Sexuality, Marriage and Family: Readings in the Catholic Tradition
God created mankind in his image; In the epitome of God he created them; Male and female person he created them. (Gn 1:27)
God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him. (1 Jn 4:16)
In God'southward Prototype, Men and Women
Are Made for Love!
God'southward plan for human love and sexuality is practiced news! "The joy of love experienced past families is also the joy of the Church building" (Amoris Laetitia, 1). All that the Catholic Church building teaches about human love and sexuality comes from this truth: that God, who is love, created all people in his image—male and female he created them—to share his love and therefore to reflect his love in the world and in their lives. Jesus Christ fully reveals who God is as a Triune communion of honey—Begetter, Son, and Holy Spirit. He shows u.s. the face of God and shows u.s.a. who we are, and who we are called to exist. Love and sexuality are bound upwardly in this noble truth!
Catholic teachings on honey and sexuality are founded on God'south revelation of himself in Christ Jesus—as handed on through Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition (run across Catechism of the Catholic Church, 74-100), accessible to the light of faith; and, on the nature of the man person and the natural moral law, accessible to right reason and illuminated past faith. Here we will consider what it means to be fabricated in God'due south prototype, why male and female are foundational to God'southward design, the gift of honey, the nature of union, and why chastity is essential to love rightly.
To learn more about God'south plan for love and sexuality, delight explore the sections below on this page. See also The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), 355-421, 1601-1666, 2331-2400, and 2514-2533.
God's Plan for Love and Sexuality
Made in God'southward Image
Male and Female He Created Them: The Souvenir of Sexual Deviation
Chosen to Love, to Communion
Spousal relationship: A Unique Communion of Persons
Made in God's Image
Then God said: Let us brand human beings in our image, later our likeness…Male and female he created them. (Gn one:26-27)
In the Book of Genesis, we read that man and woman are the unique crown of God'southward creation, made in God'south image. In his image, men and women have received the capacity to be in relationship with God and with each other. "The mystery of the Christian family unit tin be fully understood simply in the lite of the Father's infinite dear revealed in Christ, who gave himself up for our sake and who continues to dwell in our midst" (Amoris Laetitia, 59). We are fabricated for relationship, for communion, and chosen to honey like God with faithfulness, trustfulness, responsibleness, forgiveness, mercy, and generosity. Every person is created in the image of God and therefore has nifty dignity. Every life is of value. God has likewise given us the power to cooperate with him to create new life—procreation. Given we are a unity of body and soul, our man bodies and sexuality, male and female, are an integral part of God's design and essential to being made in the imago Dei. The homo trunk, therefore, has great dignity, and human sexuality is a bully good (see CCC, 355-373). "Learning to have our body, to intendance for it and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine human ecology" (Laudato si, 155).
Dorsum to Superlative
Male and Female He Created Them
The Souvenir of Sexual Departure
Male and female he created them. (Gn one:27)
Male and female is the twofold expression of human nature. Like human life itself, sexual difference is non arbitrary only is willed by God. Men and women are equal in dignity and however are dissimilar from one some other in important ways, including in their bodies and how they relate to each other and to the globe. Sexuality affects every aspect of who nosotros are (meet CCC, 2332). Through sexual difference, nosotros run across that men and women are created for each other. As male or female, our differences complement each other and allow us to relate to ane another in greatly personal ways. "Valuing one's body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to exist able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is dissimilar. In this way we can joyfully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God the Creator, and find mutual enrichment. Information technology is not a healthy attitude which would seek 'to cancel out sexual departure because it no longer knows how to confront it'" (Laudato Si, 155).
Through masculinity and femininity, God has written into the human person a mutuality of one to the other. This points to the "spousal meaning" of the trunk, whereby the human trunk is seen to be a gift (see Theology of the Body). St. John Paul II explains this as man and woman existing not but "'next' or 'together,' but [besides as] called to exist mutually 'i for the other'" (Mulieris Dignitatem, 7; see besides CCC, 371-372). Men and women are created to give of themselves to each other. They manifest God's prototype both from their mutual humanity and their communio with each other (come across CCC, 371-372).
Man sexuality is woven into the fabric of each man and woman. It carries inside information technology the powers of love and life and is the human source of our virtually basic relationships as members of a family. Human sexuality indicates the capacity of persons to dearest 1 another and be united with others in friendship and community. Sexual difference is a sign of our call to dearest, to communion, inscribed within who nosotros are, including our very bodies. Equally Pope Francis notes, "It needs to be emphasized that 'biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated'" (Amoris Laetitia, 56).
