motives, such as those which not
rarely arise from medical, eugenic, economic and social so-called
"indications," may exempt husband and wife from the obligatory,
positive debt for a long period or even for the entire period of matrimonial
life. From this it follows that the observance of the natural sterile periods
may be lawful, from the moral viewpoint, and it is lawful in the conditions
mentioned. If, however, according to a reasonable and equitable judgment, there
are no such grave reasons either personal or deriving from exterior
circumstances, the will to avoid the fecundity of their union, while continuing
to satisfy to the full their sensuality, can only be the result of a false
appreciation of life and of motives foreign to sound ethical principles."[57] It is this attitude which Chesterton labeled
as "no birth and less control." This is a matter which couples should
discuss with their confessor.
There are incidentally excellent books which enable married
couples to determine fertile periods with great accuracy. One of the best is The
Ovulation Method of Birth Control by Mercedes Arzu Wilson published by Van
Norstrand Reinhold, and unfortunately out of print.[58] A
proper knowledge of the method makes the old quip to the effect that "what
you call couples who use the rhythm method is parents, is not completely
true." Every form of artificial birth control has a certain failure rate.
With condom usage, it may be as high as 25%. Even with tubal ligations there is
a 1% pregnancy rate; and certainly the use of hormones is fraught with a
significant number of complications - though it must be granted that they are
less life threatening than pregnancy can be. The fact remains however that
abstinence is the healthiest form of birth control, and what is more important,
it is the only form of birth control where the couples share responsibility. In
every other form of birth control the act is essentially unilateral - and we
have spoken of the reciprocity necessary in love. Now even with abstinence
during the so-called fertile period, there is always a risk of pregnancy and an
openness to the possibility should God so will. God's primary purpose in
marriage is not precluded. The sanctity of the act remains intact. Abstinence
can at times require an "heroic virtue," but is that not what
sanctity is all about?
According to Zertnys-Damen's Moral Theology,
continence, whether periodic or total, may be practiced under the following
definite conditions: a) the practice must be freely undertaken by mutual
consent; b) there must be no serious danger of unchastity or loss of conjugal
love in either party as a result of the practice; c) there must be a positive
and good reason for adopting the practice. the presence or absence of these
conditions should be decided with the help of a confessor.
It is perhaps not out of place to comment on the Virginity
of the Blessed Mother. How is this compatible with the teaching of the Church
that She is the ideal and model for every woman, be she single or married..
First of all, The Blessed Virgin is the ideal and model for both men and women.
As Augustine said, "the soul's virginity consists in perfect faith,
well-grounded hope and unfeigned love" (Tract. on John, XIII).
Similarly, Cornelius Lapide tells us "those whose souls are on fire with
charity, and who are ever exercising themselves in it, enjoy the bliss of
betrothal to God and the possession of His nuptial gifts of divine joys. For
charity is a marriage-union, the welding of two wills, the Divine and the human
into one, whereby God and man mutually agree in all things." Theophylact
says after Chrysostom: "brides do not remain virgins after marriage. But
Christ's brides [we are all meant to be such], as before marriage they were not
virgins, so after marriage they become virgins, most pure in faith, whole and
uncorrupt in life." (Quoted by Cornelius Lapide). This is why St. Louis de
Montfort says: "the more the Holy Spirit... finds Mary, His dear and
inseparable spouse in any soul, the more active and might He becomes in
producing Jesus Christ in that Soul."- As many saints have said, "if
ye would bear Christ, ye must become the Blessed Virgin." It is statements
such as these that explain the words of St. Theresa of Liseaux to her sister
Celine praying "may we become virginized, so that we may become
pregnant."
"
womb that bare thee.' To which Christ replied
' Blessed not alone the womb which bare me: blessed are they that hear the word
of God and keep it.' It is more worth to God His being brought forth ghostly in
the individual virgin or good soul than that he was born of Mary bodily.' "[59]
Now the Blessed Virgin is the source of fecundity, both
physical and spiritual. Her purity is virginal to us, but precisely because she
is eternally wedded to the Holy Spirit. For those of us in the married state,
it is not so much her physical virginity which exemplifies, but rather this
relationship to the Holy Spirit. For us, and indeed even more for those in the
religious life, this is exemplified by the Magnificat and above all by her response
to the Annunciation - "be it done unto me according to thy Word." It
is she who is the Janua Coeli - the Gate of Heaven, and it is no
accident that it is she who in a sense sacramentalized and continues to
sacramentalize marriage, for it was her request that led to Christ's first
miracle - the changing of water into wine - always a symbol of the sacred
transmutation.[60] It
is precisely her purity , chastity and virtue, all the qualities of the
Magnificat, brought to the marriage
state which vivifies its sacramental nature and virginilizes us. Without her
virginal graces - she who is Co-Redemtrix and the Mediatrix of all Graces -
none of us could ever sacramentalize our lives, much less our marriages. Hail
Mary, full of grace, Blessed art Thou among women, and Blessed is the fruit of
thy womb, Jesus.[61]
I have, in this paper, attempted to share with you some of
the principles on which Catholic marriage and sexuality are based. Marriage is
clearly a vocation, a "calling" willed by God, and as such every
aspect of marriage is both capable of reflecting the sacred, and of
transforming and sacralizing the participants. Eros is always
potentially Agape, but Agape both as grace and fruition is
necessary to transform Eros, or rather to be transformed into Eros.[62]
Without this Eros easily degenerates into epithumia or lust which
is nothing other than unrestrained self-love.[63] In
accordance with the principle that the highest things are the most easily
corrupted, marriage can easily become, not a foretaste of heaven, but a living
hell. While grace bloweth where it will, it is always within our power to
refuse its refreshing breezes. Our human loves - storge, eros, and filia,
can all be said to reflect and to open the door to Agape. They can be
valued as demigods, as long as we recognize that demigods, when made an end in
themselves, become idols.
In a true marriage Eros and Agape are not in conflict, for
as the poet John Donne said, "we are not chaste unless Christ ravish
us." "Blessed are they who are called to the marriage supper
of the Lamb... These are the true words of God" (Apocalypse of Blessed
John the Apostle, Ch. 19, 3).
“After this rather paltry
treatment and discussion of mine, I am not ignorant of the fact that the
question of marriage still remains very obscure and involved. Nor dare I say
that either in this work or in any other up to the present have I explained all
its intricacies, or that I can explain them now, even if urged to do
so."
St.
Augustine, (On Adulterous Marriages)
THE
GATES OF HELL SHALL NOT PREVAIL
One of the most frequent
arguments in favor of the legitimacy of the post-Conciliar establishment is
God's promise that "the gates of hell shall not prevail." Implicit in
this brief is that is neither possible nor likely that God has abandoned His
own. How is one to respond to such an argument.
