AMONG the many blessings that God has showered upon us in Christ is the blessing of marriage, a gift bestowed by the Creator from the creation of the human race. His hand has inscribed the vocation to marriage in the very nature of man and woman (see Gn 1:27-28, 2:21-24).

Father, by your plan man and woman are united,
and married life has been established
as the one blessing that was not forfeited by original sin
or washed away by the flood.[1]

Original Sin introduced evil and disorder into the world. As a consequence of the break with God, this first sin ruptured the original communion between man and woman. Nonetheless, the original blessing of marriage was never revoked.

Jesus Christ has not only restored the original blessing in its fullness but elevated it by making marriage between baptized Christians a sacramental sign of his own love for the Church—as we hear proclaimed in the wedding liturgy:

Father, to reveal the plan of your love,
you made the union of husband and wife
an image of the covenant between you and your people.
In the fulfillment of this sacrament,
the marriage of Christian man and woman
is a sign of the marriage between Christ and the Church.[2]

While marriage is a special blessing for Christians because of the grace of Christ, marriage is also a natural blessing and gift for everyone in all times and cultures. It is a source of blessing to the couple, to their families, and to society and includes the wondrous gift of co-creating human life. Indeed, as Pope John Paul II never tired of reminding us, the future of humanity depends on marriage and the family.[3] It is just such a conviction that has led us, the Catholic bishops of the United States, to write this pastoral letter.

We rejoice that so many couples are living in fidelity to their marital commitment. We thank them for proclaiming in their daily lives the beauty, goodness, and truth of marriage. In countless ways, both ordinary and heroic, through good times and bad, they bear witness to the gift and blessing they have received from the hand of their Creator. We are grateful, too, for all those who work with young people and engaged couples to establish good marriages, who help married couples to grow in love and strengthen their union, and who help those in crisis to resolve their problems and bring healing to their lives.

At the same time we are troubled by the fact that far too many people do not understand what it means to say that marriage—both as a natural institution and a Christian sacrament—is a blessing and gift from God. We observe, for example, that some people esteem marriage as an ideal but can be reluctant to make the actual commitment necessary to enter and sustain it. Some choose instead to live in cohabiting relationships that may or may not lead to marriage and can be detrimental to the well-being of themselves and any children.

In addition, the incidence of divorce remains high. The social sanctions and legal barriers to ending one‘s marriage have all but disappeared, and the negative effects of divorce on children, families, and the community have become more apparent in recent decades.

We are alarmed that a couple‘s responsibility to serve life by being open to children is being denied and abandoned more frequently today. Couples too often reflect a lack of understanding of the purposes of marriage. There is a loss of belief in the value of those purposes when couples readily treat, as separate choices, the decisions to get married and to have children. This indicates a mentality in which children are seen not as integral to a marriage but as optional. When children are viewed in this way, there can be damaging consequences not only for them but also for the marriage itself.

We note a disturbing trend today to view marriage as a mostly private matter, an individualistic project not related to the common good but oriented mostly to achieving personal satisfaction.

Finally, we bishops feel compelled to speak out against all attempts to redefine marriage so that it would no longer be exclusively the union of a man and a woman as God established and blessed it in the natural created order. 5

The opportunities and urgencies of the present moment are many and varied. Nearly thirty years ago, Pope John Paul II summoned the Church to meet a challenge that has become even more important today:

At a moment of history in which the family is the object of numerous forces that seek to destroy it or in some way to deform it, and aware that the well-being of society and her own good are intimately tied to the good of the family, the church perceives in a more urgent and compelling way her mission of proclaiming to all people the plan of God for marriage and the family, ensuring their full vitality and human and Christian development, and thus contributing to the renewal of society and of the people of God.[4]

The task of proclamation to which the Holy Father refers is one that we bishops exercise today as teachers and pastors, specifically in this pastoral letter. We address the pastoral letter first and foremost to the Catholic faithful in the United States. We call upon them to stand against all attacks on marriage and to stand up for the meaning, dignity, and sanctity of marriage and the family. In a spirit of witness and service we also offer our message to all men and women in the hope of inspiring them to embrace this teaching.

