+
JMJ
Rorate has published a new version of the article the marriage crisis with the following forward:
After receiving a detailed critique of the section on Theology of the Body in the essay below, the author has seen fit to clarify certain parts of that section as well as that on Amoris Laetitia. There follows the corrected and revised version of the essay by Fr. Pietro Leone, a traditional priest in Italy.
P^3
Source: Rorate-Caeli
The
Church and Asmodeus
Don
Pietro Leone
A
spiritu fornicationis
Libera
nos,Domine
invocation
from the Litany of the Saints
Sister
Lucia of Fatima wrote to Cardinal Caffara that the final clash
between the Devil and the Church would be in the area of the family
and marriage. A dispassionate survey of recent Church history serves
to assure us that the clash has already begun, that is to say with
the entry into the Church of the Demon Asmodeus: the spirit of
fornication.
The
question that we wish to address in this essay is how Holy Mother
Church, Who has for 2,000 years resisted, been able to overcome, and
indeed been purged and exalted by,all the cruel and inhuman violence
of her persecutors and all the abstruse subtleties of the heretics,
is now succumbing to something as base and as primitive as the
concupiscence of the flesh.
To
attempt to answer this question, we shall briefly present:
1)
The Church’s traditional attitude to sexuality, in contrast to that
of the World;
2)
The attitude to sexuality of the modern Church (or rather of the
modern Churchmen) from the time of the Second Vatican Council to the
accession of Pope Francis; and finally
3)
The attitude manifest in the encyclical AmorisLaetitia.
SEXUALITY
IN THE EYES OF THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD
- a) The Nature of Sexuality
In
the eyes of the Church, sexuality has a finality: it is a faculty of
the human person oriented to procreation. Since procreation
necessitates the existence of a marriage and a family for its proper
use, sexuality belongs within marriage and the family, and
sexualitythus falls within marital ethics.
In
the eyes of the World, by contrast, sexuality does not necessarily
belong to marriage or fall within marital ethics, but rather has its
own ethics, that is to say sexual ethics. To the Church the atomic
cell is marriage; to the World it is sexuality.
To
the World, again, sexuality does not have a ‘finality’, or
orientation, as such. Rather, as sense-love, it is an end in itself
and speaks for itself;it does not require justification, even if it
impels the agent to act counter to reason. Indeed the very conceptof
‘finality’is distasteful to the children of the World1,
because their Weltanschauung
is
essentially subjectivist and self-centred. In a word, they are
interested only in their own finality (or desires), and in not that
of God, Who, according to them, may very possibly not exist at all.
1
as to Modern Philosophers in general
Their
conception of sexuality ranges
from the superficial to the worldly-wise: from the conception simply
of something which brings pleasure,alone or with another irrespective
of the other’s age, sex, or marital status; to the conception of
love between two adults, male and female, but which is typically not
confined to marriage alone. Sexuality, according to them, has its own
dynamic: it grows, fades, dies, brings pleasure but also sadness; it
attaches to one person and then to another; it is as variable and as
bittersweet as life itself.
- b) The Evaluation of Sexuality
The
Church teaches that sexuality, being a sense faculty, is, in our
fallen human nature, and as a consequence of Original Sin,
disordered. Like all the operations of the senses and the emotions,
it must therefore be controlled and kept in check by the cardinal
virtue of moderation, which in the area of sexuality is known as
‘chastity’. Marriage,in providing the context for the proper use
of sexuality, is termed ‘the remedy for concupiscence’. For those
who are married, chastity signifies moderation of the use and
pleasures of this faculty; for the unmarried it signifies total
abstinence.
Apart
from chastity, there is another virtue which the Church advocates in
the sexual domain, and that is modesty, or the sense of shame, pudor.
This
virtue relates to demeanour, dress, and speech. Indeed sexuality is
not discussed by committed Catholics except with the utmost tact and
discretion.
The
World, by contrast, views sexuality as good in an unqualified sense,
inasmuch as it belongs to human nature, which it also views as good
in such a sense.‘God made me that way’, they are wont to say,
about any desire that might afflict them.
The
World is not interested in modesty. It advocates complete license in
the exercise of sexuality, in dress, and in speech. It is open and
candid when it comes to
this,
its favourite topic. Jokes, double
entendres,
stories of affairs, ‘conquests’, and scandals are merrily bandied
about as though a sure index of manliness and emancipation2.
2whereas
quite the opposite is true: they are signs of effeminacy and
self-indulgence: the incapacity to be a man, to take courage and
responsibility; the index of enslavement to lower desires.
3
we note here that hedonism is incoherent,
since self-indulgence brings sadness, while it is self-discipline
(within the context of the Christian virtues) that brings happiness
c)
The Abuse of Sexuality
Inasmuch
as it is ordered to procreation, to the creation of beings after the
image and likeness of God,for the conservation of the human race and
for the population of Heaven, sexuality is ordered to a great good,
and consequently its abuse is a great evil. For this reason the
Church teaches that all sexual sins, all sins against purity, are of
grave matter: whether alone or with another, whether both are single,
or one or both are married to another, whether they are of a
different or of the same sex, whether the sin is of the natural or
unnatural order. If committed with full knowledge and deliberate
consent, such sins, if not confessed before physical death, will
merit the eternal death of Hell. Holy Communion in the state of
mortal sin is a further mortal sin: that of sacrilege.
The
World, by contrast, views this vision as exaggerated, puritanical,
prudish, psychologically unenlightened, inhibited, repressive,
killjoy, moralizing, pharisaic, ‘only for nuns’,‘positively
medioeval’ and‘hopelessly out of step with the times’. The
Children of the World defend themselves fromthe criticismof impurity
by saying that they are ‘not harming any-one’. Thisthey
saybecause they subscribe to hedonism, which constitutes the sum
total of all their sexual ethics3.
*
In
conclusion, then, the Church teaches that:
- a) Sexuality has a finalityand is ordained to procreation.
- b) Sexuality is in itself disordered;in marriage it is permitted as the ‘remedy of concupiscence’; it must be moderated by asceticism: by chastity and modesty.
- c) Its abuse is gravely sinful.
The
World teaches, by contrast, that:
- a) Sexuality does not have a particular finality. Its use ispleasurable and a means for expressing love between two persons, not necessarily married to each other.
- b) It isunqualifiedly good, andis to be used and talked about with complete license.
- c) Its morality is determined by the canons of hedonism.
II
RECENT
CHURCHMARITAL DOCTRINE UNTIL POPE FRANCIS
From
the beginning of Her history, the Church had taught and practiced the
ascetic life. In fact this is one of the features which distinguished
Her from the World, and which indeed corroborates the very
authenticity of Her Faith4.
For how could She live, and convert such multitudes to, a mortified
and chaste life so at variance with Fallen Nature, if the Faith which
She preached were untrue?
4
cf.
the preambula Fidei in
the discipline of Apologetics
5
-
all features of Fallen Nature. Their philosophical formation in
particular was coloured by Modern Philosophy, which may be described
as ‘The Philosophy of Fallen Nature’. Limits of space prevent the
author from expounding the said notion at this point.
Until
the XXth century, this spirit of asceticism had prevailed in the
Church: until it began to be sapped byan opposing spirit: that of the
World, namely of Fallen Nature. The latter spirit had, over the
course of the centuries, grown in extent and power, and was now in
the course of penetrating the minds and souls of the Churchmen
themselves. Vacillating Faith, poor doctrinal formation,moral
weakness, lack of courage, superficiality, and sentimentality5
on
the part of the Hierarchy certainly all played a role in their
subsequent endeavours to accommodate this spirit to the Catholic
Faith. The moment for its official entry into the Church was marked
by the Second Vatican Council.
As
far as sexuality is concerned, this spirit is manifest in a new
emphasis on an undefined ‘love’at the very heart of marital
ethics.
This
emphasisis first manifest in recent Magisteriumin the Council
document Gaudium
et Spes (§
48), and was later codified by Canon Law (CIC 1983)in terms of a
reversal of the order of the ends of marriage.The teaching of the
Magisterium on sexuality was later notably affected and developed by
official dispositions on the reception of Holy Communion, and by
‘Theology of the Body’.
