From: kriz@skat.usc.edu (KRIZ)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Cath. Christianity 101 - JP II's letter "On the Family" - 3 (repost)
Date: 25 Jul 1992 19:58:10 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: skat.usc.edu


The following is a portion of Pope John Paul II's 1981 Apostolic
Exhortation "Familiaris Consortio" (On the Family).  The document
is organized in the following way:

     Introduction.
     Part 1. Bright Spots and Shadows for the Family Today.     
-->  Part 2. The Plan of God for Marriage and the Family.
     Part 3. The Role of the Christian Family.
          I. Forming a Community of Persons.
          II. Serving Life.
          III. Participating in the Development of Society.       
          IV. Sharing in the Life and Mission of the Church.     
     Part 4. Pastoral Care of the Family.
          I. Stages of Pastoral Care of the Family.
          II. Structures of Family Pastoral Care.
          III. Agents of the Pastoral Care of the Family.
          IV. Pastoral Care of the Family in Difficult Cases.     
     Conclusion.

Note: (-->) denotes which portion of the document is presented
herein.

In Christ,

Dennis
kriz@skat.usc.edu

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John Paul II's 1981 Apostolic Exhortation "On the Family" - Part 2


                            PART TWO
           THE PLAN OF GOD FOR MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY


11. Man, the Image of the God Who Is Love.
------------------------------------------

  God created man in his own image and likeness [20]; calling him
to existence through love, he called him at the same time for love.

  God is love [21] and in himself he lives a mystery of personal
loving communion.  Creating the human race in his own image and
continually keeping it in being, God inscribed in the humanity of
man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and
responsibility, of love and communion [22].  Love is therefore the
fundamental and innate vocation of every human being.

  As an incarnate spirit, that is, a soul which expresses itself in
a body and a body informed by an immortal spirit, man is called to
love in his unified totality.  Love includes the human body, and
the body is made a sharer in spiritual love.

  Christian revelation recognizes two specific ways of realizing
the vocation of the human person, in its entirety, to love:
marriage and virginity or celibacy.  Either one is in its proper
form an actuation of the most profound truth of man, of his being
"created in the image of God."

  Consequently sexuality, by means of which man and woman give
themselves to one another through the acts which are proper and
exclusive to spouses, is by no means something purely biological,
but concerns the innermost being of the human person as such.  It
is realized in a truly human way only if it is an integral pert of
the love by which a man and a woman commit themselves totally to
one another until death.  The total physical self-giving would be
a lie if it were not the sign and fruit of a total personal self-
giving, in which the whole person, including the temporal
dimension, is present: If the person were to withhold something or
reserve the possibility of deciding otherwise in the future, by
this very fact he or she would not be giving totally.

  This totality which is required by conjugal love also corresponds
to the demands of responsible fertility.  This fertility is
directed to the generation of a human being, and so by its nature
it surpasses the purely biological order and involves a whole
series of personal values.  For the harmonious growth of these
values a persevering and unified contribution by both parents is
necessary.

  The only "place" in which this self-giving in its whole truth is
made possible is marriage, the covenant of conjugal love freely and
consciously chosen, whereby man and woman accept the intimate
community of life and love willed by God himself [23], which only
in this light manifests its true meaning.  The institution of
marriage is not an undue interference by society or authority, nor
the extrinsic imposition of a form.  Rather, it is an interior
requirement of the covenant of conjugal love which is publicly
affirmed as unique and exclusive in order to live in complete
fidelity to the plan of God, the creator.  A person's freedom, far
from being restricted by this fidelity, is secured against every
form of subjectivism or relativism and is made a sharer in creative
wisdom.


12. Marriage and Communion Between God and People.
--------------------------------------------------

  The communion of love between God and people, a fundamental part
of the revelation and faith experience of Israel, finds a
meaningful expression in the marriage covenant which is established
between a man and a woman.

  For this reason the central word of revelation, "God loves his
people," is likewise proclaimed through the living and concrete
word whereby a man and a woman express their conjugal love.  Their
bond of love becomes the image and the symbol of the covenant which
unites god and his people [24].  And the same sin which can harm
the conjugal covenant becomes an image of the infidelity of the
people to their God: Idolatry is prostitution [25], infidelity is
adultery, disobedience to the law is abandonment of the spousal
love of the Lord.  But the infidelity of israel does not destroy
the eternal fidelity of the Lord, and therefore the ever faithful
love of God is put forward as the model of the relations of the
faithful love which should exist between spouses [26].


13. Jesus Christ, Bridegroom of the Church, and the Sacrament of 
----------------------------------------------------------------
Matrimony.
----------

  The communion between God and his people finds its definitive
fulfillment in Jesus Christ, the bridegroom who loves and gives
himself as the savior of humanity, uniting it to himself as his
body.

  He reveals the original truth of marriage, the truth of the
"beginning" [27], and, freeing man from his hardness of heart, he
makes man capable of realizing this truth in its entirety.

