**2. John Paul II**

In his major document on marriage, *Familiaris consortio*, John Paul II's central criterion for marital morality is "total love." His thesis is considered by some of his admirers to be a brilliant flowering of personalism, and it is considered a romantic flight of fantasy by some of his critics. He writes

*The total physical self-giving would be a lie if it were not the sign and fruit of a total personal self-giving, in which the whole person, including the temporal dimension, is present. If the person were to withhold something or reserve the possibility of deciding otherwise in the future, by this very fact he or she would not be giving totally… This totality which is required by conjugal love also corresponds to the demands of responsible fertility.*

Total love leads to the "greatest possible gift, the gift by which spouses become cooperators with God for giving life to a new human person." Total love proclaims "the central word of Revelation." More broadly, John Paul II writes, all human beings have a "dignity" that "demands that they should be always and solely the term of a self-giving love without limitations of time or of any other circumstance". It seems clear that John Paul II used inflated language ([1], #11–14, 19–20, 37, 80). One might recall that when Jesus spoke of "total love," including mind, heart, and body, he was speaking about love for God. Further, whatever his divine nature, the human Jesus always acted under limitations of time and circumstance. When Jesus spoke of the greatest gift, he referred to dying for a friend. These reservations notwithstanding, John Paul II's introduction of the concept of "total love" served for the next decades as a new foundation for a marital ethic.

Using this foundation, John Paul II attempted to shore up the prohibition against contraception. He no longer defended the Church's prohibition by repeating arguments about the nature of sperm or the nature of the biological organs or the nature of sex or the ends of marriage. Instead, he offers a novel argument that is far from the tradition. He argues that contraception fails because it prevents the self from "total self-giving." Further, he adopts the metaphor of sex as expressive language. Thus contraceptors are said to tell a "lie" by pretending to offer their total self while withholding some aspect of their self. They practice a "falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love." They use "objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other" while professing total self-gift to the other. By contrast, those who practice natural family planning are said to respect the "inseparable connection between the unitive and procreative meanings of human sexuality" ([2], #11, 32).

The term "objectively" is designed to forestall the obvious possibility that the spouses might honestly tell one another that they do not intend particular sexual acts to express a desire to become parents at the present moment. John Paul II asserts that bodily activity necessarily speaks a word (that is, has a meaning) quite apart from the intentions of those who speak that word. And it cannot have any alternative meaning. This emphasis on objective language of the body itself, furthermore, also enables John Paul to skip over the possibility that the recipient of this sexual word might be harmed by that word. For example, a pregnancy might kill a wife or overburden a family. One speaks the truth, even if it kills.

John Paul continues his personalist argument by asserting that those who practice contraception degrade one another because they split the personal unity of body and soul, nature and person. A distinction between nature and person had become central in the theological debate over contraception. John Paul characterized the distinction as leading to "two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality." In John Paul II's view, those who say they prioritize the needs and life of the "person" over the natural patterns of their bodily cycles in effect create a harmful separation of the person from his or her nature ([3], #32). Instead, only those who accept the natural cycle accept the person. As the Vatican

**277**

actual lives of people.

*Evolution of Catholic Marriage Morality in the Twentieth Century from a Baby-Making...*

incautiously wrote two years later, "The biological nature of every human is untouchable, in the sense that it is constituent of the personal identity of the individual" ([4], #6). On that criterion, kidney surgery would be unacceptable. As has been noted above, the "sanctity" of the body refers primarily to the sexual organs. Do those who practice natural family planning fail in total love since they do not totally give themselves during fertile periods? On two occasions, John Paul II proposed that using natural family planning was wrong, if used to not bear children: "it is not possible to practice natural methods as a 'licit' variation on the decision to be closed to life, which would be substantially the same as that which inspires the decision to use contraceptives" ([5], #6). Later, John Paul II said that "natural methods of fertility regulation" should not be considered merely in their functional aspect. Otherwise people would properly "speak of them as if they were another form of contraception" ([6], #2). This position is contrary to that of Paul VI. Presumably, the fact that it was put forward in minor addresses and has rarely been repeated means that it is not a position the Vatican wants to publicize. Nevertheless, this prohibition against choosing natural family planning methods as a way of avoiding

procreation is quite consistent with John Paul II's emphasis on total love.

In his lengthy "Letter to Families," John Paul II tries to ground the indissolubility of marriage also in the total love that spouses have for one another. The very nature of love is that it "must be lasting and irrevocable. The indissolubility of marriage flows in the first place from the very essence of that gift: the gift of one person to another." This claim strongly grounds the moral obligation to keep a marriage thriving. Still, John Paul II does not make clear how it grounds the ontological impossibility of divorce. That is, divorce typically is a moral failure in marital love on the part of one or both spouses; but a love union that has become loveless has in practice ceased to exist. It has dissolved. John Paul II responds by explaining that by "the intimate truth" of the mutual communion of spouses, the Church does not mean something subjective; rather it is the objective truth of the spouses ([7], #11–12). This line of argument follows the pattern that a practice means something objective (here, marriage is essentially a love union), even when subjectively there is no love present. This position has much to commend it. Moral norms often critique an absence of what should be. But it also leads to a rather severe disjunction between an "objective nature" and reality as people experience it. For instance, if those who (attempt to) divorce seem happily married in a new loving marriage, they are objectively not married and not really loving. Sexual intercourse with their new partner is adultery, while having an "affair" with their (previous) spouse would be virtuous. The disjunction, which goes back to Jesus [Matt 19:9], has widened in recent times. It is a disjunction between an ahistorical, non-narrative view of marriage and the