Consequently
we shall now proceed to examine:
1)
The new conception of love in Gaudium
et Spes,
and then in Canon Law;
2)
The relation between mortal sin and the reception of Holy Communion;
3)
Relevant elementsof ‘Theology of the Body’.
1.
‘LOVE’
- A. Gaudium et Spes
In
the Second Vatican Council there was a move to place the two ends of
marriage (procreation and conjugal love, see below) on the same
level,contrary to the constant teaching of Tradition which
hadculminated in the declaration of a commission of Cardinals set up
by the Pastor
Angelicus,
and in his own express declaration only a decade prior to the
Council6.
The Dominican Master General, Cardinal Browne, rose with the words
Caveatis!
Caveatis!,
and warned the assembly that to accept this definition would be to go
against the entire Tradition of the Church and to pervert the whole
meaning of marriage7,
but his words were met with amusement by the Council Fathers8.
6
AAS XXVI, 1944; Address to the Italian Midwives, 1951.
7
as reported by Mgr. Lefèbvre,cf.
Pope John’s Council p.67, Michael Davies, Augustine Publishing co.
1977
8as
reported by Archbishop Dwyer, ibid.
9an
eroticizing doctrine, as we shall shortly see
10
cf.
‘Family under Attack’.
11Matrimonii
finis primarius est procreatio atque educatio prolis; secundarius
mutuum adjutorium et remedium concupiscentiae.
12Matrimonialefoedus…
ad bonumconjugumatqueadprolisgenerationem et educationemordinatum.
After
a heated debate, an obscure compromisestatement was agreed upon,
namely that: ‘By their very nature the marriage covenant and
conjugal love are ordered to the procreation and education of
children’(GS § 48). In the light of traditional marital ethics,
this statement is orthodox in maintaining that both the marriage
covenant and conjugal love are ordered to the procreation and
education of children;it is open to heterodoxy, by contrast, in
making a close connection between marriage and love, a connection
which isin fact capable ofsupportingthe doctrine9
that
marriage is love (as in the description of marriage as ‘an intimate
partnership of married love and life’ at the beginning of the same
section of GS), or the doctrine that marriage has love as its primary
end (as already manifest in Humanae
Vitae10,and
as insinuated in the new canon, as we shall now see).
B.
Canon Law
In
the Code of Canon Law 1917(can. 1013) we read: ‘The primary end of
marriage is the procreation and education of progeny; the secondary
end is the mutual assistance and the remedy of concupiscence11’.In
The Code of 1983 (can. 1055) we read by contrast: ‘The
marriagecovenant … is ordered to the good of the spouses and to the
procreation and education of children12’.
The
later canon differs from the earlier one in that:
- i) The end previously taught as the primary end (the procreation and education of children) is placed after the one previously taught as the secondary end (the good of the spouses);
- ii) The good of the spouses is no longer defined at all: either as‘love’ or as anything else;
- iii) The goodof the spouses is not designatedas ‘primary’, nor is the good of the children designated as ‘secondary’, although the reversal of their order suggests this;
- iv) The remedy of concupiscence is no longer mentioned;
- v) The term ‘end’ is no longer mentioned either.
We
shall now briefly consider in their relation to the new canon:
a)
‘The good of the spouses’;
b)
‘The remedy of concupiscence’;
c)
The notion of finality.
a)
The Good of the Spouses
We
note that the term ‘the good of the spouses’, which signifies
love, comes to be understood, in the absence of a definition,as
emotional, and more particularly as sexual, love. The reason for this
is that emotional love is the most obvious sense of ‘love’, and
in the marital context the most obvious type of emotional love is of
asexual nature13.
13
The
same may be said of the description of marriage as an ‘intimate
partnership of married life and love’, see above.
14
Pope Pius XII in his Address to Fathers of Families 1951, warning
them of propaganda contrary to Church teaching
That
the author of the canonintended the
good of the spouses in a sexual sense is corroborated by his placing
‘the good of the spouses’ before the ‘procreation and education
of children’, thereby suggesting that the love he refers to is
indeed sexual love: as a means to the end of procreation.
In
short, the canon, foreshadowed in Gaudium
et Spes, has
the eroticizing tendency that ‘sexual life... acquires in the mind
and conscience of the average reader the idea and value of an end in
itself 14’.
This tendency was to intensify in subsequent Magisterium.
According
to traditional doctrine, by contrast, the good of the
spouses(conjugal love) is understood in the first placeas ‘mutual
assistance’ and only in the second place as ‘the remedy of
concupiscence’. Since mutual assistance is designated as secondary
to the ‘procreation and education of the children’, it must
clearly consist above all in
their
collaboration for the primary end of their marriage: that is the
procreation, and, in particular, the education of their offspring.
The fact that ‘the remedy of concupiscence’ is mentioned after
‘mutual assistance’, signifies that the role that sexuality plays
in marriage is a subordinate one.
b)
The Remedy of Concupiscence
The
Church teaches that sexuality is disordered as a consequence of
Original Sin. This sin was the cause, amongst other things, of the
concupiscence of the flesh which is a disorder, a lack of control,
and a striving of the senses and the emotions for their own
satisfaction independently of Reason. Marriage provides the ‘Remedy
for Concupiscence’ in offering a suitable and honest context for
the exercise of this faculty. In Traditional Church teaching, this
aspect of marriage is designated either as the third finality of
marriage, or, as here, as part of the second finality.
In
suppressing this aspect of marriage, the innovators seem to treat
sexuality as a purely natural phenomenon and as something
intrinsically good, prescinding from the doctrine of Original Sin and
from the negative light which it sheds on this faculty.
c)
Finality
We
have observed that the word finis(end,
or finality) is missing from the new definition (as it already was in
Gaudium
et Spes).
This corresponds to an aversion to scholastic thinking and
terminology which characterizes the Second Vatican Council and recent
Magisterium as a whole 15.
The result is a lack of precision and clarity in general, and in this
canon in particular. The end, or finality, of a thing determines its
nature. The Church had always taught that the (primary) end of
marriage is procreation. It is this that defines its nature: God
instituted marriage for progeny.
15
Other
examples are the doctrine that marriage is an ‘intimate partnership
of married life and love’ (cf. GS 48), which is a psychological
description rather than a theological definition in terms of the
vinculum or
spiritual bond (cf. the Catechism of Trent), and the doctrine that
sexuality is ordered towards ‘conjugal love’ rather than towards
procreation (see below).
What
does it mean to say that marriage is ‘ordered to the good of the
spouses and the procreation of children’? Are the two elements on
the same level, as the innovators had wished to declare in the
Council? But if so, how can the nature of a single thing be
determined by two disparate ends? Or is the former element the
principal one because it is mentioned first? But if so, what would it
mean to say that the principal end of marriage is ‘the good of the
spouses’ or sexual love, as the canon insinuates (see above)?Is
sexuality not itself oriented to procreation like the stomach for
digestion
and the eye to sight?And does this not entail that the end of
marriage is procreation after all? And in this case why not place
procreation first?
*
In
this subsection we have seen how traditional marital teaching has
been obscured; and how ‘love’, and specifically sexual love, has
been emphasized to the expense of concupiscence, finality, and
procreation. In short, we have seen how subjectivism has gained the
ascendancy over objective reality, and ‘positive’ over ‘negative’
elements.
*
Before
proceeding to the next subsection, let us briefly show how the
importance here accorded to sexual lovehas been corroborated by
subsequent Magisterium.The new conception of marriagecodified in
Canon Law (CIC 1983) has been quoted in various papal encyclicals
such as FamiliarisConsortio,
and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church(§ 1601).Humanae Vitae
likewise lends priority to marital ‘love’16.
16
Pope
John Paul II will understand Theology of the Body as a commentary on
this Encyclical (General Audience Nov. 28 1984), most famous, and
rightly so, for its condemnation of contraception, but also, as Pope
Paul VI admitted, and in conformity with Pope John Paul’s
commentary, personalistic in spirit.
