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            After these preliminary observations, we can turn to some of the canons which more particularly reflect the renewed personalist philosophy of Vatican II in its juridic expressions within the field of matrimonial law. Canon 1055 logically comes first, not only as the opening canon in the Title on Matrimony, but precisely because it offers a newness of conception that shows how the understanding of marriage offered by the Council, confirmed by post-conciliar magisterium, achieves a synthesis of aspects which were formerly contrasted and even placed in mutual opposition. This latter fact, one should add, caused no little harm to the treatment of marriage in both the juridic and theological fields, as well as in the pastoral approach to marital situations.

            Leaving aside the sacramentality of the matrimonial covenant (a topic which I have considered elsewhere from different points of view [1]), interest centers on the following words of the canon: "The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered to the good of the spouses and to the procreation and education of offspring". To my mind, what we have here is a revolutionary formula, not certainly because of the description of marriage as a "partnership of the whole of life" [2], but rather because of the way of expressing the ends of matrimony, i.e. its dual "ordering" to the good of the spouses and to the procreation/education of children. Attentive reflection shows how a new personalist vision of matrimony has here entered into canonical legislation, "displacing" (some would say), what has traditionally been called the institutional view, or rather (as I hold) profoundly remodelling it. The subject calls for careful consideration.

Personalist or institutional view of marriage?

            For a large part of this century, theologians, canonists and anthropologists have been engaged in a vigorous debate about the ends of marriage. On the one hand stood the traditional (often termed the "procreative" or "institutional") understanding, which presented the ends in a clear hierarchical manner: a "primary" end (procreation) and two "secondary" ends (mutual help and the remedy for concupiscence). On the other hand, there was an emerging new view which came to be called personalist. Without necessarily denying the importance of procreation, this view wished at least equal standing to be given to other personalist values in the relation between husband and wife: mutual love, the conjugal union in its spiritual and not just its physical aspect, the radical equality between the sexes in rights and dignity, etc.

            Elsewhere I have written at greater length on this subject ("Marriage: a personalist or an institutional understanding?": Communio 1992-III, 278-304). For our present purposes, it is enough to note that the traditional understanding fostered the impression of a certain "opposition" between the primary and secondary ends, instead of seeking out their possible interconnection. On the other hand, some of these first "personalist" lines of thought followed ways that were lacking in anthropological depth and moral richness, tending at times to refer rather disparagingly to the position which emphasizes the procreative end, as the "institutional vision" of marriage (so apparently implying that the "personalist" position was not institutional). "Institutional versus personalist", or "the subordination of the human person to institutional ends", became stock debating phrases. A peculiarity from the anthropological viewpoint is how some advocates of this new married personalism seemed to lend themselves to apparent alliance with tendencies that were contraceptive or anti-procreative.

            With regard to this controversy as it developed over the first half of the twentieth century, the position of the Church's magisterium does not appear as altogether consistent. In the pontificate of Pius XII immediately before the Council, any form of married personalism which suggested opposition or lack of interdependence between the procreative and the personalist end was uncompromisingly rejected [3]. Yet the particular theses which this pontificate rejected were in large part actually inspired or encouraged by certain expressions to be found in Pius XI's important Encyclical on marriage: Casti connubii of 1930. This is interesting to note also because it serves to modify the widespread impression that the conjugal personalism so clearly proposed by Vatican II had no precedents in papal magisterium. On the contrary, one finds in Pius XI's Encyclical a notably personalist exposition of the nature and dignity of conjugal love. There he affirms that love in marriage "demands not only mutual aid but must go further; [it] 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 towards God and their neighbor" (AAS 22 (1930) 547-548). One is particularly struck to find Pius affirming that consent and married union imply the "generous gift of one's own person" (ib. 553): an idea at the heart of the married personalism of Vatican II and destined to lead eventually to the formula of the new canon 1057 [Just as Vatican II drew on and developed the ideas of Pius XI, so Pius himself was developing ideas from the past. The Catechism of the Council of Trent presented the natural complementarity between the sexes as the first reason for matrimony (Catechismus Romanus, II, cap. 8). And St. Thomas Aquinas had approvingly quoted the 12th century Hugo of St. Victor, who might well be regarded as one of the first personalist theologians: "sicut dicit Hugo de Sancto Victore, eos qui coniunguntur sic oportet consentire ut invicem se spontanee recipiant" (Suppl. q. 45, art. 2 ad 3). The best of "new" ideas in canonical or theological thinking can almost always be found to have deep ecclesial roots]. This will occupy our attention in the next chapter.