Let us start with
indisputable facts. Whether we believe it or not, and whether it seems possible
to us or not, what is abundantly clear is, that after a scandalous Council
lacking both regularity and dignity, the Catholic religion has been changed. In
the practical order, it has been replaced by another religion, an evolving
religion, a religion greatly influenced by Freemasonry and Marxism and inspired
throughout by what Popes Pius IX and X clearly rejected under the designation
of "Modernism." Having created a "robber" Council that
raised a host of errors such as the denial of the Church's "Unity"
and Religious Liberty to the level of an infallible teaching, the
post-Conciliar "Church" proceeded to abolish the Oath against
Modernism and the Holy Office. What other purpose could such measures have than
to deprive the Traditional Church - the Church of All Times - of all her
defenses? And what followed? The turning of altars into tables, the changing of
priests into "presidents," the invalidating of all the sacraments not
acceptable to Protestants, the mistranslating of the Scriptures, and above all,
the downgrading of Tabernacles and the destruction of the Mass - "humanist"
and demagogic changes of the most serious nature. Cardinal Suenens was correct
when he described this as "the French Revolution in the Catholic
Church."
Consider the principle that
"by their fruits you shall know them." Now what are the fruits of the
new religion? Priests by the thousands have abandoned their calling - of those
remaining over 25% requested and were refused permission to marry. Monks and
nuns laicized by the thousands. The seminaries are virtually deserted. The
median age for priests in the United States being the late fifties, with an
anticipated drop to 40% of the present level by the end of the decade. Far more
tragic: despite the wide range of "liturgies" offered - conservative
to radical chic - Catholics by the millions have turned away from the Church
and for all practical purposes the youth is no longer interested in what she
has to offer. Only 15% of the erstwhile faithful still attend Sunday Mass and
among these communions are up while confessions are down, suggesting that even
sin is dwindling away. Over 80% of married Catholics use birth control and do
so in the belief that such violates no divine principle, divorce statistics
show no difference between Catholics and others; and in the practical realm
complete chaos exists with regard to sexual behavior.
Along with all this is the
corruption, nay destruction of doctrine and theology. The acceptance of
evolution as a fact in every realm - be it biology, theology, sociology - even
the Tielhardian thesis that God Himself evolves! The abrogation of canons 1399
and 2318, the refusal of the Church to condemn out and out heretics and the
blatant indulgence extended to those who like Hans Kung - their name is legion
- would poison the thinking of the faithful are symptomatic of the wide-spread
modernist malignancy. The self proclaimed "desacralization" and
"demytholization" of the Church combined with the misrepresentation
of everything traditional has resulted in an all-pervasive familiarity and
vulgarity. Recent attempts to cover this over by dressing the presidents
(clergy) and nuns in traditional garb has in no way changed the situation.
Let those who have ears
hear. The writing was on the wall from the very opening of the Council. But who
of us wished to listen. It's leitmotiv was Aggiornamento, a concept inimical
to any religion based on eternal verities and Revelation. Roncalli, alias John
XXIII, then declared his intention "to safeguard the sacred deposit of the
faith more effectively." It does not take much imagination to understand
what he meant - and he did not hesitate to declare that "...the substance
of the ancient doctrine contained in the deposit of the faith is one thing, the
manner in which it is expressed in another..." This claim is false and in
fact satanic, for it opened the door to all the betrayals and falsifications
that followed. The traditional formulations were not superficial luxuries, they
were guarantees of the truth and efficacy; they more then adequately expressed
what they wished to say - their adequacy was in fact their raison d'etre.
Is not the truth inseparable from its expression? Was it not the strength of
the Church that the old expressions were always valid? They only displeased
those who wished to make modernism, scientism, evolutionism and socialism part
of the "deposit of the faith."
One must take a phenomena
for what it is. If one sees a tiger in the streets of New York one does not
require a news broadcast to know that what one sees is a reality. One can deny
its existence only at the risk of one's life.
Despite the obvious, there
are those who, desiring to have the "best of both worlds," would
exculpate the post-Conciliar Church; and who seek to explain why is it that the
"smoke of Satan" has all but obscured "the dome of St.
Peter's"? Some claim that it is because the Council and the subsequent
innovations were "badly interpreted." But, by whom? Others, loudly
proclaiming their loyalty to those usurping the Chair of Peter, claim it is the
fault of the bishops and cardinals around him. But who appointed them? Since
when has the principle of respondeat superior been abandoned? (Even hell
has a hierarchical structure.) Despite the fact that such claims are often
motivated by the desire "to cover Noah's drunkenness," they remain a
combination of improbabilities and hypocrisy.
Whether we like it or not,
this blame must fall primarily upon the post-conciliar "popes." Even
though none of us are without an element of culpability, it is they who must
bear the burden. It is they who approved the Council and the Reforms, and
without their approval neither the Council nor the Reforms would have any
meaning or authority. It is they who have misapplied the principles of
obedience in order to bring the erstwhile faithful into line. It is they who
tolerate every conceivable deviation while condemning out of hand whatever is
traditional. They are not individuals who have "fallen into heresy,"
or who are, as Lefebvre would say, "tainted with modernism." (Can one
have a touch of Pregnancy?) They are much worse, for they are heretics who have
been elected precisely because they are heretics; men who, by the laws of the
traditional Church have long since excommunicated themselves. And this
condemnation applies to virtually the entire "electoral body"
responsible for the implementation of what can only be described as a modernist
conspiracy. It further applies to the sycophant hierarchy which declares itself
una cum those in power.
"And Ciaphus was, in
his own mind, a benefactor of mankind" (Blake). To speak of a conspiracy
is not to deny the sincerity of those involved. But what heretic has ever
lacked sincerity? Nor is it to claim that every individual who lent and lends
his support is a conscious subversive. (Thou our Lord did said that he who is
not with Him was against Him - not to
condemn error is to condone it.) The net result is clear. The Council and its
aftermath was achieved by a conspiracy of individuals who Pope Saint Pius X
clearly condemned, and against whom he desired to protect the Church. He went
so far as to state, in his capacity as Pope and hence ex cathedra, that
any individual who even defended a single modernist proposition condemned by
his Encyclicals and Lamentabili was ipso facto and latae
sententiae excommunicated - that is, by that very fact and without any need
for any one to publicly so declare (Praestantia Scripturae, Nov. 18, 1907).
No father signing the Council documents and no member of the hierarchy
accepting and teaching them, can claim to fall outside this condemnation.
Everyone who considers himself "in obedience" to the new Church
implicitly accepts its modernist principles.[64]
Consider Religious Liberty -
the idea that every man is free to decide for himself what is true and false,
what is right and wrong, and that his very human dignity resides in just this license.
