Sex, Marriage and Family in World Religions (32 page)

The form prescribed in the Lateran Council for solemnly contracting marriage is renewed; bishops may dispense with the publication of the banns; whoever contracts marriage otherwise than in the presence of the pastor and of two or three witnesses does so invalidly.

Although it is not to be doubted that clandestine marriages made with the free consent of the contracting parties are valid and true marriages so long as the Church has not declared them invalid, and consequently that those persons are justly to be condemned, as the holy council does condemn them with anathema, who deny that they are true and valid, and those also who falsely assert that marriages contracted by children [minors] without the consent of the parents are invalid, nevertheless the holy Church of God has for very just reasons at all times detested and forbidden them. But while the holy council 136

l u k e t i m o t h y j o h n s o n a n d m a r k d . j o r d a n recognizes that by reason of man’s disobedience those prohibitions are no longer of any avail, and considers the grave sins which arise from clandestine marriages, especially the sins of those who continue in the state of damnation, when having left the first wife with whom they contracted secretly, they publicly marry another and live with her in continual adultery, and since the Church which does not judge what is hidden, cannot correct this evil unless a more efficacious remedy is applied, therefore, following in the footsteps of the holy Lateran Council celebrated under Innocent III, it commands that in the future, before a marriage is contracted, the proper pastor of the contracting parties shall publicly announce three times in the church, during the celebration of the mass on three successive festival days, between whom marriage is to be contracted; after which publications, if no legitimate impediment is revealed, the marriage may be proceeded with in the presence of the people, where the parish priest, after having questioned the man and the woman and heard their mutual consent, shall either say: “I join you together in matrimony, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” or he may use other words, according to the accepted rite of each province. But if at some time there should a probable suspicion that a marriage might be maliciously hindered if so many publications precede it, then either one publication only may be made or the marriage may be celebrated forthwith in the presence of the parish priest and of two or three witnesses. Then before its consummation that publications shall be made in the church, so that if any impediments exist they may be the more easily discovered, unless the ordinary shall deem it advisable to dispense with the publications which the holy council leaves to his prudence and judgment.

Those who shall attempt to contract marriage otherwise than in the presence of the parish priest or of another priest authorized by the parish priest or by the ordinary and in the presence of two or three witnesses, the holy council renders absolutely incapable of thus contracting marriage and declares such contracts invalid and null, as by the present decree it invalidates and annuls them. Moreover, it commands that the parish priest or another priest who shall have been present at a contract of this kind with less than the prescribed number of witnesses, also the witnesses who shall have been present without the parish priest or another priest, and also the contracting parties themselves, shall at the discretion of the ordinary be severely punished. Furthermore, the same holy council exhorts the betrothed parties not to live together in the same house until they have received the sacerdotal blessing in the church; and it decrees that the blessing is to be given by their own parish priest, and permission to impart it cannot be granted to any other priest except by the parish priest himself or by the ordinary, any custom, even though immemorial, which ought rather to be called a corruption, or any privilege notwithstanding. But if any parish priest or any other priest, whether regular or secular, should attempt to unite in marriage or bless the betrothed of another parish without the permission of their parish priest, he shall, even though he may plead that his action was based on
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a privilege or immemorial custom, remain
ipso jure
suspended until absolved by the ordinary of that parish priest who ought to have been present at the marriage or from whom the blessing ought to have been received. The parish priest shall have a book in which he shall record the names of the persons united in marriage and of the witnesses, and also the day on which and the place where the marriage was contracted, and this book he shall carefully preserve. Finally, the holy council exhorts the betrothed that before they contract marriage, or at least three days before its consummation, they carefully confess their sins and approach devoutly the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist. If any provinces have in this matter other laudable customs and ceremonies in addition to the aforesaid, the holy council wishes earnestly that they be by all means retained. And that these so salutary regulations may not remain unknown to anyone, it commands all ordinaries that they as soon as possible see to it that this decree be published and explained to the people in all the parish churches and dioceses, and that this be done very often during the first year and after that as often as they shall deem it advisable. It decrees, moreover, that this decree shall begin to take effect in every parish at the expiration of thirty days, to be reckoned from the day of its first publication in that church.

