Matrimony

Summary

1 Matrimony in the Set of the 7 Sacraments

1.1 The “Difference” of the First / Last Sacrament

1.2 The Paradoxical Logic of Matrimony 

1.3 Is Matrimony a Good?

1.4 The History of the Subjects and the depositum fidei

2 Four Classic Models of the Theology of Matrimony

2.1 The Model of Origins: Matrimony and Patrimony

2.2 The Laborious Construction of a Medieval Model: Roman and Barbarian Traditions

2.3 The Modern Model: The Birth of Canonical Form

2.4 The Secular Era and the Catholic Reaction: Resistance of Temporal Power

2.4.1 Arcanum Divinae Sapientiae, Leo XIII (1880) and the Code of 1917

2.4.2 Casti Connubii, Pius XI (1930)

2.4.3 Gaudium et Spes, Second Vatican Council (1965) 

2.4.4 Humanae Vitae, Paul VI (1968)

2.4.5 Familiaris Consortio, John Paul II (1981)

2.4.6 Code of Canon Law (1983)

2.4.7 Amoris Laetitia, Francis (2016)

3 The Beginning of a “New Paradigm” for Matrimony, Family, and Relationships

3.1 A Postmodern Theology with Premodern Schemes

3.2 The Self-Criticism of the 19th-Century Magisterium

3.3 From Act to Process: The Eschatological Dimension of Matrimony

4 Open Questions on Union and Generation

4.1 The Complex Character of Matrimony

4.2 The Various Goods of Matrimony

4.3 The Debate on Indissolubility

4.4 Objective Law and Pastoral Process

4.5 Forms of Life and the Five Continents of Catholicism

5 The Good of the Sexual Relationship and the “Love Phenomenon”

5.1 The Goods of Matrimony are Three, or Rather, Four

5.2 Generation Loses its Exclusivity

5.3 From the Use of Sex to the Experience of Sexuality

5.4 Can a Single Good Be Blessed?

5.5 The Center and the Periphery: The Different Languages of the Church

References

1 Matrimony in the Set of the 7 Sacraments

1.1 The “Difference” of the First / Last Sacrament 

Matrimony should be understood at the same time as a natural given, as a social construct, and as a ritual symbol of the relationship between God and humanity, between Christ and the Church. As such, it appears, since the first lists of the “seven sacraments” in the 13th century, as one of them. It is surprising, however, that even in the oldest lists, the peculiarity of matrimony has “polar” characteristics. Indeed, it is placed at the end or at the beginning of the list, since it represents, at the same time, the case par excellence and the limit case of the sacrament phenomenon. It is at the head or at the end of the sacramental experience. On the one hand, in fact, it is the “last” among the sacraments, as it “makes licit what would be illicit” and can be understood as a remedium concupiscentiae, that is, as a remedy for concupiscence. On the other hand, the scholastic authors themselves do not forget that ratione significationis (that is, “by reason of its meaning”) matrimony is also the first of the sacraments: not only because it was instituted by God before the fall into sin, but because it expresses the unity between God and humanity, between Christ and the Church, with a completely inimitable force and immediacy. These two “souls” of the ecclesial tradition are both concentrated in two famous Pauline expressions: matrimony as a “distraction” and as a “curb on passion” (1Cor 7) and matrimony as a way of access to the “great mystery” of the relationship between Christ and the Church (Eph 5). The entire ecclesial tradition moves between these two poles.

1.2 The Paradoxical Logic of Matrimony  

Saint Thomas Aquinas explains to us, with extreme clarity, the complex nature of this sacrament. In the Summa Theologica (III, 65, 1, c), he presents a famous parallelism between “natural life” and “spiritual life” and, after having illustrated for each sacrament its “natural equivalent” (to birth corresponds baptism; to growth, confirmation, etc.), upon arriving at matrimony, he says that “this natural reality” is the sacrament. Instead, in the Summa contra Gentiles, he addresses matrimony in two different parts (III and IV): the greater part of what he writes is found in the section where reason elaborates the data, while few lines are dedicated to the properly “revealed” and sacramental part (we will return to this in the next paragraph). These two examples, in the work of Thomas, confirm something important: in matrimony, in a very particular way, nature and grace, reason and faith are indissolubly intertwined. This means that the assumption of reality, whether natural or civil, into the logic of matrimony is a condition of possibility for the sacrament. It is no coincidence that only of this sacrament is it said that it is not “instituted by Jesus Christ,” but is “elevated” to a sacrament, its dynamic being already assured by the logic of creation, of nature, and of civil institutions.

1.3 Is Matrimony a Good?

It is known that Saint Augustine, in his work De bono coniugali [On the Good of Marriage], offered the first exposition of a “matrimonial doctrine,” in which, however, a particularity that draws attention is noted. Although this text is at the root of the Christian and Catholic discourse on the “goods of matrimony,” in reality the fundamental question to which Augustine’s text responds is the question of the compatibility between matrimony and baptismal life. The polarization that we have already observed above finds a “common place” here: if faith is a way of “marrying Christ” – and this applies to the whole Church, male and female – is it still possible or licit or advisable for the baptized to marry? The question, which has predominantly received positive answers, retains, here and there throughout history and in various traditions, the force to translate into different disciplines or social roles. Think, for example, of how matrimony has differently impacted, in the East and in the West, the forms of life of pastors (deacons, presbyters, and bishops).

