Translation by Fr Komonchak
Preparatory schema on marriage and family: 1
For over two years leading up to the Second Vatican Council, 150 cardinals and religious superiors—including Archbishop Lefebvre—prepared preliminary schemas for discussion. In total, 72 such preparatory schemas were drafted, covering everything from religious life, to the modern world, to Sacred Scripture.
Archbishop Lefebvre himself testified to the fact that they all reflected traditional Catholic doctrine. Sadly, however, the entire body of work was dismissed at the First Session of the Council. Since they were originally drafted in Latin, the schemas have been unavailable in English for a long time.
Fr. Joseph Komonchak, however, has translated some of them, and we here present his translation of the Draft of a Dogmatic Constitution on Chastity, Marriage, the Family, and Virginity. This translation is by Joseph Komonchak. Used with permission.
Draft of a dogmatic constitution on chastity, marriage, the family, and virginity
Preface
1. The Church, model of both states
All the Christian faithful constitute one great family which has arisen out of the at once virginal and spousal union of the Church with Jesus Christ, since never does the Savior cease by the word of life and the grace of the Holy Spirit to render his Bride, purchased by his blood, most chastely fruitful. For this reason, the Holy Synod has decided to extol and defend in a single dogmatic Constitution the nobility both of chastity in the unmarried and its most beautiful fruit, sacred virginity, and of chaste marriage and its heavenly fruit, the Christian family.
Part one: chastity
2. Introductory note
Since all that is about to be presented presupposes the divinely ordained differences between the sexes and their mutual relationship, a few things are said first about the origin and nature of sex and about man's dominion over his own body insofar as this serves the propagation of the human race.
Chapter I: Introductory remarks on the sexes
3. The Origin and Nature of Sex
God himself "from the beginning made man male and female" (Mt 19:4),[1] and he blessed them, saying, "Increase and multiply" (Gn 1:28). When he had given this blessing, he saw that all that he had made was "very good" (Gn 1:31).[2] Thus it is that the things that in this respect are naturally found in man are also good and proper,[3] as the Church has often stated when proclaiming the sanctity and dignity of marriage. But after Adam's sin, they demand a proper modesty and protection (see Gn 2:25 and 3:7),[4] but without any false or scrupulous shame. By the merits of Christ the bodies of those reborn have become temples of the Holy Spirit, which is why God can and should be glorified in human bodies also (see 1 Cor 6:19-20). It clearly follows, therefore, that things that pertain to sex should be considered and treated simply, reverently, modestly, and chastely.[5] In affirming this original dignity of human sex, however, false over-praise should be avoided, as if it were precisely by making man male and female that God made them in his image[6] or as if it were principally by sexual elements that man were man.[7] For in this mortal life, although human sex also enjoys other human qualities, it is nevertheless primarily ordered towards marriage and its spiritual and temporal goods, as Sacred Scripture teaches (see Mt 19:4),[8] until that time is fulfilled when, as the Lord said, "at the resurrection they will neither marry nor be given in marriage" (Mt 22:30).
4. Man not the absolute lord of the body
It should be noted that God alone is the absolute Lord of man's life and of its integrity, particularly with respect to what makes man naturally capable of and associates him with God in the propagation of human life.[9] Attempts to change one's sex, therefore, when this is sufficiently determined, are wicked; nor is it allowed, in order to save the health of the whole man, to mutilate his genital organs[10] or to render them infertile, if there are other ways to provide for his health.[11] Nor in any case is or can there be a right to transplant into the human body the sexual organs of animals which produce the germinative cells of their own genus, or vice-versa;[12] nor also to try to unite the human germ-cells of each sex in a laboratory, even if this is done without violating modesty and chastity and solely for the sake of scientific progress.[13]
Chapter II: The chastity of the unmarried
5. Chastity in unmarried people
Every man has the serious but equally honorable duty to dominate his sexual impulses and feelings by the exercise of chastity; by it, with the help of God's grace, the flesh and the senses are rightly subordinated to reason, by which man is raised to higher things, and, through reason illuminated by faith, to the law of the Gospel. Thus by chastity sexual relations and intercourse are so ennobled that they are worthy of man, created in God's image, and of the Christian. But the exercise of chastity differs in the unmarried and the married since only in the unmarried is continence linked with it; and in addition, while it ordinarily prepares the unmarried for marriage or for sacred virginity, for the married chastity is the splendor of marriage itself. For by divine ordination, revealed also in the law of nature, that man has a healthy sexual power does not give him the right to exercise it. That right is obtained only in a legitimate marriage and indeed within morally prescribed limits.[14] An unmarried man, therefore, has a serious duty to refrain from actions which, alone or with others, of their nature constitute perfect or imperfect use of his properly and specifically sexual power or which by free and conscious will are directed to such use.[15] The severe warning of the Holy Spirit through the Apostle should be remembered: "Do not be deceived: neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor the effeminate nor homosexuals...will inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor 6:9-10).