John Paul And The Nature Of Marriage
By DONALD DeMARCO
Marriage is not an arbitrary arrangement made by the participants. We observe how marriage has been distorted to mean whatever the partners want it to mean. Some women, who have no interest in men, have married themselves. At the opposite end of the spectrum are polygamy and polyandry. In France, one can marry a deceased person as long as the approval of the president is secured. A woman in England has married her dog. A cowboy in the United States wants to marry his horse. Same-sex marriage is now legal in several countries. Vatican II refers to such distortions as “disfigurements” of marriage.
The Catholic Church teaches that marriage is a definable reality. She is the guardian of marriage as received from God. Marriage, then, is something very specific. St. John Paul II has written extensively on the subject in an attempt to explain to people the exact nature of marriage, how it brings together the natural and the divine, the personal and the social, male and female.
I will restrict my presentation here to what John Paul has written about marriage in an article entitled “Marriage and the Family,” which appears in Person and Community: Selected Essays (1993).
“Marriage is possible,” John Paul writes, “and comes about because God ‘created them [human beings] male and female,’ because God endowed them with physical and psychological sexual properties and a sexual urge to go along with those properties.”
This is a broad outline of marriage but it does emphasize two things of essential importance: 1) that marriage is from God; 2) that marriage is between a male and a female. In addition, marriage is a communion of persons (communio personarum), one which, according to Revelation, bears the mark of indissolubility.
Communion (communio) is a more intimate relationship than what is implied by the word “community.” It has an ethical resonance that is rooted in the ability of the person to offer himself as a gift to another. For John Paul, the notion of gift is essential. Without the notion of gift, John Paul states, “there would be no way to properly understand and interpret either the marriage relationship as a whole or the acts of conjugal intercourse that are part of this relationship and have a strict causal connection to the emergence of the family.”
The gift that the parents give to their children when they give them life is rooted in the gift that they give to each other: “The marital bond then becomes a parental bond.” Gift, has a never-ending implication, for the children will grow and make their own gifts. Marriage, family, society are woven together by mutual giving.
The word “person” has special significance in the vocabulary of John Paul. It is to be contrasted with the word “individual.” A person, to be sure, has his own individualistic traits. However, he has the natural capacity to be open to others in a way that is mutually fulfilling. Unlike material things which one loses when he gives them away, a person can give without losing anything of himself. As a person, therefore, he is capable of mutually beneficial “I-Thou” relationships with others. Marriage is between two persons, male and female, who are open to each other and freely give their consent. Because it includes the sexual dimension, which is natural, it contains a procreative purpose.
The order of nature is never disconnected from God, the Author of marriage. Moreover, the realization of the benefits of marriage are conditioned by love. In fact, love is the very form of marriage. Accordingly, John Paul states that “a human being uses the sexual urge legitimately in sexual activity only when the aims of the sexual urge are respected and love of the person is realized — for, as we know, there is no way to use the urge legitimately and normally without entering into a relationship with a person of the opposite sex.”
People may complain that this notion of marriage that St. John Paul II outlines is beautiful but idealistic. Given this lack of faith, they seek some form of compromise that inevitably weakens the marital bond. In the case of marriage, however, the ideal is the standard. It represents the completeness of marriage. A complete house includes heating, electricity, water, insulation, and plumbing. If any of these factors are missing, not only is the house incomplete, but the occupants will suffer an extreme deprivation. No one complains that putting together these five factors is “idealistic.” No one says, “Who needs plumbing”?
Male and female, a communion of persons, free consent, gift, love, indissolubility, respecting the natural order of nature that leads from intimacy to the birth of children and the formation of a family are all required for marriage to be complete. And if it is complete, it should be happy and fulfilling. Because it is anchored in God’s wisdom, it is connected to an infinite power source. This will prove to be more practical than if it is based on self-will. A lamp is not free when it is unplugged. Only when it is connected to a power source is it able to perform its proper function, which is to shed light.
The structure of marriage, of course, is one thing. The partners who animate this structure is another. Although all marriages share the same definition, each marriage, because of the uniqueness of the partners living in a unique situation, is different. Therefore, one need not fear that adhering to a definable notion of marriage would cause a couple to relinquish any shred of their individuality. In fact, it is through a loving marriage that one discovers a new dimension of himself.
- + + (Dr. Donald DeMarco is a professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College & Seminary. He is a regular columnist for the St. Austin Review. His latest five books are How to Navigate through Life; Apostles of the Culture of Life; Reflections on the Covid-10 Pandemic: A Search for Understanding; The War Against Civility (all posted on amazon.com), and A Moral Compass for a World in Confusion.)