            Having noted this, we must still say that the magisterium throughout the 1940s and 1950s gave little encouragement to married personalism. In this sense the Second Vatican Council certainly inaugurates a new epoch. Taking up certain ideas of Pius XI, it carries them much farther, proposing full acceptance of a personalist understanding of marriage, insisting on the importance of conjugal love, on the aspect of mutual self-gift, and on the dignity of the conjugal act as a privileged expression of the love between the spouses (Cf. above all, Gaudium et Spes, nos. 48-50).

The question of the ends

            Nevertheless, in relation to the possible development of doctrine about the ends of marriage, the Council somehow appears to stop half-way. Gaudium et Spes says that marriage has been endowed by God with "various ends" (no. 48). It makes it very clear that one of these ends is procreation, twice stating that marriage and married love is ordered "by its very nature to the procreation and education of children" (nos. 48 and 50). However it does not specify what the other ends may be. One particularly notes that there is no mention of any hierarchy between the "various" ends.

            Only with post-conciliar magisterium has this question of the ends of marriage been fully clarified, with the resolution (which I think and hope may be definitive) of the apparent tensions of this long drawn-out debate. To my mind this has been one of the greatest achievements of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, which the magisterium itself has called "the last document of the Second Vatican Council" (AAS 76 (1984) 644). In that concise formula of c. 1055 which we are considering - matrimony is "by its nature ordered to the good of the spouses and to the procreation and education of offspring" - the Code offers not only a magisterial application, but also a noteworthy development, of the married personalism of Gaudium et Spes; a development accepted and fully confirmed in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church which speaks concisely of the "double end of marriage: the good of the spouses themselves and the handing on of life" [4].

            One should not lose sight of the fact that in the "good of the spouses" or the bonum coniugum, we are dealing with a totally new concept or expression, which is only very exceptionally to be found in ecclesial writing before its incorporation in 1977 into the "schemata" for the new Code [5]. The term was accepted at the end of a thorough debate, within the Pontifical Commission for drafting the Code, as to ways of juridically expressing the "personal[ist]" end or ends of matrimony (Communicationes 1977, 123). It should be noted that at first the Commission spoke of the bonum coniugum as a way of signifying the "finis personalis". Some commentators took this as suggesting that the new term was intended by the Commission to express the subjective ends of the spouses. In such an interpretation the bonum coniugum would come to mean the "finis" or "fines operantis": love, security, happiness, personal satisfactions, etc. Some time later - in 1983 - the Commission itself (precisely in defending the expression bonum coniugum against criticism) explicitly rejected such an interpretation. It made it quite clear that "finis personalis" is intended in an objective not a subjective sense: "The ordination of matrimony to the «bonum coniugum»", it said, "is truly an essential element of the matrimonial covenant, and not a subjective end of the person marrying" (Communicationes 1983, 221). It is fundamental to bear this in mind: the expression bonum coniugum refers to the "finis operis", and not to the "finis operantis"; it refers in other words to the intrinsic design of marriage, to the ends which it has of itself, and not to the ends of the concrete person(s) marrying [6]. Given the importance of the bonum coniugum, we will consider it more fully in a chapter apart.

            There is however a much more fundamental point which should not escape our attention. The Code and the new Catechism correct a radical error that accompanied the two sides to the longstanding debate we have mentioned. While arguing about hierarchy or equality between the ends, those who have maintained the idea of subordination, no less than those who insist on equal dignity, habitually refer to procreation as the institutional end, and to the other end (love? happiness? the bonum coniugum?) as the personalist. The new formula used in the Code and the Catechism makes it quite clear that such a contrast or distinction is completely erroneous; both ends - procreative and personalist - are institutional! Both, in other words, derive from the very institution of marriage.