[16] Indeed, even deliberate evil internal acts against chastity are severely forbidden by the Lord (see Mt 5:28; 15:18-19). Nor should it be said, especially today, that they cannot be avoided. For even the unmarried, if they humbly beg for and are helped by God's grace, are able to maintain chastity, as the Sacred Council of Trent already declared[17] and the Church has always taught about them.[18] No less today than in the past the teaching of the Apostle applies, even for young people: "The body is not for immorality but for the Lord.... Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?" (1 Cor 6:13, 19-20).[19] "God did not call us to impurity but to holiness" (1 Th 4:7). While chastity is not the only nor the primary good in men's moral life, still without it the moral life cannot be whole; and no one can deny how important God considers the life of those who, even outside of marriage, keep themselves pure and immaculate in this world; for it is not without reason that, along with charity, modesty, continence, and chastity are also listed among the fruits of the Holy Spirit.[20]
6. The defense and care of chastity
If chastity, which is so important to God, is really to be preserved, it must be loved effectively and be humbly and vigilantly guarded, defended, and promoted by apt natural and especially by supernatural means.[21] Human nature itself helps in this, through a certain innate shame, which develops and assists if it is imbued with a Christian spirit. That opinion must not be followed, therefore, which thinks that immodest acts, that is, acts which by their nature promote sexual desire, must be considered indifferent.[22] A fortiori, must that aberration be rejected according to which such acts against modesty are recommended so that, by directly seeking and attaining lustful pleasure in them, a person may better preserve chastity and avoid the sin of consummated and perfect lust.[23] No less condemned is that other extreme which adduces various reasons of the natural order and even invokes religion itself and morality in order to defend and spread a veritable cult of nudity, which neglects the human condition after Adam's sin (see Gn 2:25; 3:7).[24] As for so-called "sexual initiation,"[25] this Sacred Synod is ready to recommend modest and Christian education and instruction in matters sexual in accord with individual conditions and needs. Indeed it blames parents who out of excessive shame or false modesty neglect or take this serious obligation lightly or who, thinking themselves incapable of it, entrust it to people not fit for it. On the other hand, it must reject the kind of education that is given to boys and girls together, without any moderation, immodestly, and without consideration of religion.[26] With supreme loathing, furthermore, the Sacred Synod knows how many and how great are the detestable onslaughts today against chastity, by which in countless manifestations of today's culture, even if under the pretext of play, recreation, science, art or praiseworthy beauty, souls redeemed by the blood of Christ are in fact constantly and almost everywhere, even within the family, being encouraged and even handed over to evil.[27] It urges all, therefore, to arm themselves against such dangers by prayer, fasting, the sacraments of Penance and Holy Eucharist, and devotion to the Virgin Mary. They should also flee what are called near occasions.[28] For how can they honestly pray, "Lead us not into temptation" (Mt 6:13), if they freely seek temptations? Mindful of the Lord's words against those who scandalize, the Church has the right and duty to repudiate those who give scandal and especially the public corruption of sexual morality.[29] And civil authority also must guard and defend morality by appropriate and effective means,[30] especially by assisting the efforts of all, individuals or groups, to foster public morality, including cases where it is being harmed by writings, radio programs, television, or other instruments of human culture.
7. Some errors are condemned
They are seriously opposed to the Church's teaching who maintain that even in a healthy man, almost everything, including religious, moral, and even supernatural matters, are to be explained a priori by sexuality, with the further accusation that shepherds of souls are to be considered unworthy and incapable of their office if they do not know these and other modern claims.[31] It is also an error not to wish to acknowledge internal sins against chastity or to measure external sin itself by new, e.g., psychoanalytical, criteria, opposed to the teachings of the Church.[32] Quite false are the views which harmfully insinuate that actions which the traditional ethics of the Church considers opposed to chastity are instead demanded by nature itself or by a healthy development of the human person.[33] The worst is to maintain that the most shameful love for persons of the same sex is the prerogative of a higher culture.[34] This Sacred Synod furthermore declares to be most pernicious the errors of those according to whom, if you believe it, precisely and above all in the area of chastity, there never or hardly ever are subjectively and seriously evil acts, especially in the time of youth or among habitual, occasional, and recidivist sinners, on the grounds that they are presumed to lack sufficient freedom; or indeed that such actions are inevitable.[35] This error even reaches the point of maintaining that it is permitted to lead someone to such objectively seriously evil acts when they are only and at most material sins.[36] Finally the Sacred Synod rejects as harmful the errors that maintain that the Church by its teaching on chastity and modesty harms a healthy and vigorous education of the young. These views are directly aimed at God, since God himself says through the Apostle: "Immorality or any impurity... must not even be mentioned among you, as is fitting among holy ones" (Eph 5:3).
