Marriage, Family, Contraception, and NFP

Fr. Austin Fagothey, S.J., “Right And Reason,” pp. 251-265

CHAPTER 23

THE FAMILY

DOMESTIC SOCIETY

If any group of human beings has the right to be called a society, that group is the family. In ancient times the family included all close blood relatives and not merely those who lived together; the word was also used to mean a whole household, including servants and other nonrelated persons, so long as they lived under one roof or on the same plantation. We take the more restricted meaning of the word: the family is a society consisting of husband or father, wife or mother, and their children.

The family or domestic society consists of two components or subsocieties: a horizontal component, the union of husband and wife, called conjugal society; and a vertical component, the union of parents and children, called parental society. These are not really two distinct societies, but two aspects or directions within the family. Accidentally a family may have one component only, but this is not the normal case.

The material cause of the family, as of all societies, consists of the members or persons constituting it: a man, a woman, and the children born from them. The formal cause is the moral bond between them, consisting of a definite group of rights and duties, guaranteed by contract in conjugal society and imposed by the nature of things in parental society. The final cause of the family is the good of all parties concerned, but especially of the child which is the natural product of relations between the sexes. The efficient cause of the family is the contract of marriage, or more properly the contracting parties, for by marriage the family is brought into existence and maintained.

MARRIAGE

Marriage may be considered as the act of getting married (wedding) or as the state of being married (wedlock). The first is the marriage contract, by which a man and a woman give and receive rights over each other's body for the performance of the generative act. As a state, marriage is a society or lasting union of a man and a woman resulting from such a contract. These define marriage not at its best, but in its bare essentials. We shall consider the state of marriage first, for people get married in order to live in the married state; hence the nature and conditions of the contract are determined from the state that the contract aims to produce.

The state of marriage implies four chief conditions:

1. There must be a union of opposite sexes. Since marriage has to do with the reproduction of the human race, this requirement is obvious. Thus marriage is opposed to all forms of unnatural sexual behavior. Whether marriage is always between only one man and only one woman will be discussed later.

2. Marriage is a permanent union. It must last at least as long as is necessary for the fulfillment of its primary purpose, the begetting and rearing of children. Hence it must endure at least until the last child is capable of living an independent life. Thus marriage differs from promiscuity. Whether marriage involves lifelong permanence will be considered later.

3. It is an exclusive union. The partners agree to share relations only with each other, so that extramarital acts are a violation of justice. Thus adultery is a crime against marriage.

4. Its permanence and exclusiveness are guaranteed by contract. Mere living together without being bound to do so does not constitute marriage, even though the partners actually remain together for life, because they do not form a society. This contract makes the difference between marriage and concubinage.

PROBLEM

The above is only a description of what marriage means as an actually existing institution. But ever since the beginning of ethics and the Greeks' first probing into human customs, the question was raised whether marriage is a natural institution necessary for the human race or only the prevailing convention we have grown to accept as a matter of course. If the former, marriage is the only possible arrangement between the sexes in conformity with the moral law; if the latter, marriage may still be the most desirable arrangement but not the only possible one even from the ethical standpoint. If marriage is a natural institution, the family is a natural society; otherwise it is not. The importance of the question is obvious:

(1) Is marriage merely a human convention?

(2) Is marriage a natural institution?

Evolutionists as a group, and all modern materialists must be evolutionists, hold that man gradually developed from primitive promiscuity through various forms of polygamy to the monogamous marriage, the stage corresponding to his present development; future evolution will probably lead on to some more advanced arrangement; hence, though man is naturally social in a broad sense, marriage is a purely human institution that may be abandoned for something better. Those moral positivists who hold that man is not naturally social should logically deny that the family is a natural society, but they seem to be thinking rather of the state than of the family in this connection; at any rate Rousseau¹ says that the family is the only natural society. Those who hold that marriage is merely conventional may, motivated perhaps by personal reasons, advocate the abolition of the convention in favor of freer relations between the sexes, or they may think that on utilitarian grounds it is an excellent convention by all means to be maintained.

On the other hand, the thesis that marriage is a natural institution, besides expressing the prevailing and traditional belief, is the only one that can square with the natural law. A system of ethics based on the natural law, as ours is, has but to establish the connection between marriage and the natural law, in order to show that marriage is no mere convention but a natural institution.

