Dr. Glenn Olsen’s recent article in these pages [“Marriage — The Mystery of Faithful Love: von Hildebrand’s Thought Revisited,'” January] reveals much about Catholic attitudes toward marriage but little about its divinely intended essence. For Dr. Olsen emphasizes one theme that has characterized Catholic attitudes for nearly two millennia: a certain suspicion of marriage in general and sexuality in particular. This suspicion endures even though Christ has elevated marriage to the dignity of a sacrament.
Many Catholics still see marriage essentially as the satisfaction of a sexual craving, which, base in itself, can only find its justification in procreation. Hence the stress they place almost exclusively on procreation as the only way, in their view, of “legitimating” marriage and the sexual satisfaction, which it affords.
As Dr. Olsen rightly points out, historically “the Christian attitude toward marriage is a very mixed one” — even in Scripture. The New Testament does, as he says, include “somber passages which see marriage as a concession to weakness.” St. Paul in particular stresses how destructive the sexual sphere can become. He repeatedly seeks to make catechumens and converts realize that in becoming Christians, they have to renounce the unbridled sexuality that was prevalent in paganism. A strong barrier has to be erected between the Christian and the pagan view of sexuality and marriage.
But in these passages, is St. Paul speaking of the essence of marriage, or has he merely adopted a pedagogical emphasis, which was no doubt necessary at the time?
Deferring the answer for a moment, we can be sure at least that these somber passages have strongly colored much of Catholic thinking about marriage. Throughout the centuries, Catholics have been wary of the sexual sphere, which, in fact, can so easily lead to grave sins.
As a result, in considering relations between men and women, Catholics have written a little about sexual satisfaction, much more about sexual sin, but rarely have emphasized love between the spouses. Dietrich von Hildebrand has called this omission “a kind of scandal”:
One hears much of the will of the flesh, the remedy for concupiscence, mutual help and assistance, but one hears very little of love. We mean the love between man and woman, the deepest source of happiness in human life, the great, glorious love of which the Canticle of Canticles says: “If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, he would despise it as nothing.”
Solomon’s Canticle of Canticles provides a far different view of love and marriage from that of St. Paul, a view first encountered in Genesis. The Genesis view is particularly instructive, since it provides a glimpse of marriage as it was divinely intended to be, before sin disrupted human life and human institutions. Thus, Genesis reflects the essence of marriage whereas the Pauline view emphasizes the dangers that afflict fallen human beings in their attempts to live in accordance with that essence. Since the Fall wounded human nature, but did not change its essence, we can best learn about the divinely intended essence of marriage by considering the relation between Adam and Eve before the Fall.
God said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” He created the animals, and then finally created Eve for Adam. Encountering Eve, Adam exulted, exclaiming, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” And the sacred author adds: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen. 2:23).
Adam exulted, but he did not exclaim, “At last, here is a legitimate satisfaction for my desire and a mother for my children.” This is because Eve was primarily given to Adam as his companion; no mention is made of procreation or the satisfaction of concupiscence. Indeed, would it not have degraded Eve for her (a free person) to be given to Adam merely to satisfy his desire or to provide him children? As Kierkegaard notes, “it always is an insult to a girl to marry her for any other reason than because one loves her.”
Unfortunately, the beautiful relationship existing between Adam and Eve was disrupted by original sin. The harmonious complementarity that had until then existed between the sexes was shattered: Adam and Eve discovered that they were naked, and were ashamed. Their sexuality (which until that time had been solely an expression of self-giving, open to procreation), became a potential danger, a possible source of isolated sensual attraction. Viewing another person as a potential object of sensual enjoyment is desecration of her, directly opposed to the divine intention in giving Eve to Adam and spouses to each other.
In his numerous works on sex, love, and marriage, Dietrich von Hildebrand has tried time and again to show this and to restore our vision of these spheres, though badly marred by sin, to their pristine beauty. Pope John Paul II has taken up this same theme. In his magnificent book Love and Responsibility, he says, “The inner and essential raison d ‘etre of marriage is not simply eventual transformation into a family, but above all the creation of a lasting personal union between a man and a woman based on love.”