1.4 The History of the Subjects and the depositum fidei 

The particular characteristics of the seventh sacrament have always had to mediate between nature, history, and grace. For this reason, the major stages of the theology of matrimony are affected by a very close relationship between forms of life (familial, economic, cultural) and their interpretation by the Church. At least until the 15th century, it was quite obvious to entrust to nature and society the articulation of this experience, which the Church limited herself to blessing and elevating to the dignity of a sacrament. The changes in the history of institutions, in the geographical understanding of the world, in forms of production, and in subjective consciousness would lead, from the 19th century onwards, to a progressive change in the model of matrimony and family. And it will be surprising to observe how the classic theme of “matrimony” will increasingly unite with the new theme of “family,” ignored by ecclesial doctrine for about nineteen centuries. However, it must be recognized that, precisely because of the very unique intertwining of levels of experience and knowledge, matrimony is the object of profound natural, social, psychological, and economic reconsideration. On all these levels, the theological tradition, after the attempt to resist at all costs, was forced to “translate the tradition,” as had already happened at least four times throughout history and as Amoris Laetitia (AL) once again clearly demands as a task for the coming decades. Let us, therefore, examine four classic forms of approaching matrimonial theology.

2 Four Classic Models of the Theology of Matrimony

2.1 The Model of Origins: Matrimony and Patrimony 

The proclamation of the fullness of the relationship between man and woman, as a place of truth of the Covenant with the heavenly Father, qualifies the word of Jesus (Mt 19:1-9) and inaugurates the overcoming of the “hardness of heart.” But already in the oldest words, the presence of the “exception clause” – “except in the case of porneia” – opens space for an ecclesial elaboration of the Master’s word, which implies a delicate mediation between natural, civil, and ecclesial logics. The identification of the recipients of the word – which was received as a universal word but has prophetic and eschatological characteristics indicating that its primary recipients are the disciples – can be clarified by examining the logic of the entirety of chapter 19 of the Gospel according to Matthew, in which one moves from “matrimony” (Mt 19:3-9) to “patrimony” (Mt 19:16-30): the indissolubility of the personal bond and the absence of economic ties are announced in the same text, although tradition has been oriented to receive the first as a “norm of natural law” and the second as an “evangelical counsel” (cf. BARBAGLIA, 2016). The result is, on the one hand, the symbolic valorization of the spousal union and, on the other, an increasingly accurate discipline of Christian life. The assumption of the creatural reality (“Christians marry like everyone else,” from the Epistle to Diognetus) or the judgment of the relationship on a legal, prophetic, or eschatological level color differently the first centuries of the reception of the Gospel, up to the first systematization by Augustine (On the Good of Marriage).

2.2 The Laborious Construction of a Medieval Model: Roman and Barbarian Traditions 

The doctrinal and disciplinary evolution in the Middle Ages deserves careful consideration (cf. CORTONI, 2021). In the first place, it becomes evident that the doctrine of matrimony, in its unity, had to mediate different cultural, legal, and even “natural” traditions. There is, in fact, a long elaboration, lasting for some centuries, that tries to harmonize the reading of matrimony as “consent” – typical of the Roman tradition – with that which understands it as “coitus” – typical of the peoples who came to Rome from the North. The synthesis, which theological and legal knowledge would sustain in the Universities of Paris and Bologna from the 12th century onwards, would offer a powerful historical mediation, combining in the same act the “validity of consent” and the “indissolubility by consummation.” The legal formula, however, hides the presence, in the dynamic of the sacrament, of different levels of experience, whose composition is permanently entrusted also to the mediation of nature and civil culture and cannot be simply anticipated by the Church.

It is, therefore, extremely useful to carefully analyze one of the great syntheses of medieval knowledge on matrimony, as found in the Summa contra Gentiles (ScG) by Thomas Aquinas. The theme of matrimony is “divided” into two parts. The first, more substantial, is in book III (chapters 122-126), while the more strictly sacramental part is found in book IV. It is necessary to know that the first three books of the ScG are dedicated to the discussion of arguments “of natural reason,” while book IV works in the field of “divine revelation.” Therefore, there are two discourses on matrimony:

– in book III (chapters 122-126), the text deals with natural matrimony, indissolubility, monogamous matrimony, kinship, and the sinful nature of all carnal union;

– matrimony (as a sacrament) is found in book IV and is limited to a single chapter (78).