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Called to Dear, to Communion
It is not good for the human being to be alone. (Gn 2:18)
Love i another as I love you lot. (John 15:12)
God is love. He is the Blessed Trinity, a Communion of 3 Divine Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—continuously giving and receiving dear, 1 to the other. God calls all people to communion with Him and with each other through the Church, the Body of Christ. Nosotros live out this telephone call to communion in various ways whether as clergy, consecrated religious, married persons, or in the single state—in families, friendships, in the parish, in a religious community, with colleagues at work, among fellow citizens, and indeed with the global community. A unique course of communion to which most people are called is found in marriage, the one-flesh communion of persons between husband and married woman. "Marriage is the icon of God's love for u.s." (Amoris Laetitia, 121).
God desires that each of the states grow in holiness by giving and receiving love like him. Such dearest requires putting the human ego aside and first considering the needs of others earlier our ain. As we pray in the Peace Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, "it is in giving that nosotros receive."1 We tin can but know our real selves when we give of ourselves to others (see Gaudium et Spes, 24).ii
With regard to human sexuality, the mutuality noted above comes into play as men and women seek to honey each other. Each has dissimilar gifts to present to the other. Whether it is in friendship or matrimony, forming authentic relationships with other people may be the most profound way that we enact our likeness to God.
Of all the "communions of persons" that people can create; Scripture tells us that marriage is the fundamentally unique relationship (meet Church Teaching on Wedlock; Church Teaching and NFP; see also Marriage: Unique For A Reason). "[Conjugal love] is an 'affective union,' spiritual and sacrificial, which combines the warmth of friendship and erotic passion, and endures long subsequently emotions and passion subside" (Amoris Laetitia, 120). God willed that marriage exist the unique communion of persons, indeed, a covenantal relationship, that is designed for the well-being of married man and wife (the "one-flesh" wedlock) and the "begetting and educating of children." (see Gaudium et Spes, 50). Union, as willed past God, builds the family!
Chastity
The gift of homo sexuality is precious with its powers of life and love, and information technology calls for an authentic and good for you integration in the person. This is the virtue of chastity. Chastity ensures "the successful integration of sexuality within the person" (CCC, 2337). It protects the inner unity (body, heed, and soul) of the person. It enables men and women to defend "love from the perils of selfishness and aggressiveness" (Familiaris Consortio, 33).
Everyone is called to chastity. Chastity is necessary to the correct living of one's sexuality. It requires practice, or equally the Canon calls it, an "apprenticeship in self-mastery," where a person learns the meaning of true liberty (see CCC, 2339). The chaste person is not governed past his or her emotions. Rather, the chaste person understands the meaning of sexual feelings and advisable behaviors. Chaste self-possession brings truthful freedom and peace.
In marriage, the joy of honey needs to exist cultivated. When the search for pleasure becomes obsessive, information technology holds usa in thrall and keeps the states from experiencing other satisfactions. Joy, on the other hand, increases our pleasure and helps us find fulfillment in any number of things, even at those times of life when physical pleasure has ebbed. (Amoris Laetitia, 126)
With guiltlessness, we can avert using others and abusing ourselves. We can live our sexuality according to God's plan for our lives. Chastity reminds us of the value of the person and of the torso. It helps us respect interpersonal boundaries too as our own bodies. Chastity enables us to "love rightly" according to our state in life. "The chaste person maintains the integrity of the powers of life and love placed in him. This integrity ensures the unity of the person, information technology is opposed to any behavior that would impair it" (CCC, 2338).
- The Peace Prayer of St. Francis captures the spirit of God's dearest:
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where in that location is hatred, permit me sow beloved; where in that location is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.
O, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled equally to panel; to exist understood equally to empathise; to be loved as to honey; For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that nosotros are pardoned; it is in dying that we are born once again to eternal life.
- "This likeness…reveals that man…cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself" (GS, no. 24).
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Marriage
A Unique Communion of Persons
Union is a unique communion of persons, and it is on the basis of this communion that the family is called to become a community of persons. (St. John Paul Two, Letter to Families, 10)
God is the author of marriage. God willed that man and woman would be joined in such a manner as to help each other to abound in holiness and to protect and nurture new life in their sacred relationship. Spousal relationship builds the family unit and the society. Pope Francis reminds us that at "the eye [of the dwelling house] we see the begetter and mother, a couple with their personal story of love. They embody the primordial divine programme conspicuously spoken of past Christ himself: 'Accept you not read that he who made them from the outset made them male and female?' (Mt 19:four)" (Amoris Laetitia, 9).
