The essence of marriage is the bond
made up of the whole
network of rights and obligations.
The definition of marriage
in the Code of Canon Law
n Is the 1983 Code of Canon Law to blame for the marriage "annulment crisis" of the last twenty years? One side in the current debate in another Catholic publication1 seems to think that the law is at fault by having introduced in canon 1055 the concept of "the good of the spouses" as an end that defines marriage. It is true that the new formulation of the ends of marriage has been and continues to be a source of confusion for many, but a return to the former categories of "primary" and "secondary" ends found in the 1917 Code will not provide the required doctrinal framework to overcome the crisis.2 Rather, in the spirit of Master Gratian who sought concordance among the discordant laws, I offer here some reflections without polemical intention. Any concordance, however, must begin with an accurate reading of the text of the law.
The marriage covenant
Canon 1055 of the Code of Canon Law reads as follows: The marriage covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of their entire life, which is ordered by its own nature to the good of the spouses and to the procreation and upbringing of offspring, has been raised, between the baptized, to the dignity of sacrament by Christ the Lord. The Catechism of the Catholic Church reiterates this teaching in its exposition of the Sacrament of Matrimony. 3
In the text of the canon, the marriage covenant is the binding agreement, pact, alliance, or contract. The use of the term "covenant" in the 1983 Code does not imply any substantial change from the concept of "contract" traditionally used to define marriage. The term adds, however, a biblical connotation which seems very appropriate because the content of this alliance to which the spouses freely consent has been predetermined by God and because this covenant, contract or agreement between two baptized persons is also the sacramental sign of the spouses' participation in God's salvific plans.4 At the heart of the covenant or contract, there is the exchange of consent which is the efficient cause of marriage, for "the consent of the parties causes marriage."5 To consent means to confirm a choice, and a choice is an elementary and most personal, nontransferable human act which, in the case of marriage, "no human power can supply."6 What defines a particular choice, however, and makes it different from any other choice is the object that is chosen. Canon 1057, 2 defines matrimonial consent as a choice or "act of the will by which a man and a woman, through an irrevocable covenant, mutually yield and accept each other in order to form a marriage."7
Discussing the object of consent, St. Thomas observes that the spouses explicitly "consent to marriage and implicitly to the mutual yielding of the right over the acts proper to marriage."8 Surrendering to another person the right over one's acts means giving one's will over those acts, and since free will means also possession of self, by giving one's free will over certain acts, the person gives his or her self. The spouses consent to give to each other the right to certain acts or services ordered to the ends of marriage, and through the mutual, exclusive, perpetual and irrevocable right to these very personal acts,9 they mutually give and accept each other in order to form a marriage. This is the object of marriage consent which, in juridical terms, can be formulated as the ius ad operationes coniugales. It is important to understand that the ends of marriage ("the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of children") cannot be the direct object of a contractual agreement because the attainment of those ends is not always within the spouses' power. A marriage is valid as long as the spouses consent to the acts ordered to those ends even though the good of the spouses, the procreation of offspring or the upbringing of children may not be successfully attained.
A communion of persons
In the expression of St. Thomas Aquinas,10 reiterated in the teaching of John Paul II, marriage is a communio personarum, a common union of two persons in their feminine and masculine modalities. This union is a permanent joining of two embodied (male and female) persons who, retaining their individuality and complementary qualities, establish a unity between themselves (una caro 11) which we call marriage. The essence of marriage consists, then, of a unity made up of two persons12 in their masculinity and femininity (the stuff or matter of this unity) brought together by a permanent bond which unites them (the form of the unity). The bond of marriage, obviously, is not a physical bond or tie but a non-sensible relation. As a relation, it is an accidental quality of the person. Although this relation is non-material and non-sensible, it is however very real, and when we speak of husband and of wife, we are saying that a man has the quality of husband in relation with a woman and a woman has the quality of wife in relation with a man. Furthermore, this relation is a relation of unity, that is to say, a relation which unites the persons by the common end or purpose,13 as the purpose of doing business, for example, brings a certain union, which we may call a business partnership, between the persons involved in the common endeavor of doing business.