In this chapter 78, the theological discourse is concentrated in a few lines around the theme of

generatio (that is, “generation”), as the central category of the sacrament:

Generatio autem humana ordinatur ad multa: scilicet ad perpetuitatem speciei; et ad perpetuitatem alicuius boni politici, puta ad perpetuitatem populi in aliqua civitate; ordinatur etiam ad perpetuitatem Ecclesiae, quae in fidelium collectione consistit. Unde oportet quod huiusmodi generatio a diversis dirigatur. Inquantum igitur ordinatur ad bonum naturae, quod est perpetuitas speciei, dirigitur in finem a natura inclinante in hunc finem: et sic dicitur esse naturae officium. Inquantum vero ordinatur ad bonum politicum, subiacet ordinationi civilis legis. Inquantum igitur ordinatur ad bonum Ecclesiae, oportet quod subiaceat regimini ecclesiastico. Ea autem quae populo per ministros Ecclesiae dispensantur, sacramenta dicuntur. Matrimonium igitur secundum quod consistit in coniunctione maris et feminae intendentium prolem ad cultum Dei generare et educare est Ecclesiae sacramentum: unde et quaedam benedictio nubentibus per ministros Ecclesiae adhibetur. (THOMAS AQUINAS, ScG, l. IV, c. 78)

In translation:

Human generation is ordered to many things, namely: to the perpetuation of the species, to the perpetuation of some political good, such as the perpetuation of the people in a certain city, or to the perpetuation of the Church, which consists in the assembly of the faithful. It is, therefore, necessary that such generation be directed by different subjects. Indeed, insofar as it is ordered to the good of nature, which is the perpetuation of the species, it is directed to this end by the force of nature that inclines it to this end: and for this reason it is said to be a duty of nature. Insofar as it is ordered to a political good, it is subject to the force of civil law. Insofar as it is ordered to the good of the Church, it is fitting that it be subject to ecclesiastical governance. Now, what is conferred upon the people by the ministers of the Church is called a sacrament. Therefore, matrimony, as it consists in the union of a man and a woman intending to generate and educate offspring for the worship of God, is a sacrament of the Church, and for this reason, a blessing of the betrothed by the ministers of the Church is provided. (THOMAS AQUINAS, ScG, l. IV, c. 78)

If we examine the text, we will see presented, as in a mirror, the characteristics of the medieval model that will remain until the Council of Trent. Let its key points be summarized:

– it is characterized by a “plurality of forums.” The same phenomenon, matrimony, is read in three spheres: natural, civil, and ecclesial, to which correspond three “laws” and three “logics”;

– the sacramental dimension is the generation and education of children in the faith;

– the sacrament evidently consists in the “blessing of the spouses” by the ministers of the Church, without directly including the sexual union or the consent, which belong to the natural and civil logic.

From a systematic point of view, the “form” of the sacrament and its ministeriality are conceived according to a very different vision from the current one. Since “consent” and “consummation” belong to rational, natural, and civil logic, the ecclesial dimension is simply concerned with the “blessing,” which obviously is not an act of the spouses (as consent and consummation are), but of the presbyter or the bishop.

2.3 The Modern Model: The Birth of Canonical Form

The transition that occurs with the Council of Trent is of extreme importance. Not only because the classic doctrine on matrimony is reaffirmed, against the Protestant challenge, but because, through the Decree Tametsi (1563), the institutional understanding of matrimony is transformed: as the first word says, “tametsi” [= although, notwithstanding], there is a “concession,” at the core of the document, that revolutionizes the history of Catholic matrimony. Let us read the first paragraph of the decree:

The holy Church of God has always detested and forbidden for most just reasons clandestine marriages, although it should not be doubted that, carried out with the free consent of the contracting parties, they are ratified and true marriages, as long as the Church has not annulled them;

and, consequently, they should rightly be condemned, as the holy Synod with anathema condemns those who deny that they are true and ratified, and also those who erroneously affirm that marriages contracted by children of the family without the consent of the parents are null, and that the parents can make them ratified or null. (DH 1813)

In this paragraph, which opens the decree, a world is changing. The role of the Church in matrimony changes. The introduction of the “canonical form,” necessary for the validity of the act, places the Church in a new position. There was resistance at the time. Here is the clarifying opinion of one of the bishops at the Council, who said: “if clandestine marriage were abolished, marriages made freely and spontaneously would be abolished and, consequently, true friendship between spouses would be forbidden” (so says the bishop of Cava de’ Tirreni, Tommaso Caselli).

This decision inaugurates the competence of the Church in matrimonial cases, which will remain a kind of imprinting for the entire modern period and which will explode in the era of late modernity, when the competition will no longer be from the first modern States, but from the liberal States that succeeded the French Revolution. The clash will revolve around the “competence regarding union and generation.” A contemporary, Paolo Sarpi, who was a respected and critical chronicler of the Council of Trent, wrote about the decree:

Be that as it may – they said –, the decree would not have been made except to elaborate, very soon, an article of faith affirming that the words pronounced by the parish priest would be the form of the sacrament… On the contrary, it was established that, without the presence of the priest, every marriage was null, the supreme exaltation of the ecclesiastical order, since such an important action in political and economic administration, which until then was solely in the hands of those to whom it belonged, became entirely subject to the clergy, leaving no way to contract marriage if the priests, that is, the parish priest and the bishop, for whatever interest, refused to attend. (SARPI)

John Bossy, in turn, author of a successful synthesis on Christendom between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern Age, clarifies what happened to matrimony in the decree:

The proposal was accepted – it was the only one that could reconcile the parties – and became law. Even if it had been in some way prefigured by the previous history on the subject, it was still a bolt from the blue, and it is not clear to what extent the Council was aware of having imposed on Christendom a true revolution, in the proper sense of the word. By canceling the canonical doctrine according to which the conjugal contract followed by carnal copulation constituted Christian marriage, excluding the vast corpus of customary rites and agreements for being deprived of sacramental potentiality, marriage was transformed from a social process guaranteed by the Church into an ecclesiastical process administered by the Church. (BOSSY, 1997, p. 79)

The figure of matrimony, which emerged after the mid-16th century, would have a great influence on our way of thinking about the sacrament, its truth, and its effects. Although it is a merely disciplinary intervention, it will have no small doctrinal consequences, which will be felt especially from the 19th century onwards.