In
that Catechism we also find the doctrine that ‘sexuality is ordered
to the conjugal love of the man and woman’ (§ 2360).Here conjugal
love is understood as sexual love, and there is no longerevena
mention of procreation.
A
further novel doctrine on sexuality is found in the Catechism at §
2332: ‘Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the
unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the
capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the
aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others’.
But
what does it mean to say that ‘Sexuality affects all
the
aspects of the human person’? How can it affect the purely
spiritual aspect of the person, involved for example in his
relationship with God? And how does it concern ‘the aptitude for
forming bonds of communion with others’? Bonds of communion can be
forged or strengthened either rationally, as when I give alms to
some-one, or emotionally, as when I express my affection for
some-one. But sexuality certainly does not pertain to the former
case, and it does not necessarily pertain to the latter either. The
latter case involves sense-love, but sexual love is not the only form
of sense-love that there is; there is also family love, for instance,
as when a mother embraces her child.
Here
sexuality is again accorded importance, this time by universalizing
it, more in accordance with Freudian psychology than to any sane, let
alone Catholic, anthropology.
From
the promulgation of Gaudium
et Spes onwards
we see, then, an ever-intensifying spirit of eroticism in marital
ethics.
2.
MORTAL SINAND HOLY COMMUNION
The
Traditional Doctrine
The
Church has always warned faithful against receiving Holy Communion in
the state of mortal sin. In the Maundy Thursday liturgy and in the
Feast of Corpus
Christi,
the Church in Her Old Rite liturgy presents for our meditation the
passage from chapter 11 of the First Epistle of St. Paul to the
Corinthians 11warning againstthe reception of Holy Communion to one’s
damnation. On the latter feast, St. Thomas Aquinas himself, its
author,pointedly repeats the phrase in the Communio
prayer,
that is to say during the distribution of the Holy Communion itself;
and in the sequence LaudaSionhe
unambiguously declares:
Sumunt
boni sumunt mali,
sorte
tamen inaequali,
vitae
vel interitus.
Mors
est malis, vita bonis:
vide
paris sumptionis
quam
sit dispar exitus.
The
good receive, the evil receive, but their destiny is different: life
or death. Death is for the evil, life is for the good: see how
unequal is the outcome of an equal reception.
The
Church teaches traditionally that any-one in the state of mortal sin
must make a sacramental confession before receiving Holy Communion.
Otherwise, when he attends Mass, he must refrain from communicating
sacramentally and receive only a spiritual Communion. It is true that
an act of perfect contrition outside the Sacrament of Confession
suffices for absolving a person from mortal sin, but since it is
impossible to know whether the contrition in any given case is
perfect, the person in question would in effect be risking committing
a further mortal sin by receiving Holy Communionin such
circumstances, and therefore it would be wrong to do so.
Accordingly
we read in the Catechism of St. Pius X (§ 630):‘...the person who
knows that he is in a state of mortal sin must, before Communion,
must make a
goodconfession;
since it is not sufficient to make the act of perfect contrition,
without confession, for some-one who is in mortal sin in order to
communicate properly17’.
17Chi
sa di essere in peccato mortale, che cosa deve fare prima di
comunicarsi? Chi sa di essere in peccato mortale, deve, prima di
comunicarsi, fare una buona confessione; non bastando l’atto di
contrizione perfetta, senza la confessione, a chi è in peccato
mortale per comunicarsi come conviene (n.
630).
18as
observed in our booklet ‘The Destruction of the Roman Rite’
19
(quoted in Redemptoris
Sacramentum ch. 4, 81) The Code of
Canon Law is not infallible, nor does a subsequent version of it
necessarily represent an improvement over a previous version. In this
its canons are similar to the non-infallible declarations of a
Council.
20
He is faced with a choix
corneillien, but how is it that he
does not have more respect for the sacred priesthood, of which he
bears the indelible and eternal character in his soul? Did he never
study such doctrines? Did his seminary confessor never avert him to
the gravity of such sacrileges?
The
New Doctrine
Both
in the new liturgy and in recent Church Magisterium, we find that
theabove- described traditional doctrinehas been diluted.
In
the Novus
Ordo18
St.
Paul’s admonition against receiving Holy Communion in the state of
mortal sin has been excised from the liturgy both of Maundy Thursday
and of Corpus Christi (intwo instances in the latter feast, see
above). Furthermore, the Sequence LaudaSion
has
been made optional; alternatively a shorter version has been provided
(see for example the ‘American Bishops’ Site’) which no longer
contains the two verses quoted above.
As
for recent Magisterium, we read in the Code of Canon Law: ‘A person
who is conscious of grave sin is not to celebrate Mass or receive the
body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession, unless
there is a grave reason and there is no opportunity to confess; in
this case the person is to remember the obligation to make an act of
perfect contrition which includes the resolution of confessing as
soon as possible’ ( CIC 1983 can. 91619).
The
Canon refers in the first instance to priests, but clearly applies to
laymen as well. It justifies Holy Communion for a‘grave reason’
but what could this grave reason possibly be? For a priest it could
perhaps be the obligation to celebrate a Mass for a given
congregation20,
but what could it be for a layman? What could constitute a reason
grave enough to risk a sacrilegious Communion? Embarrassment at what
others might think or say? Human respect? ‘Solidarity’ with the
couple whose marriage he is attending for example? The thought that
Holy Communion might somehow help himto overcome his sin?
We
observe that this canon, already questionable enough in itself, is
quoted in an abbreviated form in the Catechism of the Catholic Church
as follows (§ 1457):‘Any-
one
who is aware of having committed a mortal sin must not receive Holy
Communion even if he experiences deep contrition, without first
having received sacramental absolution, unless he has a grave reason
for receiving Communion and there is no possibility of going to
confession’.Here only two of the conditions listed in the canon are
explicitly quoted, namely the impossibility of a sacramental
confession and the ‘grave reason’;the act of contrition is
mentioned, but not explicitly as a condition; whereas the fourth
condition, namely the resolution to confess as soon as possibleafter
Holy Communion, has been entirely left out.
The
modern clergy seems, by contrast, typically toinsist only on the
fourthcondition, for all too often laymenwill blithely announce to a
Confessor that a priest had told him that it was sufficient to
confess after
receiving
Communion. What is most remarkable here is thelack of logical
coherence on the part of all concerned.
If
we still lived in the happy age and territory of the Holy Roman
Empire, and the Emperor had expressed his intention to visit us in
our home, would it be sufficient to welcome him into a stuffy
apartment with curtains drawn, unmade beds, unwashed clothes
andplates,dust, dirt, and piles of rubbish everywhere, and assure him
that the next day we would be cleaning the whole place up for his
visit?
The
more permissive stance of the Church in regard to the reception of
Holy Communion is relevant to the issue of sexuality, inasmuch as
belittling the gravity of Holy Communion in the state of mortal sin,
it belittles the gravity of mortal sin itself, of which impurity is,
sad to say, one of the most common forms.
However
much these liturgical and magisterial innovations may have affected
the faithful’s understanding of the gravity of impurity, we must in
all honesty admit that the clergy in recent times has been far from
assiduous in inculcating true Christian values pertaining to this sin
and to its opposing virtue.
When,
o Gentle Reader, did you last hear a sermon on the glory of purity or
the abomination of impurity? When did you last hear a priest warn the
congregation not to receive Holy Communion after committing an act of
impurity, even alone? When didhe last admonish you in the
confessional on the danger of impurity for the salvation of your
eternal soul or when did he ever encourage you to offer to God the
sacrifice of a life of perfect chastity21?
21We
mention in this connection of the suppression on the part of the
Vatican Hierarchy of the initiative to make St. Aloysius Gonzaga
patron of the youth. Even if this action, which we have been unable
to substantiate, did not occur, it would be typical of the
contemporary Church outlook towards purity.
3.
