Christian Marriage
Christian Marriage confers the dignity upon the human person that is their due, being based upon mutual respect and honor out of the Love of God.
The “Brotherhood of Man” and the Family
The connections, inter-dependence and societal organisation of all human life are a mystery to man, as is that thing that’s been called, somewhat non-inclusively, “the Brotherhood of Man”. What I mean is that we have yet to discover the ideal way in which to organise mankind, or the ideal philosophy of social planning. There is no political system that does not foster corruption internally and war externally. No one even really understands the world financial markets, or why the cost of a loaf of bread in Europe can feed a whole family in Africa.
The only true economy is the heavenly economy, where here is justice for all. And that economy dictates that every slight committed against a human being, even the slightest, is a sin. The reason of this indissolubility of human relations from the Christian perspective, is the common Fatherhood of God which makes us all siblings. The ideal political system does not exist on Earth, it is the Kingdom of God in Heaven. We cannot mentally divorce ourselves from the rest of Humanity. Human relationships are indissoluble, whether form the genetic record or from the Christian record. The reason you feel empathy for a stranger is the same as the reason you fell empathy for you own baby: You see a bit of you in them.
Altruism is good for the soul for this reason and selfishness is injurious to the psyche. It is healthier to feel true empathy at your workplace than to pretend to feel empathy while gathering selfishly. It is impossible to have a true friendship if you do not have a true awareness of the brotherhood of man. Your workplace is your primary interface with the rest of the world. This is my point: Human Beings are thrown into the mental turmoil of being torn between selfish and altruistic consideration from the time that they open their eyes.
We cannot deny our own blood: this is the human state. There is no investigating the relations in marriage without first comprehending the relations between humans; and a bad human being will be a bad husband for the same reason. In the section we shall see how this relates to marriage, the closest of human relations, and the most difficult of them for the same reason.
Headings
Marriages and International Treaties
What a secular or civil marriage certificate adds to this is the effect of a treaty between nations. No other analogy seems to work as well, like business relations, company mergers etc. This is the truth of the matter: everyone is everyone else’s distant cousin. Nations have treaties, individuals have marriages. Both have boundaries and both have their own unique internal environment. Both have and utilise both threat and reward, both relationships give the impression of being generally prone to disaster or teetering on the brink of breakdown, and both for the same reasons: personal interest. This is all that can be said in philosophical terms of the general intention and scope of a secular marriage. It is a hopeful extending of the hand, between individuals of a society who are inextricably linked to each other by mysterious incredibly close bonds blood much, much before that hand was ever extended. It is a treaty between persons who are very, very close so each other already by virtue of their humanity.
Further, much the entire mass of humanity through this treaty is tied up into pairs, just like every nation is tied by its boundaries to at least one other. And what can be said of the purpose of marraige? As in the treaty between nations, it is the mutual benefit, whatever that entails, and so this might well include the rearing of children or it might, as we can see, just as well not.
So this is a human life: He/she is thrown from their birth into the “safety-net” of the family, and when of age, will grow their own family within the safety net of society which is the rest of humanity. As you can see in both cases the crux of the matter is the family: It is the family that grows the individual, and the family that the individual grows.
And this is what brings us to marriage. Humanity in its ideal form consists almost entirely in pairs of married couples. Marriage is what provides sufficient basis for symbiosis which is the interpersonal beneficence with due concern for the protection of individual boundaries. When this institution breaks down that all sorts of other boundaries become salient and necessary in order to serve much the same purpose though in more tyrannical ways.
The more that the world is grounded in the family, the less it will be in hostile border disputes, financial and trade deals. If the marriage itself is seen as a trade deal then international relationships will be the same as inter-tribal relationships: survival of the fittest. Everything starts with marriage, because the human being is a married being, and is born and nurtured among married beings. This is why it’s worth getting right. Marriage which is our identity, determines the fate of nations. Marriage is the ideal, it cannot be subordinate to a different ideal like pleasure. Any attempt to do so dissipates humanity. Most sales campaigns are based on this, the creation of a false-need, and the perception that you need something more than you need marriage or that you need something to work more than you need marriage to work.
As you look across the vast expanse of humanity, and with the exceptions of a few of the privileged class, there is indeed one thing which does bind us: marriage and the desire for peace in the home. When we plan society so as to engender better marriage, we get better society because society gets what it wanted. If human beings can ever be said to be of one mind or to possess one ideal, then this is that ideal and this is that mind. This is the one desire that truly and justifiably binds humanity together. At the end of the day, we all want to be able to return to a loving home.
Marriage is entrusted not only with the creation of a human being, it is also concerned with the creation of a righteous human being. What I mean to say that is that not only is marriage where we get a man/woman, but a good man, or what we have come to call in the western world…a gentleman.
Why is it that husbands and wives argue? This is not due to any specific properties unique and exclusive to marriages as most might think. Any two persons forced to live interdependently would probably argue at least to the same extent. It is also the reason that nations argue. Two neighbouring nations are bound by their borders tighter than any marriage could possibly bind them, and must find some way of co-existence. The reason that husbands and wives argue is in essence no different in its essence form the reason that nations argue and the reasons that humans are argumentative.
Marriages Cannot be Darwinian
But Is Marriage Different from the ol’ evolutionary conveyor-belt? If there was ever an endearing icon of humanity, it is the conveyor belt, that thing that has some to represent all our repetitive tasks and processes that we can never escape and seemingly were only ever part of already. The division also lends itself to simplicity and to simple analogy: there is one for the production line, and another to the incinerator.
But us marriage any different? Suddenly, it seems, that into all this turmoil of gnarled claw and twisted web and hooked beak and steely sword chasing after scampering hairy hide, thrashing gossamer wing and shrieking silken veil, the returning coming-of-age hunter and warrior is abruptly presented with doe-eyed love and gurgling child.
Marriage is a special case among the animal relationships, because human beings are suddenly aware and their minds are bathed in strange notions of feelings that though they might not be clearly defined as eternal, might yet be called “undying”. Suddenly, apart from himself, there is one other thing that man does not want to ever end. Man, as the first animal to be aware that he is about to die, is the first animal to be aware that he would rather live forever. Not only this, but he does not want to live forever except with his family. Joy is presented to him as having two elusive co-ordinates: eternal life and eternal love.