The marriage bond is a moral entity formed by a mutual and irrevocably permanent commitment to seek the common good proper to marriage.14 Insofar as this commitment sets the will to seek the good of another person, it is a habit of love, and insofar as it sets the will to seek the same good due by reason of a contractual agreement, it is a habit of justice.15 The capacity to love, which is a capacity of sharing with another person the goods of one's entire life, finds its roots in the human person's spiritual likeness of the Creator which, embodied in the masculine and feminine person, is expressed through the human person's bodily constitution. In other words, the capacity to give the goods of one's life to another is part of a human person's spiritual and physical integrity. Canonists have often asked whether love is of the essence of marriage. Since the term is analogical and the meaning most often used is that of an affective inclination, they have either answered the question negatively or have been opposed to include a term that is ambiguous in the language of the law. But if marriage is a union of persons sustained by the mutual commitment to seek the good of the spouse, then love, understood as the giving of self for the good of another person, is of the very essence of marriage.16
The ends of marriage
The very substance of marriage, i.e., its essence, should be studied not only through its material and formal causes but also through its final cause-its ends or purposes. In this regard we should first recall the elementary notion that the ethical quality of human acts is defined not by the physical end, result, or terminus of the operation, but by the moral good implied in the end to which the act is directed. To define, then, the nature of that type of human behavior called marriage, we should identify the moral good which is the ontological end, or finis operis of marriage. This ontological end is not to be confused with the finis operantis, or intention of the agent, which may or may not coincide with the finis operis and is irrelevant in defining marriage as instituted by the Creator.
The Church has always taught that marriage exists in function of offspring as well as of the good of the spouses through their mutual services.17 Natural reason itself inclines the human person to the attainment of these goods through marriage which exists, then, to fulfill a role of nature (in officium naturae).18 The foundation of this human inclination is made more explicit by John Paul II when he teaches that it consists of the human person's vocation to love. By creating the human person through love and for love, God has "inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the capacity and responsibility for love and communion."19 As an incarnate spirit, the human person is called to a love which includes the giving of oneself both spiritually and bodily: "love includes the human body while the body is made sharer of spiritual love."20 This love between a man and a woman is only true to their human personhood when it takes the form of an exclusive commitment to each other in order to generate the divine image into a new human person through procreation and education.21
Because of this vocation to love, the human person is inclined toward marriage, knowingly and freely, in two ways: First, in relation to the good of the offspring, for right reason dictates that the bearing of children be completed by rearing them to human maturity which is the state of virtue; but this would not be possible if the child had no certain and definite parents, which would be the case without that permanent tie which is marriage. Second, in relation to the mutual services that married persons render to one another, for just as human nature dictates that the person should live in society, and since some things which are necessary for life are more becoming to men while others are more becoming to women, so natural reason shows us the need for that society of man and woman which is marriage.22
In the covenant of conjugal love (i.e., marriage), the spouses commit themselves to that "total personal self-giving"23 in order to seek the good of each other and the good of the children born from their conjugal love. This total personal self-giving refers to the giving of both body and soul but not to a giving of self in those things not required by the ends of marriage.24 Much less does the term total refer to a perfect self-giving which would in fact be beyond human capacity. All this is succinctly expressed in canon 1055, 1 when it states that marriage "by its own nature is ordered to the good of the spouses and to the procreation and upbringing of offspring."
