Tag Archives: Pope Benedict XVI

Marital Sexuality

The Catholic Church, in its official teaching, has always taken a positive view of sexuality in marriage. Marital intercourse, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is “noble and honorable,” established by God so that “spouses should experience pleasure and enjoyment of body and spirit.” (#2362).

The Church’s positive understanding of sexuality is rooted in the teachings of Jesus that were, in part, drawn from the wisdom of the Old Testament. Both the Book of Genesis and the Song of Songs describe the basic goodness of sexual love in marriage. In the New Testament, Jesus began his public ministry with his supportive presence at the wedding feast of Cana, a further indication of the goodness of marriage.

Marital sexuality achieves two purposes. The Church affirms, first, its role in creating new human life, sometimes called the procreative dimension of sexuality. In giving birth to children and educating them, the couple cooperates with the Creator’s love.

Second, sexual union expresses and deepens the love between husband and wife. This is called the unitive, or relational, aspect of sexuality.

The bond between the procreative and the relational aspects cannot be broken. Each sexual act in a marriage must be open to the possibility of conceiving a child. Contraception is wrong because it separates the act of conception from sexual union. (See Married Love and the Gift of Life for more on this topic.)

Recent church teaching has tried to integrate the two purposes of marriage into a single perspective, which sees marital sexual love as essentially procreative. Marital love is by its nature fruitful; it generates new life. The God-created expression of marital love, joined to an openness to new life, contributes to the holiness of the couple. The “call to holiness in marriage is a lifelong process of conversion and growth.” (Catholic Catechism for Adults, p. 408)

Like all the baptized, married couples are called to chastity. The Church defines chastity as “the successful integration of sexuality within the person.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2337). Married couples practice the conjugal chastity that is proper to their state in life.

The late Pope John Paul II wanted to find a new and compelling way to express this positive view of sexuality. He developed a strand of thinking about sexuality and its role in human life called “The Theology of the Body.”

The Pope begins with the idea that each human being is willed for his or her own sake. Out of love God created human beings as male and female, persons of dignity and worthy of respect. Also out of love, God established marriage as the first communion of persons. In marriage, man and woman totally give themselves to each other, and in this self-giving they discover who they are.

The sin of Adam and Eve ruptured this original unity of body and soul. Sadly, we know the results: too often women and men have become objects to be used and exploited. The salvation won for us by Jesus Christ began the process of restoring the lost unity of body and soul. This process is partly completed here; full unity will be restored in the next life.

The Church teaches that human sexuality is sacred. Within marriage, it fulfills its purpose as an expression of deep, faithful and exclusive love that is open to new life. Marital sexual relations involve profound openness and receptivity, a complete and mutual self-giving. Sexuality is an important part of that incredibly rich and mysterious pattern in Creation that comes directly from the mind and heart of God.

Pope Benedict Focuses on Marriage and Family in Holy Family’s Home Town

Visiting Nazareth May 14, the city in northern Israel that he called the Holy Family’s “home town,” Pope Benedict accented the key role married couples fulfill today in “the building of a civilization of love.” The pope’s visit to Nazareth coincided with the conclusion of a Year of the Family celebrated by the church in the Holy Land.

During a Mass in Nazareth, the pope encouraged families to recognize their “irreplaceable mission” within society. He explained:

  • The love of a married man and woman “is raised by grace to become a sharing in, and an expression of, the love of Christ and the church.”
  • The family, grounded in the love of marriage, “is called to be a ‘domestic church,’ a place of faith, of prayer and of loving concern for the true and enduring good of each of its members.”

A glimpse is caught of the family’s essential role “as the first building-block of a well-ordered and welcoming society” when it is realized that “in the family each person, whether the smallest child or the oldest relative, is valued for himself or herself, and not seen simply as a means to some other end,” Pope Benedict observed.

Calling the family a “school of wisdom,” Pope Benedict said it is in the family that people first learn to practice “those virtues which make for authentic happiness and lasting fulfillment.”

In his Nazareth homily, Pope Benedict turned attention briefly to each member of the Holy Family and the contribution to the family each was called to make. When he spoke of Mary, he focused on one of the themes of the Holy Land’s Year of the Family, the dignity and vocation of women in the home, the church, and society.

Nazareth, the city of the Annunciation, “reminds us of our need to acknowledge and respect the God-given dignity and proper role of women, as well as their particular charisms and talents,” Pope Benedict said. “Whether as mothers in families, as a vital presence in the workforce and the institutions of society, or in the particular vocation of following our Lord by the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience, women have an indispensable role in creating that ‘human ecology’ which our world and this land so urgently need: a milieu in which children learn to love and to cherish others, to be honest, and respectful to all, to practice the virtues of mercy and forgiveness.”

The pope spoke next of Joseph, saying that from his “strong and fatherly example Jesus learned the virtues of a manly piety, fidelity to one’s word, integrity and hard work.” In Joseph, “the carpenter of Nazareth,” Jesus saw that “authority placed at the service of love is infinitely more fruitful than the power which seeks to dominate.” The world today greatly “needs the example, guidance, and quiet strength of men like Joseph,” the pope added.

Finally, turning to the youthful Jesus, Pope Benedict said he wanted “to leave a particular thought with the young people” present. Vatican Council II taught that children play a special role in their parents’ growth toward holiness, the pope noted. He said, “In the Holy Family of Nazareth, it was Jesus who taught Mary and Joseph something of the greatness of the love of God his heavenly Father, the ultimate source of all love.”

Pope Benedict also spoke on marriage and the family during a Mass on May 10 in Amman, Jordan. In his homily there, as in Nazareth, he accented the dignity of women.

“From the very first pages of the Bible, we see how man and woman, created in the image of God, are meant to complement one another as stewards of God’s gifts and partners in communicating his gift of life, both physical and spiritual, to our world,” the pope said. However, he continued:

“Sadly, this God-given dignity and role of women have not always been sufficiently understood and esteemed. The church, and society as a whole, has come to realize how urgently we need what the late Pope John Paul II called the ‘prophetic charism’ of women as bearers of love, teachers of mercy, and artisans of peace, bringing warmth and humanity to a world that all too often judges the value of a person by the cold criteria of usefulness and profit.”

About the author 
David Gibson served for 37 years on the editorial staff at Catholic News Service, where he was the founding and long-time editor of Origins, CNS Documentary Service. David received a bachelor’s degree from St. John’s University in Minnesota and an M.A. in religious education from The Catholic University of America. Married for 38 years, he and his wife have three adult daughters and six grandchildren.