Contrary to what we hear incessantly, marriage is not a right; it is an estate, a condition. There are conditions of life that have nothing to do with rights. One doesn’t have a right to go through puberty. One either does or doesn’t. What is the condition of being married, and what makes it possible to attain it? Franz Rosenzweig’s anthropology—in which religion is a response to man’s sentience of death, and the sentience of death is not only an individual but also an communal characteristic—may help answer that question. Humankind fights mortality in two ways. The first is to raise children who will remember us, and the second is to seek eternal life through divine grace. The estate of marriage involves both.
“Why do men chase women?” asks Rose Castorini in Moonstruck. “Because they want to live forever.” The data suggest that we marry and have children for just that reason. When we cease to hope in eternal life, we no longer marry and no longer have children. That is the terrible lesson that the triumph of secularism has taught us. In industrial countries where atheism triumphed in the form of communism, fertility rates have fallen to levels barely half of replacement. The fertility of Eastern Europe in 2005 was only 1.25 children per woman, according to the United Nations Population Prospects. Japan stood at 1.3. In secular Western Europe it was 1.6. In industrial countries where most people profess some form of religious faith, however, fertility remains at replacement levels or above. America’s fertility in 2005 stood at 2.1, and Israel’s at 2.9.
The concentration of childbearing among people of faith is evident not only from international comparison but also within countries and religious denominations. The clearest data are available for the different Jewish currents. As Steven Bayme wrote March 24 in Jewish Week, “Orthodox Jews constitute at most ten percent of the total U.S. Jewish population. Yet twenty-three percent of Jewish children are Orthodox, according to a United Jewish Communities report. Among affiliated Jewish homes 197,000 children are Reform, 153,000 are Conservative, and 228,000 are Orthodox. The smallest of the movements (Orthodox) contains thirty-eight percent of the children of affiliated Jewish homes.”
These observations suggest that when we talk about nature and marriage, it is a peculiarly human nature that is at work. It is not the nature of some of the other mammals to breed in captivity; it is not the nature of homo sapiens to breed in the absence of the hope of eternal life. The first principle of Augustine’s anthropology, that we are made for God and restless until we come to him, coheres well with what we observe in societies that abandon God. Our restlessness in that terminal case can reach levels that tear us to pieces. It is entirely possible to devise other means of perpetuating the species than marriage, for example, the collective raising of children as in Plato’s dystopia and the various attempts to realize some of its features. But none of them has taken, not even for short periods of time. They have no interest for human beings. It is not only that people want to raise their own children, rather than the state’s children: Without the expectation of eternal life within a faith community, mating couples do not evince interest in reproducing at replacement levels. An often-cited exception to this rule seems to be Sweden, where only sixty percent of women will marry at current rates (compared to eighty-five percent in the United States), and fifty-six percent of births occur outside of marriage, compared to thirty-five percent in the United states. Twenty-eight percent of all Swedish couples cohabit without marrying, compared to eight percent in the United States. Swedish fertility, to be sure, is an unsustainable 1.6, so the problem will liquidate itself over time.
Marriage as an institution that fulfills our nature: It is a holy estate that permits the mating pair of humans to embed their reproductive activity in the eschatological hope of their faith community. The propagation of the species in its animal characteristics is united with the continuity of the people of God. If, as observation seems to confirm, the willingness of humans to form mating pairs and to bear offspring depends in the first instance on eschatological hope, then it is marriage as a sacred institution that makes possible the perpetuation of human life.
In the words of the Christian wedding ceremony that we know from the Book of Common Prayer,
Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this man and this woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honorable estate, instituted of God in the time of man's innocency, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church.
It is the mystical union between Christ and his Church that is primary, and marriage is instituted by God to allow a human mating pair to emulate it.
Not dissimilar are the Seven Blessings of the Jewish marriage service. It is because of the image of God planted in each human being that the perpetuation of humanity is possible. Each bridal pair recreates the bliss of the first man and woman in the Garden of Eden:
Blessing Four: “We bless you, God, for forming each person in your image. You have planted within us a vision of you and given us the means that we may flourish through time. Blessed are you, Creator of humanity.”
Blessing Five: “May Israel, once bereft of her children, now delight as they gather together in joy. Blessed are you, God, who lets Zion rejoice with her children.”