2.4 The Secular Era and the Catholic Reaction: Resistance of Temporal Power

The title of the recent Apostolic Exhortation (FRANCIS, 2016) is Amoris Laetitia, the joy of love, the rejoicing of love, but also the fruitfulness and creativity of love. The Latin word laetitia is rich in resonances and promises. Thus begins the document: with the joy of love. After the joy of the gospel – in Evangelii Gaudium – the joy of love – in Amoris Laetitia. How did we get here? It may be useful to recall, in an extremely summary way, the major stages that have brought us to this point, which is a kind of “new beginning.” After the ancient, medieval, and modern-Tridentine models, a “19th-century model” emerged, which has its debut in the first papal document of the “late Modern Age” that addresses the “matrimonial” issue in a new context. We are in 1880, during the pontificate of Leo XIII, a few years after the “assault on the Porta Pia” and the loss of the “temporal power” of the popes. The story that begins at that moment – and that comes to an end with AL – is deeply marked by institutional, legal, and political issues, that characterized the evolution of much of the following 140 years. Theological issues and institutional issues became intertwined in a new way, which is unprecedented in the history of the Church. In light of the new text, we can reread this story in another way.

2.4.1 Arcanum Divinae Sapientiae, Leo XIII (1880) and the Code of 1917

The entire great medieval tradition, mediated with authority by the Council of Trent, assumes, with this encyclical of Leo XIII, the new and unprecedented problem of a reaffirmation of “ecclesial competence” in the face of the claim of competence by modern States over matrimony, which the 19th century had just inaugurated. The fundamental themes, typical of the entire preceding tradition, are thus “filtered” by this new and dramatic problem. In this encyclical, the “forms of thought and of action” are elaborated that will later be adopted by the Code of Canon Law of 1917. And that will become, for many decades, the decisive axis of the “Catholic” understanding of matrimony, of family, and of love. With its merits and its defects. To this day, this institutional “strangulation” casts its long shadow on the way we speak, reflect, act, and even pray about love and matrimony.

2.4.2 Casti Connubii, Pius XI (1930)

Fifty years later, in a completely different world, Pius XI took up a particular theme such as “contraception” as the “key to understanding” matrimony and the family. This would determine, from then on, a certain priority in the “natural” reading of matrimony and family. The renunciation of “freedom” in the matrimonial context translates into the norm of a purely “objective” sexuality, almost purified of subjectivity and regulated only naturally and, therefore, by God himself. In an embrace between grace and nature that, in the long run, risks suffocating and increasingly polarizing the relationship with civil culture and its inevitable “responsible” evolution. The identification of God with the “natural” and of man with the “artificial” created a growing polarization, which not only brought clarity but, in the long run, clouded minds and hearts. Thus, the theme of “nature,” which for the theological tradition was a guarantee of “dialogue with reason,” became a principle of confrontation and opposition to contemporary culture.

2.4.3 Gaudium et Spes, Second Vatican Council (1965) 

The texts we find in GS (n. 46-52) testify to some phenomena of great importance:

– matrimony and family are united and thought of in the category of “more urgent problems,” but no longer primarily apologetically, but with openness, mercy, and dialogue;

– a “personalist reading” is proposed that, in no way, excludes the maintenance of the disciplinary and doctrinal structures of the 19th century, but rereads them with new lenses: family holiness, conjugal love, and fruitfulness are understood as part of the ecclesial mission;

– cultural dialogue becomes a promising ground for common development, for the recognition of the good of matrimony and family, as a “school of human enrichment.”

This stage is crucial, as it fits into the “pastoral nature” of Vatican II, according to which the substance of the ancient doctrine of the depositum fidei is distinguished from the formulation of its coating, according to the allocution Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, with which John XXIII opened the council’s works.

2.4.4 Humanae Vitae, Paul VI (1968)

Notwithstanding the partial change of language introduced by the Second Vatican Council and the path towards a “personalization” of matrimony and family, which certainly find an affirmation of great importance in Gaudium et Spes, still in 1968 we find in Humanae Vitae, by Paul VI, ample vestiges of the configuration that dates back to Arcanum Divinae Sapientiae and Casti Connubii: matrimony and family – as unique places for the exercise of sexuality – are entirely “predetermined” by God, leaving for the human being a space of responsibility so small that it often results almost fictitious and always very formal and, in any case, hijacked by the theories of “contractual consent.” The possibility of a “responsible generation” becomes an abstract theme, to which “practices” and “disciplines” that are realistic do not correspond. But the ineffective solution depends – more generally – on a way of thinking about matrimony and family “in contrast” with modern civil culture. Matrimony and family can still be “used” as anti-modern bulwarks and reserves of ecclesiastical competence. But in this “use” they also suffer mortifications and progressive reductions, which paralyze ecclesial thought and practice, isolating and marginalizing it from the common culture. “Responsible parenthood” becomes a space for reflection on the world and of self-reflection on the Church, with a view to a different understanding of the relationship between union and generation.