Human beings have been thrust very unceremoniously upon this earth in deep conflict between what is their deepest fear and their deepest desire. This puts the entire scenario of courtship, bonding and procreating into a completely different light, because as his closest relationships, neither does he inherently want them to ever end. He is aware of beauty and fragility, and this makes him artistic and tender. Because he is terrified and lonely, this can make him selfish, malicious and unreasonable too. Evolution very considerately has given to him no means of navigating this emotional ocean and has left him without compass so to speak. For he dies just as surely as a giraffe and yet he bonds just as strongly as a lobster.
Now that we’ve laid out an outline as loosely and yet in a sense as closely as one might me made of humanity and the fate of nations, let us examine marriage in a theological sense, so as to draw a comparison. Although Darwin stated that biology loves to survive, we find that humans do not want to survive without love. Now, for those persons who believe in a Creator God, are not constrained to believe in this “bungee-jump” model of existence, by which I mean in case its not obvious a sort of being thrust into existence and them back out of it while attached to a giant rubber-band, with the attendant emotional fallout completely unaccounted for.
Rather the Christian faith states that God does not simply thrust man into an existential crisis without a paddle. How does He do this? If the foregoing discussion made any sense, then one would not be surprised at God for sanctifying, glorifying, and perhaps as many might see it, “micro-managing” that very institution on which the fate of nations depend. If God were to bring sanity to humanity, it would make sense that He bring sanity to Marriage.
“The fact that theology also includes the body should not surprise or astonish anyone who is conscious of the mystery and reality of the Incarnation. Through the fact that the Word of God became flesh, the body entered theology…”
God is Love. If man is to partake of Eternity, then he must speak its language, and that language is love. Is not the Bible the story of two Gardens? In the Garden of Gethsemane it is that Jesus demonstrates his complete self-giving to the Father. This is not something that He contrives for our sakes, but rather it is the very nature of Love. Love is the only definition of a relationship.
It is in nature that beauty and pain come together in their most exquisite form. It is possible to die in the greatest pain in the midst of serene beauty, like the tribesperson mauled by a bear on a misty mountain trail, or a shipwrecked sailor upon a beautiful island that dies from thirst. The beauty of that which survives bears witness to the pain of that which did not. This is the basis of why Christians base their marriages on the former model of the created love and not on Darwinism. God created man knowing that man would kill His Son.
Does God have a need for man, when He already had the Holy Angels and needed them not either? This is how Marriage enters the human story: A communion of persons mirroring the Communion of the Holy Trinity, with relationships mirrored by loving self-gift.
Salvation out of Love
This is what Marriage is then. God is not inventing the wheel here, marriage is already given us, we are to be as He is, in His Image, and He has given us this in the very first Creation. God is not being dogmatic for the sake of being autocratic, rather He is being authoritative in order to preserve authenticity. Thus it is that man is made “in the image and likeness of God”. “Man becomes the image of God not so much in his solitude as in the communion of persons” TOB 9:3.
The issue of marriage and the relations of the sexes have been addressed with a profound and yet hidden beauty in the very first book of the Bible. It is salient here that God indeed expresses his clear intention for marriage so early in the narrative. Let us examine for example Genesis 2:24-25:
“Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” These verses contain the first marriage of man “..he clings to this wife”, its meaning: “for this reason…” and the statement of its indissolubility “..they become one flesh..”. It is the state of what has been called “Original Innocence” that makes this possible “…they were naked, yet not ashamed”.
When Eve is created from one of his ribs, Adam exults joyously “At last! This is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones” He rejoices in this oneness as a mother or father would exult in adoration of their newborn child of their loins. To divorce one’s wife it seems in God’s eyes, would in a sense be akin to divorcing one’s child or one’s mother- one’s “flesh of flesh, bones of bones!”
Thus when we see two unmarried persons have children today, we are left with a curious situation: the parents are related to their children, yet remain ostensibly unrelated to each other since they have not affirmed any bond yet. Adam could deny if he chose, his love for Eve, but not his bond with her. There are two relationships that God has taken care to lay down in His very first words to us: our relationship with Him and with our spouse, and both are stated in no uncertain terms and in plain sight in the undefiled earthly Paradise.
Because it is the closest relationship, it fulfils the work of the kind that most closely mirrors and participates in the creative work of God. God has specifically sanctified it and it is the work of the rest of the community “humanity” through their very relationships to protect it. In this, the preservation of the family as its primary goal, do all other societal units whether local councils or national and international policy makers find their purpose. Humanity find salvation, by finding that it is really a family. Thus the fruits of marriage and the relevance of this discussion on it extend way beyond the married couple, enveloping the whole world for thus is explained the principles of human relationships and human sociology.
God’s plan is to nurture babies, by the nurturing of families, and the responsibility for this is placed upon all of society, as part of the family of humanity. The responsibility of the care of the weakest members is placed upon the strongest members to use or abuse, and this is Free Will that brings Heaven or Hell as reward. But herein lies the key to Eternity: not at the bottom of some ocean whirlpool, nor at the top of some snow-topped peak nor upon a distant star. It lies in the family!
The Sacramentality of the Human Body
From this then, arises the sacramentally of the human body, the sacramentally of marriage and the sacramentality of the human family at large. Each is a “visible sign that confers invisible grace” i.e. a sacrament, and the grace that is received as we have said, is our Salvation. Thus it is that through our bodies that we find Salvation and not in denial of or apart from them.
Our bodies are not to be taken as an accident of nature, but rather God willed our bodies for a purpose, they have a divine meaning, a ‘Theology of the Body”. Our bodies of pleasure, our bodies of pain, our bodies of health and of sickness, our bodies of satiation, of hunger and of thirst, our bodies of joy, our bodies of sadness. It is in family that our restless bundles of sensing and discharging nerve fibers attached to all their twitching muscles and cranking bones, attempting to connect to, and communicate with the vast Universe finally find peace and sanity…and rest. This is sacramentality and this is grace, and this is what it means to be “like God”. God is after all, a Loving Communion of Persons:
“Thus, in this dimension, a primordial sacrament is constituted, understood as a sign that transmits effectively in the visible world the invisible mystery hidden in God from time immemorial. This is the mystery of truth and love, the mystery of divine life, in which man really participates….It (the body) was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden since time immemorial in God, and thus be a sign of it…Against this vast background we understand fully the words that constitute the sacrament of marriage…” TOB 19:4,5
“God is love (1 John 4:8) and in himself he lives a mystery of personal loving communion. Creating the human race in his own image and continually keeping it in being, God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion” (Gaudium et spes, 12).
