In
the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus said to the Pharisees:
Have you not read that the one who made them at the
beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall
leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become
one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has
joined together, let no one separate (Matt 19:4-6).
Marriage is a sacrament of the Catholic
Church in which a man and a woman, by submitting to God’s plan for man at the beginning and acting in
accordance with the Lord’s words, establish a matrimonial covenant between
themselves for the whole of their lives. Together they form a family of mutual
love. But the family “does not end with the couple, because it makes them
capable of the greatest possible gift, the gift by which they become
cooperators with God for giving life to a new human person” (FC 14), thereby
fulfilling His blessing to man at the beginning of Creation, “Be fruitful and
multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:28).
“The
family, which is founded and given life by love, is a community of persons: of
husband and wife, of parents and children, of relatives” (FC 18). Building a
family is not just in the interest of a particular person, but it is extended
to the spouse, their children, relatives and the common good of the society.
This is pretty much in line with the famous Chinese saying of Confucius in the Great Learning, “修身, 齊家, 治國, 平天下”, which essentially means that when one’s personal
life is cultivated, one’s family will be in harmony, and as a result one’s
country will be well governed, and when all the countries are well governed,
there will be peace throughout the world. Even outside the Church, it is a
common understanding among different nations and different peoples that
marriage is a profound good of universal value which perfects man as a social
being; protects the well-being of children; and sustains the civil society and
promotes common good. This basically explains why human laws have been
established in almost every country to protect married people and their
children, albeit to different extents.
In
virtually every community, the institution of marriage serves three important
public purposes. First, marriage is the institution through which societies
seek to organize the bearing and rearing of children. It is a natural human
instinct that children cling to their mother at the young age, and it is
equally important to ensure that they have the love and support of their
father. Second, marriage provides direction, order, and stability to adult
sexual unions and to their economic, social, and biological consequences.
Third, marriage civilizes men, furnishing them with a sense of purpose, norms,
and social status that orient their lives away from vice and toward virtue
(Witherspoon 9). Therefore, it is apparent that good marriages and family lives
are conducive to achieving common good in society.
Unfortunately,
we see so many and frequent breakdowns in marriage and family in the modern
world. The most common threats are divorce, illegitimacy, cohabitation and
same-sex marriage. All these lead to instability of the society and increase
the burden of the society in one way or another. Children suffer most from
divorce. They are significantly more likely to divorce as adults, to suffer
from mental illness and delinquency, to drop out of high school, to have poor
relationships with one or both parents, and to have difficulty committing
themselves to a relationship (Witherspoon 17). Children are also the primary
victim of illegitimacy (i.e., non-marital child-bearing). Most of them spend
the majority of their childhood in a single parent home, the adverse effect of
which is similar to that of divorce. Non-marital child-bearing also has
negative impacts on the parents, many of whom are youths not yet ready
psychologically and financially to establish a family. They are more likely to
experience educational failure, earn less and have difficulty in finding a good
marriage partner (Witherspoon 17).
Cohabitation
has become very popular in the Western culture. Currently, 60% of all marriages
in the United States are preceded by cohabitation, but fewer than half of
cohabiting unions end in marriage (For Your Marriage, Cohabitation). Cohabiting
union is particularly risky to children. They are more likely to engage in
delinquent behavior, be suspended from school, and cheat in school, and most
seriously, those cohabiting with an unrelated male adult face significantly
higher risks of sexual or physical abuse. One study found that preschool
children living in households with unrelated adults (typically a mother’s
boyfriend) were nearly 50 times more likely to be killed than were children
living with both biological parents. As for the adults, they face higher rates
of domestic violence, sexual infidelity, and instability, compared to couples
in marital unions. Of course, this has serious adverse impacts on the happy and
healthy growth of children as well (Witherspoon 18).
“The
major threat that same-sex marriages pose to traditional unions is that they
redefine the institution of marriage” (Sokolowski, I). People of the same sex
can have sex, but they cannot procreate through the natural means of sexual
intercourse between a man and a woman. Society has an interest of seeing there
will be a next generation being brought up in a virtuous and law-abiding
manner. Traditionally, public authorities view reproduction as a good end of marriage
and a common good. On the other hand, “proponents of same-sex marriages want to
unlink marriage from reproduction and have the laws legalize their friendship
because it is a friendship, not because it is procreative” (Sokolowski, IV). This
poses a serious threat to the definition of marriage and its creeping effect is
that the public authority will have to consider legalizing any sort of
friendships and not same-sex marriage alone. The societal impacts of
re-definition of marriage can be huge and even unbearable to the continuation
of the human race. This partly explains why the Catholic Church adopts a
persistent stance on the intrinsically evil homosexual act. The Catechism
states that homosexual acts “are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual
act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and
sexual complementarity. Under no
circumstances can they be approved” (CCC 2357).
The
empirical evidence in support of marriage is clear. “Only when marriage is
valued as good in itself, and not simply as a means to other good ends, will
children, adults, and societies reap its profound benefits” (Witherspoon 20).
Regrettably, many people in the modern era no longer cherish marriage as a
community good, and they are adopting an individualistic approach in making
their own personal “good” decisions of commitment and love. And the problem is
aggravated among the youths by the social media, making things such as speed
dating and casual sex more and more common. Catholics have the responsibility
to protect the values of marriage and family in accordance with the natural law
as illuminated by the Lord’s words. We should always bear in mind and be
consistent in our words and in our acts that marriage is a common good and should be protected in its integrity in
the modern world.
Bibliography
Catechism of the Catholic Church. New York: Doubleday, 1995.
Print.
"Cohabitation." For
Your Marriage. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2015.
Coogan, Michael D. The
New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha.
N.p.: Oxford UP, 2010. Print.
Pope John Paul II. "Familiaris Consortio." Vatican,
n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2015.
Sokolowski, Robert. The
Threat of Same-Sex Marriage. <http://ezproxy.sjcme.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=13286361&site=ehost-live>
Witherspoon Institute. Marriage
and the Public Good: Ten Principles. Witherspoon Institute, 2008. <http://protectmarriage.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/WI_Marriage.pdf>.
No comments:
Post a Comment