A Plea for the traditional family: Situating marriage within John Paul II's realist, or personalist, perspective of human freedom

Abstract

This article is an attempt to defend the rights of the traditional family: not simply against the redefinition of marriage, but more fundamentally against a re-conceptualization of human freedom and human rights. To this end, it contrasts what Saint John Paul II calls an individualistic understanding of freedom and a personalistic notion of the same in order to argue that human freedom is called by the Creator to be in service of, and not in opposition to, the good of the human family. From this perspective—that of the social doctrine of the Catholic Church—it argues for the harmony between natural marriage and the respect of fundamental human rights, and it presents the social dimension of marriage as fundamental with respect to the legal and social protection of the family.

Keywords:

• Marriage (natural)
• Marriage (gay)
• Family
• Rights
• Freedom
• John Paul II
• Personalism
• Utilitarianism
• Individualism
• Natural law

Notes

1 This is an expanded and newly adapted version of a conference, “The Human and Legal Base for Protection and Support of the Family,” delivered at the invitation of the Holy See's Permanent Mission to the United Nations and Specialized Agencies in Geneva on March 18, 2013, within the context of a parallel event on “Promoting human rights and freedoms by upholding legal and social protection for the traditional family” in conjunction with the 22nd Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, Geneva, February–March 2013. The original conference has been published in Working Papers on Promoting Human Rights and Freedoms by Upholding Legal and Social Protection for the Traditional Family. Caritas in Veritate Foundation. Geneva. http://fciv.org/downloads/Schumacher.pdf (Schumacher 2013)

2 To be sure, this is not a phenomenon uniquely characteristic of the modern or contemporary world, for Pieper also cites Plato's disputes with the sophists as an example of the same. As for Louis Dupré, he traces the detachment of words from reality to nominalism. “Nominalist thinkers,” he explains, “detached words from concepts and thereby undermined the assumption that language merely mirrors a reality internalized by the mind. This detachment enabled words to function as more than referential signs. Meaning was first established by the mind and subsequently expressed in conventional signs. Early humanists went further; they regarded language itself as creative of meaning. Reversing the traditional order of reference, they began to envision reality itself through the prism of language.” (Dupré 1994, 6–7).

3 Orwell's book was published in 1949.

4 The philosopher, Cardinal Cottier, is also a retired theologian of the pontifical house and secretary of the International Theological Commission.

5 Ironically, this thinking logically leads to that of Judith Butler, who recognizes a “heterosexual imperative” working “in a performative fashion to constitute the materiality of bodies, and, more specifically, to materialize the body's sex, to materialize sexual difference in the service of the consolidation of the heterosexual imperative” (Butler 1993, 2). In other words, “bodies only appear, only endure, only live within the productive constraints of certain highly gendered regulatory schemas.” In fact, without these constructions “we would not be able,” Butler claims, “to think, to live, to make sense at all.” They have “acquired for us a kind of necessity” (Butler 1993, xi). Butler's final goal, however, is to change the regulatory norm: “to understand how what has been foreclosed or banished [by the so-called heterosexual imperative] from the proper domain of ‘sex’ [i.e., the homosexual, the transsexual, and the bisexual] … might at once be produced as a troubling return, not only as an imaginary contestation that effects a failure in the workings of the inevitable law, but as an enabling disruption, the occasion for a radical rearticulation of the symbolic horizon in which bodies come to matter at all” (Butler 1993, 23). Regulatory norms, in Butler's sense of the term (namely that of cultural determinism), are thus necessarily very different from natural norms: when, that is to say, nature itself is understood as endowed with a metaphysical meaning, as will be increasingly evident in what follows.

6 Or, as the editors of the French edition of Nova et Vetera have put it, individual rights are being substituted for human rights (see Nova et Vetera ed. 2014).

7 For a concrete example of this thinking, see Sartre (1957).

8 “For St. Thomas,” Pinckaers explains, “the natural inclinations to goodness, happiness, being and truth were the very source of freedom. They formed the will and intellect, whose union produced free will” (Pinckaers 1995, 245).