“The only ‘place’ in which this self-giving in its whole truth is made possible is marriage, the covenant of conjugal love freely and consciously chosen, whereby man and woman accept the intimate community of life and love willed by God himself… A person’s freedom, far from being restricted by this fidelity, is secured against every form of subjectivism or relativism and is made a sharer in creative Wisdom”(Familiaris Consortio, 11).
“The first setting in which faith enlightens the human city is the family. I think first and foremost of the stable union of man and woman in marriage. This union is born of their love, as a sign and presence of God’s own love, and of the acknowledgment and acceptance of the goodness of sexual differentiation, whereby spouses can become one flesh (cf. Gen 2:24) and are enabled to give birth to a new life, a manifestation of the Creator’s goodness, wisdom and loving plan. Grounded in this love, a man and a woman can promise each other mutual love in a gesture which engages their entire lives and mirrors many features of faith.
Promising love for ever is possible when we perceive a plan bigger than our own ideas and undertakings, a plan which sustains us and enables us to surrender our future entirely to the one we love” (LF, 52). “Faith is no refuge for the fainthearted, but something which enhances our lives. It makes us aware of a magnificent calling, the vocation of love. It assures us that this love is trustworthy and worth embracing, for it is based on God’s faithfulness which is stronger than our every weakness” ( LF, 53).
“faith reveals just how firm the bonds between people can be when God is present in their midst” (LF, 50)
(LF, 52-53). “…this love is trustworthy and worth embracing, for it is based on God’s faithfulness which is stronger than our every weakness”.
The whole of TOC 105:4 should be here, really!
It is no wonder that Michael West reflects in his analysis of the TOB that in a sense Jesus accepts his “difficult” marriage to humanity in the Garden of Gethsemane, when amidst great disturbance, He submits to the will of the Father. More now than a rainbow, it is the Cross that has come to represent this Marriage and it’s “difficulty”. This is why he goes so far as to say that Jesus’ spiritual marriage to his Bride, the Church is “consummated” on the Cross.
The Cross the nature of Jesus’ relation with human beings. And what other institution are we given in which to love sacrificially other than that of marriage and the procreation of children? This is the means given to human beings of experiencing daily the love of God. When we pray we praise and thank God for this life that was begotten and nurtured in the marriage of our parents, we confess for our affronts to this life of love, and we ask for strength to love more perfectly.
Following a lifetime of sacrificial love, may we be counted worthy to rejoice in and celebrate the sacrificial love of the Son for the Father, at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, where He stands, “as if slain”, by love. One cannot be taught love without being taught nuptial love. A religion cannot teach love without teaching marital love. Marital love is at the core of Christianity, because Family is in the very Nature of its God.
Indissolubility:
(Prov.2:16-19) “You will be saved from the loose woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words, who forsakes the partner of her youth and forgets her sacred covenant; Her way leads down to death, and her paths to the shades: For those who go to her never come back.
Malachi 2:13 “…the Lord was a witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did not one God make her? Both flesh and spirit are his. And what does the one God desire? Godly offspring. So look to yourselves, and do not let anyone be faithless to the wife of his youth. For I hate divorce, says the Lord, the God of Israel…”
(Matthew 5:31,32) “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
If one does not desire to live as the faithful spouse of another temporally, one cannot desire to live as the spouse of Christ eternally. Marriage is a lesson in faithfulness. If a man cannot raise himself up to adhere to his promises in the face of storms and disappointments, will that person be ready for faithfulness to the Kingdom? The road to holiness is hardly meant for one who cannot even forgive their own flesh and blood. Jesus is at the heart of your own family, which is where you will find your Salvation. The reason that your marriage is indissoluble is principally because you are called to charity no matter what the cost. If charity was a cafeteria-type commodity then so would marriage be a trial and error type enterprise.
Betrayal of the marriage commitment is a sin inasmuch as betrayal of any commitment of trust is a sin. But to say that marriage is dissoluble is to seek also dissolve every sin, because every sin is an essence a betrayal of love and the debt that we owe to humanity. It is a mortal sin that places your soul in peril of Hell because it is a sin with deadly consequences for society and the lives of innocents, consequences that are often unseen as we discuss subsequently. If Adam had dissolved his relationship with Eve, we would have no human race!
Polygamy that creeps into the Biblical narrative is in my view taken up by the Patriarchs from the customs of the tribes that they belonged to and to which they came to settle in with and is not commanded by God, but is, like in the case of slavery in the Old Testament, tolerated and not criticised explicitly, so also divorce was permitted for a times as Jesus states “because of the hardness of your hearts” Many ages later, when Jesus Himself is asked about divorce Jesus issues what sounds like threat against any attack upon the sanctity of this institution of marriage stating: “what God has brought together let no man put asunder”. “It was not so in the beginning”, He says, clearly indicating that the way He intended Marriage to be, was the way it had been given to us, not what it had or has become.
Why Stick it Out?
Why carry on in marriage that seems clearly unsuitable? The simplest answer to this is that it takes two to make a marriage. If a marriage can be dissolved purely on the subjective opinion of one of the partners then few marriages would stand, and more importantly few would validly fall. This is why the rules for annulment are rigorous and seek to be objective.
That is all the objectivity that is available to what is a private affair. The rest is left to prayer and conversion. If you think that you are in the wrong marriage, it might be that through perseverance you might undergo a personal conversion that brings you to realize that it was wrong because of you. It might also be that your partner might have a personal conversion through your perseverance. Both are stated ideals and objectives of the Christian life. Will a dissolved marriage then not obstruct these ideals? The Church is quite clear about cases where separation is necessary for the sake of safety and for the protection of the children whether physically or financially in the Canon Law.
