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15 January 2025

Can the “Theology of the Body” Be Reconciled with the Traditional “Ends of Marriage”?

Dr Kwasniewski analyses Pope John Paul II's "Theology of the Body" and its relationship to the Traditional understanding of the doctrine of marriage.


From One Peter Five

By Peter Kwasniewski, PhD

Author’s note: the following article is based on a real epistolary exchange.

Dear Dr. Kwasniewski,

I am aware of traditionalist objections to the apparent disturbance of the order and hierarchy of the goods of marriage in postconciliar theology, which goes along with a rejection of Pope John Paul II’s so-called Theology of the Body. This prompts some questions:

1. Is the teaching on the order between the ends of marriage—procreation is primary, fidelity (union?) is secondary—firmly established in the tradition of the Church?

2. Has this tradition been preserved in the recent teachings of the magisterium since the Second Vatican Council? Or has it ever been obscured or even reversed, i.e., has the hierarchy of the ends of marriage been equalized or even inverted?

3. Can one find, in the traditional teaching, an affirmation and exposition of the secondary and unitive ends of marriage through marital love, though in subordination to the primary end of procreation? In other words, is there, in the tradition itself, an answer to the objection that the traditional view makes marriage into a loveless, possessive, and impersonal thing? (This seems to be a fear among good Catholics, that the older teaching made marriage into a matter of having “rights over each other’s bodies,” thus evacuating marriage of love and self-gift, and seeming to portray it as a matter of dominion or possession.)

4. This is related to the previous two questions: Can the teaching of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body and Love and Responsibility be properly integrated into the traditional teaching, keeping the order of ends in mind?

5. I am also curious to know your thoughts on the use and legitimacy—or the conditions of legitimate use—of Natural Family Planning, on the basis of a traditional understanding of marriage, but also taking into account any legitimate recent developments. I realize that this is a convoluted and controversial question among good Catholics; but this also makes it difficult for me to know where to begin or how to sort out all the reasons and ideas involved.

I am particularly interested to be able to ground my thoughts about these questions in the concrete sources of the Church’s tradition, so as to have something to show for myself as a Catholic who wishes to be faithful to the magisterium of the Church.

Thanks and God bless,
N.

Dear N.,

These are massive questions!

1. St. Thomas Aquinas’s teaching on marriage aligns with what the Church has consistently taught, and, even with some of the new ideas of recent decades, the fundamental structure of the teaching remains the same, as far as magisterial documents go. The roots of Thomas’s teaching go back to the Church Fathers and Scripture, so we can certainly speak of a traditional understanding when it comes to the ends of marriage and their hierarchy.

2. The idea of primary end/secondary end is really a philosophical doctrine, not a psychological one. It is not talking about what should be going on inside the soul, but rather, about what is taking place in the objective relationship of two individuals. It looks to the specific difference that makes this relationship, namely, between a man and a woman, distinctively marriage, as opposed to any other possible relationship between two human beings (such as that of friends, relations, colleagues, comrades). The specific difference of marriage is that it is ordered to the generation of new life. This ordination to offspring is the end that defines marriage as such, and without it, there is no marriage. The moment one abandons that traditional answer for something vaguer like “mutual support” or “interpersonal love,” one opens the door to contraception, homosexuality, and other perversions.

However, from a psychological point of view, the friendship between spouses and their aspiration to assist in each other’s sanctification has a certain primacy. A Christian couple gets married in order to seek sanctity together, to live in charity and sanctifying grace, as a brother and sister in Christ. Yes, of course they are open to procreation—that is why they are married, as said above—but without charity and the quest for sanctity, it is not a Christian marriage; not a sacramental marriage. What I am saying is not the recent brainchild of Karol Wojtyła but the clear teaching of Pope Pius XI in Casti Connubii, which is by far the best magisterial document on marriage:

This conjugal faith…which is most aptly called by St. Augustine the “faith of chastity,” blooms more freely, more beautifully and more nobly, when it is rooted in that more excellent soil, the love of husband and wife which pervades all the duties of married life and holds pride of place in Christian marriage. For matrimonial faith demands that husband and wife be joined in an especially holy and pure love, not as adulterers love each other, but as Christ loved the Church. This precept the Apostle laid down when he said: “Husbands, love your wives as Christ also loved the Church,” that Church which of a truth He embraced with a boundless love not for the sake of His own advantage, but seeking only the good of His Spouse.