MARRIAGE A NATURAL INSTITUTION

Aristotle's sagacious words deserve quoting because they contain the germ of our argument as well as a penetrating insight into human nature:

Between man and wife friendship seems to exist by nature; for man is naturally inclined to form couples—even more than to form cities, inasmuch as the household is earlier and more necessary than the city, and reproduction is more common to man with the animals.² With the other animals the union extends only to this point, but human beings live together not only for the sake of reproduction but also for the various purposes of life; from the start the functions are divided, and those of man and woman are different; so they help each other by throwing their peculiar gifts into the common stock. It is for these reasons that both utility and pleasure seem to be found in this kind of friendship. But this friendship may be based also on virtue, if the parties are good; for each has its own virtue and they will delight in the fact. And children seem to be a bond of union (which is the reason why childless people part more easily); for children are a common good to both and what is common holds them together.³

The Thomistic proof is built on this passage but casts the idea into a more formal type of argument:

That is said to be natural to which nature inclines, although it comes to pass through the intervention of the free will; thus acts of virtue and the virtues themselves are called natural; and in this way matrimony is natural, because natural reason inclines thereto in two ways. First, in relation to the principal end of matrimony, namely the good of the offspring. For nature intends not only the begetting of offspring, but also its education and development until it reach the perfect state of man as man, and that is the state of virtue. Hence, according to the Philosopher⁴ we derive three things from our parents, namely existence, nourishment, and education. Now a child cannot be brought up and instructed unless it have certain and definite parents, and this would not be the case unless there were a tie between the man and a definite woman, and it is in this way that matrimony consists. Secondly, in relation to the secondary end of matrimony, which is the mutual services which married persons render one another in household matters. For just as natural reason dictates that men should live together, since one is not self-sufficient in all things concerning life, for which reason man is described as being naturally inclined to political society, so too among those works that are necessary for human life some are becoming to men, others to women. Wherefore nature inculcated that society of man and woman which consists in matrimony.⁵

The argument may be restated in the following fashion, carrying it along by steps and bringing out each point expressly:

1. Nature intends the continuance of the human race, because nature has given human beings the faculty and instinct for reproduction. Nature intends that this occur by a union of man and woman, because human beings are made to reproduce in the sexual manner. Hence in nature's plan the first and fundamental purpose of the sexual relation is the child. People may marry for a variety of motives, for love, for companionship, for money, for position. The idea of begetting children may be very secondary, perhaps only tolerated rather than desired, in the minds of many marrying couples; it need not be psychologically uppermost in their minds. But there is no doubt that it is primary in nature's design. Men eat mostly for the pleasure of it and rarely think of its necessity for sustaining life, yet they recognize on reflection that the latter is the primary purpose of eating. The same is true regarding the sexual relation; it may be done for pleasure, but its primary purpose is to sustain the race. In race-preservation, nature has not trusted to logic by which man might reason to his duty in this regard, but has implanted an instinct so strong that most human beings follow it. Thus the whole economy of nature in establishing the sexes leads to the child.

2. The duty of caring for the child naturally devolves on the parents. The parents are the cause of the child's existence and therefore are charged with caring for its welfare. There is nothing so helpless as the human infant. Some animals can fend for themselves shortly after birth, and none require a long period of care. Natural instinct prompts the parent animals, when both are necessary, to remain together until the offspring are sufficiently reared to care for themselves. In no case does this last until the next mating season, and therefore promiscuous mating does no harm to the offspring of animals and allows well for the fulfillment of nature's primary purpose. The same cannot be said of human beings. The human child cannot live at all without intense care for several years, and on the whole needs about twenty years of rearing before it is really able to live a fully independent human life. The ones equipped by nature with the means for rearing the child and normally impelled to it by natural instinct and love are the parents. Other agencies are poor makeshifts in this regard. Therefore the parents are designated by nature as the child's proper guardians.

3. The duty of rearing the child belongs to both parents, and not to one alone. That this duty belongs to the mother is clear from the fact that she must bear the child and nurse it; otherwise it cannot survive even the first few days of life. But the father is equally the cause of the child's existence, and therefore is equally charged by nature with the child's welfare. Together they gave the child life and together they must care for it, not in lives apart and independent, but in that joint life which makes up the society of the family. Ordinarily neither mother nor child can procure the means of subsistence, and who else in nature's plan has this duty except the father, the one responsible for the condition of mother and child? The possibility that the mother may have wealth of her own is accidental and outside of nature's provision. The help of the father is necessary, not only in the first years of the child's life, but throughout the whole period of the child's rearing. In fact, it is rather toward the latter part of the training period that the father's influence is most necessary, when he must fit his children, especially the boys, to take their place in human life. Nature has given father and mother different capacities that are psychologically as well as physically complementary, and the influence of the father's sternness as well as of the mother's sweetness is necessary for the adequate training of the child.

