The nature of marriage and its various aspects.

• Author: Lopez Trujillo, Alfonso
• Position: Special Issue

I am pleased to offer these reflections for consideration and dialogue in response to the honor accorded me by the Ave Maria Law Review. Such reflections represent a general overview of some aspects of marriage and various related problems emerging today as true challenges to the institution. Working in the Holy See, one develops a general understanding of what is happening in various parts of the world--not only the theological, pastoral, and legal aspects, but also the changes and various perspectives common today that have caused the truth of marriage and the currency of its values to be questioned. The human element of marriage is in itself a response to God's design and to the inherent necessity in the nature of man and woman, invited by God himself, to form a very special unity, "one flesh," that has an irreplaceable value for local communities, states, and societies. (1) The questioning of this truth demonstrates the importance of determining whether irreplaceable human values are being progressively eliminated, and if so, which ones. The anxiety surrounding the topics of marriage and family, which I perceive everywhere, illustrates the urgent need to put marriage back in its place as a natural institution.

1. THE NATURE OF MARRIAGE

   The truth about marriage is solidly rooted in God's plan, which seeks the integral well-being of man and humanity. Therefore, to respect, with a grateful heart, this creative plan ab initio is to investigate and emphasize the immense value of the natural institution of marriage. (2) The value of marriage cannot simply be explained by evolving and changing historical-cultural factors as if marriage were a product of the human will submitted to all kinds of transformations. A serious anthropological consideration of marriage and the family is currently and urgently needed in light of the confusion that has raised a number of questions about the true nature of marriage. A series of introductory clarifications will be useful in developing an understanding of this complex, delicate matter full of consequence for society.

   1. Natural Marriage: Its Value and Currency

      A mutual gift, the reciprocal donation of man and woman, gives origin to marriage and the family, which are natural realities. Marriage is a natural institution which precedes the sacrament. (3) Marriage's elevation to the high dignity of a sacrament inundates the whole of its value with a new brilliance and depth and with a more demanding commitment. The dignity of the person, the fact of being "the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, [and which] cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself," is the great truth of the family. (4) This truth is at the same time contained and revealed by the family itself.

      The truth of the family does not differ basically from the nucleus of the Gospel. Moreover, the Gospel, which can also be called the Good News, sums up God's design for marriage and the family in the order of Creation. (5) According to this understanding, the family, founded in the conjugal pact, is a divine institution (6) called to constitute the "primordial sacrament," that is to say, the intimate mystery of God, manifested across the centuries. (7)

      The truth of marriage as a divine institution has also been expressed with the Biblical definition repeated by Jesus Christ: "what God has joined together, let no one separate." (8) It constitutes a principle of natural law to which Christians of all times have had access for the inculcation of revealed truth and the slow, but effective, transformation of the cultures in which they have lived. Yet, not only do Christians have access to it, but so do all men who are moved by a sincere and true love, that contemplate the natural reality of marriage and the family. For this reason, the truth of the family is a truth that is at the same time found in one's self and revealed by the family to all.

      Marriage and the family are natural in the sense that they hold and reveal the truth coming "from the beginning" (ab initio). All civilizations, in the sense that they are truly civilized, recognize, in large or small degree, this truth in principle. It is present in some manner in the cultures developed by men and women in all times, enlightening them from within and, at the same time, transcending them. In this sense, "natural" means not only what emerges spontaneously as a fruit of the human inclination toward the good, and that which is lived by all men in all epochs and on all continents, but, above all, what is worthy of the personal nature of man. This link between nature and the dignity of the human person is what permits us to discover the manner in which the concepts of nature and culture, natural law, and positive law relate to each other.

      Man is a social being and is naturally oriented toward the family. As such, the organization of the family is not a simple occasion of human evolution such that, once reaching a certain point in evolution, man can dispose of the family. Nevertheless, the various historical attempts to eliminate the family as a natural institution have perhaps contributed to the decline, apparent now more than ever before, of the proper understanding of the "natural character" of the family. Such attempts have been produced particularly in countries following a Marxist ideology, in a world pursued by various totalitarianisms, and by the post-modern version of secularization, as well as the enormous transformations that the family has suffered in the West.

      Nature and culture are two intimately related concepts, even to the point that they cannot be considered in isolation from one another. (9) The life of man is necessarily developed in a culture, but it is not exhausted by it, since the very progress of a culture demonstrates that in man there is something that transcends culture. That "something" is precisely the nature of man; it "is itself the measure of culture and the condition ensuring that man does not become the prisoner of any of his cultures, but asserts his personal dignity by living in accordance with the profound truth of his being." (10) This relationship presented by Pope John Paul II allows us to explain the following:

      (a) No culture can exhaust the truth of the principle regarding the family. In the same moment that a jurist might want to assert the universal validity of a partial concrete historical realization of the family, regardless of how sublime and useful it might be, he would make himself guilty of having "encaged" human nature in a concrete cultural context. All of the attempts made in this sense throughout history have turned out to be failures, because nature always succeeds in "avenging itself" of these unjust pretensions of decadent cultures. It does so by transcending them, renewing once again the complete truth that the family contains in itself.

      (b) At the same time, it is equally important to assert that the family cannot disregard the cultural vehicle in which it has to express itself: "Man comes to a true and full humanity only through culture, that is through the cultivation of the goods and values of nature. Wherever human life is involved, therefore, nature and culture are quite intimately connected one with the other." (11) The fact that human speech is realized in a multitude of languages, that is to say, in partial cultural systems, without any of them exhausting the complete communicative capacity of man, is often put forth as an example of this correlation.

      This double correlation between nature and culture permits the understanding that the first of these two realities (nature) is what fills cultural values with sense and meaning. Consequently, cultural values are measured by their greater or lesser appropriateness in relation to human nature. This correlation between nature and culture has a direct influence on the understanding of both natural and positive law as elements that are necessarily present in every legal system or order. (12) Two orders do not exist, one natural and one positive, but a single legal system in which the demands of justice "coming from" the family (nature) are integrated with the necessary historical determinations derived from positive law (culture). This relation is deducible from every legal order.

      The legal order of the Church has a greater sensibility toward those elements belonging to natural law. It conceives of the mission of the positive order as a service offered to families, with the purpose that they might fulfill their evangelizing function.

      Indeed, the fundamental structure and properties of natural marriage do not cease but acquire greater importance and breadth in the New Covenant. Marriage is not a kind of "Christian property" but a patrimony of humanity that affects believers and non-believers. Marriage involves man in his human reality. This expression, "patrimony of humanity," need not be understood as a venerable treasure of the past that must be preserved as in a museum but as something forever written in the profundity of the being of man and his history. Because of this profundity, the 1983 Charter of the Rights of the Family presented by the Holy See makes no reference to the reality of the Catholic marriage sacrament in any of its twelve articles. The Charter was meant to be an instrument for dialogue with all peoples, and especially politicians, legislators, and educators. (13)

      I have returned many times to the Nicomachean Ethics to show how Aristotle's valuable reflections on marriage and the family, made three hundred years before Christ, were possible even then because marriage and the family are something prior to and greater than the state. They are not a simple recognition or concession of the state. (14) As this article will show, one of society's greatest current challenges lies precisely in making marriage an agent for cultural transformation. This would provide a foundation for addressing...