Imagine Christ upon the Cross telling us that he came to establish a visible
Church - "One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic," and to confide to it
those truths necessary for our salvation. He continues however to assure us
that we have no obligation to listen to Him. - that we are free to choose for
ourselves what we shall believe, and that our real human dignity resides, not
in conforming to His image, but in making just such choices! Incredible! And now, some two thousand years later, we
find Christ's representative whose function it is to teach us what Christ
taught us, assuring us that, as a result of Christ's incarnation, all men, even
those who reject the very idea of God, are saved, that Christ's Church, through
her own fault, has lost her "unity," and that the Crucifixion is but
a "witness to man's human dignity" - his ability to determine for
himself what is true and false. Madness reigns supreme!
It will be argued that these
false popes have said some nice things. Such however is of no importance or
interest in the present situation when we must decide whether or not they are
truly Christ's representatives on earth. If they are truly "one
hierarchical person" with our Lord, we must obey them. But Catholics must
understand that the Pope's infallibility is totally dependent upon his being
himself in obedience to Christ, and that when he rejects Christ and falsifies
Christ's teaching, we must reject his authority. As Peter said, "one must
obey God rather than man." A modernist pope is an impossibility. Either he
is a modernist and then he isn't a pope, or he is a pope and then he isn't a
modernist. All this is not a matter of picking or choosing what we shall
believe. It is a matter of being Catholic. To deny this principle is to declare
Christ a liar! St. Catherine of Sienna told us that a Pope who falsifies his
function will go to hell, and further, that those of us who obey him will go
there with him. Let us be done with those who claim that John Paul II is trying
to bring the "Church" back to tradition. The lie is easily exposed.
All he has to do is reject Vatican II and restore the traditional sacraments.
Short of this he is but a wolf in sheep's clothing pulling the wool over our
eyes.
Have the "gates of
hell" prevailed? Certainly not. Catholics know that Christ cannot lie. Let
us then examine the meaning of this promise. What it proclaims is that the
truth will ultimately win out - though not necessarily so in the "short
run." That such is "true" is an intellectual certainty, for
error can only be defined in terms of the denial of truth. Now the Catholic
Church is true, and hence it can no more be totally destroyed than can the
truth itself. But this Church resides, not in numbers, not in buildings, and
not even of necessity in the hierarchy. The truth functions ex opere
operatio. It resides in the faithful (the hierarchy must be "of the
faithful," before they can be "of the hierarchy." Or as the
theologians put it, members of the "teaching Church" (the
Magisterium) must be first of all members of the "learning Church.")
Every baptized infant, according to the traditional rite, becomes a
"member of the body of Christ." And what is the Church if not the
Body of Christ, the presence of Christ in this world? It follows then that, as
Catherine Emmerick points out, if there were but one person alive who was truly
Catholic, the Church would reside in him.
Visibility is a quality of
the Church. Does visibility require a hierarchy. The matter is open to debate,
but time has not yet run its course. In any event traditional bishops are
available, and if but one traditional bishop survives, the hierarchy would
reside in him. What has to be remembered however is that the Church does not
exist for the sake of the hierarchy, it is the hierarchy that exists for the
sake of the Church. And history has shown that Catholics can live and retain
the faith for centuries without any hierarchy. God knows his own and will not
abandon them. If a bishop is necessary for the visibility of the Church, He
will certainly provide one. Ultimately, it is we who abandon God, his truth and
his Church, and never the other way around.
One would have thought that
the changes were more than enough to induce the faithful to revolt. The great
surprise, truly apocalyptic, was that the Catholic people did not do so. That
they did not only goes to show what "sincere, pious, fervent and well
intentioned" Catholics really valued. One is tempted to feel sorry for
them, but as always, even in such a situation "God knows his own."
One must insist upon this, for the truly innocent are far less numerous than
one is inclined to believe. The argument that it is not possible or likely that
God would abandon his own presumes that "his own" did not deserve to
be abandoned, when in fact they did deserve it precisely to the degree that
they are in fact abandoned.
Why did Catholics not
revolt?. Well, first of all, many did, but their stand was undermined by poor
leadership. Psychologically dependent upon the hierarchy and the clergy, they
looked for guidance that was not provided. The Modernists, working for decades,
had prepared the ground, and even those who were not out and out subversives
had their faith corrupted and hence weakened. At the Council there were perhaps
70 individuals who - towards the end - began to understand what was happening.
No more! And among them not one was willing to take a clear cut stand on solid
doctrinal grounds. Even Lefebvre based his opposition on false theological
premises, arguing for example that one can disobey a valid pope.[65]
Secondly, for decades the faithful were both inadequately trained in their
faith and discouraged from leading active spiritual lives. Educated in
secularized colleges, taught by "liberal" priests, they were by in
large modernists without knowing it. And finally, both clergy and laity found
the modern world seductively attractive. They found the rejection and scorn of
the modern world - a world which had repudiated the Church and like the
Prodigal son, had walked away from the bosom of the Father - increasingly
intolerable. They could not accept the disapproval of this world in which they
believed more strongly than in Christ. The Council declared the Church would
henceforth not only be "open to the world," but that it would
"embrace" it! Its avowed aim and promise was aggiornamento to
bring the Church "into the twentieth century" and make it part of,
and acceptable to that world. No longer did she proclaim that it was necessary
for the Prodigal son to return to the bosom of the Father. Rather, abandoning both
her function and her identity, she proclaimed that the Father was obliged to
eat the swill fit only for pigs!. Both clergy and laity - exceptions apart -
rushed headlong into to the sea to spend their patrimony as if there was no
tomorrow. It is this that is at the heart of the conspiracy. It is this that is
the crux of the problem. It is this that created the smoke swirling around St.
Peter's Basilica. This spark of rebellion, present in the soul of every man,
needed only the "winds of change" to create an inferno.
However, as has always been
the case throughout the history of the Church, a remnant persisted in retaining
the fullness of the faith. The true Church is to be found among those who
believe and continue to believe in the manner of their ancestors. It is they
who bear witness to the truth of Christ's promise. It is they who provide the
proof that "the gates of hell have not prevailed." Not all are
profound theologians. Not all are sinless. But they can be recognized by their
insistence on true priests, true doctrine, and the true Mass - the Mass of All
Times.
Some would accuse
traditional Catholics - those that insist on retaining the fullness of the
Catholic faith intact and who therefore refuse the new religion of the
post-Conciliar Church, of being in "schism." The accusation is a lie.
In reality, the schismatic is one who removes himself from the truth, and not
one who insists upon it. And if it is necessary to separate oneself from
something in order to save the truth, long live Schism! But in reality, it is
not the traditional Catholic who is in Schism, but those who are responsible
for changing the Catholic faith. But let is be both clear and honest. The new
Church is not schismatic. It is heretical. In similar manner traditional Catholics
are accused of being Protestants because they disobey the pope. Such
accusations are false. Traditional Catholics do not "pick and choose"
what they wish to believe; they are adhering with all their hearts to what the
Church has always taught and always done. Nor are they disobeying the pope.