Notes: https://sspx.au/en/preparatory-schema-marriage-and-family-1-31685
Chapter I: The divinely established order of Christian marriage
Part II: Marriage and the family
8. Introductory note
In the sources of divine Revelation, both the mystical union of Christ with the Church and other mysteries of religion are more than once presented under the analogies of marriage and the family.[1] By this very fact the Holy Spirit is already intimating that marriage and family are not fleeting and changeable human inventions but proceed from God, the author of nature and of grace, "with whom there is no alteration or shadow of change" (Jas 1:17). For this reason, so that the institution, purpose, and functions of chaste marriage and of the Christian family may be known more clearly, that their importance, nobility, and beauty may shine more fully and may be more effectively defended from the shadows of errors arising everywhere, the Sacred Synod, taught no less by the Spirit of love than by that of truth, intends to propose what God himself willed when he created man male and female and gave him a helpmate like himself (see Gn 1:27; 2:18-24 and 5:2; Mt 19:4) and what Jesus Christ, by restoring marriage and raising it to the dignity of a Sacrament, divinely entrusted to the Church as a basic and never changeable law.
9. The origin, nature, and dignity of marriage
God provided for the multiplication of the human race by instituting marriage (see Gn 1:28; 2:18-24; Mt 19:4).[2] By its origin, purpose, and function, therefore, marriage is of its nature good and holy.[3] Indeed for the baptized it is a Sacrament, a dignity to which Christ elevated it.[4] The Sacred Synod teaches that this sacrament is constituted between Christians by the very fact that two baptized persons, a man and a woman, legitimately join themselves by one and the same mutual and valid consent in a true marriage.[5] By the very will of God the Father and of Jesus Christ, therefore, such a human consent, even in a Christian marriage, is so essential that without it there is no Sacrament;[6] it is so personal that it cannot be supplied by any other consent or human power;[7] it is so one and indivisible that between the baptized there can be no true and valid marriage without it being by that very fact a Sacrament.[8] By this sacramental character, the dignity, nobility and splendor of Christian spouses is so great that they themselves not only represent the most pure and most fruitful union of Christ with the Church (see Eph 5:32-33), but they themselves, in the person of Christ and the Church, are made the ministers of this Sacrament through a valid consent mutually manifested and accepted externally in the rite, and by this consent they constitute the sign by which grace is conferred on those who place no obstacle in its way.[9] As the Council of Trent teaches, by the grace which Christ himself merited for us by his passion, natural love is perfected, the indissoluble unity is confirmed, and the spouses are sanctified.[10] And thus in truth the spouses in their own state can and should be a symbol of the grace and love of the Savior.[11]
10. The properties of marriage
Although, considered in itself, Christian marriage does not constitute a state of evangelical perfection,[12] nonetheless according to Christ's laws, it also requires its own perfection.[13] In the first place, the reigning divine order with regard to the properties, purposes, and goods of marriage must be preserved even if this may require heroic acts.[14] Restoring what had fallen, Christ established that not only Christian marriage but marriage for all be permanently one and, further, so indissoluble that it can never by dissolved by the will of the parties or indeed by any merely human authority.[15] Unity and indissolubility, therefore, are such intrinsic and essential properties of any marriage[16] that they are not even subject to the contrary will of the contracting parties and therefore must be necessarily and perpetually accepted by anyone who wishes to contract a true marriage.[17] Human beings lack any power in this matter, and, therefore, anything proposed or done by them against the unity and indissolubility of marriage, neither responds to the demands of nature or the good of society nor belongs to the progress of human culture, but rather is to be considered an act of no value, which reveals the most wretched moral regression of man the sinner from original justice. For what offends the divine order can in no way profit the individual, the family, or civil society.[18]
11. The ends of marriage
Of itself, furthermore, and independently of the intentions of the contracting parties, marriage has its own divinely established objective ends.[19] Among these, if careful consideration is given to the divine institution of marriage itself and to nature itself as well as to the magisterium of the Church,[20] the primary end of marriage is only the procreation and education of children,[21] even if a particular marriage is not fruitful.[22] By pursuing this end, man, by the dignity of fatherhood and motherhood, cooperates with God, creator and sanctifier of souls, in the propagation and sanctification of the human race. For this reason, the procreation of children, although it is not the object of the marriage consent, is nonetheless of itself so connatural to every marriage, indeed in this sense is essential, that in every valid consent a perpetual and exclusive right to acts of themselves naturally apt for the generation of children is included as the proper object to be handed over;[23] in fact it is so primary and predominant that it does not depend on any other intended ends, even ones indicated by nature, and indeed it cannot be equated or confused with them.[24] The other objective ends of marriage, which arise from the nature of marriage itself but are secondary, are the mutual help and solace of the spouses in the communion of domestic life and what is called the remedy for concupiscence. For in a marriage concupiscence is correctly directed by conjugal fidelity, and therefore, subject to reason, serves chastity and is ennobled by it.[25] Rightly understood, these ends establish rights, although subordinate ones, in a marriage,[26] and therefore, although secondary in themselves, they are not to be despised or thought little of, but are to be promoted in the required way by true charity.[27]
While the procreation of children is legitimately obtained only in a marriage, concupiscence can also by the help of divine grace be conquered outside of marriage.[28] Insofar, however, as the mutual assistance and remedy for concupiscence are to be attained in marriage itself, they participate in the specific nature of the conjugal union and thus differ in kind from any other assistance, even that which comes from a friendship.[29] Other subjective purposes, by which people are not rarely immediately and primarily moved to enter a marriage,[30] do not obstruct a marriage, provided that they do not contradict the ends indicated by nature itself but are subordinated to them.[31]
The faithful should remember that all the ends of marriage, both objective and subjective, even that primary one by which men are associated with God in his creative work, cannot be perfectly attained unless a marriage is informed by true and right conjugal love, which, enriched by supernatural love and the grace of Christ, in Christian marriages, more and more contributes to the attainment of the ends.