We intend this pastoral letter to be a theological and doctrinal foundation. It can be a resource to help and encourage all those who are moving toward marriage, who are journeying in married life, and who are accompanying and assisting those who are called to the vocation of marriage.

Our pastoral letter presents those beliefs and teachings of the Catholic Church—informed by human reason and enlightened by Divine Revelation—that summarize and express God‘s plan 6 for marriage. This divine plan, like the gift of marriage itself, is something we receive, not something we construct or change to fit our purposes. It is a firm foundation, a truthful guide, a trustworthy light for the way.

For all who seek to find meaning in their marriage will do so when they are open to accepting the transcendent meaning of marriage according to God‘s plan. Of this quest for meaning and truth, Pope Benedict XVI writes:

All people feel the interior impulse to love authentically: love and truth never abandon them completely, because these are the vocation planted by God in the heart and mind of every human person. The search for love and truth is purified and liberated by Jesus Christ from the impoverishment that our humanity brings to it, and he reveals to us in all its fullness the initiative of love and the plan for true life that God has prepared for us.[5]

Our pastoral letter is an invitation to discover, or perhaps rediscover, the blessing given when God first established marriage as a natural institution and when Christ restored and elevated it as a sacramental sign of salvation.

Marriage is a lifelong partnership of the whole of life, of mutual and exclusive fidelity, established by mutual consent between a man and a woman, and ordered towards the good of the spouses and the procreation of offspring.[6] As the Second Vatican Council reminds us, marriage is not a purely human institution: ―the intimate partnership of life and the love which constitutes the married state has been established by the creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws. . . . For God himself is the author of marriage.[7] Moreover, God has endowed marriage with certain essential attributes, without which marriage cannot exist as he intends.

The Church has taught through the ages that marriage is an exclusive relationship between one man and one woman. This union, once validly entered and consummated, gives rise to a bond that cannot be dissolved by the will of the spouses.[8] Marriage thus created is a faithful, privileged sphere of intimacy between the spouses that lasts until death.

Marriage is not merely a private institution, however. It is the foundation for the family, where children learn the values and virtues that will make good Christians as well as good 8 citizens. The importance of marriage for children and for the upbringing of the next generation highlights the importance of marriage for all society.

Conjugal love, the love proper to marriage, is present in the commitment to the complete and total gift of self between husband and wife. Conjugal love establishes a unique communion of persons through the relationship of mutual self-giving and receiving between husband and wife, a relationship by which ―a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body [flesh]‖ (Gn 2:24).

The Second Vatican Council speaks about conjugal love in words of great beauty:

The Lord, wishing to bestow special gifts of grace and divine love on married love, has restored, perfected, and elevated it. A love like that, bringing together the human and the divine, leads the partners to a free and mutual self-giving, experienced in tenderness and action, and permeating their entire lives; this love is actually developed and increased by its generous exercise.9

9 GS, no. 49.

As Part Two of this pastoral letter will examine, in conjugal love one can see something of how Christ loves his Church (Eph 5:25).

God created man in his image, in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them. (Gn 1:27) 9

The two creation stories in the book of Genesis communicate two important truths about the identity of man and woman and the relationship between them. In the first account, God creates both male and female at the same time and in the divine image. This act completes creation, and God judges it to be ―very good‖ (Gn 1:31). In this way, Sacred Scripture affirms the fundamental equality and dignity of man and woman as persons created in God‘s image.

The second creation account emphasizes that both sexes are necessary for God‘s plan. Having created Adam, God says, ―It is not good for the man to be alone‖ (Gn 2:18). So God creates a helpmate who is suitable for him and matches him. ―Helpmate‖ (ezer) is a word reserved in the Bible not for inferiors but most often for God himself, who is Israel‘s ―helper.‖ Indeed, after God creates all of the animals and brings them to Adam to name, it becomes clear that none of them is ―the suitable partner for the man‖ (Gn 2:20).