The love, then, of which We are speaking is not that based on the passing lust of the moment nor does it consist in pleasing words only, but in the deep attachment of the heart which is expressed in action, since love is proved by deeds. This outward expression of love in the home demands not only mutual help but must go further; must have as its primary purpose that man and wife help each other day by day in forming and perfecting themselves in the interior life, so that through their partnership in life they may advance ever more and more in virtue, and above all that they may grow in true love toward God and their neighbor, on which indeed “dependeth the whole Law and the Prophets.” For all men of every condition, in whatever honorable walk of life they may be, can and ought to imitate that most perfect example of holiness placed before man by God, namely Christ Our Lord, and by God’s grace to arrive at the summit of perfection, as is proved by the example set us of many saints.

This mutual molding of husband and wife, this determined effort to perfect each other, can in a very real sense, as the Roman Catechism teaches, be said to be the chief reason and purpose of matrimony, provided matrimony be looked at not in the restricted sense as instituted for the proper conception and education of the child, but more widely as the blending of life as a whole and the mutual interchange and sharing thereof.

By this same love it is necessary that all the other rights and duties of the marriage state be regulated, as the words of the Apostle—“Let the husband render the debt to the wife, and the wife also in like manner to the husband”—express not only a law of justice but also one of charity. (nos. 23–25)

Who would dare deny that this is the traditional teaching of the Church, so well expressed in this encyclical of 1930, and so well expounded in Leila Marie Lawler’s God Has No Grandchildren?

3. Yes, Catholic tradition can respond to the caricature of “Tridentine marriage” as loveless, possessive, and impersonal. Again, Pius XI’s Casti Connubii is superb on this question. No one who reads this encyclical could come away with that superficial impression. Truth be told, every marriage is a work in progress and will be for decades. There are many difficulties that must be faced, and no couple can escape them, regardless of what “paradigm” they choose. What is more important is that the spouses have a living faith in Christ and an unswerving fidelity to each other that patiently works through the problems that arise, never giving up. I talk about this in my article “Marriage: Crown and Cross,” and in my book Treasuring the Goods of Marriage in a Throwaway Society.

4. Yes, John Paul II is compatible with the traditional teaching. His formulations are not always very clearly articulated, but at the end of the day, he is a Thomist on the disputed questions. Michael Waldstein has explored this question exhaustively and reached the same conclusion.[1]

5. Regarding Natural Family Planning, allow me to refer you to the above-mentioned book Treasuring the Goods of Marriage, as I would not be able here to write out everything I’ve already put into its chapters.

Cordially,
Dr. Kwasniewski

Dear Dr. Kwasniewski,

In your book, you write of specific instances of a couple beginning their marriage and, for some reason, deciding to practice NFP right away. The examples you gave had to do with wishing to “get to know one another” before conceiving a child, and both spouses wishing to finish a graduate degree before starting a family; and you wrote that with such motives it would be wrong to practice NFP. My question is this: is it ever justified to begin a marriage practicing NFP, with the intention of avoiding a pregnancy for some time? What kinds of situations would justify this—if it is ever legitimate? Would this be sometimes permissible prudentially, as long as one does not intend some other end (e.g., unimpeded physical togetherness for a time, or the completion of a doctorate) above the conception of a child?

Again, I am asking specifically about the case of beginning a marriage this way; I am not troubled by the idea of spacing out one’s children, but the question of intentionally waiting at the very start of one’s marriage, before conceiving. Let me try to express why this is unclear: I am wondering whether it is fitting for any part of the full sacramental meaning of marriage to be absent when the marriage begins. And it seems that, at the beginning of the marriage, the fullness of its meaning involves the openness to life in a radical way. Not that in the practice of NFP there is not also openness to life; yet it is conditioned by the need to space out births, for the sake of the parents and even for the sake of the children. But at the beginning of marriage there is no need to space out births, for there has not yet been a birth; and it is difficult for me to imagine precisely how waiting (while practicing NFP) is for the benefit of one’s first child. In other words, if they are not ready to conceive right away, they should not get married.