9 Cf. Pinckaers (1995, 242–243; 327–53); and Pinckaers (2001, 65–81).

10 Similarly, Pope Benedict XVI points in his first encyclical letter to “the need to link charity with truth” (Benedict 2005, n. 2).

11 See also John Paul II (1979, n. 16), wherein freedom is acknowledged as being “confused with the instinct for individual or collective interest or with the instinct for combat and domination.”

12 Similarly, he points out that natural law receives its name “not because it refers to the nature of irrational beings [so as to be identified with inclinations of a sub-rational nature], but because the reason which promulgates it is proper to human nature” (John Paul II 1993, n. 42).

13 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I–II, q. 91, a. 2; and CCC (1997, n. 1955).

14 Hence, in the case of a misinterpretation of the doctrine of Humanae vitae, for example, “natural law was [incorrectly] taken to mean merely the biological regularity we find in people in the area of sexual actualization” (Wojtyła 1993b, 183). Similarly, “the [sexual] urge appears as something that merely ‘happens’ in the human being” (Wojtyła 1993f, 294).

15 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I–II, q. 1, a. 1. See also Wojtyła (1993b, 183). Willed acts, in turn, are acts, Wojtyła explains, that are self-determining. See Wojtyła (1993e, 189–190).

16 Within the specific context of the natural regulation of birth, this means that “the order of nature connected with using the sexual urge in accord with its nature and purpose has, in a sense, been turned over to human beings for conscious realization. This accounts for the possibility of regulating conception by taking advantage of the regularity of nature in the operation of the sexual urge—and human persons who do so (in appropriate circumstances, of course) somehow confirm themselves in their role as subjects conscious of the order of nature. On the other hand, by using a method of artificial contraception, they somehow compromise themselves in that role and degrade themselves as persons” (Wojtyła 1993f, 293). See also Wojtyła (1993f, 289).

17 See also Schmitz (1993, especially 121–146).

18 It follows from this perspective that consciousness is considered as creative with respect to values rather than responsive to them.

19 Wojtyła thus points to the etymology of the word “subject”: sub- (under) + jacere (to throw), whence the idea of being “brought under,” or owing obedience to, another. Within the context, the point is made that the human being is not only the (active) subject of his actions, but also the (passive) subject (that is to say, the object) of his own reflection. In short, Wojtyła points here to the idea of reflective consciousness.

20 In this way and in light of the “gnosiological attitude” of his contemporaries, Wotjyla thus recognized the need for a “confrontation of the metaphysical view of the person that we find in St. Thomas and in the traditions of Thomistic philosophy with the comprehensive experience of the human person” (Wojtyła 1993e, 195).

21 “The lived experience of the fact ‘I act’ differs from all facts that merely ‘happen’ in a personal subject. This clear difference between something that ‘happens’ in the subject and an ‘activity’ or action of the subject allows us, in turn, to identify … self-determination… ‘I act’ means ‘I am the efficient cause’ of my action and of my self-actualization as a subject, which is not the case when something merely ‘happens’ in me, for then I do not experience the efficacy of my personal self.” The latter, he specifies, “Is intimately connected with a sense of responsibility for that activity” (Wojtyła 1993e, 189).

22 Wojtyła specifies that concupiscence, understood as sensual desire, is not an act of the will. It is something that “happens” within us. However, “concupiscence of the senses tends to become active ‘wanting’, which is an act of will. … As soon as the will consents it begins actively to want what is spontaneously ‘happening’ in the senses and the sensual appetites. From then onwards, this is not something merely ‘happening’ to a man, but something which he himself begins actively doing—at first only internally, for the will is in the first place the source of interior acts, of interior ‘deeds.’ These deeds have a moral value, are good or evil, and if they are evil we call them sins” (Wojtyła 1993a, 161–162).

23 It is in this very specific sense that Wojtyła dares to state that I am “in some sense the ‘creator of myself’” (Wojtyła 1993e, 191). See also his more extensive development of these ideas in Wojtyła (1979).