2.4.5 Familiaris Consortio, John Paul II (1981)

Although within a strong continuity with the language of the previous century, Familiaris Consortio makes two important changes: on the one hand, it introduces, even in the title, the expression familiaris, which is new in the magisterium, which had always dealt with “matrimony,” not family. Its precedent is certainly the Second Vatican Council and its rethinking of the family ecclesiastically. But the second decisive step is the open recognition of a “differentiation” of society, which henceforth emerges as evident also for the Church. There are not only “regular families,” but also “irregular” ones, which are no longer automatically and ipso facto “infamous” and “excommunicated.” The document of John Paul II does not give much importance to this “admission,” but it is the beginning of a small revolution. The logic of opposition to civil society, inaugurated by Arcanum Divinae Sapientiae, in 1880, one hundred years later no longer holds up on the practical and operational level, even if theoretically it can still provide some comfort. Instead of frontal opposition, reconciliation in differentiation comes into question. It is only a task, indicated and not performed, but clearly recognized. This opens the way for an evolution first of praxis and then also of theory.

2.4.6 Code of Canon Law (1983)

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1601, under the title “The Sacrament of Matrimony,” the following text is found:

The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament. (CIC can. 1055, § 1)

If we look systematically, one fact should surprise us: this is the only one of the seven sacraments to begin with a citation from the code. This fact says a lot about the tradition, its lights and shadows. It is a tradition that, as we have seen, is prepared by medieval theoretical developments, by modern institutional upheavals, and thus finds a language and a mens ready to be applied also to new questions, which arise much later than the Council of Trent. We see the root of this “juridical beginning” in the evolution of the magisterium and of ecclesial experience, as it developed in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Code of Canon Law of 1917 defined matrimony in the following terms: “Matrimonial consent is the act of the will by which each of the two parties transmits and receives the perpetual and exclusive right over the body (ius in corpus), for the purpose of acts, by their nature, apt for the generation of offspring” (can. 1081 § 2 of the 1917 CIC).

At least three important points can be observed here:

– matrimony is understood as a “contract”;

– the central point is the “right to dispose of the spouse’s body” and not the “intimate partnership of the whole of life”;

– the absence of any reference to the “good of the spouses.”

Also the legal language, in a century, has changed profoundly, which has not failed to be significant as a preparation for the leap that happened with Amoris Laetitia.

2.4.7 Amoris Laetitia, Francis (2016)

Thus, we arrive at the magisterium of Francis. It is the last link in the magisterial chain of the late Modern Age. We do not just have a “new” document, following an accurate synodal process, with a strong demand for pastoral conversion and a vigorous reception of the Second Vatican Council. Even just at the “lexical” level, the “names of love” change and transform: from “arcane divine wisdom” to “chaste matrimony,” then to “human life,” to “familial consortium,” to finally arrive at the “joy of love.” Behind these changing names, we see a complex, painful, problematic, and at the same time, promising history emerge. The new document must be read in this “broad arc,” in the context of this recent history, without simply dissolving it into the 2,000 years of Christian history, but also not compressing it into the very recent history of the last decades. In light of this last document, all the others today inevitably take on new colors and forms. Thus it has always been in the long history of the Christian Church, every time the tradition has managed to show and recognize itself not only as “living,” but also as “healthy.” To maintain this “healthy and robust constitution,” it is necessary to incessantly resort to the sources of tradition and offer a “translation,” as I will try to do next.

3 The Beginning of a “New Paradigm” for Matrimony, Family, and Relationships

The period that followed the Second Vatican Council accelerated the dissolution of the “19th-century model” of understanding and articulating the matrimonial experience. To use the image of a great German sociologist of the second half of the 20th century, “modern society is distinguished from previous social formations by a double increase: a greater possibility of impersonal relationships and more intense personal relationships” (LUHMANN, 2008, p. 43). The text of AL, in fact, sanctioned the ecclesial encounter with this world by means of a series of novelties that deserve to be briefly considered next.

3.1 A Postmodern Theology with Premodern Schemes

The end of the 19th-century model of Catholic theology of matrimony is nourished not only by a new experience of “union” and “generation,” offered by the open liberal and post-liberal society, but also by the use of “interpretive schemes” different from those established between the Council of Trent and the Second Vatican Council. A “postmodern” theology of union and generation resorts to “premodern schemes” to overcome the difficulties of the modern reading provided by the Tridentine “canonical form,” reinterpreted by the apologetics of the 19th century and by the two codes of the 20th century.

3.2 The Self-Criticism of the 19th-Century Magisterium

– a “personalist reading” is proposed that, in no way, excludes the maintenance of the disciplinary and doctrinal structures of the 19th century, but rereads them with new lenses: family holiness, conjugal love, and fruitfulness are understood as part of the ecclesial mission;

– cultural dialogue becomes a promising ground for common development, for the recognition of the good of matrimony and family, as a “school of human enrichment.”

This stage is crucial, as it fits into the “pastoral nature” of Vatican II, according to which the substance of the ancient doctrine of the depositum fidei is distinguished from the formulation of its coating, according to the allocution Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, with which John XXIII opened the council’s works.