This view of the essence of marriage was presented by Dietrich von Hildebrand in his book Marriage: The Mystery of Faithful Love (1984). There, von Hildebrand discusses the essence of marriage rather than reporting about marriage as experienced by weakened, fallen men. His analysis of the essence of marriage aims at showing how marriage is meant to be according to the divine plan, and how the beauty of natural love finds its fulfillment in and through the sacrament of marriage. Von Hildebrand’s presentation of marriage as an intimate community of spousal love is so clearly the true one that, deep down, it is the one that every man longs for — knowing, alas, that this ideal is not often realized on this earth.
In speaking of this infrequently realized ideal, is von Hildebrand — as Dr. Olsen suggests — guilty of a “lack of psychological realism”? Does he suggest a romantic and unrealistic view of marriage?
One might as well ask whether St. Thomas’s natural law ethics is a romantic and unrealistic view of human action. After all, most men fail to live fully in accordance with the natural moral law. In fact, neither von Hildebrand’s view of the essence of marriage nor St. Thomas’s view of natural law ethics are unrealistic and romantic. Rather, both are examples of Christian realism: they teach men the way things are meant to be, the ideal, which we are all called to achieve.
As von Hildebrand shows (and John Paul II confirms), marriage is essentially an intimate community of love between the spouses. Just as one cannot discover the rules of morality simply by observing how most people act, so one cannot discover the nature of marriage simply by observing how most people relate to their spouses. Obviously, then, the true conception of the nature of marriage cannot be based on sociological or historical data. Nor can it be based merely on a study of the nature of marriage apart from its sacramental character as ordained by Christ himself. Indeed, as von Hildebrand shows in Marriage, it is only Christianity which reveals the true beauty of natural love as intended by God, a beauty often obnubilated by sin.
Whereas Dr. Olsen (and most conservative Catholic authors) direct our attention to marriage as lived by the immense majority of people, John Paul II and von Hildebrand draw our gaze to the divinely instituted essence of marriage: what a Christian marriage should be, can be, and is in privileged cases. (Indeed, there are extraordinarily happy marriages.)
But the difficulty of achieving such a marriage explains why, as Dr. Olsen remarks, marriage as von Hildebrand describes it “bears little resemblance to any historical society.” Marriage has been particularly scarred by original sin, and the history of marriage as lived by pagans and even (unfortunately) by many Christians, is mostly a very sad one.
Our task is to remedy this, and it can be approached in a number of ways. As mentioned above, St. Paul chose in his day to emphasize the more somber aspects of marriage and the dangers of sexuality. John Paul II and Dietrich von Hildebrand have chosen in our day to emphasize not the dangers of marriage, but its essence: the perfection and sublimity of the intimate interpersonal union it calls for.
Perhaps this is because modern Christians are already well acquainted with the somber view of marriage which emphasizes that which marriage only accidentally is; they are too little acquainted with the essence of marriage as first revealed in Genesis: marriage as one of the most sublime communities possible to man. Moderns know too much about the physiology of sex, too little about spousal love and its physical expression. Therefore as a corrective, our age demands greater emphasis on spousal love, particularly on the sublime call of the essence of marriage rather than on the somber elements associated with the real dangers of sexuality.
Indeed, only those who are sensitive to the beauty and sublimity of spousal love as presented in Genesis and the Canticle of Canticles can fully sense the horror and desecration of unbridled sexuality, which provoked St. Paul’s somber view of marriage, and sexuality.
When Dietrich von Hildebrand began Marriage in 1923, Western culture sorely needed to have restored its appreciation of the beauty and sublimity of spousal love in marriage. Catholic doctrine was not in need of improvements. (After all, marriage was one of the seven sacraments.) But there was a void in Christian literature; Catholics needed to be reminded of the greatness of spousal love. That was primarily the task von Hildebrand set himself. Marriage (which preceded the works of l’Abbe Violet) can, from this point of view, be considered revolutionary as well as vitally important. The task that von Hildebrand began in the twenties, John Paul II (and many others) have continued into the eighties.
