As we approach the one-year anniversary of Obergefell v. Hodges, it is fitting to reflect on the Church’s teaching on marriage, a teaching that is not strictly about the sacrament but also about the natural purposes of marriage. This teaching about natural marriage has seemingly been tossed aside by the modern media to pave the way for “tolerance,” so that almost anyone can marry each because “they love each other.” If love is the defining factor of marriage, do we even know what it is? What does it mean to love someone else? Can marriage exist between two men or two women who love each other? To answer these questions, let us outline the three goods of marriage as first defined by St. Augustine and then described by Pope Pius XI in Casti Connubii (1930).
According to Augustine and Pius XI, the first good of marriage is proles, or children. As Pius XI writes, “Thus amongst the blessings of marriage, the child holds the first place” (CC 11). In the very beginning of creation, one of the first things God told to Adam and Eve was, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). Bringing children into the world through the institution of marriage, then, is a direct fulfillment of God’s plan for creation, and indeed, for man and woman. Pius XI indicates man’s eternal end as the reason for why children should be born within marriage, for all are meant to be with God in Heaven. “From which it is easily seen how great a gift of divine goodness and how remarkable a fruit of marriage are children born by the omnipotent power of God by the cooperation of those bound in wedlock” (CC 12). This end of marriage has a second part: not only are couples called to bring children into the world, but parents are also meant to educate their children “to become members of the Church of Christ, to raise up fellow-citizens of the Saints, and members of God’s household, that the worshippers of God and our Savior may daily increase” (CC 13). Thus, education of children also belongs to the procreation of children; it is not merely enough to bring them into the world physically.
The second end of marriage is fides, or “the blessing of conjugal honor which consists in the mutual fidelity of the spouses in fulfilling the marriage contract” (CC 19). This blessing is for giving the marital gifts only to one’s husband or wife. Of this blessing, Pius XI specifically states that marriage should be between one man and one woman: “Wherefore, conjugal faith, or honor, demands in the first place the complete unity of matrimony which the Church laid down in the beginning when He wished it to be not otherwise than between one man and one woman” (CC 20). Even though the Law of Moses allowed divorce, the fullness of marriage as being an indissoluble bond was restored with Christ. Thus, fidelity as end of marriage is in full obedience with marriage as established from the beginning of creation. Furthermore, Pius XI writes, “If the blessing of conjugal faith is to shine with becoming splendor, [it] must be distinguished by chastity” (CC 22). He continues: “This conjugal faith, however, which is mostly aptly called by St. Augustine the ‘faith of chastity’ blooms more freely, more beautifully, and more nobly, when it is rooted in that more excellent soil, so the love of husband and wife which pervades all the duties of married life and holds pride of place in Christian marriage” (CC 23). Thus, the “faith of chastity” between the husband and wife is meant to permeate every activity of their life, so that there is a “mutual molding” (CC 24) of the two.
Finally, the culmination of all these blessings from fidelity (including chastity, charity, obedience, etc.) is found in the third end, the sacramentum, or the sacrament. This sacrament is “denoted [by] both the indissolubility of the bond and the raising and hollowing of the contract by Christ Himself, whereby He made it an efficacious sign of grace” (CC 31). What does this entail? First, that the sacrament of marriage is indissoluble, which was God’s plan from the very beginning, and re-established by Christ when He says, “What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder” (Matthew 19:6). Thus, marriage is a lifelong commitment that can only be broken by death. In the Scriptures, Christ adds that he who divorces his wife and marries another (while the one is still living) is committing adultery (Matthew 9:19). Pius XI considers this commitment to be “inviolable stability,” (CC 34) which is required even in natural marriages that are not sacramental. How much more so would that stability be true of a sacramental marriage? This stability in the sacrament is meant to be an image of Christ’s love for the Church, which is a love that does not die, because it is Christ’s own love by its very nature. Pius XI goes on to enumerate the many goods of indissolubility for both the couple and the common good of society (CC 37).
The second aspect of marriage as a sacrament is explained as follows: Christ “made it a sign and source of that peculiar internal grace by which ‘it perfects natural love, it confirms an indissoluble union, and sanctifies both man and wife’” (CC 38). In other words, the sacrament is meant to bring couples more deeply into the divine love, to prepare husband and wife for eternal life with God. They thusly “draw supernatural power for the fulfilling of their rights and duties faithfully, holily, perseveringly even unto death” (CC 40). The sacrament, then, not only prepares them for Heaven, but also grants the graces necessary to sanctify the daily, temporal activities of married life.
Although written over eighty years ago, using language that is less familiar to us, we can still see the relevance of Augustine and Pius XI today, even in Pope St. John Paul II’s own thought. John Paul II considers the goods, or ends, of marriage in light of self-gift in his Letter to Families. Drawing from the Second Vatican Council document Gaudium et spes, “By its very nature, the gift of the person must be lasting and irrevocable. The indissolubility of marriage flows in the first place from the very essence of that gift: the gift of one person to another person” (11). Furthermore, “Love causes man to find fulfilment through the sincere gift of self” (Ibid).
We thus return full-circle. Can homosexual unions be considered real marriages and manifestations of love? Given what Augustine, Pius XI, and John Paul II have said, our answer must be a resounding no. Homosexual unions can never fulfill the ends of marriage that we have described, and they can never fulfill the self-gift that John Paul II discusses (NB: we are not considering in this context individuals with homosexual tendencies who choose to live chastely). For marriage to be oriented toward bringing children into the world, fidelity, and a sacramental bond marked by self-gift, it can only exist between one man and one woman. Many see this teaching of the Church to be intolerant or hateful. However, it truly is a message of love, for it is Christ’s very own message in the Gospels. Not only that, but it is God’s plan for creation from the beginning. Thus, God intends married love to exist between only one man and one woman, and only this kind of marriage can reveal the sublime dignity of the human person.