24 Hence, the will is often “the arena for a struggle between the sexual instinct and the need for freedom.”

25 Similarly, “Our decisions of conscience at each step reveal us as persons who fulfill ourselves by going beyond ourselves toward values accepted in truth and realized, therefore, with a deep sense of responsibility” (Wojtyła 1993 g, 215).

26 Wojtyła recognizes an inherent contradiction at the heart of the utilitarian principle of “the maximum pleasure (‘greatest happiness’) for the greatest number”, for “pleasure is, of its nature, a good for the moment and only for a particular subject, it is not a super-subjective or trans-subjective good. And so, as long as that good is recognized as the entire basis of the moral norm, there can be no possibility of my transcending the bounds of that which is good for me alone” (Wojtyła 1993a, 37–38).

27 Far from denying the natural appetite for a sexual good—what the tradition refers to as the desire of concupiscence—this perspective admits its authentic value, which must nonetheless always be subordinate to the good of the person. “‘Sinful love’ comes into being when affirmation of the value of the person, and intentness on the true good of the person (which are at the care of true love), are absent, and instead a hankering after mere pleasure, mere sensual enjoyment connected with ‘sexual experiences’ invades the relationship between man and woman [or in the case of a homosexual relationship: between man and man or woman and woman]. ‘Enjoying’ then displaces ‘loving’” (Wojtyła 1993a, 164). See also Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I–II, q. 27, a. 1, where he writes that “the proper object of love is the good; because, as stated above (Q 26, AA1, 2), love implies a certain connaturalness or complacency of the lover for the thing beloved, and to everything, that thing is a good, which is akin and proportionate to it. It follows, therefore, that good is the proper cause of love.”

28 “God allows man to learn his supernatural ends, but the decision to strive towards an end, the choice of course, is left to man's free will. God does not redeem man against his will” (Wojtyła 1993a, 27). Concretely within the context of procreation, this means that the Creator “does not utilize persons merely as the means or instruments of his creative power but offers them the possibility of a special realization of love,” namely, by giving them “a rational nature and the capacity consciously to decide upon their own actions” and thus also “to choose freely the end to which sexual intercourse naturally leads.” It follows that it is up to them “to put their sexual relations on the plane of love, the appropriate plane for human persons, or on a lower plane. The Creator's will is not only the preservation of the species by way of sexual intercourse but also its preservation on the basis of a love worthy of human persons” (Wojtyła 1993a, 59–60).

29 See also Wojtyła (1993f, 288–289).

30 This ability to participate in another's humanity is, of course, a human prerogative, pointing to our spiritual nature. “For a human being is always first and foremost himself (‘a person’), and in order not merely to live with another but to live by and for that other person he must continually discover himself in the other and the other in himself. Love is impossible for beings who are mutually impenetrable—only the spirituality and the ‘inwardness’, of persons create the conditions for mutual interpenetration, which enables each to live in and by the other [to enter, that is to say, into the other's interiority]” (Wojtyła 1993a, 131).

31 “[T]o understand the human being inwardly … may be called personalistic” (Wojtyła 1993 g, 213). The personalistic principle, he explained many years later, “is an attempt to translate the commandment of love into the language of philosophical ethics. The person is a being from whom the only suitable dimension is love. We are just to a person if we love him” (John Paul II 1994a, 1994b, 1994c, 200–201). Hence, the “dual content” of the personalistic norm: “a positive content (‘though shalt love!’) and a negative content (‘thou shalt not use!’)” (Wojtyła 1993a, 171).

32 Obviously, this is not to deny the previously cited insight according to which the human person determines him- or herself as morally “good” or “bad” in virtue of his or her actions. Reference here is made instead to the ontological value of the human person.

33 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I–II, q. 20, a. 2. Aquinas thus contrasts the divine will, which “infuses and creates goodness,” with the human will, which “is not the cause of the goodness of things.” Instead, it is the goodness of the beloved object or person that “calls forth our love,” which in turn incites the action to obtain the object or to be united to the beloved person (ibid.). See also ibid., III, q. 110, a. 1; and idem, Super Ioan. 5, lect. 3, n. 753 (Aquinas 2013). See also the marvelous treatment of the primacy of affirmation with respect to the willed act by Pieper (1997, 139–281).

