There’s an old children’s taunt that some may recall which
speaks to a natural progression of love, marriage and baby carriage. While not designed to be a deep discourse on
marriage, it certainly brings us back to an age when conjugal love and
procreation where assumed to take place within the context of marriage, even in
the mind of a ten-year old. How times
have changed. We now live in a country where
the out-of-wedlock birthrate exceeds 40%.
In the black community, that number jumps up to two-thirds. 92% of
Maine families on welfare (TANF) are single parent families, most headed up by
women. Of those, only 12% receive child
support payments from the absentee parents, mostly fathers. With a
divorce rate that hovers somewhere in the mid-fortieth percentile and an
increasing number of couples choosing to cohabitate as a prelude to a marriage
which may never occur, it is obvious that we live in a society that has lost
sight of the value of marriage.
Which leads us to the question of what is the telos, or purpose, of marriage? In order to answer this question, we must first re-acquaint ourselves with the true meaning of love and the connection between marriage and the baby carriage.
First comes love.
It is all too common to look at love as an emotion, a feeling that comes and goes. As Aquinas reminds us, love is not a feeling but an act of the will. The mother who wakes up at 2:00 am to nurse a sick child is performing an act of love. The father who disciplines his son in order that the boy might know right from wrong is performing an act of love. The young man who clears snow from the front porch of an elderly neighbor is performing an act of love. To love is to will the good of another, quite often at the expense of our own wants and needs. True, self-sacrificing, die- to-self love does not simply fade away when our emotional state changes.
Then comes marriage.
But before we can fully understand marriage, we must actually jump ahead to the baby carriage. Here’s a blinding flash of the obvious that we seem to have forgotten: pregnancy does not result from a contraception failure. It results from a conjugal act between a man and a woman. To be more direct, sex makes babies. Contraception may reduce the possibility of conception, but it cannot eliminate it. A sad statistic coming straight out of the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute is that 40% of women seeking abortion were using some form of birth control when they got pregnant. There is no magic pill.
If sex makes babies and if artificial contraception cannot, in the aggregate, stop this process, then what are we to make of a society that glorifies sex-without-consequences as a normative experience, so much so that the virgin wedding is but a relic of the past? The statistics stated earlier bear witness to the social ills that we bring upon ourselves and our children when we treat our human sexuality as just another bodily function, akin to blowing one’s nose or going to the restroom.
Sex has a twofold purpose. It is both unitive and procreative. We can no more separate the two than we can remove the backside of a sheet of paper from the front. Sure, we can try, but the end result will always be the destruction of the thing itself. Love precedes marriage because it is love, properly understood, that allows us to make the commitment necessary to live a life of total self-giving. Marriage precedes the conjugal act because it guarantees that the product of this conjugal love, not a thing but a person, has the opportunity to know and be known both the two people who brought him or her into this world. While it is true that not every couple can have a child, it is equally true that every child is born of both a mother and father. By properly focusing on the needs and rights of children, we can gain a renewed appreciation for the ends and purposes of marriage.
So, what is the purpose of marriage? Marriage unites a man and a woman with each other and any children born from their union. Its purpose is twofold: unitive and procreative. Say it over and over again, and pass this little bit of lost wisdom on to your children. The future well-being of our society really does depend on it.
By Brian Souchet
Brian currently serves as the director of the Office for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland.
Which leads us to the question of what is the telos, or purpose, of marriage? In order to answer this question, we must first re-acquaint ourselves with the true meaning of love and the connection between marriage and the baby carriage.
First comes love.
It is all too common to look at love as an emotion, a feeling that comes and goes. As Aquinas reminds us, love is not a feeling but an act of the will. The mother who wakes up at 2:00 am to nurse a sick child is performing an act of love. The father who disciplines his son in order that the boy might know right from wrong is performing an act of love. The young man who clears snow from the front porch of an elderly neighbor is performing an act of love. To love is to will the good of another, quite often at the expense of our own wants and needs. True, self-sacrificing, die- to-self love does not simply fade away when our emotional state changes.
Then comes marriage.
But before we can fully understand marriage, we must actually jump ahead to the baby carriage. Here’s a blinding flash of the obvious that we seem to have forgotten: pregnancy does not result from a contraception failure. It results from a conjugal act between a man and a woman. To be more direct, sex makes babies. Contraception may reduce the possibility of conception, but it cannot eliminate it. A sad statistic coming straight out of the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute is that 40% of women seeking abortion were using some form of birth control when they got pregnant. There is no magic pill.
If sex makes babies and if artificial contraception cannot, in the aggregate, stop this process, then what are we to make of a society that glorifies sex-without-consequences as a normative experience, so much so that the virgin wedding is but a relic of the past? The statistics stated earlier bear witness to the social ills that we bring upon ourselves and our children when we treat our human sexuality as just another bodily function, akin to blowing one’s nose or going to the restroom.
Sex has a twofold purpose. It is both unitive and procreative. We can no more separate the two than we can remove the backside of a sheet of paper from the front. Sure, we can try, but the end result will always be the destruction of the thing itself. Love precedes marriage because it is love, properly understood, that allows us to make the commitment necessary to live a life of total self-giving. Marriage precedes the conjugal act because it guarantees that the product of this conjugal love, not a thing but a person, has the opportunity to know and be known both the two people who brought him or her into this world. While it is true that not every couple can have a child, it is equally true that every child is born of both a mother and father. By properly focusing on the needs and rights of children, we can gain a renewed appreciation for the ends and purposes of marriage.
So, what is the purpose of marriage? Marriage unites a man and a woman with each other and any children born from their union. Its purpose is twofold: unitive and procreative. Say it over and over again, and pass this little bit of lost wisdom on to your children. The future well-being of our society really does depend on it.
By Brian Souchet
Brian currently serves as the director of the Office for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland.
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