Through the marriage covenant, the spouses enter into a consortium or partnership in which they commit themselves to share the gifts of their own masculine and feminine humanity. This includes not only sexual acts but also those spiritual goods unique to their own feminine or masculine modality by which they complement each other. This complementariness is designed by the Creator and is expressed in Genesis 2:18 with the statement that it is not good for either man or woman to be alone. By their commitment, then, the spouses seek the good of each other as desired by the Creator. The good of the spouses is, therefore, an ontological end of marriage in officium naturae, that is to say, a finis operis or end intended by the Creator. For this reason, a person who chooses to marry when procreation is not physically attainable still chooses a true marriage because the good of the spouses is also an ontological end and a good that gives to the particular relationship the character of marriage.25
John Paul II has explained that "the good of the spouses" is "the good of the person," that is to say, the good that is characteristic of the person and fulfills the person. It consists of the power to communicate to others the gifts of one's own life through self-giving. And since through this self-giving, the person finds his own fulfillment and perfection, self-giving is the "good of the person" and "the good of the spouses." In marriage, self-giving is reinforced and perfected by the exclusiveness and indissolubility which characterize it "from the beginning."26 For this reason, then, the "good of the spouses," to which marriage "is ordered by its own nature," consists of the exclusive, indissoluble, and mutual self-giving of the spouses. This self-giving of the spouses is exercised and promoted as the "common good of the family."27 Particular external goods contribute to the good of the spouses if they are true goods, but the bonum coniugum mentioned in canon 1055, 1 cannot be reduced to any particular good for it refers to the total "good of the person." Some particular goods are, however, external manifestations of "the good of the spouses": these are the bona or blessing of offspring, fidelity, and the sacrament which have an important juridical relevance as we will study later.
Marriage is also ordered by its own nature to procreation and upbringing of offspring which in the words of Gaudium et spes 28 is the fulfillment and purpose of marriage and conjugal love. As John Paul II explains, the "fundamental task" of marriage (and by derivation of the family) is to "actualize in history the original blessing of the Creator: to transmit by means of procreation the divine image from person to person."29 Human procreation means more than biological reproduction; it means also the upbringing of offspring to human maturity or the " state of virtue."30 The goal of education of offspring is to transmit to the children the person's capacity to give and share the good of one's own life with another, which is the "good of the person." In this sense, it can be said that the bearing and rearing of offspring is the final cause or finis operis of conjugal love and marriage and the moral good ordering and giving meaning to all other acts within the marriage relationship. The "good of the spouses" is implied in "procreation and education of offspring" and is inseparable from it, for this end requires that the spouses give each other those goods needed to fulfill their role as parents. Children are for the spouses "a living and inseparable synthesis of their being a father and a mother."31 Since the transmission of the divine image by means of "procreation and education of offspring" requires the personal and mutual self-giving of the spouses, the covenant of conjugal love is ordered to the personal good of the spouses and of the children.32
Each particular marriage may have many other personal or accidental ends which, being ends intended by the agent (finis operantis), do not define marriage as the work of the Creator and can be unlimited. The personal ends of a particular marriage can be, and often are, compatible with its essential or ontological ends, but even when personal ends are base and immoral, and render a marriage morally illicit, they do not make it invalid if the personal ends do not exclude any of the ontological ends of marriage. However, if a personal end were to exclude any of the ontological ends from a particular relationship, the marriage would be invalid because the person motivated by such end would be choosing something other than marriage.33
The essential properties
The covenant of conjugal love is endowed with two essential properties: unity and indissolubility, which further qualify the nature of the covenant and of the relationship resulting from it. The integrity of the ontological ends (procreation/education, and the good of the spouses) requires that marriage be one and indissoluble. 34 Unity and indissolubility are demanded by natural law "from the beginning"35 and "in Christian marriage acquire a greater firmness by reason of the sacrament."36
Unity means that marriage is, by its very nature, a union of one man with one woman. The Book of Genesis describes this unity with the profound expression of "two become one flesh."37 Unity, therefore, excludes the union of one man with several women (polygamy) as contrary to the very nature of marriage, for in such cases the woman is not made an equal partner but is left to raise the children without the full participation of the man, who cannot give to the woman an undivided heart (will) as implied in the biblical concept of "one flesh." The prohibition of polygamy admits of divine dispensation, which was granted by God for the increase of his chosen people. In the union of one woman with many men (polyandry), the man is denied equal partnership as well as his lawful paternity, and the children are denied their exclusive filiation, for neither father nor children can be certain of their true mutual relationship.38 Indissolubility means the matrimonial bond is permanent for life. Christ solemnly confirmed this teaching "as it was from the beginning."39 It is especially confirmed by the sacramental nature of marriage between Christians, for whom marriage is a sign of that faithful and indivisible bond between Christ and the Church.40