“Love never fails” 1 Cor 13:8 (NRSV), “Love never ends” (NIV, NSAB).
24:12 And because wickedness is multiplied, most men’s love will grow cold.
Love in relationships has grown cold. People don’t love each other enough to marry.
Jesus is the spouse of the church. This marriage actually went terribly to start with, for he was rejected. But it was one ordained by the Father. And Jesus was determined to make it work. But it just kept getting worse. To the point that His wife wanted to nail Him to a cross, and did. Surely no marriage could have been worse than that. If there was ever a marriage to get out of it was this one! But Jesus didn’t give up on His wife, and stuck with her. If He had divorced her, then we would have no part in divine sonship, no eternal life. The day we died and were buried, we would have stayed right there in the ground. We go to Heaven because God sticks with us in spite of our faults. God does not bail out.
The Extended Marriage Family
What is Marriage a celebration of? We’ve all heard the masters of ceremonies going, “…we have come here to celebrate so and so’s future lives together…” Can a future be celebrated, or is it merely anticipated and hoped for. Rather if Marriage celebrates anything at all, it is the celebration of all the events that have brought one to that day and the hope that the event holds for the future, rather than the future itself. It is a celebration of an individual’s upbringing, his education, his spiritual growth, his family pedigree if present, all that has gone into making him an individual that is worthy to be trusted unconditionally.
For the institute of Marriage is one of complete trust. From a man’s point of view, it is everything that went into making him the person that a young lady is willing to trust her life with. The trust is of course signified in the vows, where the whole ceremony culminates with the consensual “I do!” of each partner. When you can the look the bride’s father, brother and whole family in the eye obtain the blessing of his complete trust, which you know that you have kept, at least to the extent that God requires of you, who would surely say “You can have this man’s daughter/ sister when you have performed the full marriage ceremony in my Presence”.
Jacob serves his uncle Laban for a full seven years before marrying Rachel, as per his father-in-law’s wishes, and this wonderful verse is related: “So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her” Gen 29:20. You see, every strand of the spouses’s life is here incorporated into the marital relationship, which shows that the marriage does not constitute a breaking up of ties but their strengthening of bonds in the family and in society. While allowing for privacy of the couple it prevents isolation. God, being a “relational” Being, creates not individualistic creatures, but relational ones.
The Nuptial meaning of Sex
“…both are naked, because they are free with the very freedom of the gift…the “spousal” attribute, that is, the power to express love: precisely that love in which the human person becomes a gift…Here we mean freedom above all as self-mastery (self-dominion). Under this aspect, self-mastery is indispensable in order for man to be able to “give himself”…the consciousness of the meaning of the body…points to a particular power to express love…“We clearly grasp…the connection that exists between the revelation-discovery of the spousal meaning of the body and man’s original happiness”” 15:1,4,5 TOB
“Indeed the Lord Jesus, when he prays to the Father, “that all may be one…as we are one” (Jn 17:21-22)…shows that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find itself except through a sincere gift of self” Gaudium et Spes 24:3
Maritally Chaste Sex and the Love it Confers
Sex is that act which occurs in a chaste and committed relationship, where nothing has been held back- neither one’s promises to a person, nor one’s promises to God- a “total giving of self” which constitutes the chastity of marriage and the conjugal act. Taken in this manner, sex is the pinnacle of a physical relationship between persons and also is one that suffers no disconnect from their intellectual relationship. The intimacy of sex is no more a lie, when one’s lives and mutually committed. The vocation of the single life consists in precisely that: the mission to actually remain sexually single.
The experience of temptation in the single life is the call to stop being single rather than to stop being chaste. Sexual life is hardly restricted to what happens between the sheets, it is also everything that happens outside the bedroom in a million gestures, kindnesses, signs of caring and prayer. Human beings flourish and thrive emotionally in monogamous relationships, and marriage confers emotional security to that relationship.
Marriage rather than something that lassoes or reels in the wild sex-life and tames it, is what engenders and fosters it. It is Marriage from which your family and your children are brought forth and nurtured, and in the midst of all this holy chastity and security and spirituality of prayer they, both the spousal and the parental relationships with one’s children will get the best and fullest nurturing. Indeed it is in theses preconditions that these relationships will be “complete”, or will have all the prerequisites for developing into complete relationships. There is no better situation for a man and a woman than as a committed couple.
There is just no doubt about this, and contrary to any myopic view presented in tabloids, if you’ve met enough decent educated persons in your life, though many might have had occasional misdeeds, there are probably none that practise promiscuity with abandon. Even the most “eligible bachelor” will not enjoy having one-night stands all their lives, and not only that, neither will they meet the best women in the land, for all the world’s best women are looking for home and family. One will through such a lifestyle, while searching for the thing that man desires most, miss out on that very thing: the undivided, undying devotion of another person.
The cost is great because the reward is great, no less than the reward of gaining true love. Marriage is the perfection of love, that 5-star, Rolls Royce standard of love, engineered to perfection through centuries of wisdom. Marriage is what separates of man from the beasts, and is the mark of civilization. And I am not convinced that it possible to draw a line between sexual lives of a married couple and their marital lives itself, rather they are better taken as a single thing. The notion that sex is “a thing that happens in marriage” is not in my opinion helpful, nor would I say that we have the intellectual capacity to draw that line between those two notions of sex and marriage: One has sex with one’s spouse with the same love that one loves them with when they are not having sex.
There are not “two loves”, rather one love, and several acts, sex and the raising of children being one of those, and the pinnacle of the physical acts, prayer being the pinnacle of the spiritual acts. There are some religious traditions which well-meaning describe the marital contract as that which makes it legal to have sex with a person, and this while not untrue is not a full definition of the marital contract, rather it is that which makes it legal to have children with a person.
My proof for that would be that it would be immoral to marry someone and have persistently contracepted sex with them, while it would not be immoral to marry someone and have no sex with them, yet foster adopted children. It is also because of this that sex before marriage is aberrant. Sex is what occurs in a marriage. But we will talk more of the problem of pre-marital sex later.
God constructed human society in concentric circles. We are necessarily called to have a charitable view within our spheres of influence in each of these, starting with, and most importantly, the one closest to us. Human loving interactions are a spectrum, from conversation and eye contact to time spent doing things together.
