Marriage And Church

MARRIAGE: A PERSON-AFFIRMING, LOVE-ENABLING, LIFE-GIVING, AND SANCTIFYING REALITY
William E. May
Michael J. McGivney Professor of Moral Theology
John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family
Families and especially children are at serious risk today. This is due to issues such as violence and drugs; and in in some families, children growing up without a father figure. In addition,they are poor, not only financially but in the sense that they do not receive enough attention and guidance from their trusted adults.
In the U.S., for example one of the causes of low birth is abortion because more babies are aborted than are born annually. ‘As John Paul said, “The promotion of the culture of life should be the highest priority in our societies… If the right to life is notdefended decisively as a condition for all other rights of the person, all other references to human rights remain deceitful and illusory.”’
There is an urgent need for what Pope John Paul II called "the civilization of love" to take root in the hearts of contemporary men and women as all these events (abortions, divorce, contraception, etc.) affect families.
Marriage is the rock on which thefamily is formed. For today's family must explain some moral criteria.
Marriage: Rock, on which the family is built, must be rooted in the marriage of a man and woman and their children will form a family.
“Also in the procreation of children, marriage reflects its divine model, the love of God for man. In man and woman, paternity and maternity, as happens with the body and with love, the biologicalaspect is not circumscribed: life is only given totally when with birth, love and meaning are also given, which make it possible to say yes to this life.”
Marriage and the generation of human life: That we all know babies enter human existence into the genital trough the union of a man and a woman and that is surely the usual way that new human beings come to be. We all know that babies enterhuman existence through the union of a man and a woman.
“The Holy Father is clear on why same-sex ‘marriage’ is an oxymoron. Marriage is between a man and a woman to create a family. For Catholics, redefining marriage goes against God and for many others of different faiths, and none, it goes against the natural order of things.”
Humans are born to be loved ones. However, it is good that aperson is born to two unmarried persons.
Earlier civilizations thought a baby could only come into the world if through the sexual union between a man and a woman. Now, on the contrary, many consider it a right to have a baby using artificial means rather than natural methods.
Unmarried persons not entitled to have children because they refuse to surrender unconditionally to each other. This is oneof the benefits of marriage because a man and a woman are committed to each other and this enables them to nurture a child and educate them in love and service to God.
Marriage is a free choice that allows children; they must be trained in an act of love and not for fornication, adultery or "creation" in a laboratory. Children are beings equal in dignity to their fathers and mothers andtherefore cannot be created as an inferior product.
‘As Benedict XII said, “"The human and Christian dignity of procreation, in fact, doesn't consist in a 'product,' but in its link to the conjugal act, an expression of the love of the spouses of their union, not only biological but also spiritual,"’


Marriage: A Person-Affirming, Love-Enabling, Life-Giving, and Sanctifying Reality:
• Marriage: APerson-Affirming Reality, marriage begins when a couple comes to each other unconditionally renouncing all.
Thus marriage, far from being a legalistic or extrinsic limitation on the freedom of men and women or an empty formality is indeed, as Pope John Paul II reminds us, "an interior requirement of the covenant of conjugal love which is publicly affirmed as unique and exclusive." As we read in...