12. The power of the Church
As belonging to the divine order, marriage was entrusted by Christ, not to individuals, but to the Church that it might preserve, explain, and determine the doctrine and norms by which it is governed.[32] The Church must exercise this power not only for the good of souls but also for the benefit of Christian faith[33] and the growth of the Mystical Body.[34] For this reason, Christ, who wished the Church to defend to the utmost the indissolubility which he restored to marriage, also gave it the power,[35] within limits and conditions established by divine law, to dissolve the bond of all other marriages, both natural and sacramental, always excepting, however, a marriage consummated after the baptism of both parties.[36]
13. The competence of civil authority
Without doubt, legitimate civil authority enjoys competence with regard to the merely civil effects of marriage, even of the baptized, in accord with the norm of natural law and the right requirements of the common good.[37] In virtue of its own law, it also enjoys the power, on its part and in its own field, to state, apply, and urge the marital requirements of the natural law. But it enjoys no power with regard either to the dissolution of the bond of any validly entered marriage,[38] or to the sacramental character of Christian marriage,[39] or to other goods divinely linked with marriage,[40] or to impediments established by the Church,[41] or to judicial judgements passed by the Church.[42] These things, since they belong to God and not to Caesar, are the competence of the Church alone (see Mt 22:21).[43]
14. Errors are repudiated
The Sacred Synod knows how greatly the salvation of the Mystical Body of Christ depends on a right acknowledgment of the divine order with regard to marriage.[44] To defend it, it knows first of all that it is its duty to condemn all the radical errors of those who maintain that marriage in its origin and constitution is some merely social phenomenon in continuous evolution and without any natural or supernatural value, and that it does not come from God and from Christ and is not subject to the power of the Church in the new economy of salvation.[45] Likewise it condemns those errors by which it is held that the marriage of Christians either is not a sacrament or that the sacrament itself is something accessory and separable from the contract itself.[46] It also rejects the view of those who state that the use of marriage is the specific means for attaining that perfection by which man is truly and properly an image of God and the Most Holy Trinity.[47] It severely rejects the errors and theories by which is denied the immutable divine order with regard to the properties and purposes of marriage. And it explicitly confutes as a supreme calumny the statement that the indissolubility of marriage does not come from God but is a cruel invention of the Church, no less cruelly retained.[48] Finally, it rejects the theories by which, in an inversion of the right order of values, the primary purpose of marriage is esteemed less than biological and personal values[49] and conjugal love, in the objective order itself, is proclaimed to be the primary purpose.[50]
Chapter II: The rights, obligations, and virtues proper to Christian marriage
15. The duties and rights of individuals
Of himself everyone has an innate, personal, and inviolable right legitimately to enter a marriage. Some legitimate impediment can, however, stand in the way, either absolutely or relatively, permanently or temporarily.[51] Sometimes some people, for various reasons, e.g., medical, eugenic, economic, or social, should be exhorted not to contract a marriage, unless personal and moral reasons, overriding less important considerations, recommend that they too enter a marriage and make use of it.[52] Similarly, no private or public authority can by law, through unjust limitations and premarital conditions, prevent someone who is naturally capable from entering a marriage.[52] While these rights are being preserved, everyone has a duty also to act prudently, justly, and chastely in matters preceding the marriage.[54] For this reason, morally to be rejected are imprudent engagements, treacherous deceptions of the other party, and illicit sexual liberties between future spouses, even in order to enter the marriage more securely.[55] For, as the Apostle warns (see Rm 3:8), evil is not be done in order that good come about. Of supreme importance for marriage are a right and Christian education and diligent preparation with apt instruction, in a spirit of chastity, charity, and sacrifice, with the help of various kinds of natural and especially supernatural means, and avoiding the errors of naturalism.[56] Finally, in the celebration of the marriage itself, there is a serious duty legitimately to express the required consent and to avoid all simulation or profanation.
