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            It was encouraging to see in your Newsletter no. 110. that the debate on the bonum coniugum is very much alive. While Fr. Paul Churchill's article marks a particularly thought-provoking contribution, he makes a few points concerning my own ideas that I would like to clarify.

            He says "Cormac Burke admits that the object [of matrimonial consent] is now the gift of self": which seems to imply that I concede this point, perhaps a bit reluctantly. I am on the contrary very happy with the new personalist definition of the object of matrimonial consent - the "sese mutuo tradunt et accipiunt" - to the extent of having written a book on it [1]. When Paul Churchill adds "[But] he believes that the words of the law are not to be taken literally" (66), he is quite right. The "traditio suiipsius" must necessarily involve an element of metaphor. The right that each spouse acquires is not and cannot be a right over every aspect of the person or life of the other. Some of these are absolutely inalienable, such as personal dignity, freedom, responsibility, etc. Without questioning that the spouses should seek a high degree of mutual compenetration and moral unity, it is evident that marital consent does not confer any juridic right over those aspects of the person which can be considered supra- or meta-conjugal. For instance, along with the obligations proper to the married state, each spouse retains the untransferable duty to work out his or her own salvation; a duty that can and ought to be powerfully helped by the married commitment but cannot be absorbed into it.

            My conclusion is that the marital "self-gift" is essentially specified in the giving-accepting of what is involved in the augustinian values or bona. Further, while perpetuity and exclusiveness of the marital self-gift are of course of defining importance, they are nevertheless not so specifying as the gift of shared procreative sexuality. If this were not so, there would really be no argument against "homosexual marriages".

            Regarding my views, Fr. Churchill comments: "His idea of sexuality is not to be confused with the merely biological or the act of sexual intercourse, but concerns the innermost being of human persons, including affectivity, emotions, capacity to love and procreate, aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others. Yet many of his statement seem to be focused on the physical procreative act, its importance in specifying the matrimonial relationship and the negation of the natural meaning of the act by artificial contraception". He goes on: "That is why [i.e. in my interpretation] contraceptive sexual intercourse is so wrong: it is not a total giving of oneself", and comments: "One wonders if this last point is not the reason d'etre of his approach" (66-67).

            Here I feel that he is reading my mind backwards. In proposing a juridic interpretation of the marital self-donation of c. 1057, my purpose is not to make a defence of the Church's teaching on contraception. I rather take an anthropological approach (not a moral-theological one) to analyse the distinctive human, and then juridic, content of the "sese tradere". This anthropological analysis leads me to the conclusion that an interpersonal donation which is not sexual, is not marital; and that it is the donation of complementary sexual power which in the last analysis most distinguishes the marital commitment. Permanence and exclusiveness are also necessary to make that interpersonal covenant or gift conjugal.

            Interpersonal relationships are many; and they take on a more human character insofar as they are distinguished by tact, understanding, mutual care, etc. All sorts of interpersonal relations - friendship, adoption, etc. - can be so characterized. Such relations become deeper and more unique if they are also qualified by permanence and fidelity; a brother and a sister for instance - whose relationship is of course also inter-sexual - are permanently brother and sister, and most siblings strive to maintain their relationship faithfully. What then ultimately specifies or distinguishes the conjugal interpersonal relationship? - Its distinctively sexual character. In utilizing the term "spiritual", Paul Churchill notes that he uses in a broad sense; I do the same with "sexual" (as any understanding of human sexuality should do), for it has spiritual as well as physical connotations and expressions.

            Physical sexual intercourse between spouses, while certainly not the only or the main expression of marital love, is the most distinctive. To make little of its importance would be to pass over the depth of John Paul II's theology of the body, also with its insistence on the human "language of the body". From an anthropological viewpoint, physical sexual intercourse remains the most unique corporal expression of conjugal love: so much so as to be called the conjugal act - reserved, as a matter of right, to the spouses.

            Regarding contraception, I have not the slightest doubt that the Church is right in its moral judgment. My conviction however rests not on faith or on theological argument, but on reason and anthropology. In chapter two of my book Covenanted Happiness, I seek to present the human reasons why a contraceptive act is not only not a conjugal act (contraceptive intercourse does not consummate marriage, for it is not in fact real sexual intercourse), but is not a sexual act at all. It is a negation of the human meaning of sex, of both its personalist and unitive meaning. I find this confirmed by a juridic analysis of c. 1057 § 2 (cf. book and articles just mentioned); but that has been and remains for me an end conclusion, not a starting point of my analysis.