From these three points it follows that nature demands a permanent and exclusive union between the sexes, and one guaranteed by contract, in other words, that marriage is a natural institution. A momentary union for the sake of procreation alone is a betrayal and gross violation of nature's provisions for the human child. It also follows that any use of the sexual faculty outside marriage is contrary to nature and to the natural law, for it either fails to provide for the child or else is some form of unnatural perversion.

Remarks on the Argument.—1. The argument shows why parents should remain together, but why must they bind themselves to this by contract? Parental society requires no contract, since the infant cannot make a contract and when it arrives at the use of reason finds itself already a member of parental society by disposition of nature itself. The same is not true of conjugal society, which is entered into freely by adults. Each must be assured of the other partner's faithfulness before assuming the heavy burdens that marriage entails. Public order as well as the virtue of the two partners requires that it be publicly known who is married to whom. Therefore a formal contract is necessary.

2. If the argument for marriage as a natural institution is drawn wholly from the parents' obligation to the child, what about childless marriages? The plan of nature must be judged from the normal instance, not from what is accidental. There is no marriage contract and no consequent married state unless the partners transfer to one another rights, and assume toward one another duties, which in the normal course of nature should issue in the existence of children. The begetting and rearing of children remains the primary end of marriage, even if through default of nature no child arrives. Nature sets the end, but does not guarantee that it will be attained in every case. Childless couples form a family in its conjugal relation, even though the parental relation never becomes actualized. They have the same rights and duties toward one another as any married people, but their duties as parents are in abeyance so long as they have no child.

3. Nature sometimes allows the child to be deprived of father or mother or both; how then is the help of both required by nature? Here again the plan of nature must be judged from the normal instance. A man can get through life on one leg or without any, but this is not nature's design for the human frame. Loss of a parent, and much more of both, is recognized as a great misfortune in the child's life. An institution can supply material needs perhaps better than some parents, but it cannot give the child the love it craves and all that goes to make a home. Adoption into another family is the best remedy, but this supposes that there should be families, the very thing we have been proving.

4. If marriage is a natural institution, is it not contrary to nature not to marry? Marriage is a duty for the race but not for the individual, since its primary end is the racial and not the in dividual good. The individual's good can be obtained only by the individual's effort; thus no man can live by getting others to eat for him. But the good of the race can be obtained if a sufficient number tend toward it. Marriage would be a duty for each individual only if the human race would be in danger of dying out, but man's strong sexual propensities leave no fear in this regard. But, though marriage is not necessary for all, it is necessary for those who intend to have sexual experience.

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY ENDS OF MARRIAGE

As we have seen, the primary end of marriage is the good of the race to be achieved through the good of the children born of this particular union. It is not only the begetting but also the rearing of children. Rearing or education is taken here in the broadest sense for full physical, mental, and moral development, by which the children are fitted to face life, to pursue their last end, and to work with their fellows for the common good. This is the task married couples take on themselves, which they alone can most properly accomplish, and for which they bind themselves into a permanent contractual society rather than a temporary indiscriminate union. This is why marriage is marriage.

The secondary ends, while not absolutely essential, reinforce the primary end. They can be summed up in the mutual love and help which should exist between husband and wife. More specifically:

1. Sexual desire finds its only legitimate outlet in marriage. It is an utter mistake to see anything wrong in sex itself, which is a merely natural power and good in itself, but any use of it outside marriage is immoral. One who does not marry is bound to continence, a form of life for the few rather than the many.

2. Human love is something on a far higher plane than animal desire, something more lasting and spiritual, for it is directed to the other as a person with qualities of mind, heart, and soul. Whereas sex seeks selfish pleasure, love is the most unselfish thing in the world and seeks the good of the beloved. No marriage can be perfect without it.

3. Companionship results from the fact that the two sexes are ideally suited to each other, since the qualities of man and woman are naturally supplementary, each supplying what the other lacks. This mutual need appears in a practical as well as in a romantic way, and many unemotional marriages are successful on this prosaic level. Companionship remains long after the fires of passion are burnt out.

4. Self-perpetuation, the desire to leave behind an image of oneself, though scarcely present before childbirth, becomes prominent afterward and is a powerful motive in keeping the family together. It furnishes a new sense of identity between man and wife when each sees that the image of oneself is also the image of the other.

BIRTH CONTROL

Any use of sex outside marriage is immoral, but there can also be immoral uses of sex within marriage. Unnatural acts performed by husband and wife are wrong from the very fact that they are unnatural. The only controversy on this point regards the formerly rare but now widespread practice of birth control. Is this also an unnatural act?