But the culmination is the sexual act, the time when no words nor deeds are required but the act itself, and this is what gives it its spiritual dimension, for Christian spirituality “not by works”, and Christian prayer is “not by… many words”. It is the consummation and none else. And so the sexual aspect of a male-female relationship is its pinnacle, and not a cause of embarrassment, or even a mere embellishment upon the married life. The closest aspect of the marital relationship is the sexual aspect. Sex is to the human physical interaction what contemplative prayer is to the spiritual interaction with God.
Contraception and Christian Marriage
For the reasons of its supremely elevated status as we have just been describing, any tampering with the sex life is to risk decapitating the physical relationship with the spouse altogether. The first thing I would state in the respect of contracepted sex is that it criticism is not something that is easy to understand or explain, and the debate surrounding it is more complex than some might admit or give the impression of it as being.
But I think this is the best critique of it, in that having shown the elevated status of the act, it is hard to see how tampering with it will not sully it. It is not, contrary to the popular cliché, sex which is God’s gift to man, but family, and the proof is that (if you can believe it) I would assert that a couple who cannot for medical reasons ever have sex can have a completely fulfilled relationship through the adoption of children.
Perhaps we can also agree with the assertion: The pleasure of sex is derived from chastity, from union with and righteousness before God, from complete trust and sincere giving in a committed relationship to one’s spouse, all of which is possible only in marriage. The criticism of contraception would seek to insinuate that to tamper with that act, is to sin against the spouse, in denying a “total self-giving”, it is to be its opposite, in whatever small degree “selfish”, and therefore sin against the other, to whom one’s whole self was their due and their debt owed in the nature of the act.
Sex is certainly not only the single strongest current of all of man’s desires, but also the only means for our propagation of our species on the planet, our only “instrument” that maintains our survival in direct competition with the other species. It is hardly surprising that the sexual desire is strong. Mans’ whole being is directed to sex.
The moment he is presented with a member of the opposite sex, his mind is numbed to all else but the animal instinct. He hides it only from another instinct of self-preservation! Yet inside of him his entire being is the form of a heat-seeking missile identifying its target areas instantly, effectively and spontaneously, the training of several eons coming into play in an effortless instant. The earth’s surface, did we have the appropriate lens filter could be made to seem like one great sea of raging sexual desire, we would have a “pink planet”.
Consider a man who wants to have children, but cannot force his wife to stop taking the pill, or one who does so surreptitiously, is she being completely giving? Consider a woman who wants to have children, but her husband uses a condom every time, is he giving completely? Is he not sinning, for had he not wanted to build a family, should he really have married her? Finally, consider a man and woman who have contracepted sex, although God wanted to give them a child. How certain can a man and woman who have contracepted sex be, that they do not have the capacity for another child? Who decides, who calculates the numbers? Is this not God’s remit.
Again, if nothing else convinces you, then do consider the increase in sexual license that the world has seen since the advent of contraception. Think of the porn industry, switch on mainstream telly, look at the lives of the average teenager, house parties, and college proms, look at the single parent rates, look at the tabloids, billboard advertising. Most of those considerations are likely to be infiltrated with worldly considerations rather than the consideration of the things of God.
It is erroneous to think that love can grow purely through physical intimacy, rather it is more likely love grows through sacrifice, which can surely be offered in abstinence. It is this love that then yearns for intimacy. Sex is not a ‘Miracle-Gro’ (flower fertiliser), and neither are children: they are all born of love. I know of a couple whose relationship was strained going on to have two children in the hope that it would make things better, and then divorcing anyway. Our lives are filled with moments; love grows in those ones spent giving, and no others.
Partners that feel used for sex can end up hating each other as we well know. One of the greatest movie moments is when Meg Ryan yells at Tom Cruise “when you sleep with someone, your body makes a promise to them!” right before driving their car off a cliff in a despairing rage in the movie Vanilla Sky. Even any positive emotional gratification from the sexual act itself is entirely presumed. A couple might have nothing but the sensual gratification from the act, in fact emotions might be negatively impacted.
An act that produces nothing but sensual gratification is no more than an objectification of the means of that act. This is how a contraception sexual act has the potential to descend into objectification, the use of the spouse as an object which is the definition of the death of love. It cannot be that the ancient and timeless rites of marriage and childbearing be tweaked without any consequences, and that they can be performed repeatedly contrary to its childbearing nature.
Sex as the pinnacle of any living activity and the triumph of everything it truly means to be human in a physical sense, that pleasure which is free and which is identical no matter what your social standing, it should not be supposed that tweaking with such perfection might not produce diabolically disordered effects. Consider what would happen if you had travelled to the highest mountain in a lost forest after a journey of many years of chasing after rumours and finally many mortal battles and there had finally found the rumoured elixir of life- liquid Ambrosia, but then decided to mix it in your Mountain Dew drink to make it last longer.
Were there multiple things that constituted the meaning of human life, the situation might not be so precarious, however there being only one thing, tweaking it would throw every aspect of life into disarray, there being nothing else of meaning to balance the effect. The introduction of Blanket Contraception curtailed the human enjoyment of Sex in chaste relationships. The Church tries to protect you from this loss. That is the stand of the Church.
One simply cannot define a religious aspect of contraceptive sex. One might argue that even contracepted sex is an expression of love, but it is hard to impossible to show that there is no selfishness involved in the act through the very nature of the act. The mere presence of selfishness in any degree taints the act. Non contracepted sex, through the very fact that nothing is “held back” creates at the very least the possibility of an untainted and completely chaste act.
The other fallout of contraception, perhaps even more terrible, is contraception. One cannot also allow barrier contraception while disallowing hormonal contraceptives under the pretext that babies are not wasted in the second method. A couple who will use a condom (or barrier method) is unlikely to be one that has a spiritual objection to the use of a hormonal contraceptive. Of all the 44,000 non-Catholic congregations, nor of any of the other world religions, I know of not one that condones the one and condemns the other. And with this seemingly small step down, one finds oneself already in the territory of aborting babies. A more detailed discussion of abortion is in a separate article of that name.
