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            Man is by nature a discontented creature. He is seldom happy with his present lot; he wants more (a good sign that he is made for more). His distinctive awareness of the future tends to turn his existence into a recurring question mark: "what will become of me?" Our human consciousness seldom permits us to forget this aspect - the problematic aspect - of life.

            Our age has its problems, some the same, many different, to those of earlier generations. The modern world is specially characterized by a therapeutic sense, a conviction that ills can be treated and difficulties solved. In medicine and many other fields we have developed new and revolutionary remedies and techniques, and possess the keenness and skill to apply them. The result has been to generate a certain optimism about problems, at least about those that turn up in one's personal life: an inclination to think that everything must have a remedy, and that the remedy moreover should be quick, painless, and obtained without much effort. Such optimism constitutes a weakness more than a strength. Life is worth living, but there is little advantage in thinking that it can be lived easily.

            The real problem of life - facing each age and each person - is finding happiness, as far as it can be found. Happiness however is one "good" that can seldom be found quickly (or if it is, will almost certainly not be lasting), and never without an effort. The truly "good" things in life are always "bona ardua", arduous goods, with their necessary aspect of difficulty. But that does not make them less good, or less worth pursuing or less productive of happiness once they are found and accepted; once one comes out of one's self to respond to the values they offer. Just the contrary.

            These elementary truths can be usefully borne in mind in this chapter, as we consider the relationship between married personalism and the "bona" or "goods" or marriage - those concepts which constantly recur in canonical studies and jurisprudence, and to which we have already had more than one occasion to refer. So traditional has it been to refer to each of the essential features of marriage (fidelity, procreativity, permanence of the bond) as a "bonum" - "bonum fidei", "bonum prolis", "bonum sacramenti" - that the word "bona", in reference to marriage, has become for many a working term with a purely technical connotation. To me the "bona" also appear as concepts filled with human and personalist meaning. And I consider that marriage itself will not be appreciated nor be a source of real happiness unless these "bona", which express its fundamental properties, are understood in all their positive content, and loved, with a true love that embraces both their "easy" and their difficult aspects.

            Let us go back to St. Augustine who first singled out these three essential characteristics of marriage, and gave them the name of "bona". The nomenclature he chose must have had a certain fittingness to it, otherwise it would scarcely have had the fortune to be accepted in ecclesial usage right down to our days. However the original sense in which he proposed and used the terminology has perhaps not been quite so fortunately preserved.

¿"Bona" or "Mala"?

            No one denies the genius of St. Augustine. He fascinates and inspires; he provokes and irritates. He is frequently misunderstood (his thought being very nuanced and not always easy to follow); and just as often misrepresented. With regard to the "bona" of marriage, the positive nature of Augustine's teaching has been not so much misconstrued, as obscured and forgotten. Peculiarly, if one were to look for the cause of this, no small measure of responsibility would have to be assigned to canonical law and practice. In considering how the exclusion of one of the "bona" invalidates consent, canon law focussed attention on the obligatory aspect of each "bonum", with the demands it involves. This was (and is) quite logical in dealing with cases of simulation, one of the "pathologies" of marital consent which ecclesiastical tribunals have to consider. But our present study is not about the pathology of marriage. And certainly the married personalism of Vatican II did not seek to fix attention on conjugal pathology, but to present a renewed vision of the dignity of marriage and of all those aspects - natural and supernatural - which contribute to its fulfillment and health. To my mind, this renewed vision cannot be actualized in practice without "redeeming" the "bona" from that narrow canonical understanding which has virtually appropriated them for so long, conditioning our understanding of them in a way that deeply obscures their actual goodness as "values" or "benefits" of the married state. Some personalist trends have not only failed to discern the deficient anthropology operative here, but have tended in fact to adopt it, at times in so negative a fashion that it might well seem more appropriate within their presentation to speak of the augustinian "goods" as "mala", rather than as "bona".

            We have not yet emerged from this phase. Many post-conciliar canonists and other writers still consider any analysis of marriage structured around the three augustinian "bona" as restrictive [1] and impoverishing. As we saw in chapter two above, continuing to classify them as institutional and "therefore" non-personalist concepts [2], they have sought to develop a married personalism that takes little or no account of the "bona". In my opinion, unless these tendencies adjust themselves to a more adequate anthropology, they will stand in the way of that truly human and positive understanding of marriage which is a pre-condition to its renewal. Within the canonical field, the persistent negative view of the "bona" has fostered vague juridic formulations (e.g. in relation to the "communio vitae", to the "essential obligations", to the bonum coniugum) which have such a uncertain meaning as to offer little solid support to any substantial renewal.

            How then did Augustine conceive the "goods" of marriage - the "bonum fidei" (the faithful exclusiveness of the conjugal relationship: one man with one woman), the "bonum prolis" (the openness of this relationship to the procreative power of sexual intercourse), and the "bonum sacramenti" (the permanent or unbreakable character of the marital bond, which in a profound and mysterious way [3] reflects God's covenanted and unbreakable love for mankind)?