Blessing Six: “Let these loving friends taste of the bliss you gave to the first man and woman in the Garden of Eden in the days of old. Blessed are you, the Presence who dwells with bride and groom in delight.”
Blessing Seven: “Blessed are you, who lights the world with happiness and contentment, love and companionship, peace and friendship, bridegroom and bride. Let the mountains of Israel dance! Let the gates of Jerusalem ring with the sounds of joy, song, merriment, and delight—the voice of the groom and the voice of the bride, the happy shouts of their friends and companions. We bless you, God, who brings bride and groom together to rejoice in each other."
The human bride and bridegroom unite in mystical emulation of God’s espousal of Israel, and the very mountains of Israel dance in joy with each wedded pair.
Husband and wife join together as a microcosm of the union of God and his people. It is the union of God and his people that makes possible holy matrimony. The pagans of the ancient world had marriages to ensure legitimacy and inheritance, and the reproductive relationships of wedded pairs stood under the sign of the civic gods. In that respect all societies have sanctified marriage after their own fashion. But only the passionate God of Israel by espousing his people makes possible the union of khesed and ahavah, of agape and eros, that is, the union of the biological erotic impulse and of the uniquely human desire for eternal life. It is not the love of the bridal couple that defines marriage. Love comes in many forms, some of them pathological. It is the fact that the love of the bridal couple seeks to conform to the eternal image of covenantal love—between God and his people—that uniquely defines the estate of marriage.
Marriage is celebrated before a holy congregation; it is the entry of the bride and bridegroom into the holy congregation in their new condition as husband as wife that makes the marriage holy. Civil marriage never quite replaces marriage before a holy congregation, but it serves a similar purpose where the predominant religious culture makes civil marriage an imitation of sacred marriage.
This may be the first time in Western history in which the sacred foundation of society, whose irreducible fundamental unit is the family, faces explicit opposition. If militant secularism succeeds in banishing the sacred from social life, we will lose heart and perish, as the tragic victims of communism are perishing. There is nothing to be done for the infertile, aging peoples of the former Soviet empire. The best thing one can do for them is not to be like them. Secular Western Europe already has one foot in the demographic grave. If we lose the sacred in the United States, we will follow them into Sheol. We might as well make a stand now over the sacred character of marriage, because there is nowhere to fall back from here.
David P. Goldman is associate editor of First Things.
Comments:
And so the next question is how. I don't think insisting on this point will work. Appeals to revelation will not persuade enough people to make a difference.
David, with "congregation" you are definitely onto something. If there were communities, as you say, that are clearly thriving, happy, and perpetuating themselves lovingly -- are examples of genuine human flourishing -- then healthy marriages will have strength in numbers. Isolated sacred marriages are easily seen as anomalies, "good for them," etc. But entire communities, visible as such? Something good must be happening there!
So the job has to include defining thriving communities as such, and to make them resistant to inevitable ridicule from the culture of death. This, it seems to me, is how we can make a stand. Nothing argues like success.
Life sells, but who's buying ?
Also, marriage is not a condition like puberty is a condition. Assuming survival, puberty is inevitable while marriage is not.
Excellent, thank you. Your blending of Levenson & Madigan with De Lubac, of Jewish tradition and communio theology, is fruitful.
I am reminded of the difference in tone between weddings of elderly people and weddings from which children may result. The former tend to be small, discreet affairs. All concerned plainly see the difference. The remarriage of two widowed people merely sanctions mutual comfort and release from loneliness. Only the story of Sarah's conception of Isaac in old age, and acceptance of the possibility of such miracles, has permitted us to call these unions "marriage." The difference is like that between sitting in the shade of a tree and eating its fruit, and planting a tree from which only generations to come will derive shade and fruit. The former is licit and may be good, but only the latter inherently transcends self and mortality and thereby cultivates "the seed of eternal life" that the Lord has implanted in us.
And one step furhter, if a same-sex-marriage cannot equal a traditional marriage, by definition --just as the Government cannot redine a horse a cow or a hawk a sparrow-- then why should The Church care what the Government recognizes as marriage?
Call SSM what you will, people will know the difference between a Marriage between Man and Woman for the purpose of creating life, opposed to a Marriage entered to fufill some other purpose.
Perhapes a SSM would mock The Church or Christianity whatever... but it's minor mocking compared to the rest of today's cultures.
Yes?
