Mark Twain on marriage | Katie van Schaijik
Tags: mark twain, marriage

Friend Mark forwards these lovely lines from an 1870 letter from Mark Twain to his fiancée, Olivia.  They ring just as true today.

This 4th of February will be the mightiest day in the history of our lives, the holiest, & the most generous toward us both—for it makes of two fractional lives a whole; it gives to two purposeless lives a work, & doubles the strength of each whereby to perform it; it gives to two questioning natures a reason for living, & something to live for; it will give a new gladness to the sunshine, a new fragrance to the flowers, a new beauty to the earth, a new mystery to life; & Livy it will give a new revelation to love, a new depth to sorrow, a new impulse to worship. In that day the scales will fall from our eyes & we shall look upon a new world. Speed it!

Bishop Sheen on sex and marriage | Katie van Schaijik
Tags: fulton sheen, marriage, sex

I found linked today at the Dawn Patrol this treasury of free audios by Bishop Fulton Sheen.  I listened to two of them.  “Marriage Problems” and “Sex as a Mystery.”  Both are very good.  I take them as representing the best of pre-John Paul II Catholic thinking on sex and marriage.  They contain much wisdom.  But, it seems to me, they lack a depth dimension present in the Theology of the Body and in Dietrich von Hildebrand’s philosophy of love and marriage.  They are not the “new thinking about mankind” that, as I said in my last post, we need to meet the crisis of our day. 
I would love to know what others think.

Conjugal rights: a further Comment | Josef Seifert
Tags: conjugal rights, marriage

As far as Saint Paul’s passage cited in the letter to Katie van Schaijik (it being better to get married than to burn) (1 Cor. 7:9) is concerned, I believe that what she indicates in her reply is the deepest, truest and most personalistic interpretation (also found in Pope John Paul II) of this text and of the teaching on marriage as “remedium concupiscentiae”: that the true remedium against concupiscence is the inner transformation of human sexuality into a mutual gift of love that is not just for lust or concupiscence and that, being informed and transformed by “love for the sake of the other person herself”, becomes thus “healed.” Nevertheless, there is still another more obvious and literal meaning of this text that has also to do with the marital rights and duties. If the refusal of marital intercourse leads one’s spouse to sin because of his or her “burning,” it is also for this less noble reason and less sublime meaning of “remedium concupiscentiae,” a serious matter to refuse the spousal act to one’s spouse directly or indirectly by leaving him or her against the other’s will. Also Christ refers to this, and not to marriage as highest spousal communion of love, when he says that a husband who dismisses his wife (which is the most radical way of such refusal), “makes an adulteress of her”.
But of course, to the utmost extent possible to a person, the spousal act should never be just sought and even less conceded just for the sake of stilling the sexual desire of oneself or of the spouse, but be an expression and unique fulfillment of spousal love, a love which Christ compares with the supreme self-giving love of Christ and the Church.
Thus fully agreeing with Michael Healy’s and Grisez’s remarks on “a more literal meaning” of the married person’s rights and duties, I would regard it, like they do, as a grave violation of my married love and marriage vows ever to refuse this “right of my wife over my body” for less than serious reasons, and like Healy I would understand this quite personalistically: not as having myself made into my wife’s sex-slave, but as being part of the “totality” of the gift of my married love, a gift I give to no one else until death shall part us (this of course does not exclude but include the consideration which especially the husband owes to his wife in this regard).

I would only add to all these excellent remarks of Healy that it is a false though widespread idea that Pope John Paul II’s and Hildebrand’s personalist and grandiose vision of marriage as a communion of love has, because they hardly speak of it ever, abolished the meaning of what Saint Paul expresses when he says that no longer the man has a right over his body but his wife and quite equally not the wife but her husband. To bestow this right on the spouse is itself, or ought to be, a unique act of deep love: a perpetual and undivided self-donation.

Hence, while a personalist understanding of marriage and spousal rights will more radically exclude any kind of slave-interpretation of Paul’s words as if the spouses would have an unrestricted right over the other body, to use the other as a mere sex-object, for sex-games or for impure and unworthy acts, that are opposite to the dignity of the marriage act, the personalist understanding implies even more than just a right over each other’s body: namely a certain right over the soul and heart of a person that ought to be given with and in this act: correspondingly, the spouse’s duty is not only to lend his or her body to the other coldly “for the purpose of intercourse,” or “for the purpose of acts which by their nature are capable of being procreative,” but he or she is bound to do so lovingly, to give his or her heart, as deeply as he or she is capable in a certain moment, to the other. Thus, the right I give to my spouse in the consensus involves much more than giving her a right over my body: namely a claim over my loving will and intention, and even over the love of my heart, inasmuch as the voice of my heart, the actualization of my superactual spousal love, even in its affective dimensions, depends on my indirect or cooperative freedom. Therefore, the fulfillment of the spousal duties never must be just that: fulfillment of duties; and the rights over the other’s body are never just that: a right over a body.

In this double way (of excluding a right over the spouse’s body for impure or perverted acts, and of demanding infinitely more than “merely being ready to have intercourse”), I see the personalist vision of love and marriage as a perfection of the traditional teaching on the marriage rights and duties, but as a perfecting it that does not cancel and does not even change but fulfill this teaching such that in its highest form, the spousal act includes but goes beyond all rights and duties, and show itself truly to be that “great mystery” of which Paul speaks and a true image of the perfect loving union and desire for union between Christ and the Church , and a true reflection of God’s own inner-trinitarian, freely given, uncoerced, mutual and perpetual love.

Josef S

Conjugal rights | Katie van Schaijik
Tags: conjugal rights, marriage

I just got this good question by email from a friend who studied personalist philosophy as an undergrad. It’s one that comes up often in Catholic circles.

Dear Katie,
Have just happened upon the excitement on your website as I was searching for a good definition of Personalist philosophy to send to someone here in—.
Just out of interest (and because I am working two jobs for the foreseeable future and don’t have time to explore all the good links on your website), can you tell me if the issue of “It is better to marry than to burn with passion” 1 Corinthians 7:9 has come up yet in your discussions. This has always rankled, as it seems to condone the using of one’s spouse as an object. However, in certain Church circles, I am told that this is morally acceptable. This is closely allied with the concept of “conjugal rights”, which also mystifies me. If a woman (and it is almost always this way around) has had her trust in her husband eroded by anger and/or violence, subjectively, for her, conjugal relations can become something akin to physical violation. As a sponsor [in a 12-step program], I come up against this problem a lot.

Here is the response I sent:

Our discussions are just getting off the ground, so only a few topics have been raised. Maria Fedoryka has some great thoughts on “conjugal rights”, which I’ll see if I can entice her to share. Basically the idea behind “better to marry than burn” and “remedy for concupiscence” is that true spousal love can overcome the tendency to treat sex as a mere appetite and another person as an object for my pleasure.
As for conjugal rights I see it this way: when a woman pledges herself to her husband she is his alone. She had no right to give herself sexually or romantically to anyone else. It does not mean that her husband has a right to enjoy her sexually whenever he pleases. He still has a duty in love to try win by his love a response of love in her. She has a duty to be open to his love, not necessarily his sexual advances—especially if she senses that they are impure.