34 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I–II, q. 27, a. 1. See also ibid., q. 26, aa.1–2.

35 Ibid., a. 5. See also Kwasniewski (1997).

36 See Aquinas, Summa theologiae I–II, q. 26, a. 2.

37 On the importance of Vatican Council II (1965, n. 24), for the magisterial teaching of Pope John Paul II, see Ide (2001).

38 Similarly: “Here [in Vatican Council II 1965, n. 24] we truly have an adequate interpretation of the commandment of love. Above all, the principle that a person has value by the simple fact that he is a person finds very clear expression: man, it is said, ‘is the only creature on earth that God has wanted for his own sake.’ At the same time the Council emphasizes that the most important thing above love is the sincere gift of self. In this sense the person is realized through love” (John Paul II 1994a, 202).

39 This point is explicit in the passage: “This statement is primarily ontological in nature, and it gives rise to an ethical affirmation. Love is an ontological and ethical requirement of the person… This explains the commandment of love, known already in the Old Testament (cf. Deut 6:5; Lev 19:18) and placed by Christ at the very centre of the Gospel ‘ethos’ (cf. Mt 22:36–40; Mk 12:28–34). This also explains the primacy of love expressed by Saint Paul in the First Letter to the Corinthians: ‘the greatest of these is love’ (cf. 13:13)” (John Paul II 1994a, 201).

40 Hence, the fundamental question addressed by John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor, as read by his biographer, George Weigel: “How is freedom to be lived so that freedom does not destroy itself?” (Weigel 1999, 694). Cf. John Paul II (1993, n. 96).

41 Similarly, “If freedom is not used, is not taken advantage of by love it becomes a negative thing and gives human beings a feeling of emptiness and unfulfilment” (Wojtyła 1993a, 135).

42 This means, as Michael Sherwin has fittingly argued, that before love is a principle of action, it is “a response to goodness,” particularly in the form of “a pleasant affective affinity” that St. Thomas calls complacentia (literally, “with pleasing assent”: cum + placentia). See Sherwin (2007, 181–204); and Sherwin (2005, 63–118). “This affinity,” Sherwin specifies, is “the aptitude, inclination, or proportion existing in the appetite for the loved object” (Sherwin 2005, 70). See also the long development of the primarily affirmative value of love in Pieper (1997).

43 Likewise in the particular context of conjugal love, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, in words borrowed from Pope Pius XII: “The Creator himself … established that in the [generative] [sic] function, spouses should experience pleasure and enjoyment of body and spirit. Therefore, the spouses do nothing evil in seeking this pleasure and enjoyment. They accept what the Creator has intended for them. At the same time, spouses should know how to keep themselves within the limits of just moderation” (CCC 1997, n. 2362).

44 As Josef Pieper puts it straightforwardly, “We must have experienced and ‘seen’ that the other person, as well as his existence in this world, really is good and wonderful; that is the precondition for the impulse of the will that says, ‘It's good that you exist!’” (Pieper 1997, 198).

45 St. Thomas points, for example, to the transcendence caused by the elevation of one's apprehensive and appetitive powers “to comprehend things that surpass sense and reason” (Aquinas 2012, Summa theologiae I–II, q. 28, a. 3).

46 In that case, the subject is “cast down” in, for example, drunkenness or “violent passion or madness” (ibid.).

47 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I–II, q. 28, a. 3.

48 Helpful to this analysis, Wojtyła explains, is the Augustinian distinction between uti and frui. The former “is intent on pleasure for its own sake, with no concern for the object of pleasure.” The latter “finds joy in a totally committed relationship with the object precisely because this is what the nature of the object demands” (Wojtyła 1993a, 44).