[
Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent,
trans. and ed. H. J. Schroeder (St. Louis: Herder, 1955), pp. 180–185]

GEORGE FOX

George Fox (1624–1691) is the founder of the Religious Society of Friends or Quakers. Raised as a Puritan with strong suspicions of church-state connections and liturgical formalism, Fox spent his life as a preacher and missionary to marginalized Christian groups, including (from the 1650s on) the first Quakers.

Always traveling, and often enough in prison for his views, Fox did not marry until he was in his late forties. This description of his wedding is taken from his journal, which he dictated five years afterward (1675).

Document 2–21

I had seen from the Lord a considerable time before that I should take Margaret Fell to be my wife. And when I first mentioned it to her, she felt the answer of life from God thereunto. But though the Lord had opened this thing unto me, yet I had not received a command from the Lord for the accomplishment of it then. Wherefore I let the thing rest, and went on in the work and service of the Lord as before, according as the Lord led me, traveling up and down in this nation and through the nation of Ireland. But now, after I was come back from Ireland and was come to Bristol and found Margaret Fell there, it opened in me from the Lord that the thing should be now accomplished.

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l u k e t i m o t h y j o h n s o n a n d m a r k d . j o r d a n And after we had discoursed the thing together I told her if she also was satisfied with the accomplishing of it now she should first send for her children, which she did. And when the rest of her daughters were come, I was moved to ask the children (and her sons-in-law) whether they were all satisfied and whether Margaret had answered them according to her husband’s will to her children, she being a widow, and if her husband had left anything to her for the assistance of her children, in which if she married they might suffer loss, whether she had answered them in lieu of that and all other things. And the children made answer and said she had doubled it, and would not have me to speak of those things. (I told them I was plain and would have all things done plainly, for I sought not any outward advantage to myself.) And so when I had thus acquainted the children with it, and when it had been laid before several meetings both of the men and women, assembled together for that purpose, and all were satisfied, there was a large meeting appointed of purpose (in the meeting house at Broad Mead in Bristol, the Lord joining us together in the honorable marriage in the everlasting covenant and immortal Seed of life, where there were several large testimonies borne by Friends [October 27, 1669]. (Then was a certificate, relating both the proceed-ings and the marriage, openly read and signed by the relations and by most of the ancient Friends of that city, besides many other Friends from divers[e] parts of the nation.)

And before we were married I was moved to write forth a paper to all the meetings in England both of men and woman and elsewhere, for all meetings of Friends which were begotten to the Lord were but as one meeting to me.

After this I stayed in Bristol about a week and then passed with Margaret into the country to Olveston, where Margaret passed homewards towards the north and I passed on in the work of the Lord into Wiltshire, where I had many large and precious meetings.

And from thence I passed into Berkshire, where I had many large precious meetings, and so from thence till I came into Oxfordshire and Buckingham-shire, where I had many precious meetings all along till I came to London.

[
The Journal of George Fox,
ed. John L. Nickalls (Cambridge: University Press, 1952), pp. 554–555]

A CONTEMPORARY CRITIQUE OF SEXUAL ETHICS

Joseph Fletcher (1905–1991) is remembered as a radical Christian advocate of “situation ethics,” especially in sexual matters. In fact, his advocacy of social reform ranged more widely. Early works on the church and property brought unwelcome attention from anti-Communist crusaders, including Joseph McCarthy. A commitment to biomedical ethics led him to help establish the group Planned Parenthood. The selection here, in which Fletcher criticizes older Christian sexual ethics, is taken from
Moral Responsibility
(1967).

