CATHOLIC MARRIAGE 101: A PRIMER | KAIROS GLOBAL | FEBRUARY 2024

Author:Joseph Anthraper

Intro: Joseph Anthraper throws light on some pertinent questions regarding Catholic marriage.

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a great mystery… (Ephesians 5:31-32). St Paul says that marriage is a great mystery and there is little doubt that almost all married couples now and across the centuries would gladly concur! Almost all have, and still yearn for and try for that perfect marriage, yet only a few have achieved the joy and happiness they were looking for; so much so that in the last couple of generations we have dropped the pretence and stopped even trying! Since nearly half of all marriages in the Western world end up in a divorce, it is only natural for the younger generation to look at the institution of marriage with suspicion, and go for other short-term solutions, since they are so convinced that it is going to fail sooner rather than later.

Yet as St John Paul II famously said, ‘as the family goes, so goes the nation, and so goes the whole world in which we live’ – in today’s society more than ever, there is an increasing need for Christians to truly embrace this great God-given vocation, thereby bringing renewal and transformation to the societies we live in.

1. Now that you have put it that way it is kind of scary! I have seen a lot of my friends in the youth group doing vocational discernment – maybe I should also begin my discernment of whether marriage is my vocation?

No and Yes! Marriage is sometimes called the natural vocation or the default vocation of all humans. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that, ‘the vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator’ (CCC 1603). 

The Second Vatican Council reiterated the universal call to holiness for the faithful – the principal mandate for each baptised Christian. This call to holiness or the call for men and women to love as Jesus loved, is primarily realised through two states of life – marriage and celibacy (which itself can be either through priesthood, consecrated or religious life). According to the Church, everyone is called to marriage because we are human beings whom God has created as male or female, and there is a natural desire in each of us for the opposite sex – we read in Genesis how God says that it is not good for man to be alone. This is what St John Paul II calls the spousal meaning of the body, wherein the person – the ensouled body, finds himself and the fullness of his happiness in the true gift of his self in marriage – happiness being rooted in love (TOB 16). Marriage is called the natural vocation because the desire for marriage is thus rooted in the very DNA of our being! 

Discernment is needed to see if one is called by God to a vocation other than this natural vocation. Of course, great discernment is also needed in choosing whom one is going to marry – whether he/she is the right person for me.

2. That is good news. I don’t have to do any preparations to get married!

In fact, quite the contrary! In our postmodern, tech-savvy culture, many of the struggles couples face in their marriage is because we are woefully unprepared for family life and the gift of self it entails. We seek love; yet mostly are unaware of the demands of love. Whereas once faith, morals and life-training used to be transmitted in close-knit communities from generation to generation via osmosis, it is hardly the case anymore, and while it is certainly acknowledged that there are many good marriage preparation programmes, many more marriage-preps are sadly failing in their purpose to equip the spouses to meet the challenges of daily life.

The Church speaks and dreams of remote, proximate and immediate preparations before marriage and continuing pastoral support for couples after marriage. Remote preparation would happen in infancy, childhood and adolescence – where one learns about marriage and family life from one’s surroundings and society. ‘Proximate preparation begins around puberty and involves a more specific preparation for the sacraments, including an understanding of healthy relationships, sexuality, the virtue of chastity, and responsible parenthood’ (USCCB Love and Live in Divine Plan, 2009). And immediate preparation is the final stage just before marriage – where all that has been learned until then is reviewed and reiterated. 

The Church believes that the whole of one’s life up till marriage ought to be a constant preparation to living out the vocation to love in marriage. Talk about a lofty calling!

3. You talk about Catholic marriage – how is it different and what is so special about that?

First let’s define what Catholic marriage is and then we will see some of its characteristics. 

Catholic marriage is a sacrament – but a bit different from the other sacraments in that, in both the Latin and Eastern traditions, the spouses (not the priest) are the ministers of the sacrament of marriage – in the Eastern tradition the blessing of the priest is also necessary for the validity of the marriage. ‘The spouses as ministers of Christ's grace mutually confer upon each other the Sacrament of Matrimony by expressing their consent before the Church’ (CCC 1623). When one says ‘I do’ in marriage, he/she is saying ‘yes’ to at least three fundamental attributes – viz, permanence, exclusivity and openness to life (Code of Canon law 1055, CCC 1638). 

Permanence - Catholic marriage is a life-long union; until death do us part! Thus, in a valid and consummated marriage union, the husband and wife are joined by God in an unbreakable bond of love through the irrevocable act of their freely given consent. This bond is sealed by the Holy Spirit and so once consummated, becomes indissoluble. Hence it is not that the Catholic Church is so repressive that it doesn’t allow for divorces, the fact is that it can’t; it has no right to break asunder what God has joined (Mark 10:9, CCC 1640).

Exclusivity – As a mutual gift of self of two consenting adults with each other, there is no place within marriage for another person. There is nothing called an open-marriage, that is a contradiction in itself. God, who is forever faithful to his promises, always calls the husband and the wife to be faithful to the promises made in their marriage vows. Lack of fidelity and chastity (pornography, masturbation and so on), is one of the greatest struggles that many marriages in our time are going through.

