Todd Aglialoro - 20 Answers - Marriage & Sex (20 Answers Series from Catholic Answers Book 32)

20 Answers

Marriage & Sex

Todd Aglialoro

20 Answers: Marriage & Sex

Todd Aglialoro

2018 Catholic Answers

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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.

Tobit 8:7 (NAB)

For there is nothing that so welds our life together as the love of man and wife.

St. John Chrysostom

Perhaps never before in Christian history has the noble purpose of marriage been in such peril. We stand on the brink of an era in which the once-common acts of marrying, having children, raising families, and living together to happy old age may start becoming the exotic behavior of a minority of humans. The force that welded together peoples lives for millennia could soon be replaced by something unknown.

For those preparing for marriage this can be especially scary, as the natural support systems for engaged and married couples splinter and the threats to married love multiply. Many of those threats stem from the vacuum left by our cultures rejection of sexual morality (except perhaps for the seemingly inviolable principles of pleasure and consent). Since sex is an integral part of marriage, when one suffers so does the other.

In its teachings (if not always in its members, who are sinful human beings like any other), the Catholic Church offers a vision of marriage and sex that honors its noble purpose. I think its truth is essential not just for couples but for the whole world, and in this booklet I hope you will find it compelling.

1.What is marriage?

Marriage is a thing of such deep meaning and far-ranging importance that there is no one simple answer to this question. Instead of trying to give one, we might try instead to wrap our minds around some of the different ways in which we can view it.

Marriage is an invisible bond between a man and a woman that unites them to one another in a unique, exclusive, and objective way. It is unique because there is no other personal bond like it. It is exclusive because it can only be formed between two people. And it is objective because, unlike other bonds that we talk about in human relationshipsthe bonds formed by friendship, duty, shared interests or hardships, etc.the bond of marriage isnt merely a moral notion that depends on our will for it to continue. We can stop being friends with someone just by deciding to do so, but the bond of marriage, once it comes into being, continues to exist on its own.

Most men and women have the ability, under the right conditions, to form this natural bond with one another. But Christian marriage is a higher kind of union that elevates the natural through the supernatural. By Gods grace, marriage between two baptized persons takes on the character of a sacrament.

This means that Christian marriage islike all the seven sacramentsa visible sign of grace by which, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) puts it, divine life is dispensed to us (1131). Through the sacrament, God gives us the power we need not only to live out the natural goods of marriage but also to reach the goal toward which all sacramental grace is directed: our salvation.

In making a marriage a sacrament, then, God took an earthly, temporary thing and put it in service of a heavenly, eternal goal.

Christian marriage is distinguished not only by being ordered to the salvation of spouses; it is also a sign of the deep love God has for his people . Throughout history, Gods relationship with his chosen people, the Jews, is described in marital metaphors. For instance, the covenants of fidelity that God made with key figures in the Old Testament recall to mind the vows of marriage (e.g, Ezek. 37:2138), and the Israelites repeated breaking of those covenants through idolatry and disobedience is described in terms of sexual infidelity (e.g., Jer. 13:27). The biblical book Song of Songs, an intimate love poem about a groom and bride, also provides an earthy depiction of the special lovea marital kind of lovebetween God and his people.

In the New Testament, after Jesus institutes Christian marriage as a sacrament (Matt. 19:47), the biblical authors further explore the divine mystery it representsnow in light of the new, universal People of God, the Church . St. Paul tells us that in marriage man and woman become one flesh just as Christians are one with Christ as members of his body, and urges husbands and wives to love and sacrifice for one another in imitation of the way Christ loves his Church and the Church responds to that love (Eph. 5:2132).

Its no surprise, then, that some of the Churchs saint-mysticsthose who learned to relate to God in ways that surpassed ordinary human senses and experiencealso used marital language in an attempt to describe the ecstasy of union with the divine.

Finally, any answer to the question of what marriage is must include its social dimension. Marriage consists of a union between one man and one woman, its truebut it doesnt end with them.

Because marriage is connected with sex (what not so long ago was called the marital act) and because it is a bond of commitment between husband and wife, its also naturally ordered toward procreation and child-raising; toward forming families. Creating new life is the biological purpose of sex, and a stable union of mother and father is the best basis for ensuring childrens material, physical, mental, moral, and spiritual development.

For this very important reason, marriage is never just about the couple, isolated and self-sufficient. As the starting point for families, which are the basic unit of society, marriage also exists for something beyond itself. It is an institution that glues together the strands of human relating, belonging, and identity, taking individuals and beginning to make of them a community.

Even more important: it is also within the family, with marriage at its center, that young people first learnthrough instruction and examplethe way of Jesus Christ. Thus the family is also known as a domestic Church (CCC 1666).

2. What are the characteristics of Christian marriage?

Christian marriage is a union of a man and a woman ordered to their mutual aid, their cooperation with God in creating families, and ultimately their eternal salvation. To these ends, it bears several essential characteristics.

Christian marriage is a permanent partnership (CCC 1614). This means that, once consummated, the bond of sacramental union cannot be broken until it ceases to exist upon the death of one of the spouses. As Jesus said, husband and wife are no longer two but one. What therefore God has joined together, let man not put asunder (Matt. 19:6).

Jesus also reminds us in Matthew 22:30 that in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage. Like all the sacraments, marriage exists for this world only, as a foretaste of or signpost to the next. But, once a sacramental marriagea valid union between a baptized man and womancomes to be and is consummated in the marital act, it is unbreakable until death. Another term for this is indissoluble.