The blessings or goods of marriage
From the time of St. Augustine, theology has described Christian marriage with the three bona of offspring, fidelity, and the sacrament. These concepts describe the blessings or gifts that accrue to the spouses and are not to be confused with the notions of ontological ends which define the essence of marriage. When studying the ends of marriage we saw that marriage exists for the good of the children conceived in the relationship of man and woman. Here we are saying that offspring is a blessing or gift to the spouses. A new human being with an eternal destination is a good of the greatest value. The child is also the incarnation of conjugal love: of the mutual giving of the spouses to each other and of which the sexual act is the corporeal sign. The common care for their own children brings the love of the parents to its truly mature fulfillment developing the virtues that are proper to parenthood.41
Since the marriage covenant consists of a life-long, indivisible and exclusive commitment, it guarantees to each of the spouses a faithful companion for life in the pursuit of one's own needs and in the role of raising a family. Fidelity is the blessing that brings about the effective communio personarum which marriage ought to be in fact. In Christian marriage, it is Christ who gives the spouses to each other and with it his love for the Church and each individual person in the Church.42 The sacrament is then the blessing of divine love to the spouses which expresses the indissoluble union and love of Christ. As each Christian who enters into this sacrament comes to participate in that love in a very special way, Christian married life is a way of sanctity.
Canonical doctrine has seen these bona as essentially related to the ontological ends and to the essential properties which qualify the ends. If a person, then, were to exclude with a positive act of the will any of these bona from the marriage contract, the person would be excluding the essential properties and the ontological ends implied in the bona. Specifically, if one were to exclude the blessing of offspring, one would also be excluding the procreative/educational end which defines marriage, for this ontological end is implied in the bonum that is offspring; if fidelity were to be excluded, one would also be excluding that loyal, life-long and exclusive companionship (unity) and the " good of the spouses" implied in it; if the good of the sacrament were to be excluded, one would be excluding the indissoluble marriage bond signified by this sacramental covenant43 for among Christians, sacrament and covenant are inseparable.44
Consortium or partnership
The Code of Canon Law describes marriage as a consortium, a society or partnership. In ordinary language, a partnership means a joining of efforts among some persons who commit themselves to the pursuit of a common good. The words "of their entire life" (totius vitae) which qualify the marital partnership mean that this is a lifelong, unbreakable common lot (for this is the etymological meaning of con-sors). One may want to extend this meaning and say that the partnership colors every aspect of the spouses' lives. While a business partnership can be temporary and can always be separated from the other aspects of a partner's life, this lifelong partnership touches every aspect, though in different degrees, of the married partners' lives. The term partnership in this context expresses in juridical terms (i.e., in terms of rights and obligations) the bond of marriage.45
The essential juridical content of this communio personarum is found in the essential ends mentioned in canon 1055 as "the good of the spouse and the procreation and upbringing of offspring" and in the essential properties included in canon 1056 as, "unity and indissolubility." When the parties agree to enter into a relationship sanctioned by law, ordered to the essential ends, and qualified by the essential properties, they acquire, besides certain moral duties, the right and obligation to the acts ordered to those ends and to the furthering of those properties. If one were to exclude an essential end or an essential property from the agreed relationship, the person would not be contracting marriage but another kind of relationship. It is in this sense, then, that canon 1095 uses the expression "essential rights and obligations," which are essential because they form the essence of the juridical relation that is marriage.
From the essential core of rights and obligations given and accepted at the moment of consent, we can derive, as further specifications, other rights and obligations which complete the juridical structure of marriage: these are the right and obligation to common conjugal life (convictum coniugale) and common family life of spouses and children.46 The right to common conjugal life is not to be confused with the consortium itself or partnership which contains all the matrimonial rights and obligations including the particular right to the convictum coniugale47 or right to live together with the mutual services this entails. All matrimonial rights and obligations form the juridical content of marriage, but those essential rights and obligations which express the essential object of consent are necessary and sufficient to establish the marriage partnership. This should not lead to any legalistic and reductionist view of marriage if we keep in mind that when the spouses, knowingly and deliberately, commit those very personal acts implied in the formal object of consent as mutual, exclusive, perpetual and irrevocable rights and obligations, they do give and accept each other and form an incipient but true communio personarum in conformity with the laws which the Creator inscribed in the humanity of man and woman.