One might object that although our generation has forgotten the character and importance of spousal love, nonetheless, reminding the “me-generation” of love may merely lead them to exclude children from their lives, hoping thereby to preserve and perfect their spousal love. Certainly this happens, even in instances of incredibly sensitive and profound spousal love such as that reported by Sheldon Vanauken in his autobiographical book, A Severe Mercy. But is a contraceptive mentality a necessary or even a proper consequence of emphasis on spousal love?
Von Hildebrand thinks not. He proclaims throughout his works the deep link existing between spousal love and children. As he says in Liturgy and Personality:
The absence of the longing for a child in marriage, the rejoicing even in the fact that one has remained childless in marriage, is an illegitimate attitude, for it breaks off the deeply meaningful and mysterious link between love and the coming of a new human being into the world.
The love sanctified in marriage must be open to procreation. Indeed, the Church declares invalid a marriage in which the spouses decide from the start to prevent the conception of children. For love is essentially fruitful; there is no such thing as a sterile love.
Yet let us not forget that marriage is a sacrament but the family is not — even though the family is a beneficiary of the sacrament. Children are to be raised for God, and must at some point be encouraged to leave the nest of the family to build up a family of their own. But the sacramentally united husband and wife are to remain together until death parts them. Although by nature marriage should be spiritually fruitful and (apart from illicit human intervention) is almost always physically fruitful, a marriage is a marriage before the spouses are given the blessing of children; it is and remains one even though they remain perpetually childless; and it will remain a marriage after the children have grown up and moved away.
Moreover, the Church blesses marriages in which (because of age, or any other impediment for which the spouses are not responsible), the gift of children is denied them ab ovo. Sad as such a childless marriage may be, if the spouses truly live their married life as Christians, their love and selfless giving of themselves to each other may glorify God more than a marriage in which many children are born, but there is little affection between the spouses.
As Gabriel Marcel has shown in his beautiful essay on the essence of paternity, a childless Christian marriage animated by true love is bound to be fertile: the spouses will discover the enriching gift of spiritual children. (Too little is said these days about the fruitfulness of true love, which is bound to bring a rich harvest, if not of “children of one’s flesh,” at least of “children of one’s heart and mind.”)
At first this physical and spiritual fruitfulness of spousal love may seem to contradict the exclusivity of spousal love, which is often interpreted to mean that one loves only his beloved and no one else.
Now it is true that (by its very nature), spousal love for one person excludes our having spousal love for another at the same time. Spouses give the fullness of their hearts exclusively to each other: they speak only to each other the sweet words, “I am yours.” In this respect, their love is exclusive: a unique, mutual donation of hearts and bodies, a mutual donation that takes place in marriage and cannot (God forbid) be duplicated with children or with anyone else.
But spousal love does not exclude their having other types of love such as parental, filial, or neighborly love. In fact, true love breaks the narrow limits of self-centeredness. It melts hard hearts, mellows them, and warms them up toward others. As a result, it necessarily benefits all other categories of love.
The deeper the love between the spouses, the more they are freed from selfishness and enabled to love others, particularly their own children (the visible fruits of their love) who testify to its fertility. These children are flesh of their flesh, conceived not from lust or mere hunger for pleasure, but from the longing of the spouses to be united with each other. How could loving spouses fail also to love these little ones confided to their care?
A heart mellowed by true conjugal love discovers that in love, the more we give, the more we are enriched and able to give even more, not only to our own children, but to all those who cross our paths. Children are a precious and unique gift. But parents should not only be parents; they should remain lovers.
One day, husband and wife — their task accomplished — will find themselves alone together again. How beautiful it is then to look in each other’s eyes and to say: “My beloved”.