Then God puts Adam under a deep sleep and, using one of his ribs, builds up a woman for him as a suitable partner or helpmate. When he sees the woman, Adam cries out in wondrous joy:

This one, at last, is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
This one shall be called ―woman‖ [ishah],
for out of ―her man‖ [ish] this one has been taken. (Gn 2:23)

Adam and Eve were literally made for each other. Man and woman have been made to come together in the union of marriage. The text of Genesis continues: ―That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body [flesh]‖ (Gn 2:24). 10

Marriage, this clinging together of husband and wife as one flesh, is based on the fact that man and woman are both different and the same. They are different as male and female, but the same as human persons who are uniquely suited to be partners or helpmates for each other. The difference between man and woman, however, cannot be restricted to their bodies, as if the body could be separated from the rest of the human person. The human person is a union of body and soul as a single being. Man and woman are two different ways of being a human person.

While man and woman are different, their differences serve to relate them to each other. They are not different in a parallel way, as two lines that never meet. Man and woman do not have separate destinies. They are related to each other precisely in their differences.

The differences between male and female are complementary. Male and female are distinct bodily ways of being human, of being open to God and to one another—two distinct yet harmonizing ways of responding to the vocation to love.

While human persons are more than biological organisms, the roots of marriage can be seen in the biological fact that a man and a woman can come together as male and female in a union that has the potential for bringing forth another human person. This kind of union fills the need for the continuation of the human race. Since human beings exist at more than a biological level, however, this union has further personal and spiritual dimensions. Marriage does not exist solely for the reproduction of another member of the species, but for the creation of a communion of persons.

To form a communion of persons is the vocation of everyone. As Pope John Paul II teaches, all human persons are created in the image of God, who is a communion of love of three persons, and thus all are called to live in a communion of self-giving love: ―to say that man is 11

created in the image and likeness of God means that man is called to exist ‗for‘ others, to become a gift.‖10

10 Pope John Paul II, On the Dignity and Vocation of Women (Mulieris Dignitatem [MD]) (Washington, DC: USCCB, 1998), no. 7.

11 MD, no. 7.

Marriage, however, is a unique communion of persons. In their intimate union as male and female, the spouses are called to exist for each other. Just as Genesis describes Eve as a helper for Adam, we can see that in marriage, a husband and wife are meant to help each other through self-giving. ―In the ‗unity of the two,‘ man and woman are called from the beginning not only to exist ‗side by side‘ or ‗together,‘ but they are also called to exist mutually „one for the other.‟‖11

This communion of persons has the potential to bring forth human life and thus to produce the family, which is itself another kind of communion of persons and which is the origin and foundation of all human society. It is precisely the difference between man and woman that makes possible this unique communion of persons, the unique partnership of life and love that is marriage. A man and woman united in marriage as husband and wife serve as a symbol of both life and love in a way that no other relationship of human persons can.

Pope John Paul II‘s theology of the body speaks of the human body as having a spousal significance. This means that the human body by its very nature signifies that we humans are directed to relationship—that we are to seek union with others. For it is only in relationship that we achieve a true wholeness as a communion of persons. Before Eve was created, Adam was alone. His joy upon perceiving Eve indicated that with Eve he achieved the ―original unity‖ that human nature seeks. God clearly made human beings to love and to be loved, to be in relationships wherein the act of giving oneself and receiving the other becomes complete.

In this context, the word ―original‖ means not only that these experiences go back to the dawn of human history but, more importantly, that they are key to understanding our most basic human experiences. The experience of Adam and Eve speaks powerfully to our search not only to understand ourselves but also to love and be loved, to be in a relationship of love with a person of the opposite sex.

God established marriage so that man and woman could participate in his love and thus selflessly give themselves to each other in love. A man and a woman who by their act of consent are no longer two but one flesh (see Mt 19:6ff.) render mutual help and service to each other through an intimate union of their persons and of their actions.

―My lover belongs to me and I to him (Song 2:16; see Song 6:3). With all the dignity and simplicity of poetry, the Bride in the Song of Songs sings of the unitive meaning of married love.

―You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride. . . . How beautiful is your love!‖ (Song 4:9-10). So responds the Bridegroom of the Song, overcome with the wonder of conjugal love that is extended to him by the Bride (See Pope John Paul II, Gen.Aud., May 30, 1984). This is the love that is strong as death (see Song 8:6b).