John Paul II closed out the twentieth century when he addressed this tension between the canonical tradition of indissolubility and the reality that marriages were breaking up in ever growing numbers. He began by asserting to jurists that "the central core and foundation" of the canon law view of marriage "is the authentic concept of conjugal love." But then he interpreted this love in a way that makes it loveless. By conjugal love, he meant "essentially a commitment to the other person … made through a precise act of the will." In other words, conjugal love is simply the exchange of marriage vows at a wedding. John Paul rightly noted that affections of love or mutual attraction cannot provide the necessary stability. Hence he resorted to traditional language: "marriage consists essentially, necessarily and solely in the mutual consent expressed by those to be married. This consent is nothing other than the conscious, responsible assumption of a commitment through a juridical act by which, in reciprocal self-giving, the spouses promise total and definitive love to each other." He added that only a "reciprocal commitment

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95316*

#### *Evolution of Catholic Marriage Morality in the Twentieth Century from a Baby-Making... DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95316*

incautiously wrote two years later, "The biological nature of every human is untouchable, in the sense that it is constituent of the personal identity of the individual" ([4], #6). On that criterion, kidney surgery would be unacceptable. As has been noted above, the "sanctity" of the body refers primarily to the sexual organs.

Do those who practice natural family planning fail in total love since they do not totally give themselves during fertile periods? On two occasions, John Paul II proposed that using natural family planning was wrong, if used to not bear children: "it is not possible to practice natural methods as a 'licit' variation on the decision to be closed to life, which would be substantially the same as that which inspires the decision to use contraceptives" ([5], #6). Later, John Paul II said that "natural methods of fertility regulation" should not be considered merely in their functional aspect. Otherwise people would properly "speak of them as if they were another form of contraception" ([6], #2). This position is contrary to that of Paul VI. Presumably, the fact that it was put forward in minor addresses and has rarely been repeated means that it is not a position the Vatican wants to publicize. Nevertheless, this prohibition against choosing natural family planning methods as a way of avoiding procreation is quite consistent with John Paul II's emphasis on total love.

In his lengthy "Letter to Families," John Paul II tries to ground the indissolubility of marriage also in the total love that spouses have for one another. The very nature of love is that it "must be lasting and irrevocable. The indissolubility of marriage flows in the first place from the very essence of that gift: the gift of one person to another." This claim strongly grounds the moral obligation to keep a marriage thriving. Still, John Paul II does not make clear how it grounds the ontological impossibility of divorce. That is, divorce typically is a moral failure in marital love on the part of one or both spouses; but a love union that has become loveless has in practice ceased to exist. It has dissolved. John Paul II responds by explaining that by "the intimate truth" of the mutual communion of spouses, the Church does not mean something subjective; rather it is the objective truth of the spouses ([7], #11–12). This line of argument follows the pattern that a practice means something objective (here, marriage is essentially a love union), even when subjectively there is no love present. This position has much to commend it. Moral norms often critique an absence of what should be. But it also leads to a rather severe disjunction between an "objective nature" and reality as people experience it. For instance, if those who (attempt to) divorce seem happily married in a new loving marriage, they are objectively not married and not really loving. Sexual intercourse with their new partner is adultery, while having an "affair" with their (previous) spouse would be virtuous. The disjunction, which goes back to Jesus [Matt 19:9], has widened in recent times. It is a disjunction between an ahistorical, non-narrative view of marriage and the actual lives of people.

John Paul II closed out the twentieth century when he addressed this tension between the canonical tradition of indissolubility and the reality that marriages were breaking up in ever growing numbers. He began by asserting to jurists that "the central core and foundation" of the canon law view of marriage "is the authentic concept of conjugal love." But then he interpreted this love in a way that makes it loveless. By conjugal love, he meant "essentially a commitment to the other person … made through a precise act of the will." In other words, conjugal love is simply the exchange of marriage vows at a wedding. John Paul rightly noted that affections of love or mutual attraction cannot provide the necessary stability. Hence he resorted to traditional language: "marriage consists essentially, necessarily and solely in the mutual consent expressed by those to be married. This consent is nothing other than the conscious, responsible assumption of a commitment through a juridical act by which, in reciprocal self-giving, the spouses promise total and definitive love to each other." He added that only a "reciprocal commitment

of self-giving … can guarantee its permanence" ([8], #3–4). The problem, as is evident, is that even a strong commitment of the will at the time of marriage does not guarantee permanence except on the parish registry of sacraments.