They believe that the pope, being Christ's vicar on earth and "one
hierarchical person" with our Lord, is to be obeyed. They know that when
Peter speaks he is infallible because it is Christ who speaks through him. They
are the out and out papists and are doing nothing less than refusing to disobey
Peter. In such a situation they are obliged to disobey those who falsely speak
in Peter's name. To obey modernist and heretical "popes" is to
declare that they are "one hierarchical person" with our Lord and
hence that Christ teaches falsely - quod absit!
It is an unfortunate fact
that too many of the traditionalists do not wish to be labeled
"integrists." or "sedevacantists." And why not? Why should
they stop mid way? Such only leads to wrangling about the most absurd
positions, or to timidity of language combined with conventional and infantile
sentimentalities. If the post-Conciliar "popes" are true popes, let
us obey them. If not, let us obey Peter and through him Christ. People claim to
be "confused" or "troubled." Why? The ancient catechisms
are always there and modern innovations are no different in principle than
those of a prior era. Sin can change its style, but not its nature. "There
is no greater right than that of truth," and despite the teaching of
Vatican II, "error has no rights whatsoever."
Traditional Catholics often
give scandal by arguing among themselves. The new Church in comparison seems
more united. In point of fact it is, for it accepts within its aegis every
conceivable deviation. But if traditional Catholics seem divided it is because,
in the absence of clear leadership, each individual group seeks to determine
just what is truly Catholic for itself. What is required is a deeper study and
commitment to what is truly Catholic on the part of all. Paraphrasing Lenin,
let us have no enemies on the right - none more orthodox and none more
traditional than ourselves. Let us be united in the truth manifested in the
constant teaching and practice of the Church throughout the ages. So help us
God.
It is extraordinary that
modern churchman should claim to be reading "the signs of the times."
Christ depicted the "last times" in very sombre colors. Scripture
warns of an unparalleled outbreak of evil, called by
"It is necessary that
scandals should occur..." And this is not because of some arbitrary
decision on the part of a personal God - quod absit - but because of the
necessary ontological "play" that results from All Possibility, and
which relates inevitably to the contradictions and privations without which the
world would not be in existence. God does not desire "a given evil,"
but he tolerates 'evil as such" in view of a still greater good that
results from it. Ad majorem Dei gloriam.
Rama P. Coomaraswamy,
M.D.
[1] Secular Humanism or The American Way,
The Human Life Review, Fall 1982.
[2]The Timeless Christian. He continues: "man's participation in God's creative power, something that is denied him - the love between two human beings, the sanctification of nature, and not least, the sacramental character of the married state. He will try to force love to take on an egotistical form, to infect it with jealousy, to destroy its permanence; he will move heaven and earth to bring disorder into every aspect of sex, to turn its stream into a raging torrent, or to dry it up altogether, or to divert it into a false bed; he will lead the partners towards divorce, to petty bickering, to a sterile boredom of everyday life, even to mutual hatred; finally he will try to estrange children from their parents and, recalling his own origin, will infuse their minds with the spirit of vainglory, of 'knowing better,' and of ingratitude."
[3]"Outside the commercial civilizations of the [modern] western world, love and marriage take their place as types of divine union, and everywhere love and marriage are the subject-matter of painters and sculptors. It is true that love is the theme of [modern] western writers also, but, with them, the idea of love is now entirely free from divine signification, either explicit or implied, and, however much they mays still be under the heel of the old tradition which makes marriage the inevitable 'happy ending,' yet, as religion decays, the inevitability of such an ending becomes less and less and the nootion of a permanent union, 'till death do us part' is more and more frequently relegated to the 'scrap-heap' of outworn ideas... The modern world fondly imagines that it has removed the veil with which a more superstitious generation shrouded reality whereas, actually, it has simply blinded itself to the reality of which material life is the veil." Art and Love, Bristol: Cleverdon, 1927.
[4]Love is nothing other than the will ardently fixed on something good... " William of St. Thierry, The Nature and Dignity of Love.
[5] Much that we label "primitive" is only degeneration. As Erich Fromm states, "What is essential in the existence of man is the fact that he has emerged from the animal kingdom, from instinctive adaptation, that he has transcended nature - although he never leaves it; he is part of it - and yet once torn away from nature, he cannot return to it" (The Art of Loving).
[6] Christ loved Lazarus deeply as a friend - it is said that the emotions whelmed up in him on hearing of his death. The more modern translations state that he was overwhelmed with emotion, but such is false, for while the emotions have their place, they would never in Our Lord overwhelm the higher functions of His human soul.
[7] "Nowhere is sexual union regarded as marriage unless it is in some way socially sanctioned." C. Augustine, A Commentary on the New Code of Canon Law, (1917).
[8] Aristotle in his Politics states that "a home must possess three relationships if it is to be complete, namely, that of husband and wife, of father and the children and that between the master and servants." (Quoted by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Commentary on Ephesians).
[9] De bono conjugali, cap. xviii, n. 21
[10] In the words of St. Augustine, "offspring signifies that children shall be lovingly welcomed... and religiously educated" De Gen. ad litt., 1.9,c.7, n.12. Similarly St. Thomas teaches "education and development until it reach the perfect state of man as man, and that is the state of virtue." (III, 41, 1). It is said that a woman who brings up her child in the faith will enter heaven before any theologian.
[11] St. Seraphim of Sarov, A Spiritual Biography, Archimandrite Lazarus Moore, Sarov Press, 1994.
[12] This hierarchical arrangement is by no means restricted to Christianity. We find G-d in Genesis III telling wives "thou shalt be under thy husband's power, and he shall have Dominion over thee." The same hierarchical arrangement is found in Islam and Hinduism. It is not without significance that the newer "catholic" translations of the Bible translate "This is a great sacrament" by "This is a great foreshadowing."
.The Constitution Gaudium and Spes produced by the The Second Vatican Council attempted to soften this teaching: "Just as of old God encountered his people with a covenant of love and fidelity, so our Savior, the spouse of the Church, now encounters Christian spouses through the sacrament of Marriage. He abides with them in order that by their mutual self-giving, spouses will love each other with enduring fidelity, as he loved the Church and delivered himself for it." Here the teaching of Ephesians has been decisively abridged. Only what is agreeable has been taken from it, namely "love." The subordination of women, and correlatively, that of the Church to her Head, the basic outline of which has been presented above, is simply disregarded. Drawing on this statement, the Synod of Wurzurg declared in 1975 that the husband and wife were to be seen as partners, and that "the allotment of roles between husband and wife which was strongly patriarchal in character, has been corrected. In a parallel manner John-Paul II has persistently insisted that love creates equality. In his Familiaris consortio (1981) and in his Charter of Family Rights" (1983) he teaches that God gives man and woman an equal personal dignity, endowing them with the inalienable rights and responsibilities proper to the human person. "Above all it is important to underline the equal dignity and responsibility of women and men... in creating the human race 'male and female' God gives man and woman an equal personal dignity, endowing them with the inalienable rights and responsibilities proper to the human person." The same responsibilities and rights for man and woman clearly exclude man from being the head of the family. John Paul II is of course aware that he is contradicting the constant teaching of the Church. In an article published in the L'Osservatore Romano he explains that "the author of the letter [St. Paul] does not hesitate to accept those ideas which were proper to the contemporary mentality and its forms of expression... Our sentiments are certainly different today, different also are our mentality and customs, and, finally, different is a woman's social position vis-a-vis the man." (German ed., 27.8.82). (In 1953 the Church taught that "anyone who, as a matter of principle, denies the responsibility of the husband and father as head of the woman and of the family, puts himself in opposition to the Gospel and the doctrine of the Church." - supplement to St. Korads Blatt., No. 10, 1953)
[13] Klaus Moersdorf, Kirchenrecht, V. II, 10th edition, Munich, 1958. While not a dogmatic teaching of the Church, it is clear that failure to recognize this aspect of the marriage relationship clearly vitiates the spiritual aspect of the relationship.
