marriage as a school, always bringing out in them new excellences, and bringing them deeper into participation in God's own love within them. Four things are novel in Wojtyla's thought on "love and responsibility" (to allude to a title of another of his books). First, there is a turn to interiority, to subjectivity, beyond the Thomistic synthesis. He could
maladies made him bear the cross of when our minds grasp the communthe body's infirmities. He loves the ion of persons in matrimony. Marsights and smells and sounds of the riage between man and woman is the most beautiful (as Aquinas put it) of liturgy of the Holy Mass. He loves the oils of the sacraments. Every| all friendships known to us. God is where he sees the ways that spirit and more like the communion of persons body are made for one another, enter than He is like anything else we know into one another, interpenetrate in of. That, at least, is the way He has the secret recesses of our being. Emrevealed Himself to us, not only in bodied selves, indeed. Thus do we Scripture and in His Son, but also in believe in the resurrection of the emthe way our embodied selves are bodied self. joined in matrimony. The third insight is that the unity At the very head of the Book it is written: "Male and female He made of man and woman comes in the giving of the will, each to each. The giv- | them from the beginning. He made them in His image." Should we miss ing of the self makes truthful the bodies being one, and the bodies the point of that, it's hard to believe being one express united selves. The we'd get much right about the rest. For some time, Western culture heart of love is a communio of selves. In matrimony, human selves are one has been in a fever of free love, conin both their bodies and their selves. traception, and the pill. Doing what The fourth insight is that in our we will with our bodies?doing what sexuality lie glimpses of the Godhead. our bodies will?has become a worldOur vision of God becomes clearest wide passion, the acme of fulfillment.
not
have done this without the experience of modernity, and the simultaneous turn of some phenomenologists to both the subject and the real. The second is the refusal to separate the "person" from its body. Wojtylarefuses to adopt a physicalist theory of sexual love. He refuses to be a Manichee. He refuses to be gnostic. He loves the human body?has always enjoyed his own strength and vitality, climbing in the mountains, kayaking in mountain waters, until an assassin's bullet and other
The project must not be going very well. Why else would there be so many books on sex, so many manuals, so many grapplings to understand the
widespread disappointment? But just wait. Boredom is as boredom does. Disordered sexual love and death are partners in a deathly dance. There will come a time when minds are open. When
women
and men
wonder, When He wrote Eros into our embodied selves, what did God intend? Then it may be that they will not find many guides as daring as Karol Wojtyla.
begin
to
Michael Novak holds the George Frederick Jfewett Chair at the American Enterprise Institute. Reprinted with permission from First Things, February 2003. Copyright 2003 by the Institute on Religion and Public Life.
Marriage as 'A Daring Promise' In an interview; theologian Richard Gaillardetz sees marriage as a radical and evangelical act
|
|
cost-beneifi analysis.
!
Marriage
!
Richard
Gaillardetz says he did not write the book, A Daring Promise: A Spirituality of Christian Marriage, on how to make a marriage easy, but instead on why a faithful Christian marriage is hard. "I am convinced that living out a committed Christian marriage today is one of the most radical and evanis not a gelical things a Christian can do in our culture," says Gaillardetz, who holds the Thomas and Margaret | should look like. He says, "We are a Murray and James J. Bacik Chair of Catholic Studies at the University consumer-oriented culture based on of Toledo. cost-benefit-analysis. Listen to any One only has to look at the alarmI newly engaged person talk about their fiance. They tick off the beneing divorce statistics to agree that the | fits their beloved brings to the relaauthor does indeed have a point. tionship, having concluded that these Gaillardetz says when most single outweigh the costs." adults are asked whether or not they want to get married the majority of He says the problems arise when at some point in the marriage somethem answer positively. While he
body's needs are not met and they | there solely to help another. Gaildecide they are no longer getting any lardetz emphasizes that the therapy benefits out of the union. Gailrelationship is governed by the rules lardetz, who is married and the of economic exchange, which is a father of four young boys, says the ! contractual relationship. Marriage decision by most in our consumerist cannot be approached in the same culture is that they "bought the manner. wrong product." Hollywood is another cultural Another cultural difficulty is the | force that Gaillardetz says perpetudominance of therapy relationships as I ates an unrealistic myth. In a National Marriage Program at Rutgers | University, named "The State of Our Unions," 94 percent of those in their 20s agreed that when you marry it should be to your soul mate first and foremost. One only has to a model for human relationships. look at the majority of romantic Gaillardetz is quick to point out that movies coming out of Hollywood, he is not against therapy in any way. Gaillardetz says, to understand why His concern is when a couple enters so many people have unrealistic expectations: In the movies people into a marriage union, they often meet their soul mates, fall in love, have the expectation that all their and live happily ever after. needs ought to be met by their In the real world, if someone spouse. "recipe within the marriage grows and Inevitably, he says, this is a is therapy, changes for disaster." In one person and the other person does!
does not believe the difficulty lies in the institution of marriage having a bad name, Gaillardetz says there are "profound cultural forces that make sustaining a committed marriage difficult." What are these cultural forces? The educator points to one of the main culprits: our society's unrealistic expectations of what a marriage
i
BY RACHEL WIMBERLY
BOSTON COLLEGE
|
C2l RESOURCES
|
FALL
2003
11