CATHOLIC MORAL TEACHING
CHAPTER SEVEN: FAMILY AND SEXUAL ETHICS
(Decalogue 4, 6 & 9)
4. 'Honour your father and your mother.' (Exod. 20:12)
6.'You shall not commit adultery.' ( Exod. 20:14)
9. 'Neither shall you covet your neighbour's wife.' (Deut. 5:21)
Necessary reading: CCC 2196-2246, 2331-2391, 2514-2527
Also CCC 1601-58 on the Sacrament of Marriage and Course 9 section 5;
A Christian Vision Of Family Life:
The family is the "original cell of social life" (CCC 2207). The authority, stability and relationships formed within the family, give a young person the foundations for "freedom, security and fraternity" within society. "Family life is an initiation into society."
When family life is healthy, the whole of society is likely to be healthy. But when family life is sick, that disease slowly affects the entire society and the Church. The family is the natural unit or cell for bringing children into the world, and rearing them in the love of God and their neighbour. To be human was, until recently, to have been begotten by man and woman. Even now, someone has still to supply the gametes!
The whole of Catholic sexual ethics has this purpose: to strengthen and protect family life and love, to build relationships which are permanent, stable and loving, and which afford human happiness and fulfilment according to God's will for us.
Please read: CCC 2196-2246 and make notes on this section.
Authority in the Family and in Society
The most elemental form of authority in human society is parental authority over children. Husband and wife share in God's creative work when they beget and help children to grow up. All authority flows from the Author of all, God our Creator. God vests his authority in parents.
The word comes from the Latin root augere meaning "to grow", which gives us words like auxin (plant growth hormone) and augment. Every form of communal life needs an authority, a principle of unification, coordination and discipline, with the ability to sanction the actions of members of that society towards the common good. Good authority fosters growth..
Authority should always be a ministerium, a service of the common good, guaranteeing a dynamic order and well-being. It has to balance individuals' rights with their fulfilment of duties.
We need to distinguish between rightful authority, and its wrongful abuse in authoritarianism. While reacting against the latter, many people fall into an anti-authority mentality, the rejection of legitimate authority. This is the high road to anarchism and chaos. Abusus non tollit usum - the abuse of something does not negate its proper use; it does not prove that it should be abolished. Otherwise we would abolish all motor cars because some people drive too fast and cause accidents.
No social group has ever existed and survived without some form of authority. The French and the Russian Revolutions teach us that those who overturn the established authorities, may become even more authoritarian themselves. The question always is, what sort of authority is proper, and how shall it be exercised?
Please read CCC 1897-1904 on authority in society.
It is the task of civil authority to promote:
1. Maximum participation of citizens in social and political life.
2. The education of citizens in life and in public responsibility.
3. To select and educate future rulers well, by civic and political formation. They should gain experience at lower levels of town and province, and also experience different branches of government (education, law, finance etc.)
It is desirable that power be dispersed between the legislature e.g. Parliament; the executive - government ministries, the police and customs; and the judiciary - the court system. Uncontrolled centralization of power can be very dangerous.
Is state authority divinely derived? St Paul (Rom. 13:1-7) maintains that it is. "He who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed . . . For rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad . . he is the servant of God to execute His wrath on the wrongdoer . . Pay all of them their dues." 1 Peter 2:13-17 tells Christians to "Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the Emperor as supreme, or to governors . . . "
The Church does not specify one particular political system: She has had to adapt and survive with all sorts of regimes: empires, monarchies, dictatorships, democracies. We can classify the various types under two headings:
1. Theocratic states: OT Israel, the Holy Roman Empire, the Papal States, Calvin's Geneva, the Stuart monarchy with its theory of kingly rule by divine right. God reigns via the Sovereign.
2. Immanentist rule - the divine comes through the people and the organs they elect or which embody their aspirations.
a) democracy, relying upon the divine spark in Everyman, who votes for his rulers.
b) totalitarianism - the State embodies the divine Spirit, a concept of the German philosopher Hegel.
c) nationalism - one race or nation considers itself chosen and sacred, with a special destiny.
d) socialism/communism - the will of the proletariat, expressed via the Party, is sacred and historically irresistible.
e) autocracy - the will of the conqueror is sacred.
State authority is necessarily limited. We saw in an earlier chapter that human positive law is only valid so long as it does not contravene the divine natural law and divine positive law. Unjust or immoral laws are not binding in conscience. They contribute to authority being undermined. Aquinas notes that an unjust law is an act of violence.
The Family in God's Plan
The Bible begins with the creation of Adam and Eve for one another, and the command: Go forth and multiply. It ends with the wedding feast of the lamb. The marriage theme runs consistently through the entire Scripture.
