I. On the Natural Institution of Matrimony

104. - The origin of matrimony from nature. These things are manifest to natural reason. The good of human offspring, which is of the greatest importance to the good of the human race and therefore, at the command of nature, must be preserved, demands that an infant be born not from promiscuous intercourse, but of parents who have come together into a sacred unity, so that by the common solicitude of both parents it may be led perfectly to human life. For it comes forth from the mother's womb so wholly defenseless and lacking in counsel that it would immediately perish unless provision were made for it affectionately by general protection and minute attention. The father will give rather the protection, the mother chiefly the patient and minute cares, and both will give love. Then for several years the infant, child, adolescent, and young adult must be aided and directed in every manner; in this variety and succession of needs, now the mother, now the father, can furnish more useful work, yet in such a manner that each acts less well alone than when they are joined, so that a certain fitting tempering of the qualities of each sex is most greatly to be desired. This, moreover, will exist most happily if both parents, just as they were one principle of generation, so also become one principle of education.

But in turn, while man considers himself, he feels a great propensity toward the other sex, by which he is directed not only toward carnal conjunction with it, but toward a more complete union of persons ¹. As we said in no. 61, carnal conjunction is the symbol and material expression of this union, in the same manner as bodily pleasure figures the fuller happiness of persons whereby they have completed one another.

¹ Compare nos. 2 and 61.

If we now compare this good of offspring with these inclinations, do we not observe that there proceeds from nature an institution by which two persons complete one another and are made, as it were, one; and that, once this unity has been effected or this bond admitted, but not before, they will legitimately generate offspring? Ribbing writes aptly: "Founded upon the distinction of the sexes, matrimony constitutes the union of one man and one woman into one personality" ².

² "Founded upon the distinction of the sexes, marriage is the union of one man and one woman into one personality" (Sexuelle Ethik, in Moll, Handbuch, etc., p. 927).

105. - The unity and stability of matrimony. 1. The morally equal number in which each sex exists also proves, to say the least, that it is among the desires of nature that one man with one woman contract this bond. For only a few more powerful men will be able to practice polygamy without killing the other men or reducing them to abject servitude.

What of the fact that this unity, this full and mutual communication which love affects, is not properly made except between two persons; what of the fact that this "exclusivism," or this jealousy, indicated above in no. 40 among the marks of love, which shuts others out from this intimate union, itself commends monogamy? Again Ribbing writes very well, op. cit.: "In sexual life one cannot hand oneself over to another except under the condition that one himself acquire the other."

2. The stability, and even perpetuity, of matrimony is required on account of the offspring itself. For for a long time both parents, insofar as they have been fashioned into one, are necessary to the offspring; but they are always useful.

Moreover, children are bound by a perpetual duty of piety toward their parents, insofar as, having been made one, they generated and nourished them: they will perform this duty with difficulty if they find their parents divided by another marriage, as if made strangers to them. By a certain spontaneous estimation, a parent who, having spurned the prior bond, has attempted to admit another is judged to have done an injury to the spouse. But if both have entered a new matrimonial contract, they appear both guilty and victims of mutual injury.

Nor is the force of this argument diminished because it happens to the institution of matrimony that many marriages remain sterile.

For, since it is manifest that provision was made primarily through matrimony for the due multiplication of human beings, nature established its inviolable order concerning matrimony according to those things which this primary end required. And at the first intuition of common sense it is perceived that there cannot be different laws for a fecund marriage and for an infertile marriage: we all perceive what a path would be opened through this distinction of laws to the inventions of unbridled lust.

Add now that, through matrimony, after it has been consummated, the spouses have come together, as it were, into one human being, and that a mysterious communication of qualities has been effected ³.

³ Compare the cited dissertation of Dr. Desplats in the work L'Honnêteté conjugale (Mercier, Desplats, Vermeersch), or Matrimonio e Maltusianismo (Marconsini).

Wherefore, according to the testimony of St. Paul ⁴, the wife must be loved by the husband as a part of himself. The sayings which are likewise commonly repeated agree, in which a husband calls his wife half of himself; in which love is described as the egoism of two persons (un égoïsme à deux). Does there not belong of itself to that composite being the firmness of a singular human being, so that it is dissolved only by death?

⁴ Ephesians 5:28, 29, 31.

Moreover, consider what the mutual handing over of bodies has effected. Through it, it has come about that each person lost something of his own person and at the same time acquired something of the person of the other. This mutual handing over cannot be rendered void by a contrary restitution. This appears especially in the woman, who has irreparably lost her integrity through carnal intercourse. But it is also true in the man: he too cannot recover that which he communicated to the other. Nor can there be a valid renunciation or abdication here, since the matter concerns a part of a human person, but man does not possess that complete ownership of the person or of a bodily part of the person which would be required for alienation. Therefore, as long as that which one spouse acquired belongs to a living person, whose body must remain inviolate, that spouse cannot, as it were, transfer it together with himself or herself to another spouse. Only after death, when the soul has put aside the body, can this be done without injury to another ⁵.