And "congregation" is important, even above "community" (or "village," a term I think I'm coming to loathe). In a congregation you have the figure of a marriage: a conjoining of God with His people. When people marry before a congregation, they have that figure before them, with the expectation that the marriage will reflect and embody it. Community, on the other hand, is grounded in human relationship and on expediency of one kind or another, and has largely supplanted the congregation as the default figure for marriage, which is kind of the problem.
I find, on a purely personal level, that there's not much I can do for the aging, voluntarily infertile people of my own acquaintance who've bought into the "takes a village" mentality on the understanding that other people will have the children and they will be the village. The task of trying to make someone understand the difference between "having children in my life" and actually having children is a daunting one indeed.
"I'm still looking for the exegetical basis for the imperative to save civilization."
John 13:34 -- "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another."
Many of us have children. Even unbelievers want their children to flourish. Those of us who are believers want them to flourish as children of God. Creating and perpetuating a healthy civilization seems to be required for this to occur, at least during our lifetimes.
Isn't this enough?
Your post is at least off base, if not insane. First of all, Jews have an explicit command to make sure Israel never perishes, and God has assured them that they never will. Next, the bible itself commands our first parents, and all of us in them, to "be fruitful and multiply." The point being that, even if we shouldn't "save" our civilization, civilizations that do not heed this command will surely perish. Thus why there are no pagan romans walking about these days. Next, cut the Constantinian crap. What we shouldn't give to have a Constantine over us if he would be willing to fight for the unborn, halt the spread of Islam, and stop all pathetic talk of marriage being anything but an instituion and estate whose purpose is ordered toward having Children. The anti-Constantine crowd rails against civilization, but what do they want in its stead. Barbarism? I don't think many Visigoths would have been interested in Yoderian pacifism. All authority comes from God, and no Christian should ever hope for the dissolution of authority, even if it is indeed quite fallable. Finally, the Church can have Virgins to the order of Christ, Paul, Agnes and the Roman Martyrs, etc., because the Church is truly the Virgin Mary, bride of Christ. That is, through the miracle of Christ's birth, death, and Resurrection, the Church can be a "fecund virginity," so that even if we rightfully hope that many of our children will become Priests and Religious, this will stem from people willing to have many children (which the records of the early Church demonstrates). Remember, the womb is the first mission field...thats why we Catholics baptize babies!
"If there were communities, as you say, that are clearly thriving, happy, and perpetuating themselves lovingly -- are examples of genuine human flourishing -- then healthy marriages will have strength in numbers. Isolated sacred marriages are easily seen as anomalies, "good for them," etc. But entire communities, visible as such? Something good must be happening there!"
Down in Florida Ave Maria University is meant to be, among other things, just such a community. In another way there are similar "communities" forming themselves among the graduates of the "new" Catholic and some Protestant colleges who experience a large number of marriages, fruitful marriages, among their alumni. And, among the Catholic ones, there are a large number of vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life.
It is cause for hope.
On the other hand many of these institutions suffer from a lack of support. Perhaps one can consider becoming a "spiritual alumnus" of one of them, and instead of supporting the dying vine branches of the Georgetowns and Notre Dames and so many others place one's money where it will doo much good.
May I suggest a donation, a regular donation, to places like Thomas Aquinas, Thomas More, Christendom and Dallas?
Huh?
Civil marriage never quite replaces holy marriage? Civil marriage does not replace holy marriage - PERIOD. I thought teachings on sacramental and contractual marriage addressed that with finality.
Instead, your civil "holy congregation" argument perpetuates the child-bearing-age man/woman on a beach wedding with the local magistrate, and supports this couple simply because they are an "imitation" of sacred marriage. Imitation? Since when are we rallying around the thought of "imitations" to our sacramental experience?
I join my family and holy congregation for Sunday and/or daily Mass. David, you can rally your holy "congregation" for a wedding in the public square during weekday office hours all you want (lest you be confused for a Sabbath wedding), but don't mind if I decline the invitation.
Civil marriage is civil, sacred marriage is sacred. The reality you promote prolongs such "imitations," as well as empowers a handful of clerics of another "predominant religious culture" to one day have their way with mine.
I would suggest a reading Aristitle's Nicomachean Ethics, Augustine's City of God and Confessions, Aquanis' Summa, Pascal's Pences, and to give you an icy cold shiver, read The "Withering Away" of Marriage: Some Lessons from the Bolshevik Family Law Reforms in Russia, 1917-1926 by Lynn D. Wardle Presented at Georgetown University and published by The Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy 2004.