“Christianity was at odds with the heathen world, not only about fornication, infanticide and idolatry; but also about marriage. Christians were taught that husband and wife had equal rights in one another’s bodies; a wife is wronged by her husband’s adultery as well as a husband by his wife’s. And Christianity involved non-acceptance of the contemptible role of the female partner in fornication, calling the prostitute to repentance and repudiating respectable concubinage. And finally for Christians divorce was excluded.
These differences were the measure, great enough, of the separation between Christianity and the pagan world in these matters. By now, Christian teaching is, of course, known all over the world; and it goes without saying for those in the West that what they call “accepting traditional morals” means counting fornication as wrong – it’s just not a respectable thing. But we ought to be conscious that, like the objection to infanticide, this is a Jewish Christian inheritance.
And we should realize that heathen humanity tends to have a different attitude towards both. In Christian teaching a value is set on every human life and on men’s chastity as well as on women’s and this as part of the ordinary calling of a Christian, not just in connexion with the austerity of monks. Faithfulness, by which a man turned only to his spouse, forswearing all other women, was counted as one of the great goods of marriage.
But the quarrel is far greater between Christianity and the present-day heathen, post Christian, morality that has sprung up as a result of contraception. In one word: Christianity taught that men ought to be as chaste as pagans thought honest women ought to be; the contraceptive morality teaches that women need to be as little chaste as pagans thought men need be.” Contraception and Chastity Elizabeth Anscombe, 1972
“There is no such thing as a casual, non-significant sexual act; everyone knows this. Contrast sex with eating – you’re strolling along a lane, you see a mushroom on a bank as you pass by, you know about mushrooms, you pick it and you eat it quite casually – sex is never like that. That’s why virtue in connection with eating is basically a matter only of the pattern of one’s eating habits. But virtue in sex – chastity – is not only a matter of such a pattern, that is of its role in a pair of lives. A single sexual action can be bad even without regard to its context, its further intentions and its motives.
Those who try to make room for sex as mere casual enjoyment pay the penalty: they become shallow. At any rate the talk that reflects and commends this attitude is always shallow. They dishonour their own bodies; holding cheap what is naturally connected with the origination of human life.”
But if sexual union can be deliberately and totally divorced from fertility, then we may wonder why sexual union has got to be married union.” (Elizabeth Anscombe)
Enjoyment in Freedom
There will always be the unexpected in the truly spiritual life. The craziest people, who in ages past were also called the most brave, or chivalrous, are those knights who would give their lives for a God they can never see, their commitment to a cause whose course they cannot foretell. The most brazen are those whose heart is most easily given, indeed, it is these whose armours shine the brightest.
Sex then, when ‘fully blown’, is not merely the predictable fulfilment of a desire, but rather a participation in a frenzied celebration which is truly Heavenly. There is in it then, that element of casting away all fear, all doubt, indeed, there is in it that element of courage, the courage that it takes to face the prospect that one might have to share one’s life (and wife) with a little child. If one’s feelings are to be given up to such gay abandon, then there can be no fear of consequences.
This is the only means to the true enjoyment of any earthly pleasure. Just as one who is in fear of some malice is unlikely to also be sexually aroused, like the pleasure of eating is tempered by the fears of eating too much, as with the pleasures of drinking, the pleasures listening to music are tempered by those of damaging one’s ears, so the pleasure of sex can become tempered by the pains of the lack of trust, commitment, and complete giving ie holding something back.
Contracepted sex is not only sinful, it is also unpleasant, or rather, the only pleasure it is left with is those pleasures of the senses, five. But sex is like the unadulterated exultation of a frolicking child. It is the exultation of a parent in a child that is not coloured by the memory or prospect of one aborted. It is the exultation of a child in a parent that he knows would never have aborted him. He who loves his woman only once with such gay abandon, will have surpassed the pleasures of a lifetime of sexual benefits. Who is it that decides that a couple cannot cope with their next child? There is no scientific basis for this whatsoever. Was the one with 5 children not as unknowing when he had only one as the one who stopped at the one or two?
So Why Marry?
The Joy of Sex
”…his or her reduction to a mere “object for me”, should mark exactly the beginning of shame” TOB 17:3
“your desire shall be for you husband, but he will dominate you”… For the first time the man is defined here as “husband”…30:3 after the breaking of the original covenant with God, man and woman did not find themselves united with each other, but more divided or even set against each other because of their masculinity and femininity …they are no longer called to only union and unity; but are also threatened by the insatiability of that union and unity, which does not cease to attract man and woman precisely because they are persons, called from eternity to exist in “communion”…TOB 30:5
“1 John 2:16-17 “All that is in the world, the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life, comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world passes away with its concupiscence; but the one who does the will of God will remain in eternity. TOB 26:1
“…Adam’s words in Genesis 3:10 “I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself” seem to express the awareness of being defenseless, and the sense of insecurity about his somatic structure in the face of the processes of nature that operate with an inevitable determination.
Concupiscence also casts doubt on the fact that each of them is willed by the Creator “for himself”. The subjectivity of the person gives way in some sense to the objectivity of the body. TOB 32:6
To ask “What is the purpose of sex?” is a strange question, because there are those who will say that sex is the primary purpose of life! The truth is that every bodily function has a primary purpose and is only pleasurable if used for that purpose. Pleasure is always secondary to a bodily good, or at the very least though, it must do no bodily harm.
If you hold that sex is directed to the body, as a bodily good, as everything is directed to the body as a good, then the purpose of sex cannot be purely pleasure. What I mean is that if your objective in life is to attain health of mind (depression-free) and of body (disease-free), then it is insufficient to go looking purely for pleasurable experiences, because this ticks neither box!
Certainly one should not look at sex purely as a means of procuring this pleasure, for sex forms forms an intricate part of the tapestry of human life and relations at various levels, only one of which can be said to be sensual pleasure. We are well aware that the pursuit of any human desire in exclusion of its harmful effects is detrimental, and the same goes for sex, and though we wish it wouldn’t, this is the reality, as we shall discuss. There is one way in which to derive benefit from your food, and this is a “balanced diet”, so similarly there is one way to derive benefit and pleasure from sex, and this is what we must discover.