‘THEOLOGY OF THE BODY’
Faithful
attending Pope John Paul II’s Angelus
discourses
from September 1979 –November 1984 and hoping for catechism or
pious disquisitions, would surely have been disappointed. Instead
they were to hear him propound in all freedom his personal theories
of sexual morality. We shall here briefly examine the personalistic
‘Theology of the Body’22,
having already discussed it in detail in our book.We shall consider
forthwith:
22
‘Theology
of the Body’ may be understood to consist esentially of this corpus
of discourses, but we shall understand it in a wider sense so as also
to comprise Pope John Paul’s marital doctrine as elsewhere
expressed, as for example in Familiaris
Consortio,
which, as a Papal Encyclical, has in any case greater authority than
the Discourses.
- a) Its formal principle: the conception of conjugal love as total self-giving;
- b) Its most remarkable feauture, that of the undue elevation of conjugal love;
- c) Its root error.
- A. Total Self-Giving Love
It
is our contention that the formal principle (or central conception)
of Theology of the Body is the conception of conjugal love as ‘total
self-giving’. Whereas recent Magisterium presents conjugal love as
sexual love, Pope John Paul II presents conjugal love as ‘total
self-giving’, distinguishing two types of it: a ‘total personal
self-giving’, which is the conjugal love in the permanent sense,
and a ‘total physical self-giving’ which is the act of conjugal
love, ‘the sign and the fruit’ of the former love (Familiaris
Consortio §11).
We
proceed to criticize the conception of conjugal love as ‘total
self-giving’; and then the relation of conjugal love (so conceived)
to God’s love.
1)
Total Self-Giving Love as a Definition of Conjugal Love
There
are various difficulties with this definition, of which we shall here
present only three.
a)
To define conjugal love as ‘total self-giving’ is effectively to
divinize it, for to define it as such identifies it with the love of
Charity, which is in fact the only total self-giving love which
exists. We recall Our Blessed Lord’s commandment to love God with a
total love (ex
toto corde tuo...),
but the neighbour with a lesser love, that is, ‘as oneself’;
b)
It is in fact impossible for one human person to give himself totally
to another human person, whether on the metaphysical or on the
physical plane.
c)
If we reduce the content of ‘total self-giving’ love to that
which is practicablypossible for married couples, namely to a life of
mutual commitment and devotion, we see that the form of love thus
understood is too wide in ambit for the
Pope’s
purposes. This is because itis not confined to sacramental marriage
alone, as he intends, but ratheris a property of every valid form of
marriage, and even of certain extramarital relationships, provided
that the two persons in question (for example two non-believers of
whom at least one is a baptized Catholic, or even two adulterers)
commit themselves to live together until death with the appropriate
sentiments of mutual devotion.
2)
Total Self-Giving Love in Relation to God’s Love for Man and for
Himself
The
Pope does not stop at relating the act of conjugal love to man’s
love for God23,
but seeks to divinize it yet further, by relating it both to the love
of God for man, and to that of God for Himself. In consequence his
conception of conjugal love approaches Church teaching on Charity
even more closely.
23the
love of man for God immediately (rather than his love for God
mediately through theneighbour)
24
cf.
also Mulieris Dignitatem 1988
25
in
Familiaris Consortio §19
and §22 he offers an ethical basis for this mutuality in their equal
dignity.
The
love of God for man that the Pope has in mind is Christ’s love for
His Church.
He
relates conjugal love to this love in various ways, of which we shall
mention three.
- a) The Church’s Subjection to Christ
Thisconcept
is expressed in Ephesians 5: 22. ‘Let wives be subject to their
husbands as to the Lord.23. For the husband is head of the wife as
Christ is head of the Church, he who is the saviour of his body.
24.And as the Church is subject to Christ, so let wives be subject to
their husbands in everything’. It is clear, and has always been
taught by Holy Mother Church, that St. Paul is hereby teaching that
the husband has authority over the wife.
The
Pope, by contrast, interprets this phrase as the spouses’ mutual
subjection in marriage: in general (Discourse of 11 August 198224);
and in their sexual complementarity in particular (4 July 1984)25.
In
the former discourse the Pope accepts that the wife be subject to her
husband, but adds: ‘Love makes the husband simultaneously subject
to the wife, and thereby subject to the Lord Himself, just as the
wife to the husband’. In the latter discourse he again understands
spousal subjection in a reciprocal, and in this instance also in a
sexual, manner: as ‘a spiritually mature form of... mutual
attraction’.
In
conclusion, then, the Pope attempts to subsume the wife’s
subjection to her husband to a form of reciprocal subjection, but
then why does St. Paul here insist on
the
unilateral submission of the wife to the husband no less than three
times (in the verses 22-24 quoted above)? In neither discourse does
the Pope quote, discuss, or even mention verse 23, which describes
the husband as ‘head of the wife’ which particularly clearly
entails his authority over her.
The
reason he gives for this innovation is the difference of
‘contemporary sensitivity’, of ‘mentality and customs’, of
‘social position of women in regard to men’ (Discourse, August 11
1982). But is the husband then no longer ‘head of the wife as
Christ is head of the Church’? Have St. Paul and Tradition been put
in second place to the modern world? and Truth to ‘sensitivity’?
- b) The ‘Union in one Flesh’ as a Sign of Christ’s Union with the Church
The
Pope understands thisphrase of the spouses’ carnal union.The
Council of Trent, by contrast, understands thephraseof the unity of
the spouses’ spiritual bond.
- c) The Expression of Agape
The
Pope presentsthe conjugal act as ‘the most profound expression of
Agape’.
Here he confuses two radically different forms of love: natural
sense-love (not necessarily in the state of Grace) and supernatural
rational love which is a participation in the Inner Life of God (that
is to say Agape,
or Charity). The former love is too different from the latter to be
able to serve as its expression26.
26
Of course it may amount to Charity if the agent is in the state of
Grace.
27
A
doctrine is of course not Catholic simply because it is based on
Sacred Scripture, as the Pope does. Martin Luther based his teachings
on the Sacred Scripture but was a heretic. What is necessary is to
base doctrines on the Sacred Scriptures as they have been
interpretated by the Church and Tradition. For this reason we speak
above of the Pope’s ‘personal theories’.
*
A
similar objection may be made to the Pope’s vision of the conjugal
act as an expression of innerTrinitarian love, which is certainly the
boldest claim in his whole theology of marriage. As an instance of
this doctrine we quote (Discourse Nov.14 1979): ‘Man images God not
only through his humanity, but also through the communion of persons
which man and woman form right from the beginning’, and (June 25
1980): ‘Being one flesh is a sacramental expression which
corresponds to the communion of persons’.
*
We
see in conclusion how the Pope endeavours to relate conjugal love to
God’s love in novel and eroticizing ways, without foundation either
in Sacred Scripture27
or
in Tradition.
*
- B. The Undue Elevation of Conjugal Love
1.
Divinization and Finalization
We
have explained how conjugal love is elevated by its divinization: its
assimilation to the divine love of Charity.
By
assimilating conjugal love to Charity, the Pope not only divinizes
it, but also finalizes it, presenting it as a way of fulfilling the
meaning of man’s life. Forsince God is the sum total of all good
and all perfections, the raison
d’être of
any given thing is determined by its imitation of some good or
perfection of God Himself. The perfection of God which man in
particular is capable of imitating is His knowledge, and, above all,
the love of Himself. This love, as we have explained above, is a
total self-giving love. By claiming that conjugal love amounts to
total self-giving love, the Pope then in effect claims that man can
fulfill his raison
d’être by
conjugal love (including the act proper to it). Indeed the Pope
asserts explicitly that total self-giving love in marriage enables
the ‘accomplishment of the true meaning of one’s own being and
one’s own existence’( 16 Jan. 1980).
2.
Consequences of the Undue Elevation of Conjugal Love
There
are two types of consequence that flow from this undue elevation of
conjugal love: an internal type, that is to say a type of consequence
for other doctrines that go to make up Theology of the Body, and an
external type, for the way in which this system is generally
understood as a whole.
