Truth in marriage

Pope Benedict has confronted the “dictatorship of relativism” in its pervasive reaches in modern life. Now he warns about its corruption of the sanctity of marriage, saying that the relativism of the culture regards marriage as “a mere social formalization of emotional ties.”

Consequently, not only is it becoming incidental, as human sentiments can be, but it is also presented as a legal superstructure of the human will that can be arbitrarily manipulated and even deprived of its heterosexual character.

Benedict was addressing canon lawyers of the Roman Rota, the Church’s central appellate court, last week. He told them the truth of marriage is in Scripture, in natural law.

The union takes place by virtue of the very plan of God who created them male and female and gives them the power to unite for ever those natural and complementary dimensions of their persons. The indissolubility of marriage does not derive from the definitive commitment of those who contract it but is intrinsic in the nature of the “powerful bond established by the Creator”…

Common thought in the culture is that marriage does derive its permanence (or whatever length it has) from the commitment of those who contract it.

These paths lead away from the true essence of marriage, as well as from its intrinsic juridical dimension and, under various more or less attractive names, seek to conceal a false conjugal reality.

So it is that the point is sometimes reached of maintaining that nothing is right or wrong in a couple’s relationship, provided it corresponds with the achievement of the subjective aspirations of each party. In this perspective, the idea of marriage “in facto esse” oscillates between merely factual relations and the juridical-positivistic aspect, overlooking its essence as an intrinsic bond of justice between the persons of the man and of the woman.

“Bonds of justice between the persons” is not a concept we’re still commonly familiar with, even in the Church. Which is why Benedict is addressing this with the canon lawyers who deal with divorce issues.

In being faithful to your task, make sure that your action fits harmoniously into an overall rediscovery of the beauty of that “truth about marriage”, the truth of the “principle”, which Jesus fully taught us and of which the Holy Spirit continually reminds us in the Church today.

Rediscovering first principles is the radical exercise of actually seeing what was there all along.