16. Rights and obligations with regard to the good of children
From the divinely established order concerning the nature, properties, and purposes of marriage, it is very clear that God himself and Christ ordered it towards the achievement of certain goods. St. Augustine summed them up in these words: "These are all the good things because of which marriage is good: children, fidelity, the sacrament."[57] Concerning these three divinely given goods, there are rights and obligations which spouses must duly keep; and among them, considering the purpose for which marriage was instituted by God, the good of children holds the first place.[58] Children, therefore, must be lovingly received, generously nourished, religiously educated, as the same St. Augustine vigorously put it;[59] and children, as Sacred Scripture often teaches, are to be faithfully acknowledged as a true good, a heavenly blessing, and a gift of God.[60] As for the act of procreation itself which, as ordered by God, is in itself legitimate and good,[61] it is the right and duty of spouses to preserve in their way of acting the things that are according to nature.[62] For that reason, even in a legitimate marriage, the in itself praiseworthy desire for children from one's own spouse does not make licit so-called artificial fertilization; it does not prohibit, however, artificial assistance to the conjugal act.[63] Similarly, all means and arts by which in the use of marriage, by human effort, the procreation of children is directly impeded must be considered intrinsically and seriously evil.[64] Conjugal onanism and formal cooperation for the same purpose is always seriously prohibited.[65] As for so-called amplexus reservatus, pastors and faithful must act in accord with the teachings and decrees of the Holy See.[66] As for preserving the child, spouses have the serious duty to avoid either as end or as means any intentional killing of the child,[67] even if it should be brought about by a therapeutic abortion.[68] It is also illicit after a conjugal act to interrupt the process of conception at any stage,[69] or to effect the direct destruction of an unborn fetus, an action which is also a sin against a serious commandment of God.
17. Rights, obligations, and virtues with regard to the good of fidelity
Spouses also must conscientiously preserve and foster the good of faithfulness which besides other things entails the unity of the marriage, the chaste fidelity of the couple, and Christian love between them.[70] Chaste fidelity requires of each of the spouses, on the ground of justice, that they preserve and render the rights surrendered to one another in contracting marriage. Any adulterous relationship is absolutely to be avoided by each of them. The adultery of the other partner does not excuse one from the sin of adultery, and neither does the partner's silence or consent or his renunciation of his rights[71] or infidelity committed only by internal acts (see Mt 5:28). Chaste fidelity also requires that in rendering the mutual debt nothing be done against the law of God, even if this imposes truly heroic acts. Such conjugal acts, with the help of God's grace, they can perform. For God does not command what is impossible, but by his commands teaches you to do what you can and to pray for what you cannot, and he helps you so that you can, since God does not deny what is rightly sought and he does not allow us to be tempted beyond what we are able (see 1 Cor 10:13).[72]
18. Conjugal charity
Above all the rights, duties, and virtues, occupying its own first place,[73] shines charity, which also in the life of spouses presupposes and fulfils, indeed completes and elevates, other laws, as the Apostle teaches: "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church" (Eph 5:25). For that reason, Christian conjugal love not only must excel with the glorious marks of charity exalted by the Apostle (see 1 Cor 13:47), but as much as possible it must in its own way imitate Christ's love for the Church (see Eph 5:25ff), bought by his blood (Acts 20:28). Charity is therefore the perfection[74] and fullness of married love; for that word of God is also true of the state of marriage: the fullness of the law is love (see Rm 13:10). But the marital consent must not be said to be invalid if in fact conjugal love fails;[75] nor should the perfection of love be considered to lie, instead of in whole-hearted observance of the divine law, in some tenderness of soul, which has been proclaimed by some to be the basis of some spiritual life proper to spouses alone;[76] far be it, finally, for married love to be restricted to some sensual and blind inclinations: rather spouses are to love one another in mind and act, in God and for God's sake.[77]
19. Obligations with regard to the good of the sacrament
By the good of the sacrament is meant the good which "denotes the indissolubility of the bond and Christ's elevation and consecration of the contract into an efficacious sign of grace;"[78] and under its own aspect it is excellent[79] and also entails serious duties. In the first place, Christians have the serious duty not to set aside the religious marriage prescribed by the Church and to join in a mere "civil marriage," for by that juridical act they are declared to be a couple only in the sense that in the forum of the civil state they are invested with merely civil rights and duties. The faithful should know that from a merely civil union alone, which contradicts the invalidating laws of the Church, no marriage bond or sacrament devolves upon them before God. For this reason those who are deceitfully and invalidly married against the laws of the Church are rightly considered as public sinners, and the Church has the right publicly to declare them to be publicly sinning and to inflict canonical penalties upon them.[80]
20. Civil divorce
Spouses are seriously prohibited from seeking so-called civil divorce as a proper dissolution, as if a valid bond before God could be dissolved by civil authority; indeed neither is it licit for others directly and formally to cooperate in such a civil divorce. In no case and for no reason, even if it is not rarely serious and painful, is it licit for the faithful, while the sacred bond lasts, to dismiss a wife in order to take another, as the Lord himself clearly teaches (Mk 10:11), although sometimes civil authority invalidly allows this. Sometimes, however, "civil divorce," while the bond endures and without contradiction of ecclesiastical authority, can be sought. So-called simple separation is not to be done lightly, without just, serious, and proportionate cause.[81]
21. Mixed marriages