CCC 2201 points out that "the consent of the spouses" is the bedrock of marriage and family life. It lists two purposes: "the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of children." Notice that the family comes prior to any State or public body. The family enjoys God-given rights, which the State must respect, does not bestow and cannot withdraw.
The British State began registering marriages only in 1830 and dissolving them in 1857 with the introduction of civil divorce. Prior to that all marriages had to be contracted in the Church of England, or before 1559 in the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has been blessing and solemnising marriages in Britain since the days of St Alban (305 AD) or earlier.
At present both Westminster and the U.N. documents speak of various kinds of "alternative families" - one-parent families, cohabitees, polygamists, serial monogamists, "gay couples" adoptive families etc., CCC 2202 stresses that the normative family is that of "a man and a woman united in marriage, together with their children." In dealing with Social Services, Health and Education services, we must insist that they respect our Catholic cultural and religious heritage, just as they would claim to respect that of Hindus and Muslims.
By the principle of subsidiarity (see ch.10), the role of the State and other social bodies is to support the family when necessary. Public bodies can never replace the family or usurp its prerogatives.
The Christian family is "the domestic Church", ecclesiola domestica (CCC 2204). The father is called to exercise a priestly role for the benefit of his wife and children. He has spiritual responsibility for the welfare of their souls. CCC 2205 calls for daily family prayer and meditation on the Scriptures. The crisis in the Church today is not fundamentally a crisis of vocations to the priesthood: it is a crisis of Catholic family life.
Conversely, the Church is the "Family of God." Revelation is full of family words like Father, Son, Mother, children, brothers and sisters, to describe our relationships with the Holy Trinity and the saints.
1. Consult the full list of family rights in FC §46. In your opinion, which of these is British society and government failing to ensure and protect?
2. Summarize and list the duties of children and of parents given in the Catechism.
3. Does the Catechism recognise a right of parents to use corporal punishment on their children?
4. Can a co-habiting couple evangelise their children? (cf. CCC 2225)
5. What does CCC say about parents advising their children on marriage and on a choice of career?
6. List the duties of citizens.
7. When must citizens refuse to obey civil authority, and when are they morally entitled to take up armed resistance against it?
Necessary reading: Fernandez & Socias ch.12, pp.227-44. Attempt the questions on p.243 and assignments 4 and 5 on p.244
Fernandez & Socias ch.14, pp.275-310. Read this chapter and answer all the questions and assignments.
The nature and purpose of sexuality: CCC 2331-36
To be human is to exist either as male or as female. We are sexual beings by nature, existing in one of these two modes. Sexuality urges us out of isolation into the company of others. We find others attractive, we look for a suitable and trusted companion. Most of the human race find their closest relationships in family bonds – of love and of blood. There is an old saying: 'You choose your own friends, but God gives you your family. Our families challenge us to love in a more Christ-like way than do our friends, selected to suit ourselves.
It is not good for man to be alone. Man was made for community – family, friends, social groups. Even the hermit monk is spiritually bonded to humanity by his intercessory prayers. Man and woman were made in the image of God, the image of the Trinity, the Divine Community. In the mystery of the Godhead, the love of the Father and the Son is so powerful that it is a Third Divine Person, the Holy Spirit "who proceeds from the Father and the Son."
"The primordial model of the family is to be sought in God Himself, in the Trinitarian mystery of His life. . . The divine We is the eternal pattern of the human "we". (JPII, Letter to Families)
The cooperation of husband and wife in the creation of new life mirrors in a dim way the fruitful Divine Love. Marriage is a covenant in which man and woman "give themselves to each other and accept each other." They form a communion of life and love, and by their loving can bring into existence a third person, their child. As 'two become one flesh' in sexual union, by God's gift a new human being of infinite value can come into being. That child will continue to live for all eternity. In sexual union, therefore, man and woman become co-creators with God of a new human life. He infuses an immortal soul into that which is conceived. The child bears characteristics of both its father and its mother. A child is the greatest gift a couple can give to one another, and one of God's greatest gifts to them both. "The children . . should consolidate that [marriage] covenant, enriching and deepening the conjugal communion of the father and mother." The family is the first human society, as we have already noted.
It follows from this that sexual intercourse is a most sacred and precious act, worthy of immense reverence. In its potential to call into existence a new human person, destined to live for ever, it is an act which flows towards the shores of eternity. Every one of us originates from such a union of our father and mother. One commentator noted that when God wants to breathe new life into the world or into the Church, He does not start by forming committees. Instead, He sends the Holy Spirit and puts a generous love into the hearts of His sons and daughters, a love that bears fruit in offspring. Every baby is a sign of hope for the future of the world, and of God's confidence in mankind.
