THE LAW SCHOOL

The Goods of Marriage in Canon Law

Reverend John J. Coughlin, O.F.M.
Professor of Law

Notre Dame Law School
Legal Studies Research Paper No. 07-28

This paper can be downloaded without charge from the Social Science Research Network electronic library at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=983728 A complete list of Research Papers in this Series can be found at: http://www.nd.edu/~ndlaw/faculty/ssrn.html MARRIAGE, THE GOODS OF by John J. Coughlin, O.F.M.
I.

General Description
Saint Augustine provided the classical description of the goods of marriage as

fidelity (fidelium), children (proles), and sacrament (sacramentum). According to
Augustine, fidelity is the understanding and intention of the married couple to exercise exclusive sexual faithfulness to one another. As the fruit of fidelity, parents accept children in love, nurturing them in affection, and educating them in religion. The sacrament constitutes a symbol of the permanence and stability in marriage. (De Genesi ad litteram, 9, 7, 12). The classical Augustinian description of the three goods of marriage is reflected, but not repeated verbatim, in the 83 CIC. Section One of C. 1055 defines the ends of marriage as the good of the spouses and procreation and education of children. The language of the canon situates the two ends of marriage in the context of marriage as covenant and sacrament. C. 1056 lists unity and indissolubility as the essential properties of marriage. The elements of the Augustinian description of the goods of marriage—fidelity, children, and sacrament—inform the present law of the church describing marriage as sacramental covenant in terms of ends and properties—the love of the spouses, children, unity, and indissolubility.
II.

Saint Augustine’s Traditional Three Goods
In describing the goodness of marriage, Saint Augustine did not set out to afford a

systemic theological and canonical treatment of the subject. Rather, his teaching on marriage was formed through his experience as a bishop writing to address pastoral situations in Northern Africa. During the end of the fourth century, Augustine faced a

2 challenge raised by an ascetical movement in the Church that had Manichean overtones.
Some full-fledged Manicheans, the “Elect,” adopted the ascetical practice of sexual continence. The Manicheans thought that sexual reproduction was a trick employed by an evil deity to trap the human spirit in a physical body. This view was in conflict with the Christian interpretation of the Book of Genesis and the fundamental goodness of creation. As Christian asceticism developed, Saint Jerome entered into a debate with his fellow Christian, Jovian, over the nature of sexual reproduction and marriage. Saint
Jerome taught the superiority of virginity over marriage, and he urged married persons to end marital relations and to live a chaste asceticism. In extolling the goodness of marriage, Jovian argued that the married state was equal in status to virginity. He insisted that the married person who adhered to Christian belief could be just as virtuous as the Christian virgin. He accused Saint Jerome and other Christian ascetics of tending toward a Manichean denigration of the human body and sexual reproduction.
As Bishop of Hippo, Augustine attempted to steer a middle course in the debate between Jerome and Augustine. Augustine believed that the procreation of children was the “primary, natural, and legitimate purpose of marriage.” (De Nuptiis et
Concupiscentia, 2, 1). Moreover, he concurred with Jerome that virginity and chastity were superior ways of Christian ascetical practice than the state of marriage. At the same time, in The Good of Marriage, he wrote: “The marriage of male and female is something good. . . . not solely because of the procreation of children, but also because of the natural companionship between the spouses.” (3, 3). As a bishop, Augustine feared that the unity of the Christian community might be threatened if sexual abstinence became a line of demarcation between morally perfect and less perfect Christians. This