In the context of canon 1095, which refers to psychological incapacity to contract marriage, the reference to essential rights and obligations is equivalent to the essential object and juridical minimum defined by the essential ends and the essential properties. For this reason, in order to determine in each case a person's psychological capacity for valid marriage consent, Rotal jurisprudence continues to use the traditional goods of offspring, fidelity, and indissolubility integrated within an interpersonal relationship whose outcome is the good of the spouses. Since the meaning of those bona or blessings is well defined through the efforts of doctrine and jurisprudence, they are the preferred criteria in determining a person's psychological incapacity to contract marriage rather than the essential rights and obligations, for the latter cannot always be formulated as a "juridical minimum" and practical "measure" of incapacity to contract.
By their commitment to a personal relationship ordered to biological procreation, the spouses acquire the essential right and obligation to sexual acts apt for procreation but by their commitment to the upbringing of offspring, which is part of human procreation, no particular act or service can be said to be absolutely essential, except for the act of wanting to receive or accept the children born within the same complementary relationship. By their commitment to pursue the good of the spouses, again no particular act can be said to be essential except for the very act of consenting to marriage. While any interpersonal and complementary relationship between persons is, by reason of its own complementariness, ordered to some particular common good of the persons forming it, the special complementariness of marriage between a male person and a female person is ordered to the most general good of the spouses, namely the "good of the person."48 Since all spousal acts involve a giving of self to the spouse, we can say that all those acts or services are ordered to the good of the spouse but none is essential in pursuing the same end. Consequently, no particular right and obligation can be said to be essential in ordering the relationship to that end. From the spouses' commitment to the unity of the relationship, the spouses agree to an exclusive spousal relationship (i.e., fidelity) which is specially signified and fostered by their exclusive sexual acts, and this allows us to speak of a particular right and obligation to fidelity that is essential to the unity of the relationship. From the spouses' commitment to indissolubility, however, no essential right and obligation can be derived because indissolubility in its negative formulation involves a prohibition that qualifies the entire marital relationship and does not originate by itself any particular act or service.
It is therefore for this reason that it remains more practical to judge a person's psychological capacity for marriage by the criteria of offspring, fidelity, and indissolubility within a real, even if minimal, interpersonal relationship which is a precondition for the good of the spouses as persons. In establishing a marriage, the spouses formalize an interpersonal relationship between themselves and in doing so they give to each other the right over those conjugal acts which are the material object of marriage consent. However, in order to be capable of marriage the spouses must be capable, first of all, of that minimal human self-giving required to form a relationship between persons and, in the second place, they must be masters, both de iure and de facto, of the conjugal acts that are the material object of marriage consent, for a person who lacks possession or mastery over his own acts lacks capacity to give to another person the right over those same acts.
Institutional ends and good of the person
Catholic theology has taught from very early times that Christian marriage consists of an agreement or contract of a special nature (sui generis) and has employed the so-called "contractual theory" with its juridical/philosophical notions and arguments in order to define marriage and its essential elements in objective and precise juridical terms.49 More recently, the Church has sought to support the traditional teaching on marriage with the arguments of "personalistic" ethics in order to respond to the questions raised by modern times.50 While a certain polarization may have existed between those authors who held on to the "objective" and essential definitions of the "contractual theory" and those who emphasized the "subjective" and personal elements of this most human reality, contemporary teaching seeks to integrate and find concordance in those two methods of argumentation.