⁵ It is useful to hear Kant himself concerning this matter. In sexual intercourse, since one uses the members and faculties of the other, a person hands himself or herself over as though a thing. But this is opposed to the inviolable possession of one's own person, unless one recovers from the person of the other that which the other yields from his or her own person, and thus, as it were, reintegrates one's own person. But this is not obtained except by matrimony, in which mutual possession of the body is handed over for life. (Rechtslehre, Das Eherecht.)

Therefore, considering nature alone, it is now established that matrimony, at least after offspring has been conceived, indeed already after the unity has been completed or consummated through the perfect use of marriage, has been withdrawn from the will of the spouses, so that it is intrinsically indissoluble.

Indeed, it seems that a marriage of this kind cannot be dissolved by any human authority. For this dissolution is opposed to the necessary relations between parents and children, and contains a certain partial disposition of the human person: but no human power can break or directly impede the necessary relations of persons, nor can it dispose directly of the human person.

106. - But before the marriage has been consummated, or before both spouses have been made one flesh, can it be dissolved by mutual consent? Speaking not of the sacrament of matrimony but of that which is a mere contract, it seems to us that an indissolubility which takes its beginning from consent itself can be demonstrated with difficulty by natural reason alone. For until the spouses have been made one flesh, you would say that nothing irreparable has been done; a perfect restitution of the bodies remains possible. Thus, in a related argument, the material element of virginity is lost irreparably through the completed carnal act; but the formal element, or the purpose of virginity, if it has been revoked, even sinfully, can be restored by a new purpose according to the doctrine of St. Thomas. Compare below, no. 142, where virginity is treated.

Indeed, concerning the marriage of Christians itself it was long doubted in the Church whether, before copulation, it was perfect and indissoluble. And the Bolognese school, with Gratian (in Cause XVII, q. 2) and Master Roland (who afterwards became Alexander III), against the Parisian school defended the so-called "copula theory," according to which, before consummation, matrimony was neither a sacrament nor indissoluble. Freisen at one time favored this theory even in our own days ⁶. The fruit of the controversy was that the dissolution of a ratified and non-consummated marriage, both through solemn religious profession and through a dispensation granted by the Apostolic See for a just cause, became certain doctrine of the Church, confirmed by canon 1119 of the Code itself. This matter is treated in the Summa of St. Thomas, Supplementum, III, q. 42, art. 4.

⁶ In the first edition of his Historia Iuris Matrimonialis, written in German. Compare De Smet, De sponsalibus, etc., no. 98.

107. - The intervention of public power. Among all nations it has been perceived how great an importance the conjugal union has for the common good in human society, so that everywhere there exist written laws or customs concerning the right contracting of matrimony. Rightly and deservedly, therefore, the competent public authority claims for itself no small part in the ordering of this institution. Matrimony cannot, therefore, be regarded as a merely private covenant of two persons. Compare Ribbing, op. cit.

108. - The religious nature of matrimony. We have not yet considered the matter adequately. How great an office they exercise, with how great dignity do those persons seem to be increased who give a new rational creature to the world! Yet the spouses could not effect this unless, while they use the powers received from God and form the body, God should create and infuse the spiritual soul. Therefore, a properly divine action inserts itself into the human action, concurs in a special manner with it, and cooperates with it. Shall we call profane this production which is mingled with divine and human cooperation? Shall we call profane the very institution in which alone human beings are generated legitimately? Do we not rather all perceive that there is something mysterious and sacred in the sexual union of human beings? "Both the monuments of antiquity and the morals and institutions of those peoples who had advanced further toward civilization and had excelled in a more exquisite knowledge of law and equity testify," says Leo XIII; "it is established that it had been formed and anticipated in the minds of all of them that, when they thought about matrimony, the form of a thing joined with religion and sanctity occurred to them" ⁷.

⁷ Arcanum divinae sapientiae, February 10, 1880.

History also establishes that the protection of religion was needed so that matrimony might actually obtain its firmness and inviolability as required by the natural law itself.

What, therefore, will the competent public power be? It certainly belongs to the desires of nature that religious power assume the more important parts in governing matrimony, so that all the essentials of matrimony may be defined, declared, and sanctioned by sacred authority.

But where a social authority occupied with sacred matters is lacking, the public power itself will care for religious matters identically. I say identically, because then it manages this province not formally insofar as it is placed over civil matters, but insofar as, by reason of being more universal, it administers and provides for common matters.

Natural reason itself, therefore, shows all these marks to be present in matrimony.