- a) Internal Consequences
Nowif
conjugal love is elevated to the level that we have just described,
then it clearly cannot coherentlybe presented as negative in any way,
whether by reason of concupiscence(in the sense ofthe inherent
disorder of the sensitive appetite), or in its relation to virginity
and celibacy.
- i) Concupiscence
Sexual
concupiscence is combatted with the virtue of chastity: which means
total abstinence outside of marriage, or moderation within marriage.
Total abstinence combined with vigilance over the will and the
imagination are sufficientto avoid the taint of concupiscence on our
actions; moderation in the use of the sexual faculty within marriage
is, by contrast, insufficient to avoid this taint completely, owing
to the inherently disordered nature of the faculty as a consequence
of Original Sin. Marriage does however offer a context for the
non-sinful exercise of the sexual
faculty,
despite its inherent disorder. This is what the term‘remedy of
concupiscence’ signifies (see above).
Pope
John Paul II does not of course deny the existence of concupiscence
as a source of sin, but neglects that it is inherent to the conjugal
act, even if not in a sinful manner. For this reason he is able to
state (Discourse October 29, 1980): ‘Through Grace the Holy Spirit
impregnates sexual desires with everything that is noble and
beautiful’, and (September 26, 1979) is able to talk of ‘Original
Innocence’ as of something which in some sense is still accessible
to man.
- ii) Marriage in Relation to Virginity and Celibacy
The
Council of Trent declares dogmatically (s. 24 can.10): ‘If any-one
were to say... that it is not more blessed and better to remain in
virginity or celibacy than in marriage: Anathema sit’. Si
quisdixerit… non esse meliusacbeatiusmanere in virginitate aut
caelibatu, quam matrimonio: Anathemasit.
In
line with this teaching, Pope John Paul II (Discourse, July 7 1982)
refers to St. Paul’s words that ‘Whoever chooses marriage does
well, while whoever chooses virginity… does better’ (I Cor 7.
38), and continues: ‘… let us remember that according to St.
Paul, the unmarried person is anxious… how to please the Lord’ (I
Cor 7.32). To please the Lord has love as its foundation. This
foundation arises from a further comparison. The unmarried person is
anxious about how to please God, while the married man is anxious how
to please his wife’.
In
another passage (Discourse, April 14 1982) the same Pope, referring
to Our Blessed Lord’s statement (Mt 19. 10-2): ‘There are those
who made themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven’, declares
that these words: ‘give no reason to assert the inferiority of
marriage, nor the superiority of virginity or celibacy inasmuch as by
their nature virginity and celibacy consist in abstinence from the
conjugal union of the body…, but only for the sake of the Kingdom
of Heaven’.
In
this second passage, he again admits the superiority of virginity or
celibacy, that isfor the motive of the Kingdom of Heaven (which is
clearly equivalent to that of the love of God). But he specifies that
the motive for its superiority is this,rather thanthat of abstinence
from the conjugal act. And yet it is impossible to divorce the one
motive from the other. For virginity or celibacy for the Kingdom of
Heaven/for the (perfect) love of God, essentially consists in total
abstinence from conjugal love, which is precisely that which lends
this state of life its character of supernatural sacrifice in which
resides its very superiority.
This
reluctance to demean the conjugal act in any way corresponds to a
tendency to place the two states of life on the same level. And
indeed thePope declares
(FamiliarisConsortio
§
11): ‘Christian Revelation recognizes two specific ways of
realizing the vocation of the human person in its entirety to love:
marriage and virginity or celibacy’28.
28in
a similar way we read of a ‘vocation to marriage’ in the
Catechism of the Catholic Church (1603).
29In
conformity with this view, we note Pope John Paul II’s initiatives
to raise to the honour of the altar married individuals and couples.
This
third passage presents bothstates of life as objects of vocation, as
ways to love in a total sense, and consequently as possessingan equal
moral value. As such it may be said to place the two states on the
same level. This conflicts with the Council of Trent as it does with
the second passage above.The second passage in particular had
presented the virginal or celibate state as superior to the married
state on the basis of a disparity of love,whereas this third passage
(from FamiliarisConsortio)
places the two states on the same level on the basis of a parity of
love.
In
conclusion, we observe incoherence in the way that the Pope relates
the two states of life: at one time viewing the virginal/celibate
state as superior; at another time viewing the two states as of equal
value. The latter view,on account of its foundation in a central
principle of his thought, namely that of total self-giving love, must
be held to be the predominant view29.
- b) External Consequences of the Undue Elevation of Conjugal Love
The
elevation of conjugal love also has consequences for the way in which
Theology of the Body is generally understood.
Pope
John Paul II, as we have explained, divinizes conjugal love by
designatingit as ‘total self-giving love’. But since conjugal
love is understood by the World and is presented by recent
Magisterium (see above) as sexual love, this divinization is
generally understood as a divinization of sexual love.
The
same Pope equally divinizes the act of conjugal love, that is to say
by designating it as ‘total self-giving’, but since the total
self-giving of the conjugal act (in so far as it is realizable by the
spousesin their mutual commitment and devotion, see above) may exist
even outside marriage, this divinization is also generally understood
as a divinization of sexual love.
The
divinization of the conjugal act (in the Pope’s teaching) and that
of the sexual act and sexual love in general (as the Pope’s
teaching is generally understood) is clearly at variance with
Catholic sensibilities, and less consonant with the Catholic Faith
than with the clouded vagaries of Fallen Nature and the perverse
lucubrations of its mouthpiece, Gnosis. It is atparticular variance
with the Catholic Faith and
sensibilities
when such a loveis presented as an expression of the Inner Life of
the Most Holy Trinity30.
30A
dozen or so years ago an employee of the Propaganda of the Doctrine
of the Faith informally and in so many words admitted the fallacy of
Theology of the Body to the author in a conversation at the
Sant’Ufficio.The fact that this system of Theology sustains a
Trinitarian doctrine of the sort that which we have just mentioned
should suffice to show its fallacy to any-one possessed of a Catholic
sensibility, even if he were unconvinced by our critique of it above.
To find such concepts in the Catholic Magisterium and in the mouth of
the Vicar of Christ himself, is testimony to the remarkable expansion
of eroticism in the bosom of the Catholic Church in the twenty years
following the promulgation of Gaudium
et Spes.
31cf.
our discussion of ethical personalism in ‘Family under Attack’
The
fact that this divinization has been made at the expense of the true
divine love, that of Charity, constitutes a substitution, or eclipse,
of Charity (and of its perfection, sanctity) by sexuality. This is
true even if the Pope did not intend such an effect, and even if he
did not devote more thoughts and words in his Pontificate to
sexuality than to sanctity.
- C. The Root Error of Theology of the Body
We
have contended that the formal principle of Theology of the Body is
the conception of conjugal love as ‘total self-giving’. This is a
personalist principle of the moral order. It is grounded in a
personalist principle of the ontologicalorder, namely that love
determines personhood31.
These
principles apparently derive from Trinitarian theology which teaches
that:
- i) within the Most Holy Trinity the Relations constitute the Persons(so for example Divine Fatherhood constitutes the Divine Father);
- ii) the love between the Divine Persons is one of (total) self-gift.
Applying
these two principles to marital ethics, we see how Pope John Paul II
can claim that the love between the spouses is one of total
self-gift, and that this love constitutes their personhood: makes
them what they are as persons.
We
must however object that what is true of the Most Holy Trinity is not
true of marital ethics, nor indeed of (human) interpersonal ethics in
general. As to the first point, we have argued above that marital
love is not a total self-giving; as to the second, love does not
determine human personhood ontologically, but only morally.
Ontologically the person is a unity of body and soul and his actions
(such as his love) are a consequence of his nature(agere
sequitur esse)
rather than determinative of his nature.
In
synthesis, the root error of Theology of the Body is the
misapplication of Trinitarian theology to marital ethics.
From
the theological standpoint, this error is one of the confusion of the
supernatural and natural orders; from the philosophical standpoint it
is one of subjectivism: a disregard for the objective order - the
concrete objective reality of things - whether that of Faith or
Reason, in favour of the subject.