Liberalism, on the other hand, proposes a radically different interface between religion and public life. In contrast to the theocratic state, the liberal state does not uphold a total way of life. The liberal state suppresses violent crime and maintains the roads, but it leaves us at liberty to construct our own lives through voluntary cooperation, for better or for worse.
Theocracy brings the scope of public life to its maximum; liberalism, to its minimum. I think First Things is grasping for an Aristotelian mean between these two extremes that is, in reality, completely unsustainable, and I think you would be well advised to bite the bullet and choose one model or the other.
To choose the theocratic model would be to propose that American jurisdictions, such as counties and cities, should be released from the constitutional straitjacket that now prevents them from establishing their own official religions and instituting laws and customs that conform with those religions. (Minorities and dissenters in such jurisdictions would either be tolerated at the social margins or asked to leave.)
To choose the liberal model would be to propose that the American governmental apparatus, at all of its levels, should continue to disengage itself from the lives of its citizens, until the scope of its activity has receded within the strict lines of liberalism. At the same time, the role and influence of non-state organizations, such as religious congregations and private communities, would grow in proportion to the withering-away of the state.
In the middle of these two models seems to be the proposal, which I regard to be ill-conceived, that American law and custom should be shaped by a sort of generic theism, or what is the lowest common denominator among Jewish-Christian social norms. I see two major problems with this proposal.
Firstly, the more comprehensive this body of theistic social norms becomes, and thus the more reliably and effectively it guides the lives and choices of the theistic majority, the greater will be the number of people who find these state-enforced social norms to be intolerable. The enormous discord and strife thus occasioned would demand a resolution, which might take three possible forms. One, the dissenters could be imprisoned or exiled, thus removing them from the population and restoring tranquility. Two, the dissenters could be officially exempted from the mainstream laws and customs, e.g., from those prohibiting homosexual conduct. Yet this would obviously tend to undermine those theistic social norms, as the constant presence of those who violate them with official sanction would gradually bleed away their power to steer society. Three, the norms themselves could be loosened, such as by allowing gays to marry; but this is the worst option of all, because not only would lax and permissive norms be inherently less effective at regulating individual decisions, but they would also confuse the minds of the population and cause them, for example, to mistake a gay marriage, which is presumably an unhealthy and undesirable lifestyle choice, for an authentic marriage, as both would ultimately bear the state's imprimatur.
Secondly, a one-size-fits-all theistic compromise morality cannot properly be supported by any philosophical tradition, such as that of that medieval rabbis or the Christian scholars. This lack of rigorous justification leaves the state's laws and customs vulnerable to corruption, as the political pressures of each time and situation wear them away, like the rock of a canyon, until they have assumed a more convenient shape. By distancing theistic social norms from any specific tradition that might sustain and uphold them, and then lending them the force of law and subjecting them to revision by political assemblies, one thereby guarantees the eventual decay and destruction of those very norms.
I believe, then, that there exists no middle ground between the theocratic and liberal orders. One cannot 'make a stand' upon quicksand. Where stands First Things?
In what sense are these extreme theocratic and liberal models sustainable? Is Iran sustainable? Yes, if violence against your own citizenry is the health of the state. Is the liberal state sustainable? Yes, if the world were other than it is. Please tell us more about the "withering- away of the state" that you think we will enjoy under the liberal model. I was not aware that disengaging itself from the lives of the citizenry was an interest of the liberal state.
Furthermore, your argument against the mean is this: the "middle" state will corrupt into a theocracy, or the "middle state" will corrupt into liberalism. Bite the bullet? I cannot help but get the sense you think the state has nothing to do but exist; that sustainability has more to do with what is easiest and inevitable rather than what is best or actually sustainable and possible.
Also, I don't believe this article is advocating the United States government should become a theocracy or the straw man middle state you proposed. A "government of the people, by the people, for the people" will suffice. But it will need more people, and better, if it "shall not perish from the earth."
I believe you have set up a false dilemma working off the notion that the only two discrete units in society are the individual and government, each forming the entirety of the public and private spheres, respectively. You are right to identify that if a society must be "religious," there must be some mechanism of suasion to keep the individual checked, and, in your view, that must come from government, because you seem to think that government is the only other discrete unit in society capable of playing a force on the individual one way or the other. Therefore, to you, it may seem that there is either secularism or theocracy.
