“Natural,” “Family,” “Planning,” and Thomas Aquinas’s Teleological Understanding of Marriage
2015; Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception; Volume: 79; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/tho.2015.0012
ISSN2473-3725
Autores Tópico(s)Multicultural Socio-Legal Studies
Resumo265 The Thomist79 (2015): 265-314 “NATURAL,” “FAMILY,” “PLANNING,” AND THOMAS AQUINAS’S TELEOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING OF MARRIAGE ERIC JOHNSTON Seton Hall University South Orange, New Jersey T FIRST GLANCE, the modern Magisterium’s teaching in favor of “responsible parenthood” and the use of periodic abstinence seems a challenge to traditional ways of talking about marriage. The 1917 Code of Canon Law opened its discussion of marriage by stating, “The primary end of matrimony is the procreation and upbringing of the child; the secondary [end] is mutual help and the healing of concupiscence.”1 Gratian, summarizing canon law up till the twelfth century, and the central authority on the topic thereafter, said, “God joined male and female by nuptial chastity for the purpose of propagating the race,” and distinguished “the use of the marital act for the procreation of children” from “the use of promiscuous women, in the way of dogs.”2 And Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes states, 1 Codex Iuris Canonici (Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1917), canon 1013. Translation my own. 2 Gratian, Concordantia Discordantium Canonum, part 2, causa 31, q. 1, can. 12; causa 27, q. 1, can. 41. Invoking the same principle, he says, “though they come together to procreate, they may not separate in order to procreate. The bond of marriage remains even if children, on account of whom it is entered into, do not follow because of manifest infertility” (ibid., causa 32, q. 7, can. 27), and “The Apostle concedes their coming together for reasons apart from procreation: even though it is their depraved habits that impel them to share the bed, nevertheless, they protect their nuptials from adultery or fornication. But this is not acknowledged on account of their marriage, but rather ignored for its sake” (ibid., causa 32, q. 2, can. 3). See Edward A 266 ERIC M. JOHNSTON “By their very nature, the institution of matrimony itself and conjugal love are ordained for the procreation and upbringing of children.”3 But just three years later, Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae failed to mention any such primacy for procreation, or indeed the very word “end,” instead speaking of “the two meanings” (significationes) not only of marriage but “of the conjugal act: the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning.”4 It proclaimed, “Conjugal love requires in husband and wife an awareness of their mission of ‘responsible parenthood’,”5 according to which sometimes “the married couple are concordant in the positive will of avoiding children for plausible reasons, seeking the certainty that offspring will not arrive. . . . They are able to renounce the use of marriage in the fecund periods when, for just motives, procreation is not desirable, while making use of it during infecund periods to manifest their affection and to safeguard their mutual fidelity.”6 The 1983 Code of Canon Law completely eliminated the 1917 Code’s reference to primary and secondary ends—indeed, it eliminated any reference at all to the “ends” of marriage. And Pope John Paul II was well known for his abundant embrace of the concept “responsible parenthood.”7 Peters, “How to Use Pio-Benedictine Footnotes and Gasparri’s Fontes Codicis Iuris Canonici” (www.canonlaw.info/canonlaw_17fontes.htm). 3 Second Vatican Council, “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,” Gaudium et Spes 48. Translation from the Vatican website (www.vatican.va). 4 Humanae Vitae 12. Translation from the Vatican website (www.vatican.va). 5 Ibid. 10. 6 Ibid. 16. 7 E.g., Familiaris Consortio 35, 66, 74; Evangelium Vitae 13, 88, cf. 90. The key magisterial teachings on the use of infertile periods are the sections on “Birth Control” and “The Heroism of Continence” in Pius XII, “Allocution to Midwives” (Oct. 29, 1951); Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes 50-51; Paul VI, Humanae Vitae 16; John Paul II, “Theology of the Body,” audiences 120-32 (in the numbering adopted in Michael Waldstein, ed., Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body [Boston: Pauline, 2006]); Familiaris Consortio 32; Evangelium Vitae 13, 88; Veritatis Splendor 47-49. See also, Pontifical Council for the Family, The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality: Guidelines for Education within the Family (Dec. 8, 1995). The issue does not...
Referência(s)