            In another passage Paul Churchill interprets my ideas (or at least suggests an interpretation of them) that is very far from my actual way of thinking. I have nowhere stated that the giving-accepting of the spousal gift is "fully expressed only in the sharing of each other's seed" (67), although I do hold that by such sharing - present in any truly conjugal act - the spouses express their love for each other in a most singular way. It certainly happens that intercourse is not always as loving as it should be, or as one of the partners expects. Pastoral counselling can be of help to remedy such a defective situation: either by abstaining, as Paul Churchill himself suggests, or rather, as I would suggest, by learning to make consideration and love-expressiveness predominant over self-seeking in the act.

            Fr. Churchill continues: "Does a marriage become lesser whenever the woman cannot reciprocate seed? The focus on the act by which one party gives the seed to the other suggests an inappropriate (male) preoccupation with genital sexuality" (ib.). I must confess to surprise that this suggestion could come from anyone who has read my writings with care. I have more than once expressly stated that my use of the term "seed" in this context is not to be understood in the usual literal and biological sense, but rather in the sense of what Stankiewicz calls the "elementum procreativum", whether male or female [2].

            I agree that one needs to avoid an inappropriate preoccupation with genital sexuality between the spouses. But to attach no importance to it, not to understand its uniqueness as an expression of conjugal love (always capable of greater purification), can lead to a sort of "disincarnated" interpretation of human sexuality.

            For the rest I am in total agreement with Paul Churchill when he writes "the shift from 'the right over the body' to the 'mutual donation of each other for the establishment of a partnership of the whole of life' can be seen as an attempt to take account of marriage as a union of two incarnate spirits, of two persons" (68).

            He has a series of interesting observations regarding the difficult question of the specific (autonomous) essential obligations that flow from the "bonum coniugum". While he posits some possible obligations, he does so in such very broad terms that they can scarcely be of use for jurisprudential practice without further specification. Does a person suffer from consensual incapacity under c. 1095, he asks, if he or she is "incapable of relating [to his or her spouse] healthily in an adult way" (70)? A more precise expression of what is to be understood by "healthily" or "in an adult way" would be needed, before jurisprudence could consider if these rather loose phrases cover any essential marital obligation. As is evident from the express wording of canon 1095, the essentiality of the marital rights or obligations in question is a pre-requisite for any hypothesis of consensual incapacity.

            Then he touches on the no less difficult question of "capacity for the bonum coniugum". Under c. 1095 valid consent requires a certain minimum capacity regarding the essential obligations of marriage. Consideration of the relation between consent and the ends of marriage brings one into a different area. It is clear that valid consent requires certain dispositions towards the ends. If one excludes the ordering of marriage to procreation, consent is invalid; and similarly, if the ordering to the good of the spouses is excluded. That much is quite clear, and such cases in general fall under c. 1101 § 2. Does actual incapacity to achieve the end invalidate? Incapacity to achieve the end of procreation does not, as is stated explicitly by c. 1084 § 3: "sterility neither prohibits nor invalidates marriage". This suggests that one has to ground one's position firmly before positing a necessary capacity for the "bonum coniugum". I touch on this in a much longer article which should be published in the near future.

            In his ending paragraphs Paul Churchill seems to limit the "good of the spouses" to what was perhaps more traditionally understood under the mutuum adiutorium. Earlier he had appeared to agree with the broader analysis I propose of the content of the bonum coniugum: "It is here I can connect with Cormac Burke again since he says that the bonum coniugum has to be seen along the lines of mutual interior formation on the road to perfection" (69). Yet he goes on to suggest a possible consensual incapacity when someone is "so seriously broken [as] not to have the strength to support or heal the spouse as God intended" (70). I cannot easily accept that suggestion. A broken person may not be able to give much active support, but the other party can indeed support and perhaps heal him or her. Equal dignity in marriage does not necessarily mean parity of contribution. Would Paul Churchill have us declare null the marriage at the end of "My Left Foot"? One party may carry more of the physical burden; the other can conceivably match them, or more than match them, in love and gratitude.

            When he goes on, "it is conceivable that someone at the moment he/she married was so broken as not to be a channel of God's love", I feel we are outside the canonical field; but also wonder if Mother Teresa would have accepted such an idea.

            In conclusion he suggests "that a more careful look at the relationship from this angle (e.g. looking at such issues as trust, respect, support, moral and religious attitudes) could provide us with some basis for the discovery of essential rights and obligations deriving from the bonum coniugum" (71). He may be right; and I look forward to reading the result of his considering the question from this angle.