49 Similarly: “Sin is violation of the true good… ‘Sinful love’ is simply a relationship between two persons so structured that emotion as such and more particularly pleasure as such have assumed the dimensions of goods in their own right, and are the sole decisive consideration, while no account at all is taken of the objective value of the person” (Wojtyła 1993a, 165–166). “Its sinfulness is not of course due to the fact that it is saturated with emotion, nor to the emotion itself, but to the fact that the will puts emotion before the person, allowing it to annul all the objective laws and principles which must govern the unification of two persons, a man and a woman.” Hence Wojtyła observes that “‘Authenticity’ of feeling is quite often inimical to truth in behaviour [original emphasis]” (Wojtyła 1993a, 163).

50 Similarly, if “reciprocity is created only by self-interest, utility (a utilitarian good) or pleasure, then it is superficial and impermanent” (Wojtyła 1993a, 86).

51 He thus concludes: “Love is exclusively the portion of human persons [original emphasis]” (Wojtyła 1993a).

52 When, on the other hand, “love” is reduced to a desire motivated by pleasure or gratification, a “superficial view of happiness” is also implied: one that is “identified with mere enjoyment” (Wojtyła 1993a, 172).

53 Or, in the words of Paul VI in Humanae vitae, there is “an inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act” (Paul VI 1968, n. 12). This passage is likewise found in the CCC (1997, n. 2366).

54 See also CCC (1997, n. 2347); and http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19861001_homosexual-persons_en.htmlCDF (CDF 1986).

55 “The first right of the child is to ‘be born in a real family,’ a right that has not always been respected and that today is subject to new violations because of developments in genetic technology” (PCJP 2004, n. 244).

56 “By its very nature the institution of marriage and married love is ordered to the procreation and education of the offspring and it is in them that it finds its crowning glory” (Vatican Council II 1965, n. 48). Cf. CCC (1997, n. 1652).

57 “The family is the primary cell of society and is solidly grounded in the natural law that links all people and cultures,” John Paul II explains. “Indeed, the Church's insistence on the ethics of marriage and the family is frequently misunderstood, as though the Christian community wished to impose on all society a faith perspective valid only for believers… In fact, marriage, as a stable union of a man and a woman who are committed to the reciprocal gift of self and open to creating life, is not only a Christian value, but an original value of creation” (John Paul II 1994c).

58 “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 are ordained to the procreation and education of children, in whom they find their crowning” (John Paul II 1994b, n. 14).

59 See also PCJP (2004, n. 235): “The desire to be a mother or a father does not justify any ‘right to children,’ whereas the rights of the unborn child are evident. The unborn child must be guaranteed the best possible conditions of existence through the stability of a family founded on marriage, through the complementarities of two persons, father and mother.”

60 See, for example, Kugelman et al. (2012) http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1149497; EXPRESS Group (2009) http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=184015; Barfield et al. (2010) http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5944a4.htm.

61 Indeed, Agacinski rightly asks whether this humiliating commerce would continue if it were not profitable. See Agacinski (2009, 102).

62 Indeed, although paternal rights were supreme throughout much of history, they are often enough forgotten or simply neglected in contemporary political and social discussions.

63 This, more specifically, is a responsibility, which “arises from the basic requirements of social nature” (PCJP 2004, n. 225).

64 This is, in fact, already the case in some countries, such as France, Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, as well as several states of the USA.

65 For the Church's teaching regarding responsible parenthood, see CCC (1997, nn. 2366–2372); Paul VI (1968); John Paul II (1995, n. 97); John Paul II (1994b, nn. 12–13); John Paul II (1981, nn. 11, 28–32).

66 Similarly, “The social community of the we is given to us not only as a fact but also always as a task” (Wojtyła 1993d, 252).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michele M. Schumacher

Mother of four and wife of the Swiss philosopher, Bernard N. Schumacher, Michele M. Schumacher, S.T.D., is a habilitated member (P.D.) of the theology faculty at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. In addition to numerous articles she has authored A Trinitarian Anthropology: Adrienne von Speyr and Hans Urs von Balthasar in Dialogue with St. Thomas Aquinas (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), and she is the editor and contributing author of Women in Christ: Towards a New Feminism (Cambridge, UK and Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004). Her email address is [email protected].