Chapter — Prümmer, Manuale Theologiae Moralis
Chapter IV. On The Goods Of Matrimony
684. "A threefold good of matrimony is assigned: The first is offspring to be received and educated for the worship of God. The second is fidelity, which one spouse ought to preserve toward the other. The third is the indivisibility of matrimony, because it signifies the indivisible conjunction of Christ and the Church." Thus the Council of Florence in the Decree for the Armenians;353 all of which is taken almost word for word from St. Thomas.354 This enumeration of the threefold matrimonial good seems first to have been employed by St. Augustine, who says: "Therefore the whole good of nuptials ... is offspring, fidelity, sacrament,"355 and after him by very many canonists and theologians. The Roman Catechism, however, admonishes:356 "The faithful are to be taught that there are three goods of matrimony: offspring, fidelity, sacrament; by the compensation of these, those inconveniences which the Apostle indicates in these words, 'Nevertheless, such shall have tribulation of the flesh,'357 are alleviated, and it is brought about that bodily unions which outside matrimony would deservedly be condemned are joined with honorableness." - These three goods must indeed be present in every matrimony, and therefore also in the legitimate matrimony of unbelievers. Yet they are present in a much more perfect manner in the matrimony of Christians, to which they are so intimately joined that without them Christian matrimony is altogether unable to subsist.358
353 Denz., n. 702.
354 Contra Gent., l. 4, c. 78.
355 Found in c. 10, C. 28, q. 2; cf. also De Gen. ad litt., l. 9, c. 7.
356 P. 1, c. 8, q. 21.
357 1 Cor. 7:28.
358 Cf. St. Thomas, Suppl., q. 49, a. 2, ad 2; Gihr, Sakramentenlehre, § 56.
685. Note. Every action which gravely harms even one of these goods is a mortal sin.
The Angelic Doctor discusses these matrimonial goods most excellently throughout question 49 of the Supplement, where he also proves how fittingly these goods were joined to matrimony by God. The argument can be briefly summarized in this manner: No wise man sustains any loss unless he receives compensation in some equal or better good. But in matrimony several losses and several harms and inconveniences occur. Therefore....
The first harm which occurs is lust, and from it there results a detriment to the use of reason. For experience establishes that lust is not lulled by carnal acts, but rather is increased and becomes as it were a second nature. Likewise, it is established that reason is blunted by lust, and this to such a degree that during the lustful act itself the use of reason is not rarely lost entirely. To compensate for these harms, the good of offspring was conferred upon matrimony by the Creator. Through the generation of children the human race is propagated and God is perpetually worshiped. Hence St. Paul says: "She [the woman] shall be saved through childbearing."359
The second harm is the troublesome solicitude of pleasing the other spouse and providing for the affairs of the family; and, especially for the woman, the burdens of childbirth. This harm is compensated by the good of fidelity, by which one spouse is bound to render the conjugal debt to the other and cannot be joined to another person. Hence the Apostle Paul says: "The woman hath not power of her own body, but the man. And in like manner the man also hath not power of his own body, but the woman."360
The third harm is a certain perpetual servitude by which the husband is obligated to the wife and the wife to the husband. This harm is compensated by the good of the sacrament, that is, by the indissoluble bond by which the spouses represent the salutary conjunction of Christ with the Church and are bound to love one another as Christ loved the Church. - Now the individual goods must be treated individually.
359 1 Tim. 2:15.
360 1 Cor. 7:4.
686. 1. The good of offspring is the proximate end of matrimony; hence matrimony is null from the beginning if the right to the generation of offspring is excluded by those contracting, or even if carnal intercourse is indeed exercised, but with an explicit stipulation that the generation of offspring be avoided. The good of offspring is indeed a great good for the spouses, since children begotten are the glory and crown of their parents, but it also imposes grave obligations upon them, the transgression of which can easily become a mortal sin. St. Augustine361 beautifully comprises these obligations in this one phrase: "That [the offspring] may be lovingly received, kindly nourished, religiously educated." The Code of Canon Law, c. 1113, gravely establishes: "Parents are bound by a most grave obligation to care according to their means for the religious and moral, as well as the physical and civil, education of the offspring, and also to provide for their temporal good." Therefore obligations of this kind are fittingly divided into a) those with respect to the body and b) those with respect to the soul.
a) With respect to the body, the good of offspring demands that, from the beginning of conception, parents not only avoid all things which are gravely harmful to the offspring, but also procure good physical education and nourishment.
Cf. those things which were said more extensively concerning this matter above, II, n. 588. - Both in the Decree of Gratian362 and in the Roman Ritual,363 parents are gravely admonished not to place the infant with themselves in bed, because of the great danger of suffocation. The transgression of this law is a reserved sin in some dioceses.
b) With respect to the soul, or with respect to spiritual good, parents are bound first of all to take care that the offspring born is freed from original sin as soon as possible by the laver of baptism. Hence parents sin if, without a most urgent cause, they delay the baptism of the offspring excessively.364 The greatest sin against both the bodily and the spiritual good of conceived offspring is directly willed abortion, since together with bodily life it removes the possibility of baptism and consequently also of eternal life.365 Good religious and moral education, concerning which there was discussion above, II, n. 589, also pertains to the spiritual good of the offspring.