            It is all-important therefore to see that marriage possesses two institutional ends. One could add that it is scarcely less important to see that both these ends are - in the proper sense - personalist. The so-called "personalist" end is not in contrast with some "institutional" end, but is precisely one of the institutional ends: it must necessarily be included in any genuine institutional understanding of matrimony. Seen in this light, personalism and institutionalism merge in a synthesis which christian anthropology, tracing marriage back to its institution by God, articulates in all clearness.

The two scriptural accounts

            Striking corroboration of this analysis appears to emerge from the two distinct accounts which the first and second chapters of the Book of Genesis offer of the creation of man - male and female - and of the institution of marriage. One account expresses a clearly procreative finality, while the other can correctly be described as personalist. The first, the so-called "elohist" text, reads: "God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply"..." (Gen 1, 27-28). The other, the "jahwist" text (considered the earlier in date of composition), says: "The Lord God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him [adiutorium simile sibi]"..." (God having then created woman, the narration continues) "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh" (Gen. 2, 18-24).

            The two narrations form a contrast, but not a contradiction. Nor, I think, would it be reasonable to dismiss the fact of Genesis presenting two distinct accounts as consequence of some primeval copyist's error. On the contrary, everything suggests that we have rather to deal with something deliberate, with two complementary narratives, connected in a way that corresponds to the logic of God's plans, a logic within which the institutional purpose of marriage appears as both procreative and personalist.

            In the elohist text, man's relative perfection is underlined. Made in the image of God, he - she - represents the highest visible expression of the goodness of creation. The distinction of sexes ("male and female he created him") appears as a key to the mission - assigned to man and woman, complementing one another in their conjugal union - to carry on the work of creation. The idea of the goodness of this assigned procreative mission characterizes the passage.

            In the jahwist version, it is rather man's incompleteness which is stressed. Man (male or female) is incomplete, if he remains on his own; and this is not a good thing: "non est bonum". The normal plan of God is that he will find the goodness he lacks in union with a person of the other sex; and this union should lead to the good of each and of both: to the bonum coniugum.

            As appears from Scripture, then, God's purpose in instituting marriage is also personalist. Marriage is institutionally directed not only to the increase of the human race through ordered procreation in a conjugal and family setting, but also to the "increase" of the persons who marry, to their development or perfecting in terms of the personal destiny of each one. It is along these lines that we will at a later stage attempt to analyse more deeply the nature of the bonum coniugum.

Ends: interconnection & inseparability

            Modern christian personalism therefore, encouraged especially by Vatican II and subsequent magisterium, offers a renewed vision of marriage and its institutional ends. The major points of this vision, as I understand them, could be presented synthetically as follows:

            a) the natural ordering of marriage to given ends is emphasized;

            b) the hierarchy between the ends is not emphasized [7];

            c) both the "good of the spouses" and the procreation/education of children are institutional ends;

            d) both the "good of the spouses" and the procreation/education of children have personalist value;

            e) the ends have a natural (institutional) interconnection which goes so far as to constitute a certain inseparability between them;

            f) interconnection or inseparability of the end implies an inter-ordering between them, rather than a sub-ordination.

Inseparability

            A brief reflection on the last two points seems worthwhile: that is, on the inseparable interconnection between the two ends of marriage, as they are presented to us in the 1983 Code of Canon Law and in the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church.

            Is it possible to separate these two ends - good of the spouses and procreation/education of children? Conceptually, yes. In reality, no; not at least without undermining the understanding and the vital structure of matrimony. Marriage was instituted for the maturing of the spouses, particularly through having a family and dedicating themselves to it. And it was instituted for the procreation/education of children, to be achieved through the passing physical union and through the abiding and growing existential and functional unity between husband and wife. The institution was one, although it is described in Genesis in two distinct but complementary versions. It is God who has put these ends together in one institution, and man should resist the tendency to separate them.

