Chapter V: Other Duties of Spouses

Usefulness. - In this brief chapter, besides inculcating the duties by which conjugal life is as it were completed, we propose to supply a gap in several manuals of moral theology.

After in the other volume, concerning the duties of the virtues, we said what rights and duties would arise for spouses from piety, it is enough that here we briefly touch upon fidelity of friendship and the obligation of cohabitation.

I. Fidelity of Friendship. Manuals of theology, too much, as it seems to us, pass over in silence that kind of infidelity by which one spouse, by the love which is called platonic, withdraws his heart from the other spouse so as to give it to an extraneous person, while leaving the body to the spouse for conjugal acts. Besides the fact that this is very dangerous to chastity itself, this alienation of mind is of itself a cause of grave and just sorrow to the deserted spouse, which detracts not a little from due piety. And it cannot be composed with the obligations tacitly undertaken in contracting marriage according to the usages received among cultivated European peoples. Wherefore we judge that it is opposed to justice itself and must be marked with the note of mental adultery. Finally, the right instruction of offspring also demands agreement of minds. Therefore we judge this infidelity to be charged as grave sin. Yet the consent of the other spouse here can be more efficacious for removing at least grave guilt than when it is a question of bodily adultery.

II. The obligation of cohabiting follows both the obligation of rendering the debt and domestic society. By the former reason the one is commanded to be sufficiently near, so that he can comply with the reasonable petition of the other. But domestic society requires a more continuous dwelling under the same roof. Therefore, against the will of the other, one spouse cannot be absent for a longer time without necessity. Except the case of adultery, which confers the right of perpetual separation.

Yet this obligation must be understood in a human manner. Wherefore, with a burden plainly extraordinary and not foreseen, the wife will not be bound to follow her husband into a distant region; and a more excellent good, or certainly one more owed and more necessary, can excuse spouses from cohabitation. By a prudent estimation it will have to be weighed when, according to the gravity of the cause, the husband or wife is judged absent longer than the obligation of cohabitation permits. A husband who is forced to be absent for a long time must take his wife with him, if he conveniently can. (Cf. St. Alph., 6, 939.)

To be absent, against the will of the other spouse and without sufficient cause, will be mortal:

a) as often as it includes a mortal denial of the debt;

b) if it has not been for a brief time: this will have to be weighed both in itself and from the harm or sadness of the other. Just causes can be: honest recreation, care of health, a necessity either of avoiding one's own harm or of protecting the family, or of administering family affairs, the requirement of the public good.

But neither, with the other assenting, will it therefore immediately be lawful to depart for a certain time without another just cause, unless "probable danger of incontinence in either one is guarded against, no harm to the family follows, and scandal is absent" (Palmieri, Opus theologicum, tom. 6, tr. 10, n. 388).

In this matter it will be fitting that the richer aid the poor or humbler persons who, seeking a richer wage outside their fatherland, can easily there be exposed to many sins against religion and morals. Means must be applied to averting so great a harm of souls. Nor, insofar as there is opportunity, will confessors tolerate migrations which are a proximate occasion of sinning either for the separated wife or for the man.

A Connected Counsel. — A sharing of bedroom, not only of roof, is very greatly to be commended to spouses. For the separation of bedrooms, besides the fact that it offers an easy occasion for sins and suspicions, is shown to be not lightly harmful to mutual love, and, experience testifying, is a frequent cause of unhappy marriages and divorces.

On Separation and Divorce. — Separation from bed and board, opposed to cohabitation, cannot be introduced with a safe conscience unless because of adultery one party has given to the other the right of perpetual separation, or unless other imputable faults create a just cause of separation, regularly to be referred to the Ordinary.

Full civil divorce is still more opposed to the duty of cohabitation, if it is attempted with that mind that the indissoluble bond be broken. And even where the intention of the party seeking the divorce bears only upon a just separation, such a petition, scandalous of itself and dangerous to the morals of both spouses, cannot honestly be made unless grave reasons sufficiently overcome those inconveniences. A grave reason could be a founded fear lest adulterine children be imputed to the innocent husband, lest because of a defect of civil laws, divorce be pronounced against the innocent party in a manner harmful to patrimony or to the right instruction of children. And even if causes seem to be present which excuse, deference must be given to the authority of the Church in this way, that nothing be done unless ecclesiastical authority permits it.

I. According to usages received among cultivated peoples, spouses have wished to hand over to one another not only the body but also the heart in the conjugal pact itself. This accepted promise is gravely derogated from by a "platonic" love by which the heart is withdrawn from the spouse so as to be given to another person.

We mark this with the grave note of mental adultery. Yet the consent of the other can here remove grave guilt.

II. 1. Spouses must mutually furnish cohabitation to one another, tacitly promised, yet to be understood in a human manner, so that, against the will of the other spouse, the one cannot without grave fault be absent if thus he virtually denies the debt which he must render under grave sin, or if he is absent for a not brief time.

Indeed, not even with the other assenting will it always be lawful for one to be absent, with attention to a moral danger not removed or compensated.

2. The very sharing of a bedroom is greatly to be commended.

3. He fails in this obligation of cohabitation who illegitimately separates himself from bed and board, and much more who, without graver reasons and with ecclesiastical jurisdiction observed, seeks full civil divorce.