Where a marriage between two Catholics can be contracted without extraordinary difficulties, the good of religion for the most part requires that Catholic men and women avoid so-called mixed marriages, especially with unbelievers. But the faithful also have the duty, in accordance with the dictates of prudence and the other virtues, to avoid marriage with those who are opposed to God or religion[82] or with those who are Catholics in name but not in life. Although the Church, using her power, may permit mixed marriages, nevertheless the Catholic party, as divine law dictates, must in the conceded mixed marriage avoid dangers to the faith and indifferentism, must always carefully see to the Catholic education of the children, and lovingly and prudently try to bring the spouse to the Catholic truth.[83] Pastors should take special care for those who are joined in a mixed marriage. The Sacred Synod knows that in some places mixed marriages cannot be avoided, but from the fact that this can happen in some places false principles or dangerous inducements should not be deduced.[84]
22. Errors are rejected
The Sacred Synod must severely condemn so-called "temporary" or "experimental" or "companionate" marriages.[85] It also rejects as unworthy of a man and especially of a Christian those instructions by which through various skills a real hedonism in sacred and holy marriage is propagated.[86] It also rejects theories by which a violation of marital fidelity is considered allowed to spouses, either when the mutual love between the couple has failed or when the sexual impulse is falsely thought to be impossible to keep within the limits of monogamous marriage.[87] It is also mistaken to state that civil authority itself never has the power to punish adulterers, and indeed with an equal penalty for both men and women.[88] It also rebukes those who say, and indeed under the pretext of benefitting the Church, that mixed marriages are generally and in themselves to be fostered rather than tolerated. That position is also mistaken which maintains that a marriage can be declared invalid or dissolved solely because of a failure of love.[89] Finally the Sacred Synod most severely condemns so-called "free love," by which, under a false pretext of constructing a new fraternity and society, sin is committed against the divine order and a lethal wound is inflicted not only on marriage but also on the family and society.
Chapter III: The divinely established order of the Christian family
23. The origin and dignity of the Christian family
By the divine order itself, the family consists of parents and children and arises out of a legitimate marriage,[90] without which there cannot per se be, before God and the Church, a legitimate family. Illegitimate children, however, possess rights and duties which derive from the very fact of procreation. By its origin, nature, and goal, the family, like marriage, is sacred and, for Christians, holy,[91] by which holiness the Christian family shines before all others. According to the divine order, therefore, grace and the virtues, and charity first of all, must reign within the family, just as they did in the most holy Family of Nazareth, which is the most perfect model of every Christian family.[92]
24. The family a true society
In the light of the divine order, the family is a true society, of itself preceding the other natural societies,[93] although it can be helped and fostered by the latter so that it can really attain its own proper purposes. Indeed the family is, and will remain till the end of time, the society that for every person, in whatever social order, is necessary and inviolable, the principle and presupposition of other societies, endowed with its own spiritual and moral, juridical and economic unity.[94] The properties and goods with which marriage is furnished, especially unity, indissolubility, and the chaste fidelity of each spouse, were also given by God for the defense and the good of the whole family.[95]
25. Authority in the domestic society
As an ordered life together, the family cannot exist without proper authority,[96] which should be understood to be for the sake of securing the good of all the members, according to the saying in Mt 23:11, "The greatest among you must be your servant." Although as human persons the man and the woman have the same dignity before God and enjoy full equality of rights in the matters that constitute the essence of the marriage contract, still the man naturally presides over the whole family,[97] over the wife as the companion to be especially honored and loved, and over the children who are to be nourished and educated. This natural primacy over the wife is confirmed and elevated by the sacrament of marriage,[98] as the Apostle teaches: "Wives, be subject to your husbands as to the Lord; for the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the Church.... As the Church is subject to Christ, so wives should be subject in all things to their husbands" (Eph 5:22-24). Although the woman is subject to the man, as a mother she has her own authority over the children, an authority subordinate to that of the father. Indeed the wife takes the place of the husband in directing the family, should he be unable to fulfil his role.[99] It follows that children are under the power of the parents (see 1 Tm 3:4) until they themselves become adults.[100] In the family, further, the woman is as it were the heart, endowed with her own distinct qualities and gifts, so that she may sweetly and effectively arrange everything for the good of the whole domestic group.[101] For this reason, the wife should not be considered by her husband as a maid, subject to whatever the husband might order; but the woman, companion of the husband in procreation, must also be his companion in the education of the children, a help to him, as God willed from the beginning (see Gn 2:18), in charity and sanctification.[102] But the Church, mindful of the doctrine of the Apostle who taught that before God there is neither male nor female but that all the baptized are one in Christ Jesus (see Gal 3:28), has rejected and rejects the false ideas by which a woman is described as lacking in mature judgement, or incapable of mastering her own acts, or not equipped enough to exercise her own rights.[103] The authority of the man over the wife must therefore be informed and tempered by both the natural and the supernatural virtues, especially by conjugal love according to the divine mandate: "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and handed himself over for her" (Eph 5:25). So that the authority of each parent over the children may be exercised with that moderation without which rich fruits cannot be expected, it was said to the parents and particularly to the father, "Do not provoke your children, so they may not become discouraged" (Col 3:21).[104] Let them be strong and gentle, for if they are meek God will teach them his ways (Ps 24:9), so that they will be able to lead their children in the way of the Lord. As the authority of the father must be informed by love, so the obedience of the wife and children should be the submission of love.