            That is why one can question the usefulness of continuing to debate a possible hierarchy between these two institutional ends of marriage. Those who see the importance of defending the procreative aspect would do well to reflect that it is better defended not by simply affirming that it stands higher in importance than the good of the spouses, but by helping married couples themselves see how their own mutual love, their happiness together, and the personal growth of each, are immensely furthered by the enterprise of building a family according to God's plans. The good of the spouses is only understood in all its personalist potential when it is seen to depend also on the unique human enrichment that comes in each child. Moreover, only then is it saved from partial or reductive tendencies which, while perhaps speaking of the good "of the spouses" (conjointly), actually mean the "good" of each one individually, thus leading to those common existential situations where the "good" of one comes in the end to be seen as rival and enemy to that of the other, and the stage is set for the collapse and abandonment of a common venture of happiness. Such cases are usually the result of individualism having prevailed over personalism. It is a point to be borne in mind if one had to evaluate the term "good of the spouse" which (just before the promulgation of the Code and no doubt as a mere slip of the pen) appears in some isolated rotal sentence ("bonum coniugis, in mutua essentiali integratione psycho-sexuali consistens": c. Pinto, Feb. 12, 1982: RRD, vol. 74, p. 67). The formula did not prosper.

            The interconnection-inseparability of the ends gives a better idea of the mutual relation between them. It passes over the question of hierarchy, and looks rather to their essential inter-ordering. Each end relates vitally and existentially to the other. Each depends on the other. They stand or fall together.

            It seems as idle to debate whether the ends are of equal dignity or whether there is a subordination between them, as it is to debate the same points regarding the relationship between man and woman. It is the complementarity which matters and needs underlining. The relationship between the institutional ends of matrimony is an outstanding example of how nothing is superfluous in human life, as God designed it, everything being connected for an overall plan of goodness: "omnia in bonum!".

NOTES

[1] "The sacramentality of marriage: theological reflexions": Annales Theologici 7 (1993), 47-69; "The sacramentality of marriage: canonical reflections": Monitor Ecclesiasticus 119 (1994), pp. 545-565.

[2] "totius vitae consortium" is actually a very ancient expression, coming down from Roman law; cf. Modestinus: Digest 23, 2, 1.

[3] Address to the Roman Rota of Oct. 3, 1941 (AAS 33, 423); Decree of the Holy Office of April 1, 1944 (AAS 36, 103); 1951 Address to the Italian Midwives (AAS 43, 849). For the more precise implications of this rejection, see art. cit. in Communio 1992, pp. 280-281.

[4] no. 2363; no. 2249 says the same in equivalent terms. In the bonum coniugum, then, we are undoubtedly dealing with a concept of most significant richness, bound to provoke broad reflection in many areas of theology. Insofar as canon law was the first discipline to propose the "good of the spouses" as an institutional end of marriage - thus leading, in the Code of 1983 and in the 1992 Catechism, to the magisterial confirmation of this doctrinal development - it deserves a special vote of thanks for a great service rendered to the Church.

[5] A 1969 essay advances a fairly precise statement of the bonum coniugum as a "co-end" of marriage along with procreation: "Such help and complement of the spouses, in all its human, moral, spiritual and supernatural dimensions, constitutes what the conciliar magisterium calls the bonum coniugum, which appears as an autonomous end like that of procreation and in the same order of hierarchy" (G. Mantuano: "La definizione giuridica del matrimonio", in AA.VV. L'Amore Coniugale, Libr. Ed. Vaticana, 1971, p. 197). One wonders however if the writer was aware of the full import of what he expresses here and which is in such apparent harmony with the formula of c. 1055 of the 1983 Code. His insight remains undeveloped and indeed checked by his identification of the bonum coniugum with "conjugal love", which is his focus of interest: "conjugal love... is identified with the bonum coniugum" (ib.).

[6] cf. C. Burke: "The Bonum coniugum and the Bonum Prolis; Ends or Properties of Marriage?" (The Jurist 49 (1989), pp. 704-713). There we studied the genesis of the term bonum coniugum and the history of its incorporation into the 1983 Code.

[7] On one occasion, in a minor Address of October 10, 1984, Pope John Paul II referred in passing to the hierarchy of ends. Despite this one isolated reference (no other has come to my notice), it seems beyond question that current magisterium has given a totally different emphasis to the matter.