Just as beautifully, Tobiah prays with his wife, Sarah, on their wedding night, awestruck at the mercy of the God of their fathers, that is, the God of the covenant, in bringing them together in a union of true conjugal love:

Blessed are you, O God of our fathers;
praised be your name forever and ever.
Let the heavens and all your creation praise you forever.
You made Adam and you gave him his wife Eve
to be his help and support;
and from these two the human race descended.
You said, ―It is not good for the man to be alone;
let us make him a partner like himself.
Now, Lord, you know that I take this wife of mine
not because of lust,
but for a noble purpose.
Call down your mercy on me and on her,
and allow us to live together to a happy old age. (Tb 8:5-7)

The love that is as strong as death is the love that prays and praises, caught up into divine love.(See GS, no. 48: ―Authentic married love is caught up into divine love.)

It is the nature of love to overflow, to be life-giving. Thus, it is no surprise that marriage is ordained not only to growing in love but to transmitting life: ―by its very nature the institution of marriage and married love [is] ordered to the procreation and education of the offspring and it is in them that it finds its crowning glory.‖15

15 GS, no. 48; see CCC, no. 1652.

16 GS, no. 50; see CCC, no.1652.

Married love itself is ordered to the procreation of children, for, after all, the first command given to Adam and Eve is ―be fertile and multiply‖ (Gn 1:28). Tobiah‘s prayer, even as it asks for a happy and lifelong union, remembers that the human race descended from Adam and Eve. His prayer for happiness certainly includes, even if implicitly, a prayer for offspring. God indeed sends the couple seven sons (Tb 14:3) and long life (Tb 14:14). Again, in the words of the Second Vatican Council:

Children are the supreme gift of marriage. . . . Without intending to underestimate the other ends of marriage, it must be said that true married love and the family life which flows from it have this end in view: that the spouses would cooperate generously with the love of the Creator and Savior, who through them will in due time increase and enrich his family.16

Children are a gift in a myriad of ways. They bring joy even in the midst of heartaches; they give added direction to the lives of their parents. Children, who are the fruit of love and meaningful commitment, are a cause of love and meaning.

It is true that some marriages will not result in procreation due to infertility, even though the couple is capable of the natural act by which procreation takes place. Indeed, this situation 15 often comes as a surprise and can be a source of deep disappointment, anxiety, and even great suffering for a husband and wife. When such tragedy affects a marriage, a couple may be tempted to think that their union is not complete or truly blessed. This is not true. The marital union of a man and a woman is a distinctive communion of persons. An infertile couple continues to manifest this attribute.

Even when their child-bearing years have passed, a couple should continue to be life-affirming. They can do this by staying involved in the lives of young people, and especially their grandchildren, as spiritual mentors, teachers, and wisdom figures. They can also continue to be nurturing through the exercise of care for those who are needy, disabled, or pushed to the margins of society, and by their support for or participation in works of charity and justice.

The Church speaks of an inseparable connection between the two ends of marriage: the good of the spouses themselves as well as the procreation of children. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that ―these two meanings or values of marriage cannot be separated without altering the couple‘s spiritual life and compromising the goods of marriage and the future of the family.‖17 This inseparability arises from the very nature of conjugal love, a love that ―stands under the twofold obligation of fidelity and fecundity.‖18

17 CCC, no. 2363.

18 CCC, no. 2363.

Conjugal love expresses the unitive meaning of marriage in such a way as to show how this meaning is ordered toward the equally obvious procreative meaning. The unitive meaning is distorted if the procreative meaning is deliberately disavowed. Conjugal love is then diminished. This love is, by its nature, faithful, exclusive, and intended to be fecund. As Pope Paul VI says, 16 ―It is not confined wholly to the loving interchange of husband and wife; it also contrives to go beyond this to bring new life into being.‖19 Without its ordering toward the procreative, the unitive meaning of marriage is undermined.

19 Pope Paul VI, On the Regulation of Birth (Humanae Vitae [HV]), no. 9, www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html.