[14] The importance of obedience is shown by the fact that Adam fell because of the sin of disobedience, while Christ reversed the fall by being "obedient unto death." In the last analysis, we are all obliged to be obedient to higher authority, and "all authority is from God." Obedience is a "moral virtue," and as such of a lesser order than the "theological virtues" of Faith, Hope and Charity. In accordance with the principle that the higher takes precedence to the lower, it follows that one can never command what is sinful or against truth. True obedience implies going against our self-will and carries with it the principle of self-abnegation.
[15] "We cannot ask ourselves whether "woman" is superior or inferior to "man," any more than we can ask ourselves whether water is superior or inferior to fire. Thus the standard of measurement for either of the sexes can be provided not by the opposite sex, but only by the "idea" of the same sex. In other words, the only thing we can do is establish the superiority or inferiority of a given woman on the basis of her being more or less close to the female type, to the pure and absolute woman, and the same thing applies to man as well." The claims of modern woman therefore, spring from mistaken ambitions as well as from an inferiority complex, from the mistaken idea that woman are intrinsically inferior to man. It has been rightly said that feminism has really fought not for "woman's right," but, without knowing it, for the right of woman to make herself equal to man... it would amount to a woman having the right to pervert herself and to degenerate. Julius Evola, The Metaphysics of Sex., p. 54. Others have pointed out that femininity manifests the feminine aspects of the Divine: Goodness, radiating Beauty, Mercy, Love, and Purity, while masculinity incarnates Truth, Axiality, Intellectuality, Strength and Generosity.
[16] This fiat goes beyond obedience. A woman, in accepting motherhood, places her life on the line. Continuing the passage from Timothy I just quoted: "Yet she shall be saved through childbearing; if she continue in faith, and love, and sanctification, with sobriety." A woman who dies in childbirth - assuming the right disposition of soul - is said to go straight to heaven. With regard to obedience, St. John Chrysostom says St. Paul teaches wives that "when you yield to your husband consider that you are obeying him as part of your service to the Lord." He further says, "a household cannot be a democracy, ruled by everyone, but the authority must necessarily rest in one person. The same is true for the Church.... where there is equal authority, there never is peace. Paul places the head in authority and the body in obedience" At the same time he tells husbands: "Do you want your wife to be obedient to you, as the Church is to Christ? Then be responsible for the same providential care of her as Christ is for the Church. And even if it becomes necessary for you to undergo suffering of any kind, do not refuse." (Homily 20). Obedience in marriage is as essential as it is in the religious life.
[17] This in no way implies that couples that have fulfilled their obligations in the married state cannot enter religion under a variety of forms. Such was much more common in earlier centuries than in our day.
[18] Quoted by Msgr. Charles Doyle, in Christian Perfection for the Married, Nugent, N.Y., 1964
[19] Letter 203.
[20] To quote Pius XI: "It is the will of God, says St. Paul, that you sanctify yourselves. What kind of sanctity does he speak of? Our Lord Himself made this clear. 'Be ye perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.' No one should assume that this invitation is addressed to a small select number of individuals and that the remainder of mankind are allowed to be satisfied with some lesser degree of virtue. This law obliges and applies - and this is absolutely clear - to all of mankind, without exception."
[21] Seventh Homily on St. Matthew. "Both those who choose to dwell in the midst of noise and hubbub and those who dwell in monasteries, mountains and caves can achieve salvation." St. Symeon the New Theologian, Philokalia. A vocation must of course be intrinsically honorable, which is to say, capable of perfecting the soul.
[22] The comments of Barbe Acarie are pertinent: "If I had but one child and if I were the queen of the whole world so that he was my sole heir and God called him to the religious state I would put no obstacle in his way; but if I had a hundred children and could make no provision for them I would not oblige one to enter religion, because such a vocation must come purely from God. The religious state is so lofty that the whole world together cannot make a good religious if God does not lend his help; it is far better to remain in the world by divine disposition than to be a religious through human instigation" (Biography, Lancelot Sheppard).With regard to virginity, St. John Chrysostom: "virginity does not simply mean sexual abstinence. She who is anxious about worldly affairs is not really a virgin. In fact, he [St. Paul] says that this is the chief difference between a wife and a virgin. He doesn't mention marriage or abstinence, but attachment as opposed to detachment from worldly cares. Sex is not evil, but [it and children are] a hindrance to someone who desires [and is called ]to devote all her strength to a life of prayer." (Homily 19). "Of pure Virgins none, is fairer seen, Save one, than Mary Magdalene" (John Cordelier). May we then "be virginized" as St. Therese of Liseaux said in a letter to her sister Celine.
[23] St. Francis de Sales, Letters to Persons in the World.
[24] Louis of Grenada, The Sinner's Guide, Chapter V.
[25] "In traditional symbolism, the supernatural principle has always been conceived as 'masculine'; nature and becoming as 'feminine'." (J. Evola, Rivolta contra il mondo moderno). It is not accidental that nature is referred to as "mother nature." This principle is in no way "sexist" or "patriarchal." Thus, the Abbess Sarah, one of the saints described by the Desert Fathers stated "I am a women in sex, but not in spirit." Similarly St. Augustine describes some saintly women in these terms: "according to the inward man neither male nor female; so that even in them that are women in body the manliness of their soul hides the sex of their flesh..." (Sermon 282).This "inward man" is of course St. Paul's inward man (Rom. VII:22) and St. Peter's "inner man of the heart" (1 Pet. 3,4). St. Theresa of Avila admonished her sisters in these terms: "I would not want you, my daughters, to be womanish in anything, nor would I want you to be like woman, but like strong men" (The Way of Perfection, 7:8). Throughout the Old Testament, Jehovah is characterized as "betrothed to Israel." Christ is our spouse, telling us in Hosea II: "I will marry thee in faithfulness." And again, "Thou shalt be the spouse of my blood" (Gesta Romanum). It is in this context that St. Paul admonishes both sexes to "play the man." It is in the light of this that the feminine aspect in everyone of us takes on a "seductive" quality; when this seduction is "successful," when the spirit is subverted by the lower soul, Scripture labels the "adulterous" result as "harlotry."