            Fr. John Hadley's "Note on the bonum coniugum" is invaluable for the clearness with which it sums up the relationship and difference between essence and ends. One phrase of his might suggest that the bonum prolis and the bonum coniugum are of more or less the same order. It seems to me that we should be very careful here in handling terms which of themselves tend to provoke a certain confusion.

            The bonum coniugum and procreation are certainly in the same order, both being ends of marriage (c. 1055). The bonum prolis (despite some loose canonical usage) is not an end. As presented by St. Augustine, it is a "good" (bonum) or "value" that makes marriage good. This places it, along with the bonum fidei (fidelity) and the bonum sacramenti (the permanence of the marital bond), more in the line of essential characteristic or quality, which seems in practice indistinguishable from property. The bonum prolis, in my view, is the ordination to [the end of] procreation. Current rotal jurisprudence is unanimous that the "essential aliquod elementum" of c. 1101 § 2 certainly covers the bonum prolis in this sense, and that exclusion of that ordination invalidates consent. As I see it, the ordination to [the end of] the good of the spouses is similarly an essential element under c. 1101, and its exclusion would of course also invalidate. The distinctions here, as can be seen, are fine, but need to be made and borne in mind in the difficult task of working out a proper juridic analysis.

            Fr. Patrick Connolly offers further very useful ideas. My forthcoming article, mentioned earlier, will touch on many of the more important issues he raises. We seem to be in fairly substantial agreement and, for the sake of brevity, I would simply observe that the passage he quotes from the Commission for revising the Code - that the "ordinatio ad bonum coniugum" is an essential element of marriage - tends precisely to confirm the analysis made in the preceding paragraph. The ordination to both procreation and the good of the spouses must be present in consent; otherwise no valid marriage is constituted. Both these "ordinations" therefore enter the essence of marriage ("in fieri", i.e. in its constitution). But the end - actual procreation or actual achievement of the good of the spouses - does not enter the essence.

            I would refer to one other remark of his, as opening a line of further investigation. He seems to take the bonum coniugum simply in the sense of "the spouses' mutual welfare" or "mutual well-being" (p. 81). Is "well-being" or "welfare" an adequate notion? It seems to me, as I suggested earlier, that the bonum coniugum must also embrace the handicaps and difficulties or hardships of married life. The bonum coniugum after all, precisely as an institutional end of marriage, is God's idea. The christian sense of life suggests that "the bad times", as well as "the good", are meant to serve the achievement of the ultimate divine purpose of marriage.

            Commenting a passage from my Armagh judgment of Nov. 26, 1992, Fr. Connolly says, "it is hard not to get the impression that Mgr. Burke is unwilling to go beyond the Augustinian scheme in his assessment of marriage's essence" (82). I would ask him to reread the passage he quotes. The question it considers is whether or not essential rights - autonomous from those we already know - derive from the bonum coniugum. I am not speaking there of the essence of marriage at all, but of the very distinct question of essential marital rights or obligations, as they have to be understood for the purpose of c. 1095.

            Father Connolly feels that "regarding its [the bonum coniugum] canonical status, we are further along the road than Mgr. Burke would acknowledge" (84). Two separate points seem to get mixed together here. Canon 1055 can leave no one in doubt about the canonical status of the bonum coniugum, which is that of an end of marriage. The problematic question is not that, but rather the actual content of the bonum coniugum. And there, as Fr. Connolly so rightly remarks just a few lines earlier, "its precise content is so difficult to discern". In that I am again in full agreement, and feel that we need less loose invocation of the "good of the spouses", and more solid and thoughtful analyses, theological as well as canonical, of its actual possible content. I think we are progressing (and thanks are due to the Newsletter and to your three authors) along the road; but am still not sure how far we have got or where exactly we are. In any case, it seems as if we are all going in the same fundamental direction. Our final conclusions, if we ever reach anything final on the matter, could be interesting.

NOTES

[1] L'Oggetto del Consenso Matrimoniale: un'analisi personalistica, Giappichelli, Torino, 1997. Forum for June 1998 publishes the English version. See also, "The Object of the Marital Self-Gift as presented in c. 1057, § 2": Studia canonica 31 (1997), 403-421.

[2] cf. "Matrimonial Consent and the «Bonum Prolis»": Monitor Ecclesiasticus 114 (1989), p. 399; "Personalism and the bona of Marriage": Studia canonica 27 (1993), p. 408.