In continuity with traditional teaching, the Code of 1983 uses the concept of "contract" also understood as "covenant"51 in order to include the eternal will of the Creator within the agreement reached by the contracting parties. At the same time that these notions emphasize the "objective" and immutable character of Christian marriage, conciliar and post-conciliar magisterial texts, and most particularly the teaching of John Paul II, have stressed the human values of the marriage covenant and encouraged the "personalistic" study of marriage. According to the first principle of "personalistic ethics," for any command or law to be in consonance with a person's dignity and freedom, the good of the act commanded must be sufficiently presented to the person's self-consciousness and self-determination and must be a true good that perfects the person. The human person, in other words, should never be instrumentalized or used as an inert instrument, as it were, for the attainment of some extra-personal or alien purposes.52
The laws of the Church on marriage, which in many ways directs a person's free will on matters that are very personal, do not infringe on the person's power of self-determination and do not impose any legal requirements extrinsic to the person's true interest. The laws of the Church, rather, have derived from a most fundamental understanding of this natural form of human behavior and continue to direct the persons subject to those laws towards the authentic "good of the person." In addition, the effective implementation of those laws requires a continuous work of evangelization on marriage and the ongoing pastoral care of married couples.53 The study of matrimonial law should seek, then, concordance and not polarization between the traditional institutional/contractual theory and the more recent phenomenological/personalistic method in the study of marriage.
Among the many issues of possible contrast between those two theoretical frameworks, those concerning the "ends of marriage" and the "object of consent" seem specially relevant. In the 1917 Code (can. 108 1), the object of consent was formulated as the ius in corpus; in the 1983 Code (can. 1057, 2), the object of marriage consent is described as sese mutuo tradunt et accipiunt in which is included, as we explained, the ius ad operationes proprie coniugales. From the formulation of the ends of marriage in the 1917 Code (can. 1013, l) as "primary" and "secondary," canonists drew the conclusion that marriage was primarily defined by "procreation and education of offspring" and that "mutual help" also defined marriage but as an end subordinated to the primary end. In the Code of 1983, the ends to which marriage is ordered of its own very nature are formulated as "the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring" (can. 1055, 1) by which it is perhaps more clearly expressed that marriage is meant for offspring and for the spouses' perfection as persons without implying any separation between these two ontological ends.
In reference to the marriage covenant by which the spouses commit their own persons, perpetually and exclusively, to the ends of marriage, the "personalistic principle" means that when the spouses bind themselves by those juridical obligations that form the "bond of marriage," they make a "sincere and mutual gift of self" for the good of the spouses themselves and of the children to be conceived.54 The exclusiveness and indissolubility of the relationship which bind the spouses55 are required, as Catholic theology has always taught, by the good of the spouse as well as the good of the children.56 Those are then juridical obligations not alien to the good of the persons but required by it. In fact, the essential obligations binding the spouses produce the goods by which they are blessed, namely, offspring, fidelity, and indissoluble permanence.57
The essence of marriage is the bond made up of a whole network of rights and obligations. If properly understood, there is nothing too abstract and "legalistic" in these notions that would lead to a whole system of external formalities unworthy of the dignity of the person and of the "freedom for which Christ has set us free."58 The very notion of rights and obligations expresses in juridical terms a dynamic relation that can exist only between persons, for a right is a moral power flowing from the person's individuality and dignity, and the corresponding obligation entails the acknowledgment of and the free yielding to what belongs to another person. In marriage, furthermore, rights and obligations refer to the personal goods or gifts of the spouses' masculine and feminine personhood which are given and accepted for the purpose of very personal common ends-the good of the spouses and the good of the children. These rights and obligations form the bond of marriage which can also be described as a "unit" or entity different from the persons forming it but "common" to them in a most personal and profound way, for the persons forming this "common unit" have added to their human personality the qualities of spouse, father or mother. In fact, the communion of persons that is marriage is actualized through the exercise of the rights and obligations. The complementary relationship of man and woman becomes a true communion of persons only when the spouses give and accept each other through those very personal acts due in justice by force of the initial commitment. n
1 The Catholic World Report, June 1995, pp. 42-45.
2 The 1917 Code of Canon Law was the Church's first official text to use the terms "primary" and "secondary" ends of marriage developed by the scholasticism of the XVI century. St. Thomas Aquinas is only concerned in emphasizing that "offspring is what is most essential to marriage" (S. Th. Suppl., q. 49, a. 3).