            It is important to go back to the sources: the texts and also the circumstances. St. Augustine, whose own sexual life had given him no little trouble, was firmly convinced of the goodness of marriage. He expressed his convictions in synthetic and brilliantly clear formulations, particularly as he defended the integrity of the conjugal union against the global pessimism about material nature of the Manicheans, who applied their pessimistic view in a specially intense way to matrimony (in which they saw procreation as being peculiarly evil, inasmuch as it perpetuates material creation).

            It is logical therefore that St. Augustine should have defended the goodness of procreation, that privileged conjugal sharing in God's creative power. But his great formulations put equal stress on the value and goodness of other essential aspects of marriage. Together they show its greatness and should provoke admiration. For Augustine, each of these fundamental features of conjugal society - its exclusiveness, its permanence, its procreativity - is a "bonum", a good thing or a value, that gives dignity to marriage and shows its deep correspondence to the innate aspirations of human nature which should therefore take joy and glory in this goodness. "This is the goodness of marriage, from which comes its glory: offspring, chaste fidelity, the unbreakable bond" ("illud esse nuptiarum bonum unde gloriantur nuptiae, id est, proles, pudicitia, sacramentum": De pecc. orig., c. 37, n. 42 (PL 44, 406)). "All these are the values ["bona"], on whose account marriage is good: children, faithfulness, the covenanted bond" ("Haec omnia bona sunt, propter quae nuptiae bonae sunt: proles, fides, sacramentum": De bono coniug. cap. 24, n. 32 (CSEL 41, 227)).

            These texts make it clear that to dwell on the obligatoriness of the "bona", as canon law tends to do, is very far from Augustine's approach. He did not conceive or present the "goods" of matrimony mainly as obligations, but as values, as blessings. He writes: "Let these nuptial blessings be the objects of our love: offspring, fidelity, the unbreakable bond... Let these nuptial blessings be praised in marriage by him who wishes to extol the nuptial institution" ("In nuptiis tamen bona nuptialia diligantur, proles, fides, sacramentum ... Haec bona nuptialia laudet in nuptiis, qui laudare vult nuptias": De nupt. et conc. I, c. 17, n. 19 (PL 44, 424-425); cf. c. 21, n. 23. Passages such as these should give pause to those who accuse Augustine of pessimism about sexuality in general, and about conjugal sexuality in particular. Careful consideration of Augustine's thought reveals him as both intensely alive to the dignity and greatness of married sexuality, and highly sensitive to the dangers it must face (cf. C. Burke: "St. Augustine and Conjugal Sexuality": Communio 1990-IV, 545-565). The new Catechism of the Catholic Church also speaks of the "greatness of the matrimonial union," and of how "the mutual love [of man and woman] becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man. It is good, very good, in the Creator's eyes" (nos. 1602, 1604). But the Catechism too offers a realistic (not pessimistic) view of the difficulties facing the sexual relationship in the present state of human nature. "The experience [of evil] makes itself felt in the relationships between man and woman. Their union has always been threatened by discord, a spirit of domination, infidelity, jealousy and conflicts that can escalate into hatred and separation". This "disorder we notice so painfully does not stem from the nature of man and of woman, nor from the nature of their relations, but from sin. As a break with God, the first sin had for its first consequence the rupture of the original communion between man and woman. Their relations were distorted by mutual recriminations; their mutual attraction, the Creator's own gift, into a relationship of domination and lust..." "To heal the wounds of sin, man and woman need the help of the grace of God... Without his help, man and woman cannot achieve the union of their lives for which God created them 'in the beginning'" (nos. 1606-1608)).

            If, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church says (no. 1603), "the vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator", one would expect the normal man and woman to be deeply and naturally attracted to marriage precisely as God himself designed it to be: with the very constituent properties which St. Augustine distinguished in it and which so drew his praise.

            Canonists too need to achieve and retain a keen perception of the naturalness and goodness of the "conjugal instinct", which exists in each normal person, as something over and above the mere sexual instinct. The conjugal instinct is not satisfied with a passing physical relationship or union; it seeks more. It is more particularly activated when a man and a woman fall deeply in love, fall precisely into conjugal love. Then their desire is to give themselves to each other in a sexual relationship marked by those fundamental aspects singled out by St Augustine: a relationship that is permanent, exclusive and open to offspring. Conjugal love wants such a commitment. It wants to bind itself so, and is unhappy if it cannot, or if its desire is not reciprocated by the loved one. Moreover, it has a natural understanding that such a commitment implies obligations; and it wants to be so obliged and bound. The conjugal covenanted bond is the aspiration of true human love. Moreover, the free choice which the person in love most cares for is to be able to bind himself in such a bond. Tolstoy presents one of his characters, Leven, as having his leg pulled by his friends at a stag-party on the eve of his wedding. They tease him that he is about