Birth control is the popular but inexact term used to mean contraception, birth prevention, or race suicide: the use of artificial means (mechanical, physical, or chemical) to prevent conception that might result from the marriage act. As taken here, it does not mean a control over births by abstinence or continence, or the limitation of intercourse to periods when conception is less likely to occur.

The practice of artificial contraception is propagandized as a method of counteracting overpopulation in countries that cannot support so many people, as a means of relieving economic distress in families already too large, and as a eugenic measure against the breeding of subnormal strains; but it seems to be practiced chiefly by the higher social brackets of civilized countries. However, our viewpoint is not economic or sociological, but ethical.

Hedonists, utilitarians, relativists, and those moral positivists who base all morality on convention have little or no opposition to this practice, since they see in man no obligation rationally to conform his conduct to his nature. But in a natural law philosophy there can be no defense for artificial contraception. The argument has already been given in our proof that marriage is a natural institution whose primary end is the begetting and rearing of children. This is the purpose for which nature has equipped man with the faculty of reproduction. Its use outside marriage is immoral, and even in marriage it is immoral deliberately to frustrate the marriage act of its natural issue. To frustrate a natural faculty of its primary purpose is to go against nature, to act in a manner directly contrary to the norm of morality, and to do something intrinsically wrong.

Artificial birth control is wrong for the reason that it is an unnatural vice of the same sort as solitary vice and homosexuality. These sins are attempts to secure sexual satisfaction while at the same time evading the responsibilities which nature attaches to this pleasure. The sexual power exists for the sake of the race and its continuance. The strong desire animals, including the human animal, feel for sex gratification is nature's means of alluring them to breed. To seek the satisfaction while at the same time defrauding nature is what is meant by perversion. Other animals, having no free will and guided only by instinct, cannot abuse their faculties and there are no unnatural vices found among them. Man alone is able to act unnaturally, but is bound not to do so by the natural moral law.

Since marriage is a natural institution, and artificial birth control is a violation of the primary end of marriage, artificial birth control is against the natural law. Hence it cannot be justified by eugenic, economic, sociological, political, humanitarian, or any other reasons. The remedy is to alleviate the economic and social situation, not to counsel sex perversion.

Are then married people obliged to have as many children as possible? No, provided they use no immoral means to prevent them. With mutual consent, husband and wife are always allowed to refrain. Marriage transfers rights, and it is a violation of the marriage contract to refuse these rights to the spouse who seriously demands them, but there is no obligation to demand them. Marital continence is not easy, but it is not as impossible as some seem to think.

What of the so-called "rhythm" method? It differs from artificial contraception in that no immoral means are used. Relations are limited to the comparatively sterile periods that nature itself provides. Since there is no obligation to demand marriage rights at all, there is no obligation to demand them at one time rather than another. Hence in the "rhythm" method the particular act done here and now is not performed unnaturally nor is there any obstacle placed to its natural issue. It is known that the act will be unfruitful, but nature itself has made it so. However, an act may be wrong not only because of the means used but also because of the end intended. Partners who limit relations to sterile periods exclusively would do so only because they intend to avoid having children. To enter marriage with the fixed intention of avoiding having any children under any circumstances is immoral, as robbing that marriage of its primary purpose; such a contract would be invalid. But accidental circumstances can arise which make the having of children undesirable at least for a time. Such reasons are practically reducible to four heads:

(1) Medical, the health of one of the partners

(2) Eugenic, a serious hereditary defect

(3) Economic, inability to support a larger family

(4) Social, such conditions as war or overpopulation

Two other requirements must be met: both partners must agree to abstain during the fertile period, and both must be able to do so without proximate danger of sin.

Since the means is not wrong in itself, and so long as the intention is not mere selfishness but the avoidance of a serious difficulty, the "rhythm" method is a morally justifiable solution. It is not at all the ideal of family relations, but, like other matters governed by the double effect principle, a legitimate way of tolerating the less good when the greater good is unattainable.

PROPERTIES OF MARRIAGE

Our whole discussion up to this point has had to do with marriage in its bare essentials. We have considered only those things without which the primary end of marriage cannot be attained at all. But nature also demands that marriage have certain properties that are necessary to attain the secondary ends, and to attain the primary end in its fullness and perfection. We said before that marriage must be between man and woman, but we did not say how many. We also said that marriage must be lasting, but we did not say how long. These questions are answered by the two main properties of marriage:

(1) Unity, as opposed to polygamy

(2) Indissolubility, as opposed to divorce

Polygamy. —Unity of marriage means the marriage of only one man with only one woman at the same time. Such a marriage is called monogamy; marriage to two at the same time is bigamy; marriage to more than one at the same time without specifying the number is polygamy. Polygamy is said of either sex; it is:

(1) Polygyny, when one husband has more than one wife

(2) Polyandry, when one wife has more than one husband

Polygyny does not wholly frustrate the primary end of marriage. It places no hindrance to the birth of children, and allows at least the essentials of the child's rearing. Each mother can devote herself to the rearing of her own children while supported by the father. Unless the number of wives is extremely large, the father also should be able to assist somewhat in the training of the children.