20 CCC, no. 2363.

Likewise, the procreative meaning of marriage is degraded without the unitive. If someone were to view his or her spouse simply as a way of producing offspring, with no loving attentiveness to the spouse‘s own good or fulfillment, this would offend against the human value of the procreative meaning.

The procreative meaning of marriage involves not only the conception of children, but also their upbringing and education, including spiritual formation in the life of love. This formation can take place only within a human community formed in love. The loving communion of the spouses is the primary context in which children are both conceived and brought up in love.

The unitive and the procreative purposes are meant to be inseparable. In this way, the procreative requires the unitive, just as the unitive is ordered to the procreative. These are two connected meanings of the same reality.

We can better understand this intrinsic connection if we consider the fact that procreation is a participation in the ongoing creative activity of God. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that God‘s creative power is not a power of force or manipulation, but a power of love.20 It is a power of self-gift. God is eternally happy in himself because he is a loving communion of three persons. He is self-sufficient and needs nothing else to be happy. Yet he wills to share his life and happiness with creatures who would have no existence were it not for this creative self- 17 gift. Participating in the creative work of God means participating in the self-emptying or self-giving love of God, the rendering of one‘s whole being into a gift. If procreation is a true participation in the creative activity of God, it is a work that is inseparable from self-gift.

In the case of marriage, the principal and original self-gift is the unitive, mutual self-gift of the spouses to each other. In their marriage promises, the spouses pledge love and fidelity for as long as they live. The transmission of life is a sublime, concrete realization of this radical self-gift between a man and a woman. The mutual married love of man and woman ―becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man[kind],‖21 because as mutual self-gift, it is at the same time creative self-gift. The unitive and the procreative meanings of marriage are joined because they are two aspects of the same self-giving.

21 CCC, no. 1604.

Fundamental Challenges to the Nature and Purposes of Marriage

We recognize that couples face many challenges to building and sustaining a strong marriage. Conditions in contemporary society do not always support marriage. For example, many couples struggle to balance home and work responsibilities; others bear serious economic and social burdens.

Some challenges, however, are fundamental in the sense that they are directed at the very meaning and purposes of marriage. Here we want to discuss four such challenges: contraception, same-sex unions, divorce, and cohabitation.

Just as there are two inseparable purposes of marriage as a whole, the same is true of the act most symbolic and expressive of the marriage as a whole, namely, the act of sexual intercourse. Church teaching speaks of an ―inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.‖22

22 HV, no. 12; CCC, no. 2366.

23 See, for example, Pope John Paul II, General Audiences, January 5 and 26, 1983.

Sometimes one hears it said that as long as the marriage as a whole is open to children, each individual act of intercourse need not be. In fact, however, a marriage is only as open to procreation as each act of intercourse is, because the whole meaning of marriage is present and signified in each marital act. Each marital act signifies, embodies, and renews the original and enduring marital covenant between husband and wife. That is what makes intercourse exclusively a marital act. Engaging in marital intercourse is speaking the ―language of the body,‖ as Pope John Paul II calls it—a language of personal communion in complete and mutual self-donation.23

The spouses‘ mutual promise of lifelong love and fidelity provides this act with the clarity of an explicitly stated intention that enables the language of the body to be spoken. It is the intention of both spouses to cling together for life as ―one flesh,‖ in a completely mutual self-gift that gives the language of the body its voice. In each marital act, this intention is signified, or ―spoken.‖ Each marital act signifies the grateful openness to all of God‘s gifts. When the act signifies this grateful openness, one gives oneself completely, without shame (see Gn 2:25).

Deliberately intervening, by the use of contraceptive practices, to close off an act of intercourse to the possibility of procreation is a way of separating the unitive meaning of marriage from the procreative meaning. This is objectively wrong in and of itself and is essentially opposed to God‘s plan for marriage and proper human development. It makes the act of intercourse signify, or speak, something less than the unreserved self-gift intended in the marriage promises. The language of the body that is meant to express self-gift becomes mixed with another message, a contrary message—namely, the refusal to give oneself entirely. Thus the unitive meaning of that language is falsified.24

24 See FC, no. 32; see also CCC, no. 2370.

25 USCCB, Married Love and the Gift of Life (Washington, DC: USCCB, 2006), 17.

26

―By using contraception,‖ married couples ―may think that they are avoiding problems or easing tensions, that they are exerting control over their lives.‖25 At the same time, they may think that they are doing nothing harmful to their marriages. In reality, the deliberate separation of the procreative and unitive meanings of marriage has the potential to damage or destroy the marriage. Also, it results in many other negative consequences, both personal and social.