Husband and Wife, a Communion of Persons
It is God who calls husband and wife to be an prototype of his own love in the world. Marital love is therefore marked by faithfulness, permanence, and openness to life. The marital bond is brought into reality past the free consent of a man and a woman. When two baptized Christians substitution their marital consent, their bond is taken upwards into Christ'southward beloved for his Church building. Christian marriage, rooted in Christ, is a sacrament and has a special firmness.
The "intimate partnership of life and the love" that God designed for wedlock has its own unique characteristics (meet Gaudium et Spes, 48). Offset, husband and wife are called to form a permanent communion of persons. Second, spouses are called to be stewards of the souvenir of life. They are to welcome children generously to their marital wedlock. "The fruitfulness of the human couple is a living and constructive 'prototype,' a visible sign of [God's] creative act" (Amoris Laetitia, 10). Indeed, the Church teaches that Christian spouses receive a "kind of consecration in the duties and dignity of their land" (Gaudium et Spes, 48).
Scripture has much to say almost marriage. Probably the well-nigh telling is in the second chapter of Genesis. Adam'south happy weep upon seeing Eve that this ane "at terminal, is bone of my bones and flesh of my mankind" (Gn ii:23) is an ancient confirmation of the truth and goodness of God's design for married love: "That is why a man leaves his father and his female parent and clings to his wife, and the ii of them go one trunk" (Gn ii:24).
Gifted with the Capacity to Give Life
To be a man or a woman includes the gift of fertility. "If the parents are in some sense the foundations of the domicile, the children are similar the 'living stones' of the family unit (run into 1 Pt ii:5)" (Amoris Laetitia, 14). Fertility enables many people to share in God's bringing of a new life into the world through procreation. Sadly, it must be remembered that we live in an imperfect earth. The cross of infertility is role of many other people'south lives.
Men and women bring to the deed of procreation (sexual intercourse) their unabridged persons (body and soul) and only those reproductive cells that are unique to them. The bang-up good of procreation is part of God's design for matrimony:
God blessed them and God said to them: "Be fertile and multiply; fill up the earth and subdue it." (Gn 1:28)
In improver to the good of the spouses, God created spousal relationship to exist "oriented" or "ordained toward the bearing and teaching of children" (Gaudium et Spes, 50). The fullness of human sexuality—its ability to unite the man and women in the one-flesh matrimony (unitive) and its ability to generate new life (procreative)—is, therefore, to be lived within the context of marriage. This is true despite the fact that not all couples will be able to bear children. Marriage, the Church understands, "is non...the outcome of risk or the product of development of unconscious natural forces, it is the wise institution of the Creator to realize in mankind His blueprint of honey" (Humanae vitae, no. viii).
When a man and a woman come together in the conjugal embrace (sexual intercourse) and bring along new life, information technology is an awe-inspiring act of God's generosity. Information technology is a gift. This is why the Church has oft spoken of procreation being a "master good" of marriage. It is the invitation past the Lord of all Creation to share in the sacred task of procreating new people with an eternal destiny.
Although Church education holds upwardly procreation as part of the nature of human sexuality and marriage, married couples may notice that they are infertile. "Some couples are unable to accept children. We know that this tin can be a cause of real suffering for them" (Amoris Laetitia, 178). The Church does not take an respond as to the "why" of infertility, despite the fact that medicine may be able to provide a diagnosis. With sincere compassion to those struggling with infertility, the Church can offer alleviation and guidance to arroyo infertility in a way that reverences the person and respects God's programme for married love. In addition, the Church joins with St. John Paull II in maxim:
Y'all are no less loved by God; your love for each other is complete and fruitful when it is open to others, to the needs of the apostolate, to the needs of the poor, to the needs of orphans, to the needs of the world. (John Paul 2, Homily, 1982)
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For more information, see the following USCCB webpages and websites:
- Marriage and Family Life
- Natural Family unit Planning
- Promotion and Defense of Marriage
- For Your Marriage
- Wedlock: Unique for a Reason
Source: https://www.usccb.org/topics/natural-family-planning/love-and-sexuality