A Catholic man and woman tell their parish priest they wish to get married. They are sure they are right for each other, they tell him C they've been living together happily for more than a year.
If this were the 1950s, it's unlikely a couple would make such a confession, mainly because relatively few couples "shacked up" before the 1960s. But if they had been living together and revealed as much when the priest asked about their practice of "chastity," they would have received a stern rebuke. Before they could even think about going through the church's Pre-Cana marriage preparation course, they would have had to repent of their sin and do penance.
It's been a less-predictable scenario for Catholic couples who have come of age in the decades since the so-called "new morality" bred by the sexual revolution of the 1960s became widely accepted.
The Most Reverend John M. D'Arcy, bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend, acknowledges this in a letter of introduction to a booklet prepared by the diocese. Made available to Catholic couples intent on getting married in the diocese, the publication examines considerations for Christian marriage.
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One important area in which many priests and couples have shared their concerns with me is that of engaged couples living together before marriage," he writes. "Not too long ago, such a situation was uncommon and seen unfavorably in society. Today, it is much more common and there is not as much of a social stigma attached to it."These days, says Scott Appleby, director of Notre Dame's Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, a cohabitating couple wanting to wed in the church and bold enough to disclose their living arrangements might be told by one priest that he would not marry them until they lived apart and abstained from premarital sex. But they probably could locate another who would either not inquire about their sexual relationship or would marry them anyway.
It=s not that the Catholic Church changed its stance that sex outside of marriage is wrong, Appleby explains. It's that priests who believed themselves to be acting in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) began to exercise their own pastoral discretion in counseling about moral issues.
After Vatican II, Appleby says, many Catholic ethicists and some priests moved away from a traditional approach that equated moral maturity with strict obedience to church norms on sexuality. Instead, they began to view their flock as "relatively autonomous moral agents." Under the new approach, it fell to the individual to evaluate real-life situations and apply church teaching accordingly. Rather than being the sole source of moral authority, the church -- in the person of the priest -- became an adviser or consultant.
This approach would have made sense, Appleby notes, if the Aautonomous Catholics@ were all properly instructed and formed in Catholic morality. "Unfortunately," he says, "that wasn't always the case."
Pastoral flexibility allowed priests to apply the thinking of a new generation of progressive theologians and ethicists to the process of marriage preparation and "sacramentality" itself, Appleby says. In the case of marriage-seeking cohabitating couples, that translated into some progressive priests shying away from inquiries into their chastity and instead focusing on the couple's answers to such a question as, "Do you know what fidelity and mutual self-giving entails?"
Pastoral flexibility isn't without its critics. The so-called "Spirit of Vatican II," which Appleby agrees could be taken to mean many contradictory things, attempted to take account of and challenge the more permissive morality that emerged in the '60s. But some within the church believe that rather than accommodating change, the church capitulated to popular culture and lost its standards.
Today's church hierarchy appears intent on removing any doubt about its standards in regard to premarital sex. In the diocese's marriage-preparation booklet, Bishop D'Arcy declares that "regardless of a couple's motivations, living together and having sexual relations before marriage cannot be reconciled with what God expects of us nor with what makes good sense for the relationship."
The booklet, organized in a question-and-answer format, explains that marriage is a vocation and a sacrament, and that "married life has a special grace flowing through it by which the life of the married couple is called to mirror the love and commitment of Jesus Christ."
The booklet explains: "The gift of the body in sexual intercourse is a real symbol of the giving of the whole person. In it, husband and wife are saying to one another in 'body language' what they said to each other at the altar on their wedding day: 'I am yours, for life!' While sexual union is meant to be both physically pleasurable and emotionally fulfilling, it is, above all, the deepest sign of the complete gift of self that a husband and wife pledge to each other. This mutual gift does not end with the couple, however, but rather makes them capable of becoming co-creators with God in giving life to a new human person. According to God=s design, the gift of sexual union has two primary purposes: strengthening married love and sharing that love with the birth of children.
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Since marriage is the only 'place' where this total self-giving between a man and a woman is made possible C and where children can be raised with the committed love of both a mother and a father C the church teaches that sexual intimacy is meant only for husband and wife. This is because the total physical self-giving would be a lie if it were not the fruit and sign of a total personal self-giving, made possible only in marriage."The guidelines also quote the Catechism of the Catholic Church which describes "fornication" as the "carnal union between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman," and says this is "gravely contrary to the dignity of persons and of human sexuality which is naturally ordered to the good of spouses and the generation and education of children." The booklet then quotes Paul (1 Corinthians 6:9): "Do not be deceived; neither fornicators nor idolators nor adulterers . . . will inherit the kingdom of God."
Warning couples about the "negative results" that come "from living together before marriage," D'Arcy explains that the purpose of the booklet is "not to make couples who are living together feel they are being judged," but "to encourage them to use this time of preparation to live a truly Christian lifestyle." Couples are advised to live chastely, to attend weekly Mass, to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation (confession), to pray, and to practice works of justice and charity.
Today, Appleby says, priests do appear to be adopting a uniform approach to marriage preparation and sexual morality in general that more closely reflects the official teaching of the church.
But pastoral flexibility is "hardly a thing of the past," he says. And as many American parishioners continue to disobey Rome's orders on issues like contraception, probably the most that can be said about where American Catholics stand on issues of sexual behavior is, "It depends whom you ask."
-- Ed Cohen
Also see: Our Permissive Society