One of the priorities of ministry listed in the Pastoral Plan of the Diocese of Chalan Kanoa is marriage and family life. There is general agreement that marriage and family life should be a priority but exactly how to do that is usually one of those questions with which people struggle.
The Second Vatican Council took on the issue of marriage in its dogmatic Constitution Gaudium et spes. It describes marriage as, “The intimate partnership of life and love…established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws; it is rooted in the contract of its partners, which is in their irrevocable personal consent. It is an institution confirmed by the divine law and receiving its stability, even in the eyes of society, from the human act by which the partners mutually surrender themselves to each other; for the good of the partners, of the children, and of society…Thus the man and woman, who are no longer two but one (Matt. 19:6), help and serve each other by their marriage partnership; they become conscious of their unity and experience it more deeply from day to day. The intimate union of marriage, as a mutual giving of two persons, and the good of the children demand total fidelity from the spouses and require an unbreakable unity between them.”
This single paragraph speaks volumes about the church’s contemporary understanding of marriage. however, like most church documents it is written in “church-speak”, which is theologically very precise but needs to be translated into plain english for the normal reader. So, I thought I would “translate” some important terms from this document to get across the meaning more clearly.
The first term that needs translated is “dogmatic constitution”. To grasp the meaning of any church document you need to know what type of document it is. Some documents have the authority of laws, others are instructions explaining how to interpret laws, and still others are declarations and simply vague policy statements of what is desirable. Gaudium et spes is a dogmatic constitution, which means that it is the most authoritative of documents that the church can produce. It presents basic teaching and is the foundation for any laws produced by the church. It is just below Scripture in the importance that it holds. So, the statement from Gaudium et spes quoted above is about as authoritative as you can get from the Catholic perspective when talking about marriage.
In the opening lines of the quote, marriage is referred to as an “intimate partnership of life and love”. Pope Saint John Paul II referred to this in Theology of the Body as “nakedness without shame”. While marital intimacy certainly involves physical intimacy, the Pope was speaking more of emotional and psychological intimacy. Intimacy is letting down your defenses and revealing yourself to another as you truly are. We try to project an image that represents how we want to be seen by others. Much of the time that image is a mask to keep the world at bay. We are afraid that if others see us as we truly are they will laugh, and we will lose control of the situations in which we find ourselves. Intimacy is trusting another enough to put away the mask and be who we truly are.
Partnership is a relationship of equals. neither party is the boss of the other. no one has the right to give orders and expect the other to obey the orders. What is required is that the partners work together. When there are disagreements, and there will be disagreements, the partners must work through the disagreements together and reach an understanding with which both can live. If the relationship is going to be a success, the parties must work together and support one another.
The partnership spoken of in Gaudium et spes is a partnership of “life and love”. This is not simply a business partnership. It is a partnership in which two people blend together their lives. They commit themselves to this partnership until the day that one of them dies. This isn’t a temporary commitment. This isn’t a commitment with conditions. There is no escape clause.
It is a partnership of love. The example that St. Paul gives of marital love is that of Christ who gave his life for his bride, the church. The partnership of love that is marriage is one in which each party would willingly give his or her life to save the other. It is a partnership that places the well-being of the other above one’s own desires.
If one is realistic in their assessment of marriage, this “intimate partnership of life and love” is frightening in what it demands of the couple. Certainly, it is an ideal toward which the couple spends a lifetime working, yet even to begin to walk this path demands great courage on the part of the couple. It is not a path for the weak, self-centered or cowardly. It is not something that just happens automatically or by magic. It is a goal that is achieved slowly and through a great deal of effort. It is a process that requires constant effort, as well as a willingness to forgive the many mess ups that occur and to move beyond today’s hurt.
Another phrase in the quote is that marriage is “established by the Creator”. We often think of marriage as the most mundane of institutions. Its integral association with sex makes it quite biological and “earthly”. It is not something that we think of as spiritual. Yet, we are told that it is “established by the Creator”.