What then is the pleasure of sex? Why its everything I’ve described in Part I. The Joy of sex is that thing which the Joy of Sex video doesn’t tell you: love. How can it be otherwise, could the joy of a loving act not be related to love? There are those many who reject the Church’s teaching because they think that they will have less sex for it. This sort of rejection is based on the assumption that all sex leads to an increase in happiness, which is in turn based on the assumption that happiness is a state of mind attained through an accumulation of individual pleasures rather than through the knowledge of accumulated wisdom and growing love.
In the sexual act one’s body is given not just as a gift, but as a treasure; for a gift is given, but a treasure is entrusted. The joy of sex then is the knowledge of being treasured. One feels truly treasured if when one can trustingly close one’s eyes and feel one’s entire life cared for, and not just the next few minutes. The entire body language of the sexual act assents to this, and rejoices in the pleasure of it, as one runs one fingers over a new set of jewels, lays on the grass in one’s new house or as a footballer or tennis player dance when they hold aloft a trophy, so also is the sexual act a dance of ecstasy-the joy of treasuring and of being treasured.
Much more than merely trading pleasures, sex means entering into the life of the other person. This is what the daily routine of married life consists of anyway, and it is in a sense ritualized and thereby reinforced in the sexual act, just as it is in a kiss or in the holding of hands, or in an arm around the shoulders, or a pat on the bottom. Or like the New Zealand All-Blacks doing the Haka before a game. The sexual act is a sensual expression of affection for one’s spouse that is pleasurable. The pleasure is derived from the heightened realization of mutual affection and not merely from friction of the act.
Can one experience beauty and love without sex? Of course, the strongest human bonds, like that of a mother and child is completely non-sexual as are those with one’s father and siblings. In fact the love of a sexual partner is probably the weakest human bond. It requires constant maintenance, frivolous spending, lip-service, sexual acts, and inspite of this, has a 50% failure rate! So its a complete misconception that sex produces the strongest human bonding in and of itself, one mainly given rise to by popular music and literature. But one rarely finds the need to serenade their own mother and father, apart from on the quarter-century anniversaries!
If sex cannot provide love, then what is it that can increase the love in a relationship. It is spirituality, that is growing closer to God, because only Jesus brings love. The thing that you get in the absence of this is nothing but “emotional bonding”, which is more or less taken as the definition in love for the purpose of research papers. Without God all one achieves is “laboratory love”. Further, children freely received enhance the love in a relationship as does the mutual and lifelong commitment to love and respect each other’s families.
However if you read the questions being asked of the agony aunts, it is never ‘teach me to love him more’. If it was, then all the aunt would have to say would be ‘learn from Jesus’. Usually when a partner realizes they are not in love, they are advised head for the door, not open one’s Bible. Sex does NOT remedy relationships.
Sex is a nuptial act of total mutual self-giving, in the presence of God. The presence of God much more than embarrassing, is guaranteed. There is an adage that men want power so that they can get sex, while women give sex so that they can get power. God seems to have made woman infinitely enticing to man who always has sex on his mind as an end, never power. He has made power infinitely enticing to women, who never has sex on her mind as an end, but power. Both pursuits are pleasure-seeking.
In a Christian marriage, man and women are called to curb these concupiscent instincts. Man must limit sex to a single woman for his whole life, cannot substitute her for an imaginary mistress, or perform a sexual act in the absence of a woman. The truth is that affection cannot be summoned up out of the void. Love cannot be found anywhere but at the Font of Love which is God. Commitment is a road that will lead a believer certainly to Heaven, but will also enable an Atheist to escape the deleterious effects of antagonizing his basic instincts. Contrary to popularly held belief, man’s basic instinct is not sex.
In fact apart from perverted humans, there is no animal whose basic purpose is sex. Man’s basic instinct is love and sacrifice. He cannot help it whether he is theist or atheist. God has put it there, right in his hormones. The pleasure of sex is related to the sexual act. The joy of sex is the care and love expressed in that most vulnerable moment, right after the act- the loving embrace, which can only last longer the more a couple is in love.
For everyone who has a sex-life, is there not the frustration that it is not as good as he thought it would be in his head? Or that the partner does not look more like someone else, or that they are not available to them when expected, or often enough? Or that they do not love them enough? The answer to all of these you can see, is love. Sexual frustrations are not caused by the absence of sex in one’s life, but the absence of love in one’s sex.
Love in one’s life is really the remedy for every frustration, not just that of the sexual type but also the existential type. In fact love prevents one from viewing life as the frustrating and impossible search for fulfilling sex, or sex that matches up to impossible expectations. The absence of love is the frustration of life.
Sensuality and emotionality are both enjoyable to human beings. But sensuality is not necessarily enjoyable without the attendant emotions, while emotions might be enjoyable yet in the absence of sex. A prisoner can experience the joy of the news of freedom though he be yet in a dank dungeon. On the contrary, every sensual pleasure is empty in the absence of love. This is why a condemned man cannot be said to really enjoy his last meal. Is the gratification of sex really linked to the pleasure of the act just consummated?
Any such gratification only lasts so long as the act is being consummated. This very act which then lives and is hidden away carefully in the memory as a cherished treasure to be pulled out in quiet moments and admired gloatingly, is sullied, and decayed and distorted when to it is added any of angst, disrespect, malice or plain rejection and disinterestedness. At least that necklace set you keep pulling out to admire cannot hate you even though it fade.
The pleasure of sex is the joy of one’s flesh being cherished, and with it the joy of being cherished themselves, if only for that moment. It is in that moment the spouse looks beyond all perceived physical blemishes and personal resentment, and everything is pushed aside for only those few moments when words are no longer required. In fact the successful completion of the sexual act from the point of arousal demands that such perceptions and resentments are banished if just for those moments, and all one’s being is focussed upon the beauty of the person for what and who they are.
The pleasure felt of hormones and the rush of the orgasm is only secondary to this felt conviction. It’s why you will hear persons in one-night stands swearing undying love and affection, or at least trying to make the person feel special even if is it empty promises. This is why sex pursued apart from the above, results in guilt and resentment, that of the guilt and resentment of having cherished, and being cherished for the sake of the flesh alone. There is exactly as much emotional pleasure in that than as a cut of top rump might feel at your local mall. The entire body language of the sexual act is one of rapturous love. The mind cannot lie to the body, excepts in the intentional dissociation which is to be found in the performing arts.