3.1 A Postmodern Theology with Premodern Schemes

The end of the 19th-century model of Catholic theology of matrimony is nourished not only by a new experience of “union” and “generation,” offered by the open liberal and post-liberal society, but also by the use of “interpretive schemes” different from those established between the Council of Trent and the Second Vatican Council. A “postmodern” theology of union and generation resorts to “premodern schemes” to overcome the difficulties of the modern reading provided by the Tridentine “canonical form,” reinterpreted by the apologetics of the 19th century and by the two codes of the 20th century.

3.2 The Self-Criticism of the 19th-Century Magisterium

Quite explicitly, AL proposes a “self-criticism” of the magisterial style of the two preceding centuries (cf. AL n. 35-37). In particular, the distortions of a matrimonial pastoral care based on sterile denunciation, on alleged normatization, on “inadequate ways of expressing convictions and of treating people,” on the “imbalance between the unitive end and the procreative end,” on the ideological idealization of theology, on the alleged “self-sufficiency of doctrine,” and on the presumption of “replacing consciences, not forming them” are underlined.

3.3 From Act to Process: The Eschatological Dimension of Matrimony

One of the most decisive aspects of the paradigm shift consists precisely in a difficult transition from considering matrimony as an “act” to thinking of it as a “process.” The relevance of the “facts of life” and the “paths of conscience” thus becomes decisive also for theology, as the last number of AL states with luminous clarity:

Contemplating the fullness we have not yet reached also allows us to relativize the historical path we are taking as families, thus ceasing to demand of interpersonal relationships a perfection, a purity of intentions, and a coherence that we can only find in the definitive Kingdom. Furthermore, it prevents us from judging harshly those who live in conditions of great fragility. We are all called to keep alive the tension for something beyond ourselves and our limits, and every family must live in this constant stimulus. (AL n.325)

4 Open Questions on Union and Generation

A doctrine on matrimony, family, and facts of cohabitation implies a rereading of the entire tradition. Here are the main elements that synthesize historical analysis and systematic reflection.

4.1 The Complex Character of Matrimony

Matrimony is an “institution” that simultaneously participates in nature, civil culture, and ecclesial vocation. None of these dimensions, even in their relative autonomy, can be considered without the others. There are, therefore:

– facts and desires to be assumed;

– rights / duties to be observed and processed;

– gifts and mysteries to be recognized and celebrated.

The irreducibility of each of these levels to the others is one of the greatest challenges of this sacrament. And the challenge of tradition lies precisely in safeguarding the correlation between non-reducible elements. This original complexity of matrimony has put ecclesial doctrine to the test. Both because matrimony comes “before” the sacrament, and because it comes “at the end” of the sacrament. That is why it could be the “first” and “last” of the sacraments. Because in matrimony “grace” shows itself as nature and, at the same time, nature “is already” grace. And, amidst these “poles,” moves the law, which, on the one hand, functions as “pedagogy” and, on the other, as “recognition.” Perhaps it is precisely at this point that we find the most difficulties in our time.

4.2 The Various Goods of Matrimony

The reflection on the “goods” of matrimony was, in turn, the fruit of a natural, cultural, and ecclesial elaboration. When we speak of the “goods” of matrimony, we are moving precisely on this slippery slope. Their identification – inaugurated by Augustine through the triad proles, fides, and sacramentum – realizes a selection of the “data” that – from time to time – nature, history, and the Church place in the focus of their attention. Thus, it was possible for “goods” to emerge that the ancient, medieval, and modern Church did not consider. Let us examine just three:

– the “good of the spouses” and the “community of life and of love” acquired new evidence and a consistent autonomy;

– “sexuality” and the “feeling of love” were transformed from functions of generation to ends in themselves;

– a conscious “ecclesial vocation” changed the relationship between subject, family, and Church, modifying the relationships between these different experiences.

In turn, the “classic goods” already identified by Augustine were enriched and transformed:

– “proles” is not simply generation, as the fruit of the exercise of sex. It is rather the discovery of a “responsible generation.” With all the necessary articulation of a thought on the possible space of “self-determination” of man/woman in procreation;

– fides is not just “conjugal fidelity,” but an act of ecclesial faith. The relationship between “fidelity” and “faith” has become one of the key points of the contemporary rereading of the sacrament. Here the relationship between “act” and “vocation” has opened space for a new theological competence in a field that had previously been practically hijacked by the sole and obvious legal competence.

– sacramentum is not identified only with “indissolubility” – with the “not being able to dissolve,” that is, with the “negation of a negation” – but with the positive act of loving, of living together, of being in a covenant. Perhaps one of the most delicate points of this evolution is to correctly interpret the strong word of Jesus, that the human being “should not separate what God has joined.”

4.3 The Debate on Indissolubility

This key word of Jesus – “what God has joined together, let no one separate” – indicates an “original evidence” and a “final fulfillment.” A theologian said a few decades ago: the bond is indissoluble, but it is not unbreakable. The question, on a systematic level, requires a solution that cannot be simply of a judicial nature, although it requires new legal forms. And it is significant that tradition has identified indissolubility not on the plane of “sacramental difference,” but on that of natural and common logic. Therefore, the remedy for the “failure” of the bond must assume the task of a new understanding that concerns:

– on the one hand, the subjects involved and their conscience;

– on the other hand, the “historicity of the bond,” which is not just an “act,” but a “journey” and a “vocation.”