Conjugal love is diminished whenever the union of a husband and wife is reduced to a means of self-gratification. The procreative capacity of male and female is dehumanized, reduced to a kind of internal biological technology that one masters and controls just like any other technology. Pope Paul VI warns against treating the sexual faculties as simply one more technology to control:

to experience the gift of married love while respecting the laws of conception is to acknowledge that one is not the master of the sources of life but rather the minister of the design established by the Creator. Just as man does not have unlimited dominion over his body in general, so also, and with more particular reason, he has no such dominion over his specifically sexual faculties, for these are concerned by their very nature with the generation of life, of which God is the source. HV, no. 13.

The procreative capacity of man and woman should not be treated as just another means of technology, as also happens with in vitro fertilization (IVF) or cloning. When that happens, human life itself is degraded because it becomes, more and more, something produced or manufactured in various ways, ways that will only multiply as science advances. Children begin to be seen less as gifts received in a personal communion of mutual self-giving, and increasingly as a lifestyle choice, a commodity to which all consumers are entitled. There is a true issue of the dignity of human life at stake here. In this context, the warning of Pope Paul VI seems prophetic in retrospect:

In preserving intact the whole moral law of marriage, the Church is convinced that she is contributing to the creation of a truly human civilization. She urges man not to betray his personal responsibilities by putting all his faith in technical expedients. In this way she defends the dignity of husband and wife. . . . [and with it] ―man‘s essential dignity.‖27

27 HV, nos. 18 and 23, quoting Pope John XXIII, On Christianity and Social Progress (Mater et Magistra), 1961.

28 HV, no. 10.

Finally, living according to God‘s design for love and life does not mean that married couples cannot plan their families. The principle of responsible parenthood describes the way spouses can work with God‘s gift of fertility. Rooted in ―the objective moral order which was established by God,‖ spouses can ―recognize their own duties towards God, themselves, their families and human society‖ as they decide when to try to achieve a pregnancy or conclude that there are sufficiently serious reasons to justify postponing one.28 Today, the Church is particularly blessed that viable scientific methods of natural family planning are available to support responsible parenthood.

Natural family planning (NFP) methods represent authentic family planning. They can be used both to achieve and to postpone a pregnancy. NFP makes use of periodic abstinence from sexual intercourse based upon the observation of the woman‘s natural signs of fertility, in order to space births or to limit the number of children when there is a serious reason to do so. NFP methods require that couples learn, accept, and live with the wonders of how God made them. This is essentially different from contraception.

Openness to procreation in the marital act involves ―acknowledg[ing] that one is not the master of the sources of life.‖29 Using the technology of contraception is an attempt at such mastery. By contrast, couples using methods of NFP do nothing to alter the conjugal act. Rather, they abstain from conjugal relations during the portion of the woman‘s menstrual cycle when conception is most likely. This practice fosters in couples an attitude of respect and wonder in the face of human life, which is sacred. It also fosters profound respect for one‘s spouse, which is necessary for the mutual enjoyment of authentic intimacy.

29 HV, no. 13.

30 See FC, no. 3.

As Pope John Paul II observes, any couple who tries to live out this openness to procreation will find that it requires a sacrificial love.30 At certain difficult times in life, the procreative meaning of marriage may seem to be at odds with the unitive meaning. Though this can in fact never be the case, preserving unity may in some cases require a considerable sacrifice by couples. They should take heart from St. Paul‘s assurance that God will not test us beyond what we can endure: ―God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength; but with the trial he will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to bear it‖ (1 Cor 10:13). 22

xcxxcxxc  F ” “ This Webpage was created for a workshop held at Saint Andrew's Abbey, Valyermo, California in 1990....x....  ’ “”.