That which is most desirable and even beguiling in the weaker sex is its very weakness and vulnerability. The male protective instinct makes him yearn to throw his arms and wrap himself around such a fragile and timorous flower. This is the very thing that is violated by the use of force, and lost to the abuser of it. Thus the most powerful authoritarian regimes could obtain little sexual pleasure from their conquests, because they destroy the beauty in the which is their very vitality which they cherish. The joy of family can be only obtained in one way, that is within that very family. Any violent use of power in the sexual relations is a frustrated and infuriated attempt to quell the fire of man’s desire for a family by destroying its very source: the family again.
The Memory of Original Innocence
There are two ways of parenting:
If a child is taught sex first and learns of the Catechism later, then the sex makes the Catechism wrong.
If the child is taught the Catechism first, then when presented with a sexual proposal, will consider it wrong based on the Catechism.
Both ways are highly effective, and have highly long-lasting effects depending on what you want to do with the kids.
Is the best time of one’s life, the time that one is courted, when intentions always seem to be declared as pure, unconditional and eternal? Does anyone remember what it was like for someone to have a girlfriend, or even enjoy the attentions of the other sex when in school? The individual was instantly propelled to the status of a demi-god among his peers. The only appropriate emotion toward such an individual would be envy.
Having a girlfriend, at least from the perspective of those who did not, (like myself!) would be like having as one’s acquaintance a famous actor or footballer, or having a superhero for a dad. In the insecurity of adolescence, one’s entire instinct is trained inward, on how one is perceived by the external world. The addition of a girlfriend therefore considerably elevates that perception. Slights to this mental image of how one is viewed by the world can be devastating in the teenage years and this is why cyber-trolling and revenge-porn can lead to suicide, though it would have far lesser effect in the adult years.
Was there not a time in your life when you would give everything that you had just to have a girl by your side? You would readily accept a girl’s friendship even if there was no possibility of sex. This ethereal state of innocence can be hard even to remember or acknowledge precisely because it is likely to have been terribly brief and increasingly distant.
The Influence of Parents on their Children
How does a man learn how to relate to a woman non-sexually than from his relation to his mother. Every other relation, that with his sisters, his cousins and other non-available women he will base on various dilutions of this relationship. What if a man’s mother has died? He will then retain the memory of a woman who loved him, though he never saw her, he would have no reason to doubt it. Every other loving mother that he came across in fact or fiction would remind him of her or fill the memory.
One who’s mother did not love them would start at a disadvantage, though it is not to say that this cannot be overcome, I will say that it is only by prayer, rather than psychology. A Father, on the other hand, is the only male that a woman completely trusts with her sexuality. Every other male in her life that she must learn to trust ie her brothers, her husband, her cousins and other non-available men she must relate to on a scale which is a dilution of the relationship with her father. What of those who have never had a father, or a mother, or both?
I can merely say that there is nothing that you can do in this life, no earthly pleasure, no holiday, no food, no money, power or sex, that can ever mean that you have had a better life than mine, or what I already had and was accomplished when I was just a boy. No one, not even you yourself, will for your whole life, give you any gift so great, as what I got just from being born. Nothing and no experience in your life will ever sufficiently fill the gap except the Lord.
It is in Christ that we are completed, and only in Him, only He is our boast. Every human relationship is tainted by the tainting of the initial relationship. Every trust given is done so guardedly and partialized. Is it all worth it for man to have that experience of just that one quantum of purity in his life. All the uncertainty about religion, all the contradictions all the conflicting views, all the scientific discrepancies, even if they all eventually stick and the position of God was one day shown to be untenable in His own Universe as we understood it.
The Search for a Mate
There appears a simple way to woo a woman. Make her feel that she is the most beautiful creature in the world, and that you are not worthy of her. Seem to her so pathetic that she takes pity on you and feels she is doing you a service. You need to provide the image of the really nice guy that is really low on self-esteem, at least when you compare yourself to her, while retaining your manly airs when you present yourself to others, so that she is also convinced you can look after her. That’s how Anna Karenina got done!
However, one is not called to marry everyone, neither does being married to one person exclude you from loving everyone. Life is a battle, and one does not sleep with the agents of the Enemy. If this sounds too esoteric, consider that you would not marry a man who hated your father without reason. This should be ample analogy really. But also do consider that you would not want your children to be raised by an enemy agent. This would be the parenting equivalent of your child being kidnapped and raised by druids or worse.
Again, if you were playing football (or netball) you would not choose for a partner someone knew had been paid off by the bookies to lose. Without being too patronizing and saying things like “look for a good man”, these are some of the consideration I would advise for any youngster looking for a life partner. Then with your backs to each other you can face the world. The way to make the world a better place is to make the family a batter place. Therefore marry a believer if you want world peace!
If you think that a marriage begins with ‘being madly in love’ which is term does not really have a theological meaning, then you run the danger of believing that years of marriage can take away the excitement of this love and turn it into a drudgery devoid of spark (or periodic electrocution). To put it another way, marriage does not start with a full cup of wine, which you hope will somehow remain full for the rest of your time together.
Marriage starts with the empty cup of decision being held out at the Altar of God, that fills up over the years and starts to overflow. Put yet another way, the love of a boyfriend for a girlfriend is the lowest form of love on the planet. Friends are committed to friends, a mother is committed to her child, a son to his father, a man to his dog. Commitment is only the first step towards this. Living out the commitment comes next, and is hardly a foregone conclusion.
A woman who comes to you because you have common interests might not stay if she loses interest. A woman who comes to you because you were fun to be with is unlikely to stay if someone funnier comes along. A woman who comes to you for the thrill of sex is unlikely to stay after the thrill is gone. A woman who gives sex in exchange for the security of male company is likely to accept greater security that another may provide. A woman who loves the man she first met is unlikely to stay if you change into a man she hadn’t met yet. A woman who loves you may not stay if she stops loving you. These are the reasons for divorce.
Book References
TOB- Theology of the Body, St. Pope John Paul II
Others are given in the text where applicable