Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
July 5, 2018
Over the last few decades the West has experienced an
“anti-family” Revolution without precedent in history. One of the tenets of
this process in the disintegration of the institution of the family was the separation
of the two primary purposes of marriage, the procreative and the unitive. The
procreative purpose, separated from conjugal union, has brought about in-vitro
fertilization and the surrogate womb. The unitive purpose, emancipated from
procreation, has lead to the glorification of free love, both heterosexual and
homosexual. One of the results of these
aberrations is the recourse of homosexual couples to the practice of the
surrogate womb in order to actualize a grotesque caricature of the natural
family.
Paul VI’s encyclical
Humanae Vitae, which celebrates its 50th anniversary on July 25th 2018, had the merit of reiterating the
inseparableness of the purports of marriage and of clearly condemning artificial contraception, made possible in the 1960s by the commercialization of Dr. Pinkus' s Pill. Yet, even Humanae Vitae has it culpabilty: by not affirming with the same clarity the hierarchy of the purposes i.e. the primacy of the procreative over the unitive.
Two
principles, or values, are never on the same level of equality. One is always
subordinate to the other. This happens in the relationships between faith and
reason, between grace and nature, between the Church and the State and so
forth. It is about inseparable but distinct,
hierarchal-ordered realities. If the order of these relationships is not
defined, tensions and conflicts will follow, resulting in the overturning of
principles. In this respect, the process of moral disintegration inside the
Church, has among its causes, also the absence of a clear definition of the
primary purpose of marriage in the encyclical of Paul VI.
The
doctrine of the Church on marriage was affirmed as definitive and binding by
Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Casti Connubii of December 31st 1930.
In this document, the Pope calls the attention of the entire Church and all of the human
race to the fundamental truths on the
nature of marriage, an institution not of men, but conceived by God Himself,
and on the blessings and benefits society derives from it. The first purpose is
procreation: which doesn’t mean simply bringing children into the world, but
educating them, intellectually, morally and most of all spiritually, to help them
attain their eternal destiny, which is Heaven. The second purpose is the mutual
assistance of the spouses, which is not only a material assistance, nor only a
sexual, sentimental intent, but primarily an assistance and spiritual union.
The
encyclical contains a clear and vigorous condemnation of contraceptive methods,
defined as "shameful actions and intrinsically dishonest”. Thus:“Any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a
way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate
life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge
in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin.[56]
Pius XII
confirmed the teaching of his predecessor in many discourses. The original
schema on the family and marriage at Vatican II, approved by John XXIII in July
1962, but rejected at the start of the works by the Council Fathers, reiterated
this doctrine, explicitly condemning “theories that, reversing the right order of
values, put the primary purpose of marriage in the shade with respect to the
biological and personal values of the spouses and that, in the same objective
order, suggest the conjugal love as the primary goal” (n. 14).
The
procreative purpose, objective and rooted in nature, never ceases. The unitive
purpose, subjective and founded on the will of the spouses, can die out. The primacy of the procreative purpose saves
the marriage; the primacy of the unitive purpose exposes it to grave risks.
Furthermore,
we mustn’t forget that the purposes of marriage are not two, but three, because
there is also – subordinate - the remedy against concupiscence. Nobody speaks about this third purpose seeing as we have lost the meaning of the
notion of concupiscence, often confused with sin, in the Lutheran sense.
Concupiscence, present in every person, except the Most Blessed Virgin, immune
to original sin, reminds us that that life on earth is an incessant struggle,
as St John says: For all that is in the world, is the concupiscence of the flesh,
and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1John 2, 16). The exaltation of sexual instincts,
inoculated into the mainstream culture by Marxist-Freudism, is nothing other
than the glorification of concupiscence
and, consequently, original sin.
This
inversion of the purposes of marriage, which leads inevitably to the explosion
of concupiscence in society, appears in Pope Francis’ Exhortation, Amoris
laetitia of April 9th 2015, where we read “Then too, we often
present marriage in such a way that its unitive meaning, its call to grow in
love and its ideal of mutual assistance are overshadowed by an almost exclusive
insistence on the duty of procreation" [36].
These
words repeat almost verbatim those pronounced in the Council Hall on October 29th
1964 by Leo-Joseph Suenens, in a discourse that scandalized Paul VI. “Perhaps –
said the Cardinal, Archbishop of Brussels – we have accentuated the words of the
Scriptures: ‘increase and multiply’ to the point of leaving the other Divine
words in the shade: ‘and the two will be one flesh’ […] It
will be up to the Commission to tell us whether we have emphasized too
much the first, which is procreation, to
the detriment of a purpose likewise imperative, which is growth in the conjugal
union.”
Cardinal
Suenens insinuates that the primary purpose of marriage is not that of increasing
and multiplying, but that “the two be one flesh”. Here we move from a theological,
philosophical definition to a psychological description of marriage, presented
not as bond rooted in nature and dedicated to the propagation of the human
race, but as an intimate communion, directed at the reciprocal love between the
spouses. But once marriage is reduced to a communion of love, birth-control then, natural or artificial,
whatever it is, is seen as a good and merits being encouraged, under the name
of “responsible parenthood” inasmuch as it contributes in strengthening the
first good of conjugal union. The
inevitable consequence is that, once this intimate communion should stop, the
marriage should be dissolved.
The
inversion of the roles inside the conjugal union accompanies the inversion of
the purposes. The physical-psychological
well-being of the woman replaces her mission as mother. The birth of a child is
seen as an element that can upset the intimate communion of the couple’s love.
The child can be thought of as an unjust aggressor to the family’s equilibrium,
which is to be protected with contraception and, in extreme cases, with
abortion.
The
interpretation we have given to Cardinal Suenens’ words is not a stretch of the
imagination. Consistent with that discourse, the Primate Cardinal of Belgium,
in 1968, spearheaded the revolt of bishops and theologians against Humanae
Vitae. The Declaration of the Belgian Episcopate, of August 30, 1968, against
Paul VI’s encyclical, was, along with that of the German Episcopate, one of the
first elaborated by an Episcopal Conference and served as a model of protest
for other episcopates.
We,
therefore, respond with firmness to the heirs of that contestation, who are proposing
the reinterpretation of Humanae Vitae in the light of Amoris laetitia, that we
will continue to read Paul VI’s encyclical in the light of Casti connubii and
the perennial Magisterium of the Church.
Translation:
Contributor Francesca Romana
