Pius is Awesome

Pius XII, of Happy Memory

Recently, I have been doing a lot of historical research on the theology of marriage and the family, for a series of presentations that I will be giving at a parish in Michigan, this coming November. So, I've happily been reading a lot of the popes on the topic.

A beautiful theme that emerges and is clearly seen is the continuity of the Church's present teaching about marriage and the family, with the teaching from past centuries. Many people like to argue that with Vatican II there was a radical break with the past teaching on marriage, especially as regards the teaching on the traditional "ends." While this argument may be acceptable to a degree, I think it needs to be much mroe nuanced. The teaching on the ends never disappeared from documents such as Gaudium et Spes 48-52, nor did it disappear from the huge corpus of JPII. Rather, I think it has been enhanced and made more palpable, robust, and beautifully articulated, through the adoption of personalistic language, and the insistence on the centrality of conjugal love, which is of its nature orderd to both "ends" of marriage.

I particularly love this quote from Pope Pius XII in his Address to Midwives: "Happiness in marriage is in direct proportion to the mutual respect of the partners, even in their intimate relations; not that they regard as immoral and refuse what nature offers and what the Creator has given, but because this respect, and the mutual esteem which it produces, is one of the strongest elements of a pure love, and for this reason all the more tender."

I think many times in the Church today, even among "faithful" Catholics, and perhaps due in part to the popularity of the theology of the body, there is a widespread curiosity about the morality of "x" act or the acceptability of "y" act. While these discussions are needed, and moral theologians need to articulate with clarity the "limits," a focus on legalism within sex can often obscure the deeper meaning of the conjugal act. The Church needs to articulate clearly and without hesitation the morality of specific acts, but perhaps it would also be good to place an emphasis and focus on the respect and tenderness between spouses, and particuarly as this can be expressed in the conjugal act. Pius' insistence on tenderness is not unlike Karol Wojtyla's in Love and Reponsibility, where tenderness is a necessary element of interpersonal relations, and a safeguard against a utilitarian mindset--which can even subconsciously enter into the dynamic between two spouses.