We
have seen evidence of this subjectivismabove in the person being
understood in terms of his ‘love’, in abstraction from human
nature andfrom body and soul; in marriage being conceived in terms of
‘total self-giving’ in abstraction from the sacrament, the bond,
and Grace; in its elevation without regard either for concupiscence
or for its inferiority to celibacy/virginity; in its assimilation to
Christ’s love for the Church in untraditional and eroticizingways.
*
Before
proceeding to examine the encyclical of Pope Francis, we shall
briefly investigate the influence of the spirit of the World
onmarital ethics in the recent Magisterium, in the light of our brief
synthesis of that spirit above.
In
the first subsection, on Gaudium
et Spes and
the modified code of Canon Law, we saw how the concept of the
finality of marriage was suppressed and how ‘procreation’ then
moved into the background and ‘conjugal love’ into the
foreground.We then observed how this love acquired an erotic content
whichwas to intensify over the succeeding years.
In
the second subsection, on the liturgical changes and on a new code of
Canon Law, we saw how the gravity of mortal sins was (indirectly)
belittled.
In
the third subsection, on ‘Theology of the Body’, we saw how
conjugal love, and particularly the act of conjugal love, was
glorified, and how‘negative’ concupiscence was played down. We
witnessed a complete openness, or license, on the part of the Pope in
talking aboutsuch matters. At the same timewe sawnothing in his words
to diminish the gravity of impurity. In fact one of the great
strengths of this Pontiff’s moral teaching is his upholding of the
Natural Law, and his consequent insistence on the virtue of purity32.
32We
do not deny that Pope John Paul II wrote much that was Catholic and
true, and much in supportof chastity and purity, also in his
discourses on Theology of the Body.
III
AMORIS
LAETITIA
How
can we doubt that this encyclical, publically called into question by
the same Cardinal Caffarra(amongst others) to whom Sister Lucia had
written, is not part of the clash between the Church and Satan that
we have mentioned above?
In
this brief glance at AmorisLaetitia
we
consider marriage, adultery, and ‘sex education’.
1)
MARRIAGE
- a) Marriage in Itself
The
Exhortation AmorisLaetitiastates
in § 80: ‘Marriage is firstly an ‘intimate partnership of life
and love’ which is a good for the spouses themselves, while
sexuality is ‘ordered to the conjugal love of man and woman’...
Nonetheless the conjugal union is ordered to procreation by its very
nature’.
In
the footnotes, four references are provided for this text: Gaudium
et Spes §
48 with regard to the ‘intimate partnership’; the Code of Canon
Law (1983) c.1055 with regard to the ‘good of the spouses’33;
the Catechism of the Catholic Church § 2360 with regard to the
ordering of sexuality to conjugal love; Gaudium
et Spes §
48 again with regard to the ordering of marriage to procreation.
33cf.
Footnote 9 above
There
are two things to note when comparing this passage of the Exhortation
with recent Magisterium:
1)
It representsa step forward, inasmuch as it now explicitly presents
married love as the primary end of marriage(‘Marriage is
firstly...conjugal
love’);
2)This
doctrine is a further example of the eroticizing tendency in recent
Magisterium,manifest herealso in the re-iteration of three doctrines
(which we have treated above) describing marriage as an ‘intimate
partnership of life and love’ and a ‘good for the spouses’, and
concerning the ‘ordering of sexuality to conjugal love’. The
suggestion that conjugal love is essentially sexualin content will
indeedsubsequently be elaborated in exclusively secular terms in §
150 entitled ‘The Erotic Dimension of Love’.
- b) Marriage in Relation to Virginity or Celibacy
We
have just seenhow Pope Francis takes recent Magisterium a step
further by explicitlydesignating ‘love’ as the first finality of
marriage and by explicitly giving this ‘love’ an erotic
content.We shall now see how he does so equally by explicitlyplacing
marriage on the same level as virginity and celibacy (Exhortation§
159quoting Pope John Paul II Discourses, 14th
April
1982):‘… ‘the biblical texts do
not
furnish a motive to sustain either the ‘inferiority’ of marriage,
or the ‘superiority’ of virginity and celibacy based on sexual
abstinence’.
By
ending the quotation here and by introducing inverted commas around
the terms superiority and inferiority, Pope Francis gives the
impression that the Holy Scripture, as well as Pope John Paul II,
view these two basic choices of life as on the same level, in other
words as of equal value. This, however, is not true. The Holy
Scripture and Tradition, culminating in the Council of Trent (as we
have shown above) teach that the latter choice of life is superior.
As
for Pope John Paul II,he here acknowledges the latter choice as
superior, as we have seen above, explaining at the end of the
paragraph in question that the Lord: ‘... proposes to his disciples
the ideal of continence and the call to it, not by reason of
inferiority, nor with prejudice against conjugal union of the body,
but only for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven’34.
34
We have pointed out the difficulties of this statement above.
It
is true that Pope Francis speaks later in this section of the
perfection of the consecrated life, but he does so not in the
absolute sense in which this perfection is understood by Tradition,
but only in a relative sense in a brief review of respective
strengths and weaknesses of the two different states of life, which
states, he claims, enjoy ‘complementarity’.
In
short then, Pope John Paul II tends to view the two states of life as
of equal value, whereas Pope Francis asserts this thesis explicitly.
This certainly corresponds to the importance he too accords to
conjugal love.
2.
ADULTERY
It
is certainly the spirit of eroticism already manifest in the above
quotations that is behind the Pope’s indulgent attitude towards
adultery.
a)Advocacy
of Adultery
In
the document AmorisLaetitia
§
298, the Pope speaks of ‘divorced and remarried’ couples in the
following terms: ‘The Church acknowledges situations ‘where, for
serious reasons, such as the children’s upbringing, a man and woman
cannot satisfy the obligation to separate’(FamiliarisConsortio
§
84), and he adds in footnote 329 ‘In such situations, many people,
knowing and accepting the possibility of living ‘as brothers and
sisters’ which the Church offers them, point out that if certain
expressions of intimacy are lacking, it often happens that
faithfulness is endangered and the good of the children suffers’
(Gaudium
et Spes§
51).
Commentary
‘Expressions
of intimacy’ refers to sexual relations, as appears from a reading
of the complete passage ofGaudium
et Spes,
and from the fact that the said ‘expressions of intimacy’ are
contrasted to cohabitation ‘as brother and sister’. Consequently,
the text may be summarized as follows: Many divorced and remarried
couples who live together for the good of their children, find that
sexual relations (i.e. adultery) are fruitful for their relationship
and for the good of their children.
We
see then that:
i)Adultery
is justified; that is:
ii)
as a means to an end: namely the couple’s fidelity and the good of
their progeny;
iii)in
a particular situation, indeeda situation experienced by ‘many’;
iv)
in
purported continuity with preceding Church Magisterium.
We
may reply to each of the points as follows:
i)
Adultery is condemned expressisverbis
in
the Old Testament in the VI Commandment, and by Our Lord Jesus Christ
Himself in the New (Mt 19.9; Mk 10.11-12). Furthermore, Our Blessed
Lord specifies it as one of the sins that exclude the sinner from
eternal life (Mt.19. 17-18), in other words as a mortal sin. Being,
therefore, an intrinsic evil, it can in no way be justified.
ii)St.
Paul (Rom 3.8) declares explicitly that an evil cannot be done asa
means to a good;
iii)
Here ‘Situation Ethics’ is in operation, with the principle that
the conscience creates a norm according to the situation in which the
individual finds himself. The Church has, by contrast, condemned
situation ethics, and understands the conscience as a judgement which
applies objective moral principles to particular actions;
iv)
The Pope (or his collaborators) suppresses essential parts of the
passages from which he quotes. In the first passage, Pope John Paul
II, when speaking of the ‘divorced and remarried’ who live
together for motives which include the good of their children,
declares that they must live in perfect chastity: if they do not,
they cannot receive Holy Communion. In the second passage, the
Council recommends sexual relations for reasons of fidelity and the
good of the children, but only among those who are sacramentally
married.