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j o s e p h fl e t c h e r , m o r a l r e s p o n s i b i l i t y

In terms of ethical analysis we have, so to speak,
two
problem areas. The first one is the problem of premarital sex for those whose moral standards are in the classical religious tradition, based on a faith commitment to a divine sanction— usually, in America, some persuasion or other of the Judeo-Christian kind. The second area is the “secular” one, in which people’s moral standards are broadly humanistic, based on a value commitment to human welfare and happiness. It is difficult, if not impossible, to say what proportion of our people falls in either area, but they exist certainly, and the “secular” area is growing all the time.

As a matter of fact, there is by no means a set or unchanging viewpoint in the religious camp. Some Christians are challenging the old morality of the marital monopoly of sex. . . .

Over against this situation ethics or religious relativism stands the legalistic ethics of universal absolutes (usually negatives and prohibitions), condemning every form of sexual expression except horizontal coitus eyeball-to-eyeball solely between the parties to a monogamous marriage contract. Thus one editorial writer in a semifundamentalist magazine said recently, and correctly enough: “The new moralists do not believe that the biblical moral laws are really given by God. Moral laws are not regarded as the products of revelation.” A growing company of church people are challenging fixed moral principles or rules about sex or anything else.

The idea in the past has been that the ideal fulfillment of our sex potential lies in a monogamous marriage. But there is no reason to regard this ideal as a legal absolute. For example, if the sex ratio were to be overthrown by disaster, polygamy could well become the ideal or standard. Jesus showed more concern about pride and hypocrisy than about sex. In the story of the woman taken in adultery, her accusers were guiltier than she. Among the seven deadly sins, lust is listed but not sex, and lust can exist in marriage as well as out. But even so, lust is not so grave a sin as pride. As Dorothy Sayers points out scornfully, “A man may be greedy and selfish; spiteful, cruel, jealous and unjust; violent and brutal; grasping, unscrupulous and a liar; stubborn and arrogant; stupid, morose and dead to every noble instinct” and yet, if he practices his sinfulness within the marriage bond, he is not thought by some Christians to be immoral!

The Bible clearly affirms sex as a high-order value, at the same time sanctioning marriage (although not always monogamy), but any claim that the Bible requires that sex be expressed solely within marriage is only an inference. There is nothing explicitly forbidding premarital acts. Only extramarital acts, i.e., adultery, are forbidden. Those Christians who are situational, refusing to absolutize any moral principle except “love thy neighbor,” cannot absolutize Paul’s one 140

l u k e t i m o t h y j o h n s o n a n d m a r k d . j o r d a n flesh
(heno¯sis)
theory of marriage in 1 Cor., ch. 6. Paul Ramsey of Princeton has tried to defend premarital intercourse by engaged couples on the ground that they become married thereby. But marriages are not made by the act itself; sexual congress doesn’t create a marriage. Marriage is a mutual commitment, willed and purposed interpersonally. Besides, all such “ontological” or “naturalistic” reasoning fails completely to meet the moral question of nonmarital sex acts between
un
engaged couples, since it presumably condemns them all universally as unjustifiable simply because they are nonmarital. It is still the old marital monopoly theory, only one step relaxed.

The humanists in our “secular” society draw close to the nonlegalists, the nonabsolutists among Christians, when they choose concern for personal values as their ethical norm, for this is very close to the Biblical “love thy neighbor as thyself.” . . .

On this view, sarcasm and graft are immoral, but not sexual intercourse unless it is malicious or callous or cruel. On this basis, an act is not wrong because of the act itself but because of its
meaning
—its motive and message. . . .

Both religious and secular moralists, in America’s plural society, need to remember that freedom
of
religion includes freedom
from
religion. There is no ethical basis for compelling noncreedalists to follow any creedal codes of behavior, Christian or non-Christian. A “sin” is an act against God’s will, but if the agent does not believe in God he cannot commit sin, and even those who do believe in God disagree radically as to what God’s will is. Speaking to the issue over birth control law, Cardinal Cushing of Boston says, “Catholics do not need the support of civil law to be faithful to their own religious convictions, and they do not need to impose their moral views on other members of society. . . . ” What the cardinal says about birth control applies just as much to premarital intercourse. . . .