[26] "It is often of the greatest importance," says St. Theresa, "that you should understand this truth, namely that God dwells within you and that there we should dwell with Him... Let us not imagine that the interior of our hearts is empty... And to understand how God is always present in our soul, let us listen to St. John of the Cross, another distinguished master of the science of the saints: 'In order to know how to find this Bridegroom, we must bear in mind that the Word, the Son of god, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is hidden in essence and is present in the inmost being of the soul... And this is why St. Augustine, speaking to God, said: 'I do not find Thee without, O Lord, because I had no right to seek Thee there, for Thou are within.' God is therefore hidden within the soul." (A Spiritual Canticle, Stanza I).
St. John of the Cross continues later on to explain this more at length, remarking that God may be present in the soul in three different ways: "To explain this," he says, "it must be observed that there are three ways in which God is present in the soul. The first is His presence in essence, and in this respect He dwells not only in souls that are good and holy, but likewise in those that are bad and sinful, and indeed, in all creatures; for it is this presence that gives them life and being, and if it were once withdrawn they would cease to exist and would return to their original nothing. Now this kind of presence never fails in the soul. The second manner of god's presence is by grace, when He dwells in the soul pleased and satisfied with it. This presence of god is not in all souls, because those who commit a mortal sin lose it. The third kind of presence of God is by means of spiritual affection; for God is want to show His presence in many devout souls in divers ways of refreshment, joy and gladness." St. Theresa continues: "Of the first kind of divine presence we can never be deprived. The second we must procure for ourselves with all the powers of the soul, and we must guard it at any cost. The third isn't within our power. God gives to whom He pleases" (St. Theresa's Pater Noster).
[27] Just as Adam's bride was taken from his side, so also was the Church the product of the blood and water which flowed from the side of Christ.
[28]Translation of Christopher Bamford in The Voice of the Eagle, Lindisfarne Press, 1992. This is no novel teaching. Consider Origin: Let us see also allegorically how man, made in the image of god, is male and female. Our inner man consists of spirit and soul. The spirit is said to be male; the soul can be called female. If these have concord and agreement among themselves, they increase and multiply by the very accord among themselves and they produce sons, good inclinations and understandings... The soul united with the spirit and, so to speak, joined in wedlock...."';
Scheeben says much the same: "Marriage, says the Apostle (Eph. 5:32) is the great sacrament that is is, that is, it ranks so highly, because it is a figure of the union between God and his Church, and in consequence, of the union also between God and the soul. Reality and type are more perfect than figure and representation; the union between God and the soul is thus incomparably more real than that of man and woman. They are one in flesh; God is one with the soul in spirit ( 1 Cor. 5:17). The union of God with the soul is as far above the union of man and wife, as spirit is above flesh, as God is above matter. The union of the soul with God in one spirit is so intimate as to have no parallel in creation and the reasoning of the creature cannot grasp it. God submerges the soul in the ocean of His light, floods it with the torrent of His delights, fills it with the plenitude of His Being. He clasps it in the arms of His love. He so binds to Himself that no power in heaven or earth can tear it from Him." (Les Merveilles de la Grace divine, pp. 170ff.)
"To love God, " says St. Bernard, "is to be married to Him. Happy the soul who rejoices in this chaste and blessed embrace which is naught else than pure and holy love, love enchanting and joyful, love as serene as it is true, a mutual love, intimate and burning, which joins together two persons... in one spirit and of the two makes one." (Sermon 84 on the Canticle of Canticles, par. 5-6)
[29]"Thus too it has been said that the Pharaoh of Egypt was a type of the devil, in that he cruelly ordered the males to be cast into the Nile and permitted the females to live. So too, the devil, ruling over the great Egypt of the world from Adam unto Moses, made an effort to carry off and destroy the male and rational offspring of the soul in the flood of the passions, while he takes delight in seeing the carnal and sensual offspring increase and multiply." St. Methodius, Treatise on Chastity.
[30]Chapter on Man and Woman in J. Evola, Rivolta contra il mondo moderno, Milan, Ulricho Hoepli, 1934. Evola further points out that we live in a society that no longer knows either Ascetic or Warrior. The idealized masculine type is characterized by the power that derives from materiality as in the financial tycoon. Feminist demands for equality with the opposite sex inevitably lead to women being driven into the street, the business offices, the schools, the factories and all the other infected and infectious cross-roads of modern society and culture. "the result is a degeneration of the feminine type even in its physical features; the atrophy of its natural possibilities, the suffocation of its inwardness. And hence the garconne type, the neuter or mannish girl, sporty, vacant, incapable of any impulse beyond herself, incapable, in the last analysis, even of sensuality or sinfulness. In the case of modern women we do not even mention the possibility of maternity., but only that of a mere physical love in which she does not feel even so much interest as she does in beautifying herself, in displaying herself as much or as little dressed as possible, in physical training, dance, sport, money and so forth... The traditional woman in giving herself to another, in not living for herself, in willing to live altogether for another and to be all for another than herself, had her own heroism - essentially, she raised herself above the common level to the plane of the ascetic. The modern woman, in seeking to exist for herself, destroys herself... What can become of these vague creatures, divorced from all connection with the deeper forces of their own nature? From these creatures in whom sex begins and ends in physiology, even if abnormal inclinations are not already present.? From these creatures who are psychologically neither man nor woman, if indeed, the woman is not the man and the man the woman, and who boast of being above sex while in fact they are below it? The relations between them can have no other quality than that of a plaster cast, a virtually homosexual anodyne: can amount to no more than the promiscuity of an equivocal camaraderie, a morbid 'intellectual' sympathy, the banality of a new worship of nature shared together... Nothing else is possible in the world of 'emancipated' woman."
[31]From a taped series on Love. It is not clear from this quotation that C. S. Lewis fully realized that in Platonic and Greek symbolism Eros metaphysically represents Christ who would be married to Psyche. Despite this, the quotation does relate to the situation in marriage psychiatrists frequently meet with.
[32] Here
again I have used the term Eros as C.S. Lewis and as common parlance uses it.
There is of course a more correct understanding of the “Divine Eros” relating
to the Logos, for it is God who is Love. Thus it is that classical presentation
depicts Eros wedding psyche, which equates with Christ wedding the soul.
[33] St. Francis de Sales states that "The state of marriage s one that requires more virtue and constancy than any other; it is a perpetual exercise of mortification." (Letters to Persons in the World.)
[34] “The 1983
Code of Canon Law reflects this sacrilegious shift in defining the sacrament.