361 De Gen. ad litt., l. 9, c. 7.
362 C. 2, C. 2, q. 1.
363 Tit. 2, c. 2, n. 32.
364 Cf. above in the treatise on baptism, n. 126.
365 Cf. the penalties against those procuring abortion above, II, n. 142.
687. 2. The good of fidelity includes two things: the conjugal debt and conjugal fidelity. There will be a special discussion of the conjugal debt in the following chapter. Conjugal fidelity is a great good of matrimony, and the more holily it is preserved, the greater the happiness which customarily exists between spouses. The violation of conjugal fidelity, however, which is committed through adultery and all acts connected with it, is a grave sin of injustice. In the Old Testament adulterers were punished with the penalty of death: "If any man sleep with the wife of another, let them both die, to wit, the adulterer and the adulteress: and thou shalt take away the evil out of Israel."366 In the New Testament, however, it is said: "Neither adulterers ... shall possess the kingdom of God."367 Even if the husband has given consent for the wife to have intercourse with another man, nevertheless this act is true adultery, as is evident from proposition 50 condemned by Innocent XI, already cited above, II, n. 703. The reason is that the husband cannot alienate his right over the wife, since matrimony requires this fidelity of spouses by both divine and natural law. For just as a man does not have free and perfect dominion over the members of his own body - he cannot, for example, licitly cut off a healthy member from himself - so, by parity, the husband does not have free dominion over his wife and cannot cede her to another.
Christ Himself most strongly inculcates fidelity upon spouses, deterring them not only from evil external acts, but also from an evil internal desire: "You have heard that it was said to them of old: Thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say to you, that whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart."368
There are authors, for example, Sanchez,369 the Salamancans,370 and St. Alphonsus,371 who teach that not only adultery properly so called is against conjugal fidelity, but also sodomy with one's own wife, so that spouses perpetrating sodomy with one another commit true adultery, because in sodomy neither spouse preserves his or her body chastely for the other. Whatever may be said of this opinion, a sodomitical spouse must say in confession whether the sin was committed with his or her own spouse or with another person; because otherwise the confessor cannot render a correct judgment.
366 Deut. 22:22.
367 1 Cor. 6:9.
368 Matt. 5:27 f.
369 De matrim. sacr., l. 9, disp. 18, n. 4.
370 Theol. mor., tr. 26, c. 5, n. 15.
371 Theol. mor., l. 3, n. 446.
688. Scholion. On conjugal jealousy. It will not be beside the point to say a few words about conjugal jealousy,372 which was called by the ancients "the solicitude and suspicion of one who loves," and which not only opposes the good of fidelity, but is also accustomed to cause enormous harms and dire quarrels in conjugal life. This conjugal jealousy can indeed arise without any fault and become, as it were, a "fixed idea." A jealous spouse (who is often of a melancholic temperament) suspects everywhere and in all the actions of the other spouse, if not complete infidelity, nevertheless signs of diminished love toward himself or herself and undue love toward another person. Sometimes, however, conjugal jealousy arises from the fault of the other spouse, who neglects his or her consort and is in fact excessively affected toward another person. If conjugal jealousy is not immediately extinguished and opposed with all one's strength, the life of both spouses becomes truly intolerable; indeed, not rarely homicide or suicide follows from it. The best remedy against conjugal jealousy is a candid and open manner of speaking and acting always employed between spouses, without any circumlocutions and secrets. As a rule it is to be counseled: Neither spouse should conceal anything from the other spouse in his or her private life (the matter is otherwise with professional life, as they say, or with a secret entrusted to one).373
372 German Eifersucht, French jalousie, English jealousy.
373 Cf. Rive, Die Ehe, 364.
689. 3. The good of the sacrament is both the sacramental grace of Christian matrimony and especially the indissoluble bond, which indeed is stricter in Christian matrimony than in the matrimony of pagans. For if Christian matrimony signifies the conjunction of Christ with the Church, which is indelible, since Christ will never separate Himself from the Church, it is also necessary that the bond of conjunction between Christian spouses can never be broken. But so that this holy society may more easily be preserved without complaint, the duties of the husband and wife described by St. Paul374 and by the prince of the apostles, St. Peter,375 are to be kept before one's eyes:
Duties of the husband. The office of the husband is to treat his wife generously and honorably. In this matter it is necessary to remember that Eve was called a companion by Adam, who said: "The woman whom thou gavest me to be my companion."376 For this reason certain Fathers teach that Eve was formed not from the feet, but from the side of the man; just as she was also not fashioned from the head of Adam, so that she might understand that she was not the mistress of the man, but rather subject to him. Moreover, it becomes the man always to be occupied in the pursuit of some honorable matter, both that he may supply those things which are necessary for sustaining the family and that he may not languish in inactive idleness, from which almost all vices take their beginning; and then rightly to order the family, to correct the morals of all his subjects, and to keep each one in his duty.
The duties of the wife are clearly enumerated by the prince of the apostles, who says: "Let wives be subject to their husbands: that if any believe not the word, they may be won without the word by the conversation of the wives, considering your chaste conversation with fear. Whose adorning let it not be the outward plaiting of the hair, or the wearing of gold, or the putting on of apparel; but the hidden man of the heart in the incorruptibility of a quiet and modest spirit, which is rich in the sight of God. For after this manner heretofore the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection to their own husbands. As Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters you are, doing well, and not fearing any disturbance."377 Let their principal endeavor also be to educate the children in the worship of religion and the exercise of good morals and diligently to care for domestic affairs. Let them willingly keep themselves at home unless necessity compels them to go out, and let them never dare to do this without at least the implicit permission of the husband. Then, in that in which the marital conjunction principally consists, let them always remember that after God no one is to be loved more than the husband, and no one is to be esteemed more highly than he, to whom it is also necessary to accommodate themselves and submit with the greatest alacrity of spirit in all matters which are not opposed to Christian piety.378
The good of the sacrament not only prohibits the dissolution of matrimony as regards the bond, but also separation as regards bed and dwelling, unless, however, there are causes enumerated above, n. 679 ff.
374 Eph. 5:22; Col. 3:18; 1 Tim. 5:14.
375 1 Pet. 3:1 ff.
376 Gen. 3:12.
377 1 Pet. 3:1 ff.