26. Some errors are rejected
It is mistaken, therefore, to deny the divine origin of the family and to subvert the order which God set within it or to remove it from the control and influence of the divine order and of the Church. And therefore this Sacred Synod, while it defends the rights of the woman, rejects that evil form of emancipation by which, whether as a daughter or a wife or a mother, her proper nature, function, and role are disfigured by some false view of her equality with the man.[105] Nor does it approve of that way of acting by which some people, indeed civil authority itself, moved by some false exaltation of freedom, either denies or belittles or, what is worse, practically destroys, to the detriment of the family's good, the natural and distinct qualities of man and woman.[106]
Chapter IV: The rights, obligations, and virtues proper to the Christian family
27. The responsibility of parents with regard to the number of children
Today especially, a distinctive sign of truly Christian parents should be that generous way of acting, one in accordance with the norms of Christian virtues, with which they think correctly about the number of their children and act accordingly.[107] The Sacred Synod is not at all unaware of the many and great difficulties which spouses may encounter on this matter. It therefore teaches in general that by divine law, natural or positive, there is no universal norm with regard to the number of children to be had in each family. In each case should be considered what individual conditions, the good of the whole family and of society suggest, according to the dictates of Christian prudence, linked also with the other virtues. In their particular deliberations, the faithful should not be moved only by temporal and material considerations, but first of all by supernatural ones, and they should be led by the light of reason and of faith.[108] And, as befits Christians, in measuring the number of their children, they should be mindful of divine Providence by which all things are wisely ordered. In so serious a matter, the faithful should avoid irrational and blind instinct and the various forms of hedonism.[109] If they both agree and if they have a just cause, it is licit for the faithful to make use of marriage only on those days which are known to be infertile.[110] But renouncing the use of marriage becomes illicit for them if, as the Apostle noted (see 1 Cor 7:5), it brings the spouses into a proximate danger of sin. Let the supreme rule be the Apostle's general advice: "Let all your acts be done with charity" (1 Cor 16:14). And therefore values and reasons that are merely medical, eugenic, economic, social or of some other temporal and material order, may not be opposed to, preferred to, or equated with the values and reasons of a higher order, the order of religion and morality.[111]
28. The demographic question
No obligation to restrict the multiplication of children can of itself be drawn from simple fear of an excessive multitude of people, absolutely considered, or from a universal, necessary, and definitive disproportion between the number of living people and the quantity of temporal means necessary for them. For the theory on which this fear rests cannot be proven a priori, unless one denies the spiritual quality of the human agent, indeed unless a defect of divine Providence is posited in the order of creation established by the most wise God himself.[112] Some relative and temporary greater multitude of people may happen here or there because of the conflux of various contingent causes; but this should stimulate people to new ways of producing and distributing goods, instead of limiting, against the divine law, the procreation of children. The spread of ideas affirming a need to bring the generation of children into agreement with continually changing economic conditions, produces in matters which concern the family a way of assessing things that is too utilitarian, smacks of materialism, and is therefore quite foreign to the genuine nature of the family.[113] There is nothing against promoting certain processes and certain social transformations in the fields of economics, hygiene, and public education and in achieving other goods. But great care should be taken that these social transformations not corrupt essential values of a higher order in the family; and these changes must by all means be done in such a way that they conform to divine laws.[114]
29. The rights and duties of parents with regard to the education of children
Parents have the serious and divinely sanctioned duty especially by their word and example to educate their own children not only with regard to natural and earthly matters, but especially with regard to supernatural and eternal matters.[115] First of all, therefore, parents themselves, out of a duty owed to their children themselves, must see to it that not only are the newborn given new birth in the supernatural life as soon as possible, but also that they are religiously educated from the earliest age especially with regard to the elements of the Christian religion and the observance of the law of the Gospel.[116] For marriage itself and the family also have the goal of increasing the body of the Church and augmenting the number of the elect.[117] In educating their children, parents should give attention to natural and earthly matters, but maintain a correct assessment and degree of values.[118] The sciences and pedagogical arts must be in conformity with true and Christian principles,[119] and on this matter it should especially be noted that a person on the one hand is enlightened and led by the illuminations and movements of the Holy Spirit and, on the other, remains subject to evil concupiscence and to the other consequences of original sin.