  This revelation reaches its definitive fullness in the gift of
love which the word of God makes to humanity in assuming a human
nature, and in the sacrifice which Jesus Christ makes of himself on
the cross for his bride, the church.  In this sacrifice there is
entirely revealed that plan which God has imprinted on the humanity
of man and woman since their creation [28], the marriage of
baptized persons thus becomes a real symbol of that new and eternal
covenant sanctioned in the blood of Christ.  The Spirit which the
Lord pours forth gives a new heart, and renders man and woman
capable of loving one another as Christ has loved us.  Conjugal
love reaches that fullness to which it is interiorly ordained,
conjugal charity, which is the proper and specific way in which the
spouses participate in and are called to live the very charity of
Christ, who gave himself on the cross.

  In a deservedly famous page, Tertullian has well expressed the
greatness of this conjugal life in Christ and its beauty: "How can
I ever express the happiness of the marriage that is joined
together by the church, strengthened by an offering, sealed by a
blessing, announced by angels and ratified by the Father? !!!  How
wonderful the bond between two believers, with a single hope, a
single desire, a single observance, a single service! They are both
brethren and both fellow servants; there is no separation between
them in spirit or flesh.  In fact they are truly two in one flesh,
and where the flesh is one, one is the spirit" [29].

  Receiving and mediating faithfully on the word of God, the church
has solemnly taught and continued to teach that the marriage of the
baptized is one of the seven sacraments of the new covenant [30].

  Indeed by means of baptism, man and woman are definitively placed
within the new and eternal covenant, in the spousal covenant of
Christ with the church.  And it is because of this indestructible
insertion that the intimate community of conjugal life and love,
founded by the creator [31], is elevated and assumed into the
spousal charity of Christ, sustained and enriched by his redeeming
power.

  By virtue of the sacraments of their marriage, spouses are bound
to one another in the most profoundly indissoluble manner.  Their
belonging to each other is the real representation, by means of the
sacramental sign, of the very relationship of Christ with the
church.  

  Spouses are therefore the permanent reminder to the church of
what happened on the cross; they are for one another and for the
children witnesses to the salvation in which the sacrament makes
them sharers.  Of this salvation event marriage, like every
sacrament, is a memorial, actuation and prophecy:

  "As a memorial, the sacrament gives them the grace and duty of
commemorating the great works of God and of bearing witness to them
before their children.  As actuation, it gives them the grace and
duty of putting into practice in the present, toward each other and
their children, the demands of a love which forgives and redeems. 
As prophecy, it gives them the grace and duty of living and bearing
witness to the hope of the future encounter with Christ" [32].

  Like each one of the seven sacraments, so also marriage is a real
symbol of the event of salvation, but in its own way.

  "The spouses participate in it as spouses, together, as a couple,
so that the first and immediate effect of marriage (res et
sacramentum) is not supernatural grace itself, but the Christian
conjugal bond, a typically Christian communion of two persons
because it represents the mystery of Christ's incarnation and the
mystery of his covenant.  The content of participation in Christ's
life is also specific: Conjugal love involves a totality, in which
all the elements of the person enter -- appeal of the body and
instinct, power of feeling and affectivity, aspiration of the
spirit and of will.  It aims at a deeply personal unity, the unity
that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and
soul; it demands indissolubility and faithfulness in definitive
mutual giving; and is open to fertility (cf. Humanae Vitae, 9).  In
a word, it is a question of the normal characteristics of all
natural conjugal love, but with a new significance which not only
purifies and strengthens them, but raises them to the extent of
making them the expression of specifically Christian values" [33].


14. Children, the Precious Gift of Marriage.
--------------------------------------------

  According to the plan of God, marriage is the foundation of the
wider community of the family, since the very institution of
marriage and conjugal love is ordained to the procreation and
education of children, in whom it finds its crowning [34].

  In its most profound reality, love is essentially a gift; and
conjugal love, while leading the spouses to the reciprocal
"knowledge" which makes them "one flesh", [35] does not end with
the couple, because it makes them capable of the greatest possible
gift, the gift by which they become cooperators with God for giving
life to a new human person.  Thus the couple, while giving
themselves to one another, give not just themselves but also the
reality of children, who are a living reflection of their love, a
permanent sign of conjugal unity and a living and inseparable
synthesis of their being a father and a mother.

  When they become parents, spouses receive from God the gift of a
new responsibility.  Their parental love is called to become for
the children the visible sign of the very love of God, "from whom
every family in heaven and on earth is named" [36].

  It must not be forgotten however, that even when procreation is
not possible, conjugal life does not for this reason lose its
value.  Physical sterility in fact, can be for the spouses the
occasion for other important services to the life of the human
person, for example, adoption, various forms of educational work,
and assistance to other families and to poor or handicapped
children.  


15. The Family, a Communion of Persons.
---------------------------------------

  In matrimony and in the family a complex of interpersonal
relationships is set up -- married life, fatherhood and motherhood,
filiation and fraternity -- through which each human person is
introduced into the "human family" and into the "family of God,"
which is the church.