In
other words, Pope John Paul II states that a ‘divorce and
remarried’ couplemay live together for the good of their children
but
in perfect chastity;
the Council states that sexual relationscan promotethe fidelity of a
couple and the good of their children within
marriage.
By combining the two passages while cutting out the references to
chastity and marriage, Pope Francis purports to justify adultery on
the basis of preceding Magisterium.
b)The
Ecclesial Status of Adulterers
The
Exhortation states in § 299 that the ‘divorced and remarried’
are, ‘as living members, able to live and grow in the Church’ and
proposes that they be integrated in the public life of the Church, as
god-parents for example. The Church’s Tradition along with St.
Thomas Aquinas on the other hand, consider them as dead members of
the Church, like dead branches of a living tree. For this reason, and
by reason of their bad example, it is clearly not appropriatefor
adulterers to assume positions in the public life of the Church, nor
has it ever been permitted for them to do so.
c)
The Admission of Adulterers to Holy Communion
We
may conclude from § 298 and footnote 329 analyzed above, that if
adultery is no longer considered as a mortal sin, then adulterers
have the right to be integrated into the life of the Church, even as
far asreceiving Holy Communion is concerned. Let us now examine one
of the passages of the document that says so explicitly: ‘[…]the
consequences or effects of a rule need not necessarily always be the
same [...]This is also the case with regard to sacramental
discipline, since discernment can recognize that in a particular
situation no grave fault exists’.(§ 300 with footnote 336).
What
kind of justification for access to Holy Communion does the Pope here
have in mind? ‘Situation Ethics’? but, as we have already
explained, this ethic is null and void. Or is itperhaps the ignorance
on the part of the couple that adultery is a mortal sin, or that Holy
Communion in a state of mortal sin is a further mortal sin? It is
true that a mortal sin is not imputed to a sinner who did not know
that it was mortal; nonetheless, the sin in question is mortal
objectivelyand
is a grave offence against God. For this reason, any form of
spiritual assistance, discernment, declaration, or intervention on
the part of the Church must be directed towards instructing the
couple concerning the objective natural and Divine law, and to
leading them to live in the Grace of God: not leaving them in
ignorance and sin for fear of offending their sensibilities. In
short, the Church’s task here is not to avoid offending the
faithful, but to avoid offending God.
3.
‘SEX EDUCATION’
Now
that European schools have been flooded with ‘sex education’
programmes of an immoral and purely hedonistic order (and we fear
that even worse is to come), an intervention from Holy Mother Church
becomes increasingly more opportune and urgent with every day that
passes. With the publication of AmorisLaetitia,
one
might perhaps have hoped that the Hierarchy would have adopted some
truly Catholic stance in regard to the issue, for example:
i)
A proposal to found new, and authentically Catholic schools, or at
least to found new institutes to teach Catholic doctrine in existing
schools;
ii)
An appeal to parents to educate, or at least to supervise the
education of, their children themselves, as they are indeed obliged
to do in accordance with the primary end of marriage (i.e. the
procreation andeducation
of
children);
iii)
A clear exposition of Catholic doctrine on marriage, on the acts
contrary to it, on purity, on impurity, and on the fact that all sins
against purity are mortal.
Instead
of this, the period § 280-286 entitled ‘The Need for Sex
Education’ is singularly lacking on all of these counts.
i)
Far from proposing alternatives to the present ‘sex education’
programmes, the document limits itself to suggesting certain
modifications or change of accent within them;
ii)
The educative role of parents is not even mentioned, in marked
contrast to the document ‘The Truth and Meaning of Human
Sexuality’, promulgated by the Vatican some 20 years before (in
1995), which, in view of the dangers of treating such matters in
school, firmly collocated ‘sex education’ within the family35.
In the passage in question, AmorisLaetitiain
fact entirely ignores the primary end of marriage, concentrating
(except for one single reference to the ‘natural procreative end of
sexuality’) on the secondary end of marriage, i.e. on love: indeed
on a love understood exclusively in an emotional, and above all in a
sexual, sense. One reads for example about ‘education for love, for
mutual self-giving’ (§ 280); about the ‘capacity to love’ (§
281-2) and the way that ‘young people show love’ (§ 284).
35
The
document breathes an authentically Catholic spirit, apart from a
personalist over-insistence on ‘love’.
36Again
in marked contrast to ‘The Meaning and Truth of Human Sexuality’.
37
İt
is uncertain what is being referred to here. Certainly the Greek and
Roman ‘love-poets’, for instance, would have imagined they were
engaged in some such communication, but certainly in complete
abstraction from chastity.
iii)
With
respect to Catholic doctrine on marriage and purity36,
nothing at all is said. Sexuality is in fact treated in an
exclusively psychological manner, without so much as anallusion to
morality. The evil to be avoided is no longer sin, but rather
sociological or psychological problems such as: ‘trivialization and
impoverishment’ (§ 280); ‘the flood of pornography’, the
deformation of sexuality, the cripplingand ‘distortion’ of the
capacity to love (§ 281-2); ‘narcissismand aggressivity’,‘toying’
with bodies and desires (§ 283); immaturity (§ 284); isolation
(§284-5), not accepting one’s own body, fear of the other (§
285).
We
see that sexuality outside marriage is not condemned. Rather, it
seems actively to be encouraged, so that the section in the final
analysis is entirely compatible with ‘sex education’ programmes:
those already in force and those yet to be imposed upon the children:
‘The sexual urge can be directed through a process of growth in
self-knowledge and self-control capable of nurturing valuable
capacities for joy and for loving encounter’ (§ 280).‘The
important thing is to teach them sensitivity to different expressions
of love, mutual concern and care, loving respect, and deeply
meaningful communication37’,
in preparation ‘for sexual union in marriage as a sign
of
an all-inclusive commitment enriched by everything that has preceded
it’(§ 283, viz. also § 284).
Indeed,
the section is compatible even with ‘Gender38’,
inasmuch as its author contemplates sex education not only for
adolescents, but even for ‘children’ (§ 280 and 281); and is
pleased to assert: ‘Nor can we ignore the fact that the
configuration of our own mode of being, whether as male or female, is
not simply the result of biological or genetic factors39,
but of multiple elements having to do with temperament, family
history, culture etc. [...]; But it is also true that masculinity and
femininity are not rigid categories [...]’. The section ends with a
warning against ‘condition[ing] legitimate freedom and hamper[ing]
the authentic development of children’s specific identity and
potential’(§ 286)40
38
An ideology as bird-brained as it is despicable
39But
in which case why, pray, is ‘not accepting one’s own body’a
problem (cf. § 285)?
40
The deleterious effect of this passage is not
diminished by Papal disapproval of ‘Gender’ on other occasions,
since the latter statements have the effect only of confusing, rather
than of correcting, the former statements.
Conclusion
The
intention in writing this essay was to investigate how the
concupiscence of the flesh, or, more particularly, the spirit of
fornication, or impurity, has been able to penetrate the mind of the
contemporary Church. We have been at pains to trace it back, through
various canons of the New Church Law and various doctrines of recent
Magisterium, to the Second Vatican Council, where the spirit of
Fallen Nature made its official entry into the Catholic Church.
This
spirit of impurity corresponds to the World’s vision of sexuality.
Quoting our earlier analysis of this vision, and alluding briefly to
the period extending from the last Vatican Council to the present
pontificate, we shall proceed to examine how and to what extent this
spirit informs the encyclical AmorisLaetitia.
A.
‘Sexuality does not have a particular finality. Its use is
pleasurable and a means for expressing love between two persons, not
necessarily married to each other’
We
have seen how Gaudium
et Spes suppressed
the term ‘finality’, a suppression all the more evident in the
New Canon Law, when one compares the new and the old canons.
Subsequently, up to and including AmorisLaetitia,
the procreation and education of children has never regained its
previous, traditional status.
The
suppression of this term, either in isolation orin association with
the designation ‘primary’, certainly marks the breach in the
bastion of perennial Church marital teaching, on the part of the
Demon Asmodeus41.