I would suggest a different interface, following Tocqueville. Society is composed of several interlocking units and institutions -when we speak of society, we are talking not only about government and the individual, but also about the family, the extended clan, the local community, the province or "state" in America, the economic structures (unions, corporations, so on), the religious institutions, and so on. It is therefore possible to create a social sphere through which religion can not only operate but have an essential role in the forming of mores and customs, a role for religion in the "civil society," so to speak.
By no means does that role for religion mean that government must enforce a "total life" for its citizens. It only necessitates that government not actively destroy the intermediate institutions between itself and individuals and recognize and defend the cultural fabric formed by those intermediate institutions. This has been the case for most of American history, and Tocqueville believed it was a powerful check both on the leveling and despotic ambitions of pure democracy and upon the corruption of faith by its union with worldly power.
Your mistake, Hans, is in believing that the public square is the government square. The government is only a part of the public square. A secular government can exist in a religious public square, provided that the fabric of "civil society" is not worn out.
Yours, &c.,
Maro
Asians deal with the problems of the "hood" and PC by self-segregating into their own neighborhoods where they can send their kids to their own schools. Examples of this include the Peninsula (west side) of the Bay Area and the I-10 corridor to San Gabriel valley in SoCal. Another factor is that the Chinese want their kids to learn their home language (Mandarin or Cantonese) in addition to English and, of course, our public schools do not offer this. Thus, they create their own private schools for this purpose.
The other people lack the future time orientation to think about things like housing and schools in deciding to have kids. They just have kids without thinking about it.
Stated your way, the faithful marry and bear children and the unfaithful do not marry and do not bear children. However, eschatological hope can also be a reason for a valid call to not marry (for example, St Paul, along with most professional religious thought the history of the church) and a reason not to despair if children are not present in a marriage.
As was stated in an earlier post, "marriage is not a condition like puberty is a condition. Assuming survival, puberty is inevitable while marriage is not. " Marriage is a vocation to which not all are called. So it is also with childbearing, though, by virtue of the baptismal family, those within these communities are called to help form, protect, guide and love children whether or not they gave birth to them.
Ultimately, I believe it is improper to state that the only faithful "estate" one can be in is that of marriage and this is, indeed, what the article implies. It is an incomplete way to think of marriage, singleness and faithful life.
This is an enlightening article. Last year I had an opportunity to read "Man and Woman God Created Them: A Theology of the Body" by John Paul II and translated by Michael Waldstein. In this book John Paul II explains the original stages of man (original innocence, original solitude, original unity and original nakedness), the true nature of love and how through a deep understanding of the Eucharist we understand the institution of marriage. I personally was deeply touched by the book and God's plans for men and women. According to John Paul II husband and wife experience a glimpse of the "life in the world to come" that we profess in our creed. His teachings focus on the heart of the man and our ability to love. It is very sad how so many people don't understand the real foundation of life, the unconditional surrender of true love and the ultimate goal of love which is to create life rather than to please selfishness and lust.
I truely believe that the deep understanding of marriage as you explain in your article and like the John Paul II taught, is the solution to many problems on earth. The distortion of human sexuality is the main reason why so many deseases are spreading around presenting a challenge to the medical field. Not everyone understand that these are behavioral deseases that can be controlled only through discipline and committed behavior to God. Abortion, same sex marriage, alternative sex lifestyles, etc are all related to the lack of understanding of marriage according to Judeo-Christian values. Marriage is also strictly linked to our personhood and gift of self. What is the best that we can give? Answer: Ourselves. Giving yourself freely and completely to your spouse can be explained as an analogy to Christ giving himself for the sins of the world; Or the people of Israel -the chosen people of God- who are united to God in a way so profound that Israel is not just Israel, but "God's loved, chosen children," as my godfather would say.
David the big challenge is that to understand marriage one must understand the human person. Not everyone is willing to take on that task. That's why John Paul II explains the human person according to St Thomas Aquinas whose thoughts about the subject can be summarized in this line: "the goal of human existence is union and eternal fellowship with God." (Also see "Love and Responsibility" which is a thought provoking book about sexuality, the nature of love, marriage, and the human person). I also must confess that this article awakened my interest about the writings of Franz Rosenzweig -who you usually quote very often.