The classic solution to deal with marital crises was: the bond is indissoluble, but the subject bound by the bond may have suffered “defects of consent.” Thus, the bond can be recognized as “null” based on a serious investigation of these “causes of nullity.” However, everything that the indissolubility of the bond guarantees becomes very fragile if it is subjected to an analysis of the consensus on which the bond is based. Thus one easily passes from “everything” to “nothing.” This is the solution of the “external forum,” which today faces ever-increasing limits, becoming a reason for striking fictions and mystifications. A new way, which AL in some way inaugurates, resuming an older logic, is that of the “internal forum,” where one can discover that the bond, in the conscience of the subjects, can have a history and even fail. The great theme that enters the doctrine of Catholic matrimony, thanks to AL, with some precedent in FC, is “the history of the matrimonial bond.” The doctrinal and disciplinary solution today requires new legal categories, which must be constructed and/or recognized. There is a “lex condenda” (a law to be created) that awaits non-accessory contributions to the theological profile of the sacrament.

4.4 Objective Law and Pastoral Process

The recovery of an “eschatological dimension” of sacramental matrimony imposes, therefore, a certain distance between “legal institution” and “sacramental vocation.” This was very difficult in a Europe marked by the Decree Tametsi, which indirectly originated what the Codes of 1917 and of 1983 later assumed as a rule: that is, the identification of every matrimony between the baptized as a “sacrament.” This identification determines a kind of “vocational zeroing” of the sacrament. And here enters the new theological paradigm of Amoris Laetitia. It does not modify the doctrine, but it guarantees it a hermeneutic that is older and newer than that of late modernity. By recovering an ancient distinction between spheres that have a certain autonomy, it can overcome the (idealized) idea of identifying the good with the objective law. There are “possible goods” that nature and a culture realize, in difference and in analogy with the ecclesial ideal. These goods not only can, but must be recognizable and recognized.

4.5 Forms of Life and the Five Continents of Catholicism

A theological reconsideration of matrimony, in a structural relationship with the family, requires a new correlation of worlds and experiences, which can no longer be interpreted as “parallel legal systems.” The residue of “temporal power” that subsists in “canonical matrimonial law” still prevents the recognition of the “possible good” of the natural sphere and the civil sphere. A major theological rethinking reinterprets the legal dimension in light of eschatology. To all this must be added the great change introduced into the doctrine of matrimony, after the Second Vatican Council, by the discovery of cultures – also matrimonial – from five different continents, which enter as subjects into ecclesial doctrine and discipline. The ecclesial witness, mediated by very diverse natural experiences and civil histories – between Africa, Oceania, Asia, America, and Europe – brings to the doctrine of matrimony a new richness and a great diversification of perspectives, although in continuity with the tradition. Only a “Latin American” pope could bring this structural novelty to full evidence.

5 The Good of the Sexual Relationship and the “Love Phenomenon”

If we recapitulate the general journey taken so far, we can observe a series of relevant data and read them in a sapiential perspective. Personal relationships, communities of life, and spousal covenants were interpreted for centuries with the category of “good,” precisely because from the beginning there was the temptation to read them as an “evil.” As we have seen, the first great synthesis on matrimony, written by Saint Augustine, was titled De bono coniugali (On the Good of Marriage). If we overcome the idea that matrimony is an evil – this was the temptation of a part of ancient Christianity that remained hidden until L. Tolstoy and even after – and if we can also overcome the idea that the only “spouse” of each man or woman can only be Christ and that, therefore, every “other” matrimony is illicit or sinful, we enter into the consideration of matrimony as a “good,” that is, into the theory of the “goods of matrimony.” Augustine offered a synthetic presentation that set a school for many centuries: the three goods of matrimony are children, fidelity, and the sacrament (that is, indissolubility). The primacy of generation is very clear for Augustine, as it is the true central justification of married life. If someone is incapable of continence, the orientation of the sexual act towards generation makes it licit. But not only “generation” is a good of matrimony; also “fidelity” and the “bond for ever.” Already for Augustine, being faithful and binding oneself forever has its own dignity, even if there is no generation.

5.1 The Goods of Matrimony are Three, or Rather, Four

For centuries, this representation of matrimony, justified by generation, remained central. At least until the code of 1917 – and thus officially until 1983 – the definition of the matrimonial bond as ius in corpus (right to the body) of each of the spouses over the other shows the centrality of the act of sexual union as a theological justification for matrimony. It should be added that, always from Augustine, the distinction between “goods in themselves” and “goods for others” placed matrimony “in function” of either generation or social friendship.

But, with late modernity, another way of understanding the relationship between man and woman gained strength. Now in matrimony each subject, besides generating children, found in the good of the other and in their own good in relation to the other a decisive value. The consideration of the pleasure of the flesh itself lost its character of libido to be reined in and intemperance to be fought, to assume that of expression and experience of love – to the point of leading the Catholic Church itself, from the Second Vatican Council, to speak of matrimony as a “community of life and of love” and thus add to the classic tria bona (three goods), of which Augustine had spoken, a fourth good, the bonum coniugum, the good of the spouses. In this horizon, obviously, many things were destined to change.