41
We
have accordingly chosen as frontispiece for this essay a detail from
the Ysenheimer Altar by Matthaeus Gruenewald represented an
androgynous demon storming a church.
42connected
with this, we observe the intellectual dishonesty of the
argumentation for adultery (analyzed above). Besides, how could
argumentation against the Natural Law and Faith be otherwise?Such
dishonesty was a feature of the Council (see the book on the book on
the Second Vatican Council by Professor de Mattei), but this is
surely its first instance in a Papal document.
43although
see above for the theological problem involved
44
although see the next section for a doubt in the case of Pope
Francis.
45Pope
Francis not hesitating even to speak publically of perversions in
this field with complete nonchalance
It
is this suppression that has permitted an undefined ‘love’ to
move into the foreground of marital ethics, contemporary Churchmen
not viewing sexuality solely as pleasurable (in conformity to the
most superficial of worldly attitudes).
In
the period inaugurated by Gaudium
et Spes,
Church Magisterium insinuated increasingly that this ‘love’ was
in fact the primary end of marriage and erotic in content, until the
encyclical AmorisLaetitiawas
finally to state both doctrines explicitly (see above).
Up
to this point the encyclical represents solely a development of
recent marital heterodoxy; in its advocacy of adultery, by contrast,
it represents a novum
of
particular moral gravity, ever closer to the spirit of the World in
all its headstrong and brazen audacity42.
B.
‘Sexuality is unqualifiedly good, and is to be used and talked
about with complete license’
The
unqualified goodness of sexuality had been insinuated since the
Council by the suppression of the Church doctrine on the
concupiscence of Fallen Nature. This suppression was particularly
evident in Canon Law, and in ‘Theology of the Body’.
Its
putative goodness was elevated to a divine level by Pope John Paul
II, albeit in the context of marital love as a whole43.
In conformity with this view, marriage was no longer regarded as
inferior to virginity or celibacy. Pope Francis followed his
predecessor, at least on the latter count.
Both
Popes, while sustaining Church teaching on sins against purity44,
speak about such themes with complete license45,Pope
Francis in effect recommending this
license
also publically, inasmuch as he supports school programmes of ‘sex
education’.
C
‘Sexual morality is determined by the canons of hedonism’
If
the Church officially maintains Her position on the gravity of sins
against purity, we have observed how recent modifications in Canon
Law and the Magisterium have opened the door to Holy Communion in the
state of mortal sin under certain conditions. The dispositions of
Pope Francis for adulterers to communicate (also under certain
conditions), must be seen in line with this relaxation of Eucharistic
discipline.
As
noted above, the great novelty ofAmorisLaetitia
is
the advocacy of adultery. In the light of this laxity one cannot but
be alarmed at the Pope’s analysis of the sexuality of contemporary
youth in exclusively sociological and psychological terms, without so
much a hint at morality. Impurity, alone or with another, is nowhere
condemned. Indeed, as we observed above, it seems actively to be
encouraged, as in the phrase: ‘The important thing is to teach them
sensitivity to different expressions of love...’ in preparation
‘for sexual union in marriage as a sign of an all-inclusive
commitment enriched by everything that has preceded it’. What is
the nature of the love thatis supposed to ‘enrich’sexual union,if
it is not sexual love? But if the author of the text does not intend
this, because it is contrary to Church teaching, why does he not say
so?
In
short, although the encyclical does not promote sexual hedonism
explicitly,it advocates impurity of a particularly grave type (that
is to say adultery);it analyzes sexuality in terms of psychology,
which is typically allied to a hedonistic world-view; it instills a
permissive spirit into the faithful; and it passes over the Church’s
perennial condemnation of impurity in complete silence.
*
In
a word, what we are hearing ever more clearly, from the Second
Vatican Council to the encyclical AmorisLaetitia,
is
the voice of the World. This voice proclaims the following message:
‘Sexuality is for love; it is an unqualified good; it should be
used for the pursuit of happiness’. Cardinal Browne OP has been
proved correct in stating that the innovations proposed at the
Council were to ‘pervert the whole meaning of marriage’.
Some-one
might object: ‘The Church has changed Her outlook on these matters
- and about time too’. To which we would reply: The Churchin Her
declarations is not like a government or a firm which changes its
policies according to changing circumstances:Rather She is Guardian
and Teacher: Guardian and Teacher of the
Faith
and morals. Faith and morals constitute Supernatural Truth,
Revelation, the DepositumFidei.
The Truth does not change in itself, but only in the depth and
profundity of its expression; Revelation is a revelation of x and not
of y; the DepositumFidei
is
deposited as it is and not as anything else.
In
the face of Truth, which in the last instance is God Himself, the
virtues required of man are humility, docility, obedience,
subjection, and subjugation. Man is on this earth to serve, he is a
‘useless servant’ in the words of Our Blessed Lord, a mere
instrument, whether he is Pope, King, or layman. When Councils or
Popes take it upon themselves to touch, alter, or reform that which
is untouchable, unalterable, and irreformable, then the consequences
will be grave indeed.
Postscript
The
Status Quo
Amongst
the various indignities that have followed AmorisLaetitia
we
wish to mention solely: ‘The Meeting Point, Course of Affectivity
and Sex Education for Young People’, emanating from the Pontifical
Council for the Family, and widely distributed to the young on ‘World
Youth Day’ in Poland last year. Here the Personalism of Pope John
Paul II encounters the sexual amorality of Pope Francis, in a
glorification of love, where neither mortal sin nor parental
responsibilityis mentioned even once. The document is charged with
eroticism, which does not shrink even from pornography, a fact which
is entirely reprehensible.
The
glorification of eroticism has drawn a veil of obscurity over both
marriage and (perfect) chastity: over marriage, by obscuring its
finality which is the procreation of children; over (perfect)
chastity, by obscuring its very possibility. The result is that
married couples enter marriage without knowing what it is, and hence
end up by failing in the enterprise; while less and less young people
embrace the religious state46.
For the religious makes a vow of perfect chastity, but if the Church
does not say what that vow is or what it means, why should a young
person make it? And if marriage is on the same level as the religious
state (which is virginity\celibacy in its ecclesial form), then why
take the trouble to embrace the latter?
46
İt seems that recent Vatican documents on the religious life tend to
its further diminution
The
Hierarchy and the Clergy are not fulfilling their duty
tocommunicatethe Faith on these matters. A number of their members
seem saturated by the same spirit of eroticism that they are
preaching. They demand liberation from celibacy, and their scandals47
continue
day by day, as monotonous as they are nauseating.Here we see
47Let
them meditate on the pains that they are accumulating for themselves,
either in Purgatory where a rigorous reparation will be exacted even
for a single sign of the Cross made without reverence, or in the
deepest abysses of Hellreserved for the damned clergy. Or if they
have no pity for their own souls, let them at least have pity on the
victim souls who have offered their lives in expiation for the sins
of the clergy.
48cf.
Sacra
Virginitas, Pope Pius XII
Asmodeusat
work again,in this his most gratifying, and final, assignment: that
of contaminating the men and the doctrine of the Church.
God
has been passed over and ignored, together with His purpose inscribed
in human nature, which is the procreation of children for the
population of Heaven; together with the love due to Him, which is
total self-giving love,whether in the Blessed Eucharist received in
the state of Grace, or whether in the love of perfect chastity, the
love of purity, the supernatural love of Charity in its perfect
ordering to Him: the love with undivided heart, the love which is
more blessed and higher, and a more perfect sign of Christ’s union
with His Church, than is marriage itself 48,
the love of which Our Blessed Lord Himself said: ‘Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God’.
Sancta
Maria, ora pro nobis
Mater
purissima, ora pro nobis
Mater
castissima, ora pro nobis
SancteJoannes
Evangelista, ora pro nobis
SancteAloisi
Gonzaga, ora pro nobis
SancteDominice
Savio, ora pro nobis
SancteJoannesBaptista,
ora pro nobis
SancteJoannes
Fisher, ora pro nobis
SancteThoma
More, ora pro nobis
A
spiritufornicatione, libera nos, Domine.
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