Love is the Root of Catholic Teaching on Marriage

Love is the Root

Love is the root of Catholic teaching on marriage. It’s not some perverse desire to spoil somebody’s fun. Most emphatically not “hate,” as some folks would have you believe. The Catholic teaching on marriage is rooted in love. Not just the love of husband and wife, but love for all parties involved. St. Thomas Aquinas described love as “wanting the good of the other.” Isn’t that really the entire message of scripture? It’s there from the first creation at the beginning of Genesis to the New Jerusalem at the conclusion of Revelation. The Bible is the story of God “wanting what’s best” for all of us. And, as our Lord tells us, we should be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect (see Matthew 5.48). Love is as love does.

From the Beginning It Was Not So

Jesus addresses the topic of marriage specifically a number of times, and his message is quite straightforward:

 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one’? So they are no longer two but one. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” 

They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?” He said to them, “For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery; and he who marries a divorced woman, commits adultery.” (Matthew 19 4-10)

A Great Millstone

Niow, this may sound harsh, at first. But consider what Jesus says just a few sentences later: ““Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 19:15) Don’t think it’s a coincidence that children immediately follow marriage. Jesus talks about children a little earlier as well, in chapter 18 of Mathew’s Gospel:

“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me;  but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matthew 18:5-6)

Fractured Foundation

The Catholic teaching on marriage builds on the clear message of Jesus himself in scripture, along with the logical extension of that message. The love between husband and wife unites them, as God desires. Their union in marriage provides a safe and loving home in which to nurture children. Those families and children, in turn, are the building blocks of a healthy and prosperous society. Stable, intact families are good for everyone. The loving thing is to want them to flourish. Fracture that foundation of marriage, however, and the whole structure collapses.

Over the past century we’ve seen fractures deeper and wider, with predictable results. National Marriage Week is part of an effort to repair and reinforce the foundation. A dozen years ago I commented on an article by Katherine Lopez about a similar effort, the March for Marriage. The message that love is the root of the traditional teaching on marriage is as urgent as ever. In that spirit, and in honor of National Marriage week, I’m republishing my article below:

Motivated by “Hate”?

Katherine Jean Lopez has a good piece in National Review Online [June 23 2014] about the March for Marriage in Washington, D.C. She focuses on a talk by San Francisco Archbishop Cordileone.  The good Archbishop earned a scolding from various left-leaning types, including “Catholic” politician Nancy Pelosi, for encouraging “hate” by attending the pro-traditional marriage event.  Lopez quotes extensively from Cordileone’s speech at the March to show that the Church’ motivation is not hate, but love, when it upholds traditional marriage.    

The false charge that any opposition to the deconstruction of the institution of marriage is animated solely by hatred has been repeated so often by those on the left that not only have they convinced themselves, they have persuaded half the country as well.  Even Catholic Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in his Obergefell decision could find no reason other than “animus” against homosexuals to oppose the imposition of gay marriage. 

No Justice, No Peace, No End to Poverty

Archbishop Cordileone knows better; after recounting various problems (economy, immigration, schools) he says:

But none of these solutions will have a lasting effect if we do not rebuild a marriage culture, a culture which recognizes and supports the good of intact families, built on the marriage between a man and a woman committed to loving faithfulness to each other and to their children . . . No justice, no peace, no end to poverty, without a strong culture of marriage and the family.

It’s amazing how hard it is for many people to understand this seemingly obvious truth: there’s no social problem that isn’t made worse by the dissolution of traditional families. Likewise, there is none that wouldn’t be significantly alleviated by more intact families. 

Bad for Everyone

The problem is that we’ve convinced ourselves that we can live our lives with self-satisfaction our highest goal. This includes, thanks to contraception, enjoying the pleasures of marital intimacy without the responsibility of children. It’s not that simple; those choices have much broader consequences. Consider that a declining birthrate means that there are fewer and fewer children to support us in our dotage. Many who are born have parents who aren’t committed enough to each other to stay married or, increasingly, even to get married in the first place. 

The result is bad for everyone. The growing number of men, for example, who are essentially irrelevant to the families they have fathered. They are denied the full experience of the paternal role that is their calling. There are also the women who are crushed under the burden of being both mother and father. This, in a culture that is increasingly indifferent to, or even disdainful of, motherhood.

Then there are the children who grow up without the attention of two full-time parents, and without models of self-sacrificing complementary love. Now, that’s not to say they don’t see self-sacrificing love, often heroic self-sacrifice, on the part of the single parent (usually the mother) who is raising them. But it’s not the same. The dynamic between parent and dependent child is very different than that between husband and wife. Children aren’t learning how to be successful husbands and wives, and increasingly they don’t see a lasting marriage as a real possibility. And so the cycle worsens.

The Loving Thing

Notice that none of the arguments above have anything to do with homosexuality. They all have to do with the fundamental purposes of marriage and family. Nobody would be seriously considering novel conceptions of marriage if the real thing weren’t already thoroughly compromised. Gay activists are quite correct when they point out that heterosexuals had already made a thorough mess of the institution of marriage before “gay marriage” came on the scene. The question is, do we complete the demolition of the one natural institution most essential to human flourishing and a stable society? Or do we work to protect and, ultimately, to restore it? Which, really, is the loving thing?

Featured image top of page: The Wedding Register by Frederick Blair Leighton, 1920.