3 Cf. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) no. 1601.
4 Cf. Mark 2:19; 1 Cor. 6:15f; 2 Cor. 11:2; Eph. 5:21-33.
5 Cf. C. I. C., can. 1057, 1.
6 Cf. Ibid.
7 Cf. CCC, nos. 1626-1627.
8 Cf. S. Th. Suppl. q. 48, art. 1.
9 Cf. can. 1134, 1135, 1057, 2.
10 Cf. S. Th. Suppl. q. 45, art. 1. ad 2 & q. 44, art. 1.
11 Cf. Gen. 2:24.
12 Cf. Familiaris Consortio, nos. 12-15, 18-20.
13 Cf. CCC, no. 1627.
14 Cf. CCC, nos. 1638-1640.
15 Cf. St. Augustine, De moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae et de moribus manicheorum, 1. cap. 15.
16 Cf. CCC, nos. 1615-1617.
17 Cf. S. Th., Suppl., q. 49, a. 3; q. 41, a. 1.
18 Cf. S. Th., Suppl., q. 45, art. 1.
19 Cf. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, no. 11.
20 Cf. Ibid.; CCC, nos. 1604-1605.
21 Cf. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, no. 28.
22 Cf. S. Th., Suppl., q. 41, a. 1, resp.
23 Cf. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, no. 11.
24 Cf. S. Th. Suppl. q. 44, a. 2, ad 3; q. 65, a. 1; q. 64, art. 2.
25 Cf. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio. no. 14.
26 Cf. Matt. 19:6f.
27 Cf. John Paul II, Letter to Families, nos. 10-11.
28 Cf. Vatican Council II, Const. Gaudium et spes, no. 48.
29 Cf. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio , nos. 11-12 & 14.
30 Cf. S. Th. Suppl., q. 41, art. 1, resp.
31 Cf. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio , no. 14.
32 Cf. CCC, nos. 1652-1654.
33 Cf. C.I.C., can. 1101, 2; S. Th. q. 48, art. 2.
34 Cf. Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, no. 48; John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio nos. 13, 19-20.
35 Cf. Matt. 19:6f.
36 Cf. C. I. C., can. 1056.
37 Cf. Gen. 2:24.
38 Cf. CCC, nos. 1643-1645.
39 Cf. Matt. 19:5: Gen. 2:24.
40 Cf. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, no. 20; CCC, nos. 1614-1617.
41 Cf. Ibid. Familiaris Consortio, no. 14; CCC, nos. 1652-1657.
42 Cf. CCC, nos. 1646-1651.
43 Cf. S. Th., Suppl. q. 42, a. 2 ad 4 & 7.
44 Cf. C. I. C., can. 1055, 2; CCC, nos. 1638-1642, 1643.
45 Cf. C. I. C., can. 1055, 1.
46 Cf. Familiaris Consortio, nos. 17-66.
47 Cf. C. I. C., can. 1151.
48 Cf. John Paul II, Letter to Families, Feb. 22, 1994. nos. 10-11. CCC, nos. 1655-1657.
49 Cf. S. Th. Suppl. q. 45. a. 2 ad 2; q. 50, a. 1. resp.; q. 52. a. 1, resp.; q. 53, a. 1, resp.
50 Cf. Pius XI, Casti connubii, December 31, 1930; Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, August 12, 1965; Paul VI, Humanae vitae, July 25, 1968; John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, November 22, 1981; Letter to Families, Feb. 22, 1994.
51 Cf. C. I. C., can. 1055, 1 and 2, 1057, 1058.
52 Cf. John Paul II, Letter to Families, no. 12.
53 Cf. C.I.C., can. 1063-1065.
54 Cf. John Paul II, Letter to Families, nos. 10 & 11.
55 Cf. C. I. C., can. 1056.
56 Cf. Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, no. 48.
57 Cf. S. Th., Suppl., q. 49, art. 1, resp.. art. 4, resp.
58 Cf. Gal. 5:1.