30. The rights and duties of children
Children should truly be the honor of their parents (see Mal 1:6), their crown and glory (see Prov 17:6). Children should therefore be truly obedient and docile to their parents, should love them both affectively and, as Sacred Scripture teaches more than once, effectively, by their works.[120] Care should also be taken that children's rights are not violated, especially with regard to their choice of marriage or in freely following their vocation, especially with regard to divine service.[121]
31. The duties of others and of civil society towards the family
Relatives, both natural and spiritual, and others who by role or office are devoted to families should help the families to which they are in some way bound, especially in the support and right education of the children. Civil authority also has its duties towards the domestic group. Civil authority, whether national or international, has the right and duty to use its own organs and means to preserve, defend, and foster the goods of the family, even by positively helping it, especially in the support and education of children, according to what the common good requires.[122] For that reason, public authority should see to it that the family not fail or be deprived of things necessary to it, including its just and right progress in the social group; further, the family's right to work, with a just and fitting salary, must not be violated against natural justice and equity themselves; finally, the family must not be deprived of a just ability to emigrate; and in general, parents, especially mothers, should not be prohibited directly or indirectly from being able rightly to fulfill their own duties.[123]
32. Family and schools
With regard to schools, the civil authority may not offend the just rights of parents and of the Church that children be educated rightly and in a Christian way also in schools.[124] Indeed the civil authority must help the family also on this matter by fitting means and to the degree possible.[125] Parents have the right and duty diligently to see to it that their children not attend schools or associations in which either religion or moral integrity is placed in proximate danger,[126] which often cannot be obtained except at costs which families cannot pay.
33. The family and the Church
By divine law the family is entrusted to the Church not only because marriage, from which it legitimately arises, first of all and in itself belongs to the Church; but also because the Church has from God the most serious right, one that is independent and inviolable by any human power, to impart Christian education by its teachers and schools not only to children but also to parents, especially instructing them so that they are able to fulfill the obligations of their proper states in a Christian manner.[127] This right is proper to the Church both because of its universal teaching authority and also because of its spiritual motherhood towards children and parents.[128] For only the Church, through the administration of the sacraments, has access in the name of Christ to the sanctuary of the conscience of both parents and children.[129] Conjugal and familial intimacy has, therefore, its own limits, even with regard to the members of the family themselves. So it is that the Christian family becomes an honorable instrument, living and holy, of such and so great a Mother Church, for the building up of the Body of Christ.
34. Errors are rejected
When weighing demographic questions, it is mistaken and indeed injurious to human and Christian dignity to consider the procreation of people and their families only in relation to the service of civil society or truly to dishonor them by discussing them as if they were animal species.[130] For this reason, the Sacred Synod, while it most urgently exhorts all to provide as much effective help as possible to families burdened with a number of children, at the same time severely condemns the recommending and the spread of shameful contraceptive means in order to limit children; instead of defending the good of peoples, as is sometimes thought today, they corrupt the whole social order.[131] The Sacred Synod also condemns all theories that in any way deny the rights of the Church and of the family with regard to the education of children, or which assign primary rights in this area to civil authority; and it most seriously condemns those who directly support or formally cooperate in the passage of wicked laws about marriage and the family.[132] As for the education of children, it condemns the views of any moral doctrine which defames the Church as if in its moral education, instead of the law of liberty and love, it exclusively favored a moral education resting only on laws and fear, is negative, and contradicts, as they say, authentic Christian doctrine and method. How false such accusations or malevolent insinuations against the Church are will be clear if it is recalled that the Church in its teaching about Christian education, has always had before her eyes the example of the divine Teacher, who on the one hand entrusted to the Church the new and great commandment of charity, but on the other urged even the negative precepts of the Decalogue (see Mt 19:18),[133] and indeed urgently proposed his own self-abnegation and cross (see Mt 16:24). And if the Apostle, led by the divine Spirit, warns all the faithful to work out their salvation in fear and trembling (see Phil 1:12), those who engage themselves by divine will in the equally onerous and glorious task of Christian education know that those words apply to themselves for two reasons.
Notes: https://sspx.au/en/preparatory-schema-marriage-and-family-2-31686
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