Canon 1055 (1) places the good of the spouses before procreation of
children. Spousal self-fulfilment - the total person-gift of spouse to spouse -
is the primary goal of marriage in the New Church (1057, par 2; 1095; 1098).
Sacrilegiously employing this primary goal, the New Church rationalizes its
wholesale granting of “annulment divorces”: and thus sacrileges the Sacrament
of Matrimony... Cardinal Ratzinger seems to opt for extending this privilege.
In the future anyone [with pastoral responsibility] might be allowed to make an
extra-juridical statement on the null and void nature of a first
marriage (The Salt of the Earth, 1977". Fr. Trincaid, The
Sacraments Sacrileged, MAETA, Metairie, La., 1999
[35] Contra gentes, 4:58
[36] "According to the common teaching of theologians, the matter of the sacrament consists in the mutual consent of the contracting parties to give themselves to each other; the form consists in their mutual consent to take each other."
[37] These intentions are that the marriage is insoluble and that the ends of marriage would not be frustrated. Pope Innocent III taught that the sacrament of marriage existed both among the faithful and among infidels. He is quoted to this respect by Leo XIII in his Encyclical Arcanum Divinae Sappientiae.
[38] The indissolubility of Catholic marriage is directly connected with the esoteric nature of the Catholic revelation. It is only within such a framework that one can accept all that happens - both good and bad - as the will of God; the accepting of the will of God - the uniting of ourselves with this will - allows us to see all that happens as a salutary blessing. It is in this sense that the Church teaches that all suffering and any sacrifice is useless unless it be for the love of God. Cf quote referred to in footnote 10.
[39] St. Seraphim of Sarov, A Spiritual Biography, Archimandrite Lazarus Moore, Sarov Press, 1994.
[40] There is a certain Manichean aspect to this disparagement of sexuality. To quote Augustine: "Anyone then who extols the nature of the soul as the highest good and condemns the nature of the flesh as evil is as carnal in his love for the soul as he is in his hatred of the flesh, because his thoughts flow from human vanity and not from divine truth" (City of God, XIV, 5). The meaning of concupiscence should be clearly understood. According to Father Tixeront, "by concupiscence, the Bishop of Hippo [and the Catholic Church] does not understand merely the appetite for bodily pleasures; he understands that general tendency away from the highest good and towards the lower pleasures: 'when one turns away from godly things which are truly lasting and turns towards things which are changeable and insecure'" (History of Dogmas, Vol. II, p. 469). As the Fathers of the Council of Trent decreed: "This concupiscence, which at times the Apostle calls sin (Rom. 6, 12 ff.) the holy Synod declares that the Catholic church has never understood to be called sin, as truly and properly sin in those born again, but because it is from sin and inclines to sin." The Church teaches that, as a consequence of original sin, concupiscence is with us - with both laity and religions - till we die.
[41] St. John Chrysostom: "A man should love his spouse as much as he loves himself, not merely because they share the same nature; no, the obligation is far greater, because there are no longer two bodies, but one: he is the head, she the body. Paul says elsewhere 'the head of Christ is God,' and I say that husband and wife are one body in the same way as Christ and the Father are one. Thus we see that the Father is our head also. Paul has combined two illustrations, the natural body and Christ's body; that is why he says, 'This is a great mystery, and I take it to mean Christ and the Church.' What does this mean? The blessed Moses, - or rather, God - surely reveals in Genesis that for two to become one flesh is a great and wonderful mystery. Now Paul speaks of Christ as the greater mystery; for He left the Father and came down to us, and married His Bride, the Church, and became one spirit with her: 'he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him.' Paul says well, 'This is a great mystery,' as if he were saying 'Nevertheless the allegorical meaning does not invalidate married love.'" (Homily 20). St. Thomas Aquinas makes special note of the fact that the statement 'this is a great mystery' immediately follows upon the statement that 'they shall be united in one flesh' (Commentary on Ephesians). Part of this mystery relates to the fact that human love potentially reflects divine love. Consider the following passage from Garrigou-Lagrange: "If true love carries us towards another person towards whom we wish some good, it draws us outside of ourselves. It is in some ways ecstatic (extasim facit), according to the expression of St. Denys. It follows that it is an intense experience with a certain violent quality, and demands the sacrifice of all self love. It is not rare as St. Bernard writes (Sermon LXXIX, 1) 'O love divine, impetuous, vehement, burning, irresistible, which does not allow us to think of anything other than you.'" (La Vie Spirituelle, Vol. 20, August 1929.)
[42] "It is a union in virtue of which Christ is bound to the soul by ties of love so close that conjugal affection alone affords a term of comparison. In various passages of Scripture the relation of Christ to the Church, and to the individual soul, is described as that borne by the bridegroom to the bride.St. Liguori, quoting St. Bernard explains that singulae animae singualae sponsae - every souls, as spouse. (Commentary on Psalm XLIV, 11) In the Apocalypse (xxi, 2) St. John sees the Church as "the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for the husband." St. Paul, addressing the local Church of Corinth writes: "I espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ" (II Cor. xi, 2). And elsewhere he points out the analogy between the physical union which makes man and woman one flesh, and the far higher and yet more intimate bond between God and the bride-soul, in virtue of which "he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit" (I Cor. vi, 17). Matrimony as a permanent state typifies that union. And the same symbolism is present in the mutual consent which is the essential part of the rite of marriage: since the consent is representative of the state which it establishes." George H. Joyce, S.J., Christian Marriage, Sheed and Ward, 1948.
[43] Quoted by Eric Gill in Art and Love, op. cit. (No. 3 above)
[44] I am indebted to Prof. Jean Hani, La Vierge Noire et le Mystere Marial for the quotes in this paragraph. (Guy Tredaniel, 1995)
[45] Summa III, Q41, Article 4., Q. 49, Article 6. In marriage, the woman takes on the name of her husband, thus symbolically giving up her individual and separate identity, .
[47] St Augustine says that "Christ confirms at Cana what he established in paradise." (Commentary on Ephesians 5:23)
[48] Cf. footnote 14 above.
[49] Allocution to Midwives, October 29, 1951. Allocutions are considered part of the ordinary Magisterium. St. Augustine is often wrongly accused of stating that any pleasure derived in the act of intercourse is sinful. In his book on The Goods of Marriage (Chapter 16), he speaks in positive terms of the "natural delight" that the patriarchs enjoyed in the act of intercourse. Augustine is only against making pleasure the only purpose of the act. Prummer's Moral Theology states: "Not only the conjugal act itself, but also touches and looks and all other acts are lawful between the married, provided there is no proximate danger of pollution and the sole intention is not mere sexual pleasure. Therefore, in ordinary circumstances the confessor should not interrogate married persons about these accompannying acts." Again, Pius XII states: "The Church can rightly declare that, profoundly respectful of the sanctity of marriage, she has in theory and practice left husband and wife free in that which the impulse of a wholesome and honest nature concedes without offense to the Creator" (Allocution, Sept. 18, 1951).
