The Catholic view of marriage is wildly countercultural. Relative to the culture, it is notable for rejecting so-called “same-sex marriage,” and even among Christian denominations it is remarkable for its complete ban on divorce and contraception. 62 percent of US Catholics hope for the Church to change its stance on divorce, and 89 percent reject the Church’s teaching on contraception. This widespread doubt calls for a re-affirmation of the Church’s teachings, and the roots behind them.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines marriage as “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament” (CCC 1601). This definition has several key elements.
The first element is that marriage is a covenant, not a contract. Understanding the difference unlocks the meaning of Christian marriage. A contract lays out duties and an objective to be fulfilled. After the goal is done, the parties are free to move on from one another. For example, if I call a plumber to fix my sink, once he’s completed the repair I need never speak to him again. A covenant, however, establishes a permanent personal relationship where the parties are not free to leave, even if they fail one another. In ancient days, covenants used to be common, but now the only covenant left in modern society is marriage itself, and most view it as a contract. In short, a contract says, “this is yours, this is mine,” while a covenant says “I am yours, you are mine.”
The best example of a covenant is God’s love for His Church, where He lays down His life for us despite the fact that every one of us consistently betrays Him and lets Him down. In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul says that marriage is actually an analogy to Christ’s love for us, not the other way around.
The second element of Catholic marriage is that it lasts for a lifetime. If marriage were only a contract, it would be rational to think that a man could leave his wife when marriage stops being enjoyable. However, a covenant establishes a lifelong relationship. Covenants create lifelong bonds because they invoke God as the guarantor of the relationship. In fact, a covenant oath is called a sacramentum in Latin. Jesus tells us, “what God has joined together, let no man separate” (Mt. 19:6). Even if the Church wanted to change its teaching on divorce tomorrow, it could not. During the marriage ceremony, God fuses together husband and wife through the power of the Holy Spirit. Once the couple is welded together by God, no priest on earth can dissolve the marriage. God has not given the Church the power. While circumstances like abuse may call for separation, the husband will always remain the husband, and the wife, the wife.
The third element is that marriage is for the purpose of children, not just the good of the spouses. While the Church affirms that the primary purpose of marriage is for the good of the spouses, particularly in aiding each other in holiness, marriage can never be separated from the purpose of raising children. Malachi 2:15 specifies that God fuses a man and woman into one flesh for the express purpose of raising godly children. Although the modern world views children as a burden, the Bible views the creation of marriage as the vehicle of God’s original blessing: “be fruitful and multiply.” In the Christian view, the only reason humans have sexuality at all is to enable us to live this blessing. While pleasure is undoubtedly a good, having sex for pleasure alone is as vulgar as Romans eating vast feasts and then rushing to puke them up in the vomitorium. Every sexual act is not merely to say, “we are two humans who like this feeling,” but rather, “we are a family, open to God’s blessing of children.”
Put together, a Catholic marriage is fundamentally different from a civil marriage. Humans make a civil marriage contract in a courthouse, while God makes a Catholic marriage by changing the souls of the spouses. Catholic teaching is rooted in the reality of what God has done, and human culture is not free to change that.
Nick Letts is a former “radical atheist” who converted to Protestantism as a senior in High School, and then converted to Catholicism as a Junior in college. He studies philosophy in the Morrissey College, and loves nothing more than to curl up with a good book. He is engaged to his lovely fiancée Katherine Brown.
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