Marriage and Family as a Communio Personarum - "a Deep Community of Life and Love”
Marriage and family are "a deep community of life and love" (John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, no. 17). Their essence and tasks are determined by love, which is their inner principle, permanent power and ultimate goal. Animated by love, they form a community of persons (communio personarum). "Without love the family is not a community of persons and, in the same way, without love the family cannot live, grow and perfect itself as a community of persons." (Ibid., No. 18).
In the teaching of the Catholic Church, the concept of communio personarum allows us to understand the essence of marriage and family most fully (John Paul II, Letter to Families, No. 7). The term communio indicates the personal and interpersonal dimension of all social systems. It defines the very way of existence and activities of people in relation to each other, through which they themselves confirm and affirm each other, creating the closest community. Communio personarum is a community of unity to which only people who truly love each other are capable, that is, who live and realize mature love.
We are therefore talking about a conjugal and family communio personarum, at the root of which is love. In order to grasp the essence and depth of the term communio personarum, it is necessary to look at the carrying category of self-giving, which describes conjugal love. “Love causes man to find fulfilment through the sincere gift of self. To love means to give and to receive something which can be neither bought nor sold, but only given freely and mutually.” (John Paul II, Letter to Families, No. 11). The gift, by its nature, shows a communitarian character, as it shapes, expresses and strengthens the mutual bond between the person who offers the gift and the recipient.
A gift is an authentic gift when it is characterized by selflessness, freedom of persons when it comes to presenting and receiving it, and when it is irrevocable. The "right of gift" is inscribed in the very existence of the person. Man is capable of being a gift of himself because he is a person, i.e., someone who can decide for himself. The gift of self requires the ability to give, but also to accept the gift of the other person, so as not to instrumentalize it, which is clearly "stated" by the personalistic norm (K. Wojtyła, Love and responsibility, pp. 27-30, 41-54).
Karol Wojtyła wrote that "true love, love internally full, is the one in which we choose a person for her/his own sake, that is, the one in which a man chooses a woman, and a woman chooses a man not only as a partner in sexual life, but as a person whom he/she wants to give his/her life” (Ibid., p. 119). Because the body participates in a special way in the marital gift of self (through which each person expresses and reveals himself, his interior, spirituality), one should be careful not to falsify the gift of the body, which is happening in extra-marital sexual acts. Therefore, moral norms uphold the gift of a person and his/her body. On the basis of the above short analysis of the category of gift, it can already be noticed that marital love is special, specific. It is no longer just a liking, a love of lust and kindness, or a friendship, but a spousal love, which includes all other forms of love and the essence of which is to give oneself, one's "I" and accept another person. This love is difficult, but it makes it beautiful. There is a deep paradox in it, which can be expressed through opposing pairs of words: "lose-find", "save-lose". The concept of spousal love is also crucial to establishing the norms of all sexual morality. There can be no real sexual devotion that would not have the meaning of a person and would not fall into the orbit of requirements that result from spousal love (K. Wojtyła, Love and responsibility, pp. 87-92).
The conjugal communio personarum is initiated by the consent of the couple (covenant) by the engaged couples, which must be binding, legitimately expressed, true (without simulation), free and thoughtful, reciprocal and absolute - unconditional. Consent is a conscious and free human act through which the engaged couple give themselves to each other and accept each other as spouses. The marriage certificate is the complement and confirmation of the consent. The protagonists of the marriage covenant are the bride and groom themselves, as long as they are free from obstacles (from the natural law and in the case of the sacrament of marriage - from church law) and their consent is not affected by any anomaly. These issues are described and regulated in detail by the Code of Canon Law.
The raison d'être of marriage, its goal is the good of the spouses: spousal love, mutual fidelity implying a close and lasting bond of souls and bodies; mutual material and spiritual help; the nature of the marriage act (John Paul II, Letter to Families, No. 10) and the birth and upbringing of children (see ibid., No. 16). In the teaching of the Church, marriage is defined as a covenant and community of life and love. Conjugal love should be: human, full, faithful-exclusive and fertile, i.e., open to the transmission of life. It contains "some wholeness in which all the elements of a person enter - the impulses of the body and instinct, the strength of affection and attachment, the striving of the spirit and will.
Love tends towards a deeply personal unity which not only unites in one body but leads to only one heart and one soul. It requires indissolubility and fidelity in total mutual giving and opens to fertility (cf. Paul VI, Encyclical Humanae Vitae, 9). In a word, it is about the normal characteristics of every natural conjugal love” (John Paul II, Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, no. 13).
In order that this love develops and matures and that marriage becomes more and more a communio personarum, the Church teaches about the qualities of marriage, that is, its characteristics, the presence of which is absolutely necessary. She includes among them: unity and indissolubility. Both qualities demand and imply each other because they are essentially two aspects of the same reality.
Meaning and significance of unity is expressed in exclusivity between one man and one woman (monogamy). Unity is opposed by polygamy and polyandry as well as various kinds of betrayal and adultery. Unity appears as an anthropological requirement. It is called for by the personal condition of the spouses (spousal conjugal love, expressed in wholeness) and by the dignity of the children, protected by the unity of marriage. The deepening of unity is fostered in faithfulness and self-education to purity.
Indissolubility as an attribute of marriage belongs to its essence. It relates to the permanence of marriage and is an indispensable requirement for the truth of the marriage gift and at the same time its purest expression. As an intrinsic quality of marriage, it is not merely an ethical or disciplinary requirement, but something universal in the natural law. Indissolubility protects the welfare of spouses and the welfare of children and society as a whole. The indissolubility of marriage results, above all, from the very essence of love - being a gratuitous, mutual gift for each other. “By its very nature, the gift of the person must be lasting and irrevocable. The indissolubility of marriage flows in the first place from the very essence of that gift: the gift of one person to another person. This reciprocal giving of self-reveals the spousal nature of love. In their marital consent the bride and groom call each other by name: "I... take you... as my wife (as my husband) and I promise to be true to you... for all the days of my life". A gift such as this involves an obligation much more serious and profound than anything which might be "purchased" in any way and at any price.” (John Paul II, Letter to Families, No. 11).
There is no love without fidelity. Nor is there fidelity in a marriage without indissolubility. “The total physical self-giving would be a lie if it were not the sign and fruit of a total personal self-giving, in which the whole person, including the temporal dimension, is present: if the person were to withhold something or reserve the possibility of deciding otherwise in the future, by this very fact he or she would not be giving totally.” (John Paul II, Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, No. 11).
Through the spousal love of husband and wife, marriage becomes a family at the moment of the conception of a new life. “Conjugal communion constitutes the foundation on which is built the broader communion of the family, of parents and children, of brothers and sisters with each other, of relatives and other members of the household. This communion is rooted in the natural bonds of flesh and blood, and grows to its specifically human perfection with the establishment and maturing of the still deeper and richer bonds of the spirit: the love that animates the interpersonal relationships of the different members of the family constitutes the interior strength that shapes and animates the family communion and community. (...). Family communion can only be preserved and perfected through a great spirit of sacrifice.
It requires, in fact, a ready and generous openness of each and all to understanding, to forbearance, to pardon, to reconciliation. There is no family that does not know how selfishness, discord, tension and conflict violently attack and at times mortally wound its own communion: hence there arise the many and varied forms of division in family life. But, at the same time, every family is called by the God of peace to have the joyous and renewing experience of "reconciliation," that is, communion reestablished, unity restored.” (John Paul II, Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, No. 21)
Until Tomorrow
fr. george