[50] According to Father Kearns, S.J., St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, Alexander of Hales and many other theologians of equal importance concur with this opinion. (The Theology of Marriage, Sheed and Ward, 1964). Denis the Carthusian explains that: "pleasure cannot be avoided in sexual intercourse, and yet it is not a sin when it is not sought after and the act itself is performed as it should be. In the same way the pleasure in food and drink, natural as it is and related to a spiritual goal, is not a fault.... As Aristotle says and St. Thomas repeats, our moral evaluation of an act and the pleasure joined to an act is the same. Therefore the pleasure from a good and virtuous act is good; and to the extent that it is good, it can be desired." (ibid).
[51]St. Thomas quotes St. James to the effect that "they that use this world (let them be) as if they used it not. In each case he (St. Paul) forbade enjoyment." A footnote explains that the Latin fruitionem used in this situation refers to enjoyment of a thing sought as one's last end." (Translation by Fathers of the English Dominican Province).
[52]One can draw certain parallels between eating and the sexual act. Both are physiological, at least in part; both are "natural." Clearly, excessive indulgence in the sexual act can be likened to gluttony. But, hunger has is a function destitute of psychic counterpart, and under normal social conditions, nothing in regard to food corresponds to the part that the sexual function plays in an individual's life, or to the profound and manifold influence exerted by that function on the emotional, moral, intellectual, and, not seldom, spiritual level. As G. K. Chesterton said, "sex cannot be admitted to a mere equality among elementary emotions or experiences, like eating and sleeping. The moment sex ceases to be a servant, it becomes a tyrant. There is something dangerous and disproportionate in its place in human nature, for whatever reason; and it does really need a special purification and dedication." (St. Francis of Assisi).
[53] Orgasm, the point at which "disindividualization" is maximum, is derived from the Greek word Orgy, originally meaning "holy" or "inspired exaltation." It is a sad commentary on the current state of affairs that the word now is associated only with the unleashing of the senses. (Cf. footnote #22.)
[54] An example of beauty leading to God is provided by St. John Climacus where the Bishop Nonnos of Edessa found himself in the presence of a beautiful nude dancer and commented that "he took the occasion to adore and glorify by his praises the sovereign Beauty, of which this woman was only a reflection, and he felt himself transported with the fire of divine love, pouring forth tears of joy." Such an individual, says St. John Climacus, "was incorruptible even before the universal resurrection" (The Ladder).
[55] Allocution to Midwives, October 29, 1951. It was for this reason that artificial insemination was forbidden by Pius XII in his allocution to an International Congress of Catholic Doctors on September 29, 1949. Just as the welcoming of children is a welcoming of God's will, so also, the absence of children in a marriage is a cross to be born, but also an acceptance of God's will.
[56] The Theology of Sex in Marriage, Daniel Planque, Fides, 1962.
[57]Allocutions to midwives, October 29, 1951, and to the Associations of the large families, November 26, 1951. Solange Hertz sees the use of periodic abstinence as onanism. She claims that the Jews forbade the sexual act during infertile periods and that this is why it was forbidden during menstruation. St. Thomas Aquinas discusses this and states that this was a ritual prohibition no longer applying to Christians, and further stated that the reason Christians should not have intercourse during menses is that children born of such conceptions are not healthy. Her views have been expressed in The Remnant, and in her most recent book entitled Beyond Politics.
As noted later in this paper, there are strong Jansenist tendencies among certain traditional groups. I quote specifically Letter 13 of the Society of St. Pius X dated July 17th, 1990 which while referring to the same document of Pius XII, instructs the faithful in the following terms: "Natural family planning cannot be used by the spouses, except under some very exceptional circumstances, i.e., danger of death or very serious health problems for the pregnant mother, living conditions such that you cannot financially support another child, if you are sure all your children will be born with a pathological condition. If some of our faithful have such a hard time accepting this teaching it is because of the lack of a spirit of penance and of the spirit of the faith! They try to go to heaven without the cross!" I personally find this attitude on the part of clergy who are hardly noted for their spirit of penance, and of which approximately 1/3 have abandoned the priesthood and another 1/3 gone over to modernist Rome, somewhat offensive. I can think of few things which are more "penitential" than trying to raise a Catholic family in a Catholic manner in the modern world. Why could they not have simply quoted the gentle words of Pope Pius XII? Any asceticism not accompanied by strict adherence to the truth is a waste.
[58] Other texts are No-pill No-risk Birth Control by Nona Aguilar, Rawson Wade Publ., New York and Natural Birth Control by Frank Richards, Spectrum, Melborne, Australia. Various organizations exist to promote so-called natural methods of birth control. Not all of them are truly Catholic however.
[59] Taken from two of Meister Eckhart's Sermons, Franz Pfeiffer translation, Watkins, London, 1947.
[60] The use of wine, like sex, is easily perverted.
[61] Christos Yannaras thinks that Christian marriage.... "is most profoundly both an imitation of Christ and a participation in the mystery of His self-offering. This is because both share a true eros. This is why in his view the newly-wed couple are "martyrs" - witnesses to the truth which is being affirmed. Indeed, Yannaras declares that the love of a man for his wife is in fact a love for all the members of Christ's body since she [the wife] sums up the beauty and truth of the world, of all creation. Thus we begin to see why the virginity of monks and the eros which grafts marriage into the life of the Kingdom of God are basically the same. Virginity is eros free from the natural constraint of lust and pleasure, and it is the same eros which marks an orthodox Christian marriage." (The Freedom of Morality, St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984) Quotation taken from Father W.B. Zion, Eros and Transformation. Unfortunately Father Zion's book is strongly influenced by modernist ideas.)
[62] "In God the 'eros' is outgoing, ecstatic. Because of it lovers no longer belong to themselves but to those whom they love. God also goes out of himself... when he captivates all creatures by the spell of his love and his desire..." Dionysius the Areopagite, Divine Names, IV, 13) Again, "God is the producer and generator of tenderness and eros.... In so far as eros originates from him, he can be said to be the moving force of it, since he generated it. Maximus the Confessor, On the Divine Names, IV, 4. And again, "Blessed is the person whose desire for God has become like the lover's passion for the beloved" (St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Assent, 30th. step.
[63] St. Augustine defined lust as "that affection of the mind which aims at the enjoyment of one's self and one's neighbor without reference to God."
[64]
Certain distinctions should be made. These are essentially those between
material and formal heresy - the later requiring awareness that one is acting
or believing in a manner that goes against the constant teaching of the Church,
and that one does this with obstinacy. It is certainly possible that some of
the fathers were only material heretics. It is not for us to judge souls, but
we are certainly obliged to judge the facts.
[65]
Clearly liturgical matters and the insistance upon obedience to a supposedly
valid Council fall within his authority.