Every new child brings into the world a particular and unrepeatable "image and likeness" of God Himself. Therefore God is present in human fatherhood and motherhood in a very special way, as the source of this "image and likeness of Himself." This exists primarily in the immortal soul, secondarily in the genetic constitution. Begetting is a continuation of the great act of creation. For this reason it should take place only in the graced environment of the Sacrament of Matrimony.
Man is "the only creature on earth whom God willed for his own sake." Every person who exists has been willed to exist by God. You may have seen the car sticker: "Drive carefully, most people are caused by accidents." Amusing, but in fact totally untrue. We may make "mistakes", but God does not. "At the moment of conception itself, man is already destined to eternity in God" (JP II ibid.)
Parents desire to have children to start or to expand their family. But, like God, they should also will the child for its own sake. A child is a gift from God, not a possession of the parents. Every child is one for whose redemption Christ shed his blood on the Cross. "A soul is worth a world." A child is only on loan for eighteen years to his/her parents: then s/he must make his/her own way in the world.
EXERCISE: Read and make notes on FC 11-27.
The essential qualities of Christian marriage:
According to Augustine God instituted marriage for three reasons: proles, fides, sacramentum i.e. the good of offspring, the blessing of mutual fidelity and love, and indissolubility following from its sacred symbolism, signifying the union of Christ with his Church. Natural marriage enjoys the first two goods, but only Christian marriage has the third, and is raised to a new degree of excellence by it.
Trent listed three reasons for marriage; firstly, the association and companionship, mutual help in facing the trials of life and old age; secondly the purpose of procreation, to raise up children, especially in the true faith; thirdly, as a remedium concupiscentiae, a remedy for concupiscence which allows one to avoid sins of lust.
In Casti Connubii (1930) Pius XI went further. He included conjugal love as part of the good of fidelity. This love must go beyond mutual help and have as its primary purpose that the spouses help each other grow in virtue and holiness. He did not see marriage as incidental only to offspring, but implied that Christian marriage is in itself a vocation and way of holiness.
Vatican II in GS 47-52 presented an integrated view of marriage and family. They are a "community of love." Conjugal love "is uniquely expressed and perfected through the marital act." The fruitfulness of marriage is the fulfilment of this act.
Indissolubility in the New Testament
As expectations of marital satisfaction have risen, so the number dissatisfied with their own particular attempts seems to have multiplied. Easier divorce has led to a situation where 45% of marriages in Britain now end in divorce, and 800,000 children never see their own fathers. How can we respond to this trend?
Both Jesus and St Paul stress the indissolubility of marriage. Look up and copy out the relevant parts of the following texts: 1 Cor.7:10-11; Mk 10:1-12; Lk 16:18; Mt. 5:32 and 19:3-12. You will notice that while Paul, Mark and Luke are quite categorical on the question of divorce and remarriage, Matthew's texts introduce an extra phrase, "except for fornication" - me epi porneia in the Greek. The meaning appears to be this: "A man who divorces his wife - (I am not talking about cases of cohabitation / irregular unions) - and marries another, is guilty of adultery." (19:9)
This has led to prolonged debate. It could also be read as: "A man who divorces his wife - which is allowed on grounds of adultery - but then goes on to marry another, is guilty of adultery." St Paul allowed a wife to separate from her husband, but not to remarry. Matthew may be allowing a separation on the grounds of adultery, but no remarriage by either party afterwards. All five quotations need to be read together. It is not legitimate to read Mt. 19:9 contrary to Mark, Luke and Paul, in the sense of permitting divorce and remarriage on the grounds of adultery. Examination of the context of Mt. 19 clarifies Jesus' intention.
The Jewish law allowed a man to divorce his wife if he found some "erwat dabar" - cause of unworthiness in her. The laxer school of Pharisees and scribes (Hillel) interpreted this very broadly. If the wife gossiped too much with the neighbours, spoke disrespectfully of her in-laws or put too much salt in the cooking, she could be dismissed. The husband must say "I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you," and give her the writ of divorce. That was it. She had no redress. A woman could never divorce her husband. The stricter school of Shammai held that adultery alone was grounds for divorce. Human nature being as it is, the practice of Hillel prevailed.
When Jesus answers the Pharisees' question (19:3), He sides with neither school. Instead He goes back to the creation acount in Genesis, and reminds them of God's original intentions: "They are no longer two, therefore, but one body. Therefore what God has united, man must not divide." Moses had allowed divorce only because of their hardness of heart. henceforth, let it be as was originally intended. The reaction of the apostles proves that they were shocked at the radical nature of Jesus' teaching: "If that is how things are between husband and wife, it is not advisable to marry." He was not allowing divorce with remarriage even after the adultery of one partner. The following reference to "eunuchs" proves this conclusively.