5.2 Generation Loses its Exclusivity

The personalization of matrimony and family is not painless, not even for theology. The centrality of generation began to be contested and, officially, at least since Humanae Vitae, there was talk of “responsible procreation” or “responsible parenthood.” A certain “control” of generation became possible and reasonable, in line with the new relevance of the good of the couple. From the point of view of systematic thought, this new positioning profoundly altered the Latin system, which Augustine had inaugurated with his authority and whose synthesis had traversed with great force more than a millennium and a half of history.

However, it is not common to draw the necessary systematic consequences from this great transformation: that is, it is difficult to admit that if generation is absolutely central, it is evident that the relationship between man and woman can only be “ordered” if the ius in corpus (right to the body) is exercised within matrimony. If, therefore, sex is justified by generation, it is evident that only matrimony is the place for the exercise of sex. If, however, the relationship between man and woman has, in itself, a value of “good,” the exercise of sexuality acquires a certain autonomy, not only from generation, but also from matrimony. It becomes a “good” without necessarily having to be linked to generation. The relationship between union and generation changes and asks for new, more flexible and less rigid mediations.

5.3 From the Use of Sex to the Experience of Sexuality

This development in no way prevents that even today matrimony is recognized as the complex unity of these four goods (generation, the good of the spouses, fidelity, and indissolubility), but it does not exclude that there may be forms of life, unions (heterosexual or also homosexual) in which only some of these goods exist. That remain goods, even if they are not on the horizon of generation. They generate social friendship, fidelity, peace, even if they do not generate children.

The first question we must ask is, then: can a man and a woman live fidelity, indissolubility, and mutual care without procreating? This is by no means impossible, in fact, it is real and can even take the form of matrimony, even sacramental, as long as the “absence of generation” is not lived and presented as an explicit choice. This has been the case since the time of Augustine. The “inability to procreate” does not prevent the sacrament. But even in the case where non-generation was explicitly desired and, therefore, the sacrament was excluded, what would prevent us today from blessing, in the non-sacramental union, the goods that exist, instead of cursing for the good that does not exist?

Here lies a very delicate point of recent moral tradition: whether the “lesser evil” or “possible good” can be considered a “disorder” and, therefore, a sin, or, instead, an “other order,” a “lesser good.”

5.4 Can a Single Good Be Blessed?

Let us remember that, in 2010, there was a controversy surrounding some statements by Benedict XVI regarding the use of a condom by a “prostitute,” which in certain circumstances could be considered a “moral act.” The same example can be applied not in terms of moral judgment, but in terms of pastoral discernment. Let us take the extreme case in which, in the life of a male or female “prostitute,” the absence of generation and the obvious absence of fidelity are expressly desired – we would say by profession – but a stable relationship is lived, heterosexual or homosexual, in which one cares for the other and desires the good of the other. This “community of life and love,” perceived not as occasional but as having an acquired stability, outside of any sacramental perspective, why could it not be recognized and blessed? And, if so, could it not be a fortiori valid also for the uncommitted life of a man and a woman, or of two men, or of two women, who live their forced or voluntary natural infertility, but who are fruitful in their personal, social, cultural, and ecclesial relationship? If three of the four goods that make up the matrimonial relationship were missing, but the subsisting one was really a good, a form of “living for the other” and of “self-denial,” even amidst the possible absence of the other three, would not the Church be the ideal place for a prophetic recognition, rather than the severe tribunal of a judgment of exclusion?

5.5 The Center and the Periphery: The Different Languages of the Church

In conclusion, we ask ourselves what should be the awareness of the ministers of the Church regarding the phenomenon of union and generation. Should it be that of officials of an institution that carries, imports, and imposes the center in all peripheries? Or of men of God who lead every periphery, however remote and isolated, to the center? The Church does not establish or impose good: first and foremost, it recognizes and welcomes it. Therefore, the decisive question is not what is the Church’s power over blessing, but rather what is the authority that real and possible good exercise over the Church itself. The first question arises from a Church “closed in its center”; the second arises spontaneously from a truly universally outward-bound Church, convinced of having a eucharistic center, but also a sacramental body, and finally, a periphery and an “outside of itself” to be stimulated in praise, thanksgiving, and blessing. A church that knows it can and should speak with different languages in its center, in its extended body, and at the outermost margins of its periphery. How much resemblance to its Spouse and Lord could a Church rediscover in itself if it were accustomed to eating with prostitutes and tax collectors, if it knew how to stop to talk with women of many husbands, if it did not miss the opportunity to entertain itself with those born blind and with poor sick people, in whom it would always be able to discover – without great surprise and with magnanimous openness – the hopeful face of the “first fruits of the Kingdom.” For this reason, the distinctions between marriage, civil union, and natural union serve precisely to recognize, in each reality, the maximum possible good on the part of a Church that recognizes itself not only as a teacher, but above all as a mother.

Andrea Grillo. Pontificio Ateneo Santo Anselmo (Rome); Abbey of Santa Giustina (Padua). Original text in Italian. Translation Paolo Brivio; reviewer Francisco Taborda. Submitted: 03/03/2021. Approved: 06/06/2021. Published: 30/12/2021.

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