There is a prior question regarding what it means to intend the two ends of marriage. Even though, as you say, the doctrine of the two ends is philosophical and not psychological, it still seems clear that there is a right way for the couple to frame their psychological intentions with respect to these ends. This affects the question of how, in the practice of NFP, it is possible to include in one’s intention the openness to life that is required by the nature of marriage, even if one is primarily (psychologically) intending the unitive end. And yet obviously there is a difference between the general openness to life that obtains during the intentional avoidance of conception by NFP, and the openness to life that obtains in the act intentionally performed during fertility. There is a difference, in other words, between the intention involved while practicing and while not practicing NFP. Is the intention that is involved in the practice of NFP justified at the start of marriage? Or is nothing more required, for a right intention, than being “open to life” in the general sense that must obtain even in the practice of NFP (i.e., that no effort is made to block or interrupt the normal processes of nature)? How ready for children must one be, in order to be married? Can the delay of conception, at the start of a marriage, be legitimately done without putting a private good above the good of children?

Thanks and God bless,
N.

Dear N.,

It is never right to begin a marriage with NFP, except in a situation where there is an unforseen emergency at the start of the marriage that may call for it as a prudent judgment. I am not even sure what would constitute a bona fide emergency; a husband losing a job, for instance, is not necessarily a reason not to have a child, if one trusts in Divine Providence! But to plan to get married and to plan to postpone a child is contrary to the nature of marriage as ordered to the procreation and education of children. It is different, as you say, to think about spacing children later on when there are already children in the picture.

In fact, this issue seems almost self-evident: if a couple are not ready to welcome children, then they are not ready to get married, period. Getting married means having children, unless God places on a couple’s shoulders the heavy cross of being unable to conceive children. St. Thomas derives the very word matrimonium from “gift of the mother”—that is, the child. But I do not wish to be misunderstood. I am not saying that a couple must be perfectly ready for starting a family in order to get married. No one is ever ready for children, and one learns as one goes along—there is no other way.

What I mean is that a couple must be ready to accept the baby that will normally come from their intimate relations in order to marry virtuously in Christ and the Church, that is, with a love that is inherently faithful and fruitful. There is simply no other natural object of joining as man and woman than bringing life into the world. God did not create this union for the sake of romance; He created it so that parents might be fruitful and multiply. The interpersonal benefit is there because God multiplies His gifts, He loves to accomplish many ends with one means. No one is trying to exclude the personal love of husband and wife. Rather, we want to emphasize that this love is a subtle form of selfishness if it tries to exclude the fruit that naturally comes from it and defines it as the kind of relationship it is.

Your further thoughts on intention might be getting excessively complicated. What one is intending in the marital act is an act of a generative nature from which children could be born. The partners do not directly cause a child to come to be, but merely provide the materials, so to speak, out of which a child could come to be. This is why the act performed during fertility and the same performed during infertility are materially and morally the same act, unless there is a direct intention to exclude a child, which would have to mean something like hating a child or even desiring to abort it. If such an anti-life will is absent, then the act is pro-life by definition. We can see evidence of this in couples who, while not intended to become pregnant, discover that they are pregnant: they welcome the child with open arms.

The problem with newlyweds would lie in their wishing not to conceive and their knowledge that they are calculating an infertile time for this reason; in this case, there is no greater good for which they might be striving than mutual enjoyment, which is a selfish reason at that point in their marriage. In contrast, a couple that already has offspring and decides to space out births can be acting for the common good of the family, if one bears in mind that the parents are responsible not only for procreating but also for educating their children, as the traditional teaching of the Church has always emphasized.

God Bless,
Dr. Kwasniewski


[1] See his philosophical analysis in John Paul II, Theology of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein (Pauline Books & Media, 2006), 1-130.

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