But polygyny cannot realize the primary end of marriage perfectly, and can hardly fulfill the secondary ends at all. The father cannot give the same attention to the training of the children of several wives that he could give to those of one wife. The mutual love and help that should exist between husband and wife are weakened by being single in one direction and divided in the other. There can be no equality between husband and wife when she is only one among several, and there is little wonder that in polygamous countries the position of woman is not far above that of a slave. Jealousy among the wives is hardly to be avoided when each vies for the husband's favor and each is ambitious for her own children. Almost superhuman ingenuity is required of the husband to be perfectly fair to the wives and the children, and this kind of society seems possible only when the woman's condition is so degraded that her will does not count. All this is reflected on the children who grow up in such an atmosphere.

Polygynous families, wanting in unity, love, dignity, and equality, make a poor foundation for civil society which rests on the basis of the family. Though such evils may occur in a monogamous family, they occur there only accidentally, through the fault of the parties concerned and not through the nature of the institution; but in a polygynous family these evils can be avoided only accidentally.

Polyandry is opposed both to the primary and to the secondary ends of marriage, and is therefore intrinsically wrong. In a sense polyandry is even worse than promiscuity, for the parties bind themselves to everything that makes promiscuity hideous. The only alleviating factor is that the several husbands would all be pledged to the support of the one wife and all the children she would have. Thus wife and children would be assured of material support, but this is not the main element in marriage.

The excuse of polygyny, quicker propagation of the race, is absent in polyandry, for a woman cannot bear more children to many husbands than to one. The rearing of the children as nature intends becomes impossible, because the father cannot be determined with certainty and is thus unable to perform the function he has in natural law. The child also, unable to know his father, cannot call on him for help and guidance. The children would naturally quarrel over which husband is the father of which child. All the fathers might try to fulfill these functions to all the children or divide them arbitrarily, but this cannot be a truly parental relation. The practical difficulties of conducting a well-ordered family or home under polyandry are simply insuperable. Thus, though practiced no doubt by individuals and by a few degraded tribes here and there, it has never been the recognized form of marriage in any developed society.

Divorce. —The second property of marriage is indissolubility, which means that the marriage cannot be dissolved, that it must last until the death of one of the partners. Married persons may break up their home in either of two ways:

(1) By separation from bed and board

(2) By attempted dissolution of the marriage bond

A separation, sometimes called imperfect divorce, means that the two parties cease to live together and to discharge marital functions, but remain married; the marriage bond remains intact so that neither party is free to contract a new marriage. It is easy to see that such a separation is sometimes necessary, but it should be undertaken only for the gravest of reasons, such as the danger of physical harm, and under proper authority, lest personal whim play too great a part as a motive. We are not speaking here of such separations, since they are not intended to dissolve marriage.

The term divorce is usually understood to mean perfect divorce, which is an attempt to dissolve the marriage bond itself so that the parties are free to contract new marriages with other per sons. This alone is our question here. Divorce, like the marriage contract which it tries to dissolve, is regulated by ecclesiastical and civil law. We are obliged to consider the matter from the standpoint of the natural law alone, a limitation that necessarily makes our treatment incomplete. The primary end of marriage requires that the marriage endure until the family is fully reared.

The primary end of marriage, as we saw, is not only the begetting but also the rearing of children. Therefore by the natural law marriage must last until this end is accomplished, until the child is fully reared and able to live an independent life of its own. To rear one child normally takes about twenty years, more or less. But if the parents must live together for twenty years, other children are ordinarily to be expected. Hence marriage must last for about twenty years after the birth of the youngest child. The woman is capable of bearing children up to the age of forty-five or so. Therefore normally marriage must last until husband and wife are over sixty years old. This much at least the primary end of marriage demands.

The secondary ends of marriage require that the marriage last until the death of one of the partners. When married people have reached this age, hardly any reason could justify a separation. Life together could not have been too intolerable. Most separations occur in the early years of marriage, in the difficult period of mutual adjustment, when the romantic mist has blown away to reveal each to the other in the hard light of reality. It would be absurd to think that this has not already happened to an elderly couple who have shared all the joys and sorrows of life together for so long. The man is the natural support of the woman and must stand by her in her old age; the woman who has given to her husband her whole period of youth, beauty, and fertility deserves love and protection to the last. Likewise the woman who has taken her husband's support and protection in the years of his strength cannot leave him to loneliness at the end. Children, also, are the natural heirs and have a claim on the family property, which ought to be kept intact until by the parents' death it passes to them. And what kind of rearing would parents give to their children if they ruined it all by the bad example of breaking up their own home in their old age?

The chief reason against divorce is the havoc it works in the life of the child. Parents who divorce one another are considering themselves only, and ignoring the child whose good is the primary end of marriage. The child is the one who pays for the parents' selfishness. There is no substitute for the home. Parents who break up the home deprive the child of the environment in which by the intention of nature it should grow up. Cases happen in which the child profits by being removed from a bad home, but nature considers what is normal, not what is accidental. In fact, how can a home be bad except through the moral fault of at least one of the parents?

From this examination of the primary and secondary ends of marriage it follows that divorce is opposed to the natural law. In the early years of marriage husband and wife are forbidden to break the contract and seek new partners by the common duty they have toward the children nature normally supplies. In the latter years of marriage no justifying reason can be found for breaking the bond that has actually lasted so long.

Must we say that divorce is intrinsically wrong, so that no case of it can be permitted for any reason? Not absolutely, but conditionally. Divorce, being so contrary to the fundamental purposes of marriage and so serious a social evil, is intrinsically wrong if done at the mere discretion of the parties concerned. It is not intrinsically wrong if authorized by God, who in His providence can avert the naturally expected evil consequences. Can we prove by human reasoning on purely philosophical grounds either that God does or that He does not communicate this authority by the natural law to civil society? There seems to be no positive evidence to show that He does. On the other hand, conclusive evidence to show that He does not had best be sought from theological sources. A similar judgment applies to polygyny also.

QUESTIONS ON THE ARGUMENT.— The following difficulties are implicitly answered in the argument, but, because of the importance of the matter, should be given definite formulation:

1. If marriage is a free contract, why can it not be freely terminated at the pleasure of the contracting parties? Marriage is a free contract in the sense that one may either marry or not, but the conditions of marriage are laid down by nature and nature's Author, not by the contracting parties. Even in other matters the terms of a contract can be set down by law, either natural or positive; thus, one is free to enlist in the army, but having done so must serve out the term of enlistment. The term for marriage, set by the natural law, is until the death of one of the partners.

2. Why be obliged to spend the rest of one's life with a companion one has ceased to love? Why cannot an unfortunate mistake be rectified? Such questions only go to show what an important step marriage is. Those who enter it hastily with no sense of its serious obligations must pay the price of their folly. A contract for life is precisely that, and a person is obliged to live up to his word. Accidentally divorce may be better for this or that individual, but it is ruinous to mankind generally. Laws are made for the common good, and individuals are bound to cooperate for the common good even at personal disadvantage.

3. Would not such difficulties be obviated by trial marriages or companionate marriages? These are not marriages at all, but legalized concubinage with an option for future promiscuity. They cannot properly fulfill the primary end of marriage, as the arguments we have already given sufficiently show.

4. If separation without remarriage is allowable for serious reasons, why should not divorce with remarriage be allowable for the same reasons, since in both cases the family is broken up? The difference here is in the intention of the separating partners. The first case does not involve the plan of subsequent marital infidelity, whereas the second case almost always does. The first case is a misfortune of the kind that occurs when one partner goes insane or is sent to prison; the second case is an immoral desire to form a new union with a more desirable person by violating the contract made with the first.

5. Why could not divorce be restricted to extreme cases such as adultery? In this matter the slightest entering wedge soon throws the door wide open. In those states where this is the only permitted cause for divorce, adultery is deliberately committed or simulated to obtain a divorce. Elsewhere the barriers have been gradually let down until the most trifling excuses are accepted. This so-called wedge argument has its value and is confirmed by history, but the only satisfactory answer to this question must be sought from theological sources.

6. Why should not divorce be allowed in sterile marriages, since in them the primary end of marriage cannot be attained? Here again we must note that nature plans for the normal, not for the exceptional case. It is true that in sterile marriages the primary end cannot be attained, but this is the fault of nature, not of the parties concerned. The secondary ends of marriage remain, and they are sufficient for entering the married state so long as the primary end is not deliberately hindered. Nature seems to indicate that for the propagation of the race not all marriages need be fertile. Most couples when marrying do not know whether they are sterile or not, and cannot be sure for many years; yet from the outset, like any other married people, they must be assured of their partner's faithfulness. Even known sterility is not a bar to marriage, for a sterile person can fulfill the contract, which transfers a right to the generative act itself but not to actual fertility, the later being nature's gift and not within the contracting party's power. The wedge argument applies here also; some would induce sterility to obtain a divorce, and lesser causes would be gradually admitted.

7. Cannot the new husband or wife of a divorced person help in raising the children? In some cases they can do so quite well, but in many cases they are bitterly resented by the children. Stepfathers and step-mothers are a byword, not because there are no successful ones, but because in general they are unable to take the dead parent's place. The case is vastly complicated when the real parent is still alive.

8. People who have no intention of marrying again sometimes get a civil divorce; is this wrong? The civil law makes no distinction between a separation and a divorce, declaring that the marriage contract is considered dissolved before the law, and leaving it to the individual conscience to decide whether it is really dissolved or not. People who intend only a separation may sometimes be obliged to secure a civil divorce to protect themselves from the other party, to obtain support and custody of the children, or to effect a civilly valid distribution of property. Divorce in these cases touches only the civil effects of marriage, but it should have ecclesiastical as well as civil authorization.

THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT

The married state of individuals begins by a contract entered into by the mutual free consent of the man and the woman. People are not born married and may remain unmarried throughout their lives. Nature does not select the partners for marriage. There must be something that determines whether one shall marry and whom one shall marry. Since nature does not determine it, the partners themselves do, and they do it by the marriage contract.

The marriage contract is a contract in the full sense of the word, and must fulfill all the conditions requisite for a contract in general, as well as some peculiar to itself. It is a bilateral onerous contract, by which the parties transfer to each other strict rights and thereby incur toward each other strict duties, which they henceforth owe to each other in justice. The essential right transferred is the right to the use of the other person's body for the performance of the generative act. Love, cohabitation, support, sharing of goods, and the like are consequent rights. The transference of the essential right is permanent and exclusive; failure to make it so invalidates the contract.

By its very nature as a contract marriage requires mutual free consent, and the absence of error and fear. Freedom of consent is particularly important in marriage, because marriage supposes love and love cannot be extorted, besides the fact that marriage imposes heavy burdens which no one is obliged to assume, much less to assume in company with a particular person.

An impediment to marriage is some inability in the contracting party that makes the marriage contract either invalid or illicit. The first kind render the contract null and void from the beginning so that the parties never were actually married. The second kind simply make it wrong for a person to marry under such conditions, but if he does so the marriage contract holds. The chief invalidating impediments in natural law are impotence, too close kinship, and being already married. The Church, because of its control over marriage in the supernatural order, and the state, for the sake of the common good, can establish additional impediments of either grade.

The ban of kinship may need a few remarks. The crime of incest has always been regarded even by pagans with particular horror. Any marriage between parent and child is absolutely outlawed by nature as utterly opposed to the parental relation already existing. Marriage between brother and sister is not absolutely contrary to the natural law, but is under even more stringent conditions than polygyny and divorce; only God could allow it, and He would do so only if otherwise the race could not propagate. The reason for banning marriage between brother and sister is the fact that they grow up in the same home, and develop during their immaturity a kind of love free from all passion; anything else would mean the utter ruin of the family and make the home an unlivable place.

¹ Social Contract, bk. I, ch. 2.

² "Reproduction is more common to man with the animals" than forming cities is common to them. Reproduction is common to man and all animals, but political or quasi-political organization is common to man and some animals only, such as bees and ants.

³ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, bk. VIII, ch. 12, 1162a 16-28.

⁴ Ibid., ch. 11, 1161a 17.

⁵ St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, III, Supplement, q. 41, a. 1. St. Thomas died before he could complete the Summa Theologica. The Supplement was added by his followers from others of his writings.

CONCLUSION

There is nothing in human life more capable of abuse and mismanagement than sex. What is governed so easily and naturally in animals by means of their instinct must be regulated in man by his free will guided by his reason. Success or failure in life depends to a very great extent on the individual's ability to control this strongest of all passions. Marriage is the institution demanded by nature for securing this control. Any number of otherwise successful people have wrecked their lives by failing to succeed in their relations with the opposite sex. The selecting of the right partner in life and the preservation of fidelity to the marriage vow are not matters of accident but of wise human conduct. Marriage also requires traits of character that are not accidentally achieved, but must be sedulously developed. Success in the married state is possible only by the practice of the cardinal virtues, prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, in a high degree. Marriage therefore calls for a virtuous life and entails heavy responsibilities, but it also brings with it one of the best of earthly rewards, the founding and maintenance of a happy home.

SUMMARY

The family, the most primitive society, consists of two subsocieties: conjugal, the husband-wife relation, and parental, the parent-child relation. Marriage, which creates and maintains the family, means both the contract and the resulting state. The married state supposes a man and a woman united by contract in a permanent and exclusive union whose primary purpose is the begetting and rearing of children.

Is marriage merely a human convention or a natural institution? That it is the only arrangement between the sexes permitted by the natural law is proved thus:

(1) Nature's design in establishing sex is the propagation of the race, and is primarily directed to the child.

(2) The duty of caring for the child they beget falls on the parents, and this takes about twenty years.

(3) The rearing of the child belongs to both parents jointly; the father owes not only support but active help.

Therefore nature demands a permanent and exclusive union guaranteed by contract; that is, the natural law demands marriage.

While the primary end of marriage is the begetting and rearing of children, there are also secondary ends: to satisfy man's craving for sexual pleasure, human love, companionship, and self-perpetuation.

Birth control, in the sense of artificial contraception, is an unnatural use of sex within marriage, a frustration of a natural faculty, and therefore immoral. Eugenic, economic, social, political, and other reasons cannot justify it ethically. The "rhythm" method, since it is not unnatural, is allowable under certain conditions.

Marriage has two main properties: unity and indissolubility. Polygamy, opposed to unity, has two forms.

Polygyny, one husband with several wives, makes the primary end of marriage difficult as to the rearing of the children, and the secondary ends practically unattainable. Polyandry, one wife with several husbands, renders all the ends of marriage impossible. Both are against the natural law, especially the latter.

Divorce, opposed to indissolubility, means not a mere separation but an attempted dissolution of the marriage bond, so as to leave the partners free to remarry. The primary end of marriage requires the partners to remain together until the last child is reared; since they are then over sixty years old, no justifying reason can be found for breaking the marriage. Accidentally divorce may not be harmful in individual cases, but it would be ruinous to mankind generally. Nature legislates for the common good and all must keep nature's laws.

The marriage contract is a bilateral onerous contract, by which each transfers to the other the right to the generative act. It must fulfill all the requisites for contracts in general regarding the contracting parties, the matter, and the mutual consent. Any fault in the essentials of the contract renders it invalid. The Church and the state may establish additional impediments rendering the contract either invalid or illicit.

READINGS

This is as good a place as any to suggest a reading of Aristotle's whole treatise on Friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics, books VIII and IX, though there are only passing remarks on marriage. Read his refutation of Plato's community of women in the Politics, bk. II, ch. 1-4, 1260b28 to 1262b35.

The treatise on marriage in the Summa Theologica, part III Supplement, qq. 41-68, is written from the standpoint of a theologian but discusses the philosophical aspect especially in qq. 41, 44-48, 51, 54, 65, 67. These are not found in the Basic Writings.

Read Farrell's comments in his Companion to the Summa, vol. IV, ch. VIII.

The two Papal Encyclicals, Leo XIII's Arcanum (Christian Marriage) and Pius XI's Casti Connubii (Christian Marriage) should certainly be read.

Handren, No Longer Two, is a commentary on Casti Connubii.

Cronin, Science of Ethics, vol. II, ch. XIII, XIV.

Rickaby, Moral Philosophy, pp. 263-277.

Moore, Principles of Ethics, ch. 16-19.

Leibell, Readings in Ethics, pp. 763-788, 820-848.

Messner, Social Ethics, bk. II, pt. I.

Haas, Man and Society, ch. VI, VII.

Le Buffe and Hayes, The American Philosophy of Law, pp. 272-287.

Sheed, Society and Sanity, ch. 8-10.

The following have a good philosophical background:

Wayne, Morals and Marriage, an excellent little book for those contemplating marriage.

Schmiedeler, Marriage and the Family.

Von Hildebrand's two short books, Marriage and In Defense of Purity, are well worth reading.

Leclercq, Marriage and the Family.

Joyce, Christian Marriage.

Healy, Marriage Guidance.

Clemens, Marriage and the Family.

Gerrard, Marriage and Parenthood.

Mihanovich, Schnepp, Thomas, Marriage and the Family.

Thibon, What God Has Joined Together.

Hope, Life Together.

Morrison, God is Its Founder.

Magner, The Art of Happy Marriage.

Foerster, Marriage and the Sex Problem.

De Guchteneere's Judgment on Birth Control; Moore, Birth Control; D'Arcy, Christian Morals, pp. 124-139. There is a large pamphlet literature on this topic.

Thomas, Marriage and Rhythm.