Openness to life – ‘By its very nature, the institution of matrimony itself and conjugal love are ordained for the procreation and education of children, and find in them their ultimate crown’ (Gaudium et Spes 48). Children are not a by-product of marriage, but proceeds from the very heart of what marriage is – as the fulfilment of the total self-giving love of the spouses. 

4. Stop, I have a question – you talk about permanence, but does that mean someone in an abusive marriage is bound to suffer for the rest of her life?

Not at all! We live in a fallen world and the effects of sin are all around us – both within and without the Church. Although the graces of sacramental marriage are tangible and real, and would help a couple to achieve the ultimate goal of human life (to reach God), she also realises that individuals can reject this grace as in the Garden of Eden.

In cases of abuse, the Church would never ask the aggrieved spouse to continue living in such a relationship – as it is against the God given dignity of the human person to be used/abused in any way whatsoever. In practice and traditionally it has been called separation from bed and board, where the Church encourages the wronged spouse to leave, seek protection and to be safe as mentioned in canon 1153 – ‘If either of the spouses causes grave mental or physical danger to the other spouse or to the offspring or otherwise renders common life too difficult, that spouse gives the other a legitimate cause for leaving, either by decree of the local ordinary or even on his or her own authority if there is danger in delay.’ This is the recommended path not just in the case of continual physical or mental abuse, but also in the case of persistent adultery.

It is also worth mentioning that in some cases, based on the circumstances of the couple at the time of marriage, it may be possible to get an annulment – but in any case, the first course of action might be to move out and be safe.

5. Alright – makes sense. But let’s get to the elephant in the room. Why does the Catholic Church want to regulate what happens in the sexual life of the married couple – shouldn’t the Church treat its members as adults and give them the freedom to choose?

That’s a great question, and St John Paul II dedicated the initial years of his pontificate to giving a reasonable, intelligent and coherent answer to this question, encompassing both theology as well as anthropology – and this is what we today call Theology of the Body. Jesus revealed to us the inmost truth about God: that God is a Trinity – and as a Trinity, God is a communion of persons. St John says that God is love – the Father eternally begetting the Son, and the Father and the Son existing in a relationship of total and mutual self-giving. This love of the Father and the Son is so real that it gives rise to the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Creating man as male and female in his image and likeness, God invites human beings to partake in this inner life of God – and as bodily beings, it is through marriage and the conjugal union of their bodies that man and woman becomes one – they are no longer two, but one flesh (Matthew 19:6). And through this gift of self – the union of man and woman becomes so real, so profound that it bubbles forth in the form of new life – a child. Marriage and conjugal union mirror the inner life of God – it is no small matter, in fact it is a matter of life and death!

Thus the sexual union between the couple ought to be both unitive and procreative – and one cannot divorce one aspect from the other. Ideas have consequences and wrong ideas can have catastrophic consequences – like Marxism and Nazism. Such has been the case with artificial contraception, which became the norm in the Western world in the early 20th century, and the sexual revolution of the 1960s, both of which have sought to ‘liberate’ the joy of sexual union from its procreative dimension. More than a century later, the results of this social experiment are for all to see – a proliferation of abortions, a fatherless generation and an objectification of woman’s body, among many other horrors.

In the hyper-sexualised culture we live, it can certainly feel like the Church is obsessed with controlling the sexual life of its faithful – but the Church has to proclaim the truth – in season and out of season (2 Timothy 4:2). We humans, created in the image and likeness of God, are moral beings also – with the gift of a conscience telling us what is right and what is wrong. Thus, artificial means of contraception which seeks to separate the unitive from the procreate dimension as well as procedure such as IVF, which seeks to split the procreative from the unitive aspect of conjugal union are both morally and intrinsically wrong.

This however doesn’t mean that Catholic couples should have as many children as possible – not at all! The Church can and would never stipulate the number of children a married couple ought to have – it is up to the couple in union with God to take that decision. It is entirely and completely the responsibility of the spouses – the married couple seeking God’s guidance in prayer, and in union with each other, through the sacramental grace working in them, deciding on the number of children and how best to space their children. As Humane Vitae stipulates, that decision could be based on many factors, ‘physical, economic, psychological and social conditions’ (HV 10). God honours every decision that his children make in prayer, but being open to God would also mean taking more or less from his hands. Off late, many natural family planning (NFP) methods are becoming more and more popular as many more are becoming aware of it.

As St John of the Cross famously put it, ‘in the twilight of life, we will be judged on love’ – and in the case of conjugal union in marriage, whether this love of the couples mirrors the love of God or not.

St John Paul II, referring to St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and the Genesis account of creation goes so far as to say that, it is not possible to fully understand the mystery of Christianity apart from the mystery of man, created as male and female and their vocation to conjugal love and to fatherhood and motherhood (Letter to families, 19). I am painfully aware of the great battles of our time, within the Church regarding marriage and human sexuality – sometimes playing out ugly in the open. Yet, we know that truth will set us free (John 8:32), and I believe that as faithful Catholics living here and now, we are called to live the fullness of sacramental marriage in our little homes, far from the limelight and glamour of the battlegrounds, bringing renewal to our homes and thus redeeming the culture we live in.

Joseph Anthraper lives in Southampton, UK with Mahima, his wife and their four children.