  Christian marriage and the Christian family build up the church:
for in the family the human person is not only brought into being
and progressively introduced by means of education into the human
community, but by means of rebirth of baptism and education in the
faith the child is also introduced into God's family, which is the
church.

  The human family, disunited by sin, is reconstituted in its unity
by the redemptive power of death and resurrection of Christ [37]. 
Christian marriage, by participating in the salvific efficacy of
this event, constitutes the natural setting in which the human
person is introduced into the great family of the church.

  The commandment to grown and multiply, given to man and woman in
the beginning, in this way reaches its whole truth and full
realization.  

  The church thus finds in the family, born from the sacrament, the
cradle and the setting in which she can enter the human generations
and where these in turn can enter the church.


16. Marriage and Virginity or Celibacy.
---------------------------------------

  Virginity or celibacy for the sake of the kingdom of God not only
does not contradict the dignity of marriage but presupposes it and
confirms it.  Marriage and virginity or celibacy are two ways of
expressing and living the one mystery of the covenant of God with
his people.  When marriage is not esteemed, neither can consecrated
virginity or celibacy exist; when human sexuality is not regarded
as a great value given by the creator, the renunciation of it for
the sake of the kingdom of heaven loses its meaning.

  Rightly indeed does St. John Chrysostom say:

  "Whoever denigrates marriage also diminishes the glory of
virginity.  Whoever praises it makes virginity more admirable and
resplendent.  What appears good only in comparison with evil would
not be particularly good.  It is something better than what is
admitted to be good that is the most excellent good" [38].

  In virginity or celibacy, the human being is awaiting, also in a
bodily way, the eschatological marriage of Christ with the church,
giving himself or herself completely to the church in the hope that
Christ may give himself to the church in the full truth of eternal
life.  The celibate person thus anticipates in his or her flesh the
new world of the future resurrection [39].

  By virtue of this witness, virginity or celibacy keeps alive in
the church a consciousness of the mystery of marriage and defends
it from any reduction and impoverishment.

  Virginity or celibacy, by liberating the human heart in a unique
way [40], "so as to make it burn with greater love for God and all
humanity" [41], bears witness that the kingdom of God and his
justice is that pearl of great price which is preferred to every
other value no matter how great, and hence must be sought as the
only definitive value.  It is for this reason that the church
throughout her history has always defended the superiority of this
charism to that of marriage, by reason of the wholly singular link
which it has with the kingdom of God [42].

  In spite of having renounced physical fecundity, the celibate
person becomes spiritually fruitful, the father and mother of many,
cooperating in the realization of the family according to God's
plan.

  Christian couples therefore have the right to expect rom celibate
persons a good example and a witness of fidelity to their vocation
until death.  Just as fidelity at times becomes difficult for
married people and requires sacrifice, mortification and self-
denial, the same can happen to celibate persons, and their
fidelity, even in the trials that may occur, should strengthen the
fidelity of married couples [43].

  These refections on virginity or celibacy can enlighten and help
those who, for reasons independent of their own will, have been
unable to marry and have then accepted their situation in a spirit
of service.

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Footnotes:

[20] Cf. Gn. 1:26-27.

[21] Cf. 1 Jn. 4:8.

[22] Cf. Second Vatican Council, GAUDIUM ET SPES, 12.

[23] Cf. Ibid, 48.

[24] Cf. e.g., Hos. 2:21; Jer. 3:6-13; Is. 54.

[25] Ez. 16:25.

[26] Cf. Hos. 3.

[27] Cf. G. 2:24; Mt. 19:5.

[28] Cf. Eph. 5:32-33.

[29] Tertullian, AD UXOREM, II, VIII, 6-8: CCL, I, 393.

[30] Cf. Council of Trent, Session XXIV, Canon 1:I.D. Mansi,
SACRORUM CONCILIORUM NOVA ET EMPLISSIMA COLLECTIO, 33, 149-150.

[31] Cf. Second Vatican Council, GUADIUM ET SPES, 48.

[32] John Paul II, Address to the delegates of the Centre de
Liaison des Equipes de Recherche ( Nov. 3, 1979), 3: INSEGNAMENTI
II, 2 (1979), 1038.

[33] Ibid, 4; loc. cit., 1032.

[34] Cf. Second Vatican Council, GAUDIUM ET SPES, 50.

[35] St. John Chrysostom, VIRGINITY, X: PG 48: 540.

[39] Cf. Mt. 22:30.

[40] Cf. 1 Cor. 7:32-35.

[41] Second Vatican Council, PERFECTAE CARITATIS, 12.

[42] Cf. Pius XII, Encyclical SACRA VIRGINITAS, II: AAS 46 (1954),
174ff.

[43] Cf. John Paul II, Letter NOVO INCPIENTE (April 8, 1979), 9:
AAS 71 (1979), 410-411.

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