3 pastoral crisis early in his episcopate led Augustine to confirm the fundamental position of Saint Jerome even as he developed a doctrine of creation that attested to the goodness of the human body and sexuality. Specifically, he identified procreation of children
(proles) and the natural companionship of the spouses (fidelium) as aspects of the goodness of marriage
In response to Jovian, Augustine found it necessary to deny that he himself was a
Manichean. Prior to his conversion to Christianity, Augustine had in fact enlisted in a lower rank of the Manicheans as an Auditor. Auditors were permitted to have sexual relations as long as they practiced certain contraceptive techniques. In his Confessions,
Augustine reports that during the time of his Manichean belief, he lived in fidelity with a woman for fifteen years who in the first year of the relationship bore their only child, a son, Adeodatus. He mentions other sexual relationships that apparently were also childless. After his conversion, Augustine adopted a pro-reproductive and anticontraceptive approach to sexual relations in marriage. At the same time, Augustine exhibits a suspicion of sexual relations. Based upon his experience as reveled in the
Confessions, Augustine adopted the view of Saint Paul that a conflict between spirit and flesh was characteristic of human existence. In his work On Continence, which was composed sometime after 412 AD, Augustine rejected the negative perspective of the
Manicheans to creation, the human body, and the ethical consequences derived from it.
Contrary to the ascetical practice of the Manichean “Elect” who refrained from sexual relations on account of the evil of the human body, Augustine held that continence should be understood as God’s gift and motivated by love for God. He also rejected the
Manichean position that the power of evil was stronger than the power of God, and

4 therefore some persons were compelled to commit sexual sins. In the face of the deterministic strain of Manicheanism, Augustine emphasized the role played by free will.
Augustine’s emphasis on the goodness of marriage and free will were tempered by the conflict with the Pelagian heresy that became the focus of his writing for much of last two decades of his life. Pelagius was alarmed by the number of professed Christians who excused their sinfulness on account of the weakness of human nature as a result of original sin. According to Pelagius and his followers, God created human nature as good and endowed it with the intellectual and volitional capacity to live in accord with virtue.
Augustine responded that human nature, although created good, had been corrupted through original sin. He believed that original sin was passed on through sexual intercourse and that sinful lust was a primary manifestation of original sin. As a result of original sin, all persons are born into a world doomed and unable to choose the good without special divine assistance. Sin, for Augustine, was not just the consequence of inadequate teaching or bad habit but the rather result of the darkness of the soul the effects of which remained even after the cleansing of Baptism. The mysterium inequitatis, Augustine observed, could not be explained through the use of human reason alone. Augustine interpreted feelings of shame about the sexual organs and the desire for privacy during intercourse that remain even after Baptism for married Christians as indications of the continuing effects of original sin. However, he continued to affirm the fundamental goodness of creation and sexual intercourse. Referring to Adam and Even,
Augustine wrote: “God’s blessing on their marriage, with the command to increase and multiply and fill the earth, was given before the fall. The blessing remained even when

5 they had sinned, because it was a token that the begetting of children is part of the glory of marriage and has nothing to do with the penalty for sin.” (De Civitate Dei, 14, 21).
Contrary to the view of Saint Jerome and other patristic writers, Augustine held that if original sin had not been committed, there would still have been sexual intercourse in the
Garden of Paradise. Augustine speculated: “In Paradise, then, generative seed would have been sown by the husband, and the wife would have conceived as need required, and all would have been achieved by deliberate choice and not by uncontrollable lust.”
(Id. 14, 24). Prior to original sin, Augustine thought that the sexual “organs which are now excited only by lust could have been completely controlled by deliberate choice . . .
.” Sexual intercourse remained a good within marriage even if it had been disordered as a consequence of original sin. Marriage was for Augustine an objective social and sacramental reality that serves as a remedy for the concupiscence caused by original sin and a stable structure in which to procreate and educate children.
Augustine’s use of the word sacramentum does not imply that he understood marriage as a sacrament in the systemic and technical sense that it became to be understood by the medieval theologians and canonists and eventually expressed as a doctrine of faith at the Council of Trent. In The Good of Marriage, Augustine described marriage as sacred and permanent. Marriage in Augustine’s view does not depend on either the continued love or fidelity of the spouses. Nor does the bond of marriage require that the union produce children. Augustine’s emphasis is on the understanding of the mind and act of the will by which the couple are united in marriage. Once marriage is formed, it is “a kind of sacred bond, it can be dissolved in no way except by the death of the parties.” (Ch. 15). He claims that the Virgin Mary and her husband Joseph enjoyed

6 all three goods of marriage: “Faithfulness because of no adultery; offspring, our Lord
Christ; and sacrament, because no divorce.” (Contra Iulianum, 5, 12, 47). A newly discovered letter of Saint Augustine distinguishes between lawful concupiscence in marriage and the disordered concupiscence of the fallen human condition. In this letter, which is dated to about 421 AD, Augustine writes to the Bishop of Constantinople acknowledging that there may have been a sinless sexual desire in pre-lapsarian Paradise.
This possibility seems consistent with his thought about the fullness of the threefold goodness of the marriage between the Virgin Mary and her chaste spouse Joseph. It is also consistent with contemporary developments in the Church’s teaching on marriage.
III.

The Goods of Marriage, Personalism, and C. 1055, 83 CIC
When c. 1055, 83 CIC, defines the co-equal ends of marriage as the good of the

spouses and procreation of children, it reflects a development in the Church’s understanding that is rooted in the traditional Augustinian analysis. Section 1 of c. 1013 of the 17 CIC stated the Augustinian perspective about the ends of marriage: “The primary end of marriage is the procreation and education of children; the secondary end is as a mutual support and remedy for concupiscence.” In 1930, Pope Pius XI promulgated Casti Connubii in which he affirmed Saint Augustine’s view that the procreation of children was the primary end of marriage. Unlike the 17 CIC and Casti
Connubii, Gaudium et Spes declined to articulate a hierarchy of ends of marriage. It employed the term “good of the spouses” (bonum coniugum) rather than “mutual support and remedy for concupiscence” of the 17 CIC. Number 48 of Guadium et Spes states that the good of the spouses is “rooted in the will and embraces the good of the whole person.” The ends of marriage as described at Vatican II, and encoded into C. 1055, are

7 seen as inseparable. According to this theological approach, the reciprocal gift of self renders the married couple capable of participating in the creative power of God in which life is given to a new human person. The question may be raised as to how this new description of the ends of marriage fits into the classical Augustinian analysis of the threefold goodness of marriage. As some canonists have noted, one of Augustine’s three fold goods remains the procreation and education of children, which corresponds to one of the two ends of marriage identified in c. 1055. However, the good of the spouses seems to add a new element to the Augustinian goods of fidelity, children, and sacrament.
Specifically, these canonists have opined that the good of the spouses represents a new fourth good of marriage.
A second group of canonists have found it helpful to distinguish between the good of the spouses as an end of marriage and the traditional three goods of marriage. Saint
Augustine thought that the threefold goodness of marriage represented qualities that made marriage objectively beneficial for society and individuals. Fidelity, children, and stability are all qualities of the intrinsic and overall objective good which is marriage. In contrast, the good of the spouses is an end in the sense that one of the goals of marriage is to increase and deepen the love between the spouses. The traditional view of marriage as an objective societal good did not focus on the interpersonal nature of the spouses’ relationship and the deepening of the love between them. Rather, the Augustinian analysis of the goodness of marriage suggests that fulfilling the threefold goodness of marriage contributes to the good of the spouses. In light of this distinction between the inherent traditional goods and inseparable ends of marriage, the good of the spouses depends on the fulfillment of the traditional threefold goods. Exclusive sexual fidelity,

8 openness to the gift of children, and sacramental permanence of the marriage deepens the love between the spouses. Vatican II’s recognition of the good of the spouses as an end of marriage acknowledges the profound nature of marital love.
This is not to suggest that identification of the good of the spouses as a co-equal end adds nothing new to the Church’s understanding of marriage. The identification of the good of the spouses and procreation as inseparable and co-equal ends represents a legitimate development in Church’s teaching. During the first half of the twentieth century, certain Rotal jurisprudence and theoretical discussion of the nature of marriage reflected an emerging personalist approach. The writing of Karol Wojtyla on marriage and sexuality is representative of the new personalism. In Love and Responsibility, the future pope wrote: “Neither sensuality nor even concupiscence is a sin in itself, since only that which derives from the will can be sin—only an act of a conscious and voluntary nature (volunatrium).” (p. 161). In his battle with Pelagianism, Augustine had stressed concupiscence as a consequence of original sin. Wojtyla emphasized that “a sensual reaction, or the ‘stirring of’ carnal desire which results from it, and which occurs irrespectively and independent of the will, cannot in themselves be sins.” (Id.). Wojtyla contrasts the “love that is a gift of self” with “the superficial view of sex.” The superficial view involves “mutual exploitation” instead of the experience of marital love that involves a love rooted in the “renunciation of self.” Marital love in this sense does not diminish the human person as a result of self- renunciation but to the contrary
“enlarges and enriches the existence of the person.” The self-sacrifice that the spouses make in remaining faithful to each other, in being open to children and raising them, and in remaining within the indissolubility of the marital relationship actually functions to

9 render each of the spouses more fully a human person. Marital love is inherently linked to fidelity, children and indissolubility. These three traditional goods distinguish marital love for all other types of love.
Saint Augustine’s identification of the three goods of marriage may be said to contain the seeds of the twentieth century Church teaching on marriage that flowered at
Vatican II. Reflecting upon the Pauline comparison drawn between marital love and the love of Christ for the Church (Eph. 5, 23), Augustine interpreted the metaphor as a rebuke to the Manicheans who attributed human flesh “to some fabulous race of darkness which they claim has always held its evil nature without beginning . . .” (On Continence,
9, 22). In contrast, Augustine saw in the union of the flesh in marriage the goodness of creation and love of Christ for the Church. Christ’s love for the Church is the selfemptying love. In drawing a comparison between Christ’s spousal love for the Church and the love between husband and wife in marriage, the Pauline metaphor attributes a great dignity to marital love. The traditional three goods of fidelity, children, and permanence remain objectively verifiable criteria. Vatican II’s interpersonal approach to the good of marriage is fully consistent with the objectivity of the three traditional goods.
Section one of c. 1055 rests on the basis of Augustine’s three goods of marriage.
The canon defines marriage in terms of the objective criteria of fidelity, children and sacrament. Consistent with Vatican II’s interpersonal approach, the canon also describes marriage in terms of the good of the spouses, covenantal relationship, and a communion for the whole of life. The understanding of marriage as a sacred covenant and communion enhances both the objective and subjective dimensions of the marital relationship. A covenant suggests that marriage is not mere contractual relationship to be

10 breached at will. Rather, the canon’s description of marriage as covenant recalls the lasting nature of the biblical relationship between God and his chosen people. Such an objective sacred relationship does not depend on subjective preference. The covenantal relationship is also a deeply personal and intimate one. Likewise, communion means that marriage is no ordinary partnership. The English word partnership does not adequately reflect the objective and interpersonal relationship of communion. Communion recalls the purification and self-renunciation that comes only from unity with the Mystical Body of Christ. A member of the Body of Christ participates in an objective ecclesial reality in a deeply interpersonal way. The love of the spouses, their covenantal relationship, and their communion transforms the family into a “domestic church” in which children may first come to know God and the salvation offered through Christ. (LG 11). If the spouses in marriage are faithful, open to children, and committed for life, their love for each other will necessarily reflect the self-renunciation of Christ as a sacred unity of covenant and communion indissoluble for the whole of life.
Bibliography
Burke, Cormack, The ‘Bonum Coniugum’ and the ‘Bonum Prolis’: Ends of Properties of
Marriage, JURIST 49 (1989), 704-713.
Clark, Elizabeth, ed., SAINT AUGUSTINE ON MARRIAGE AND SEXUALITY (Washington,
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Coram Bruno, July 19 1991, SRRDec 83 (1991), 465-466.
Kasper, Walter, THEOLOGY OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE (New York: Seabury, 1980).
Wojtyla, Karol, LOVE AND RESPONSIBILITY (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993).
Wren, Lawrence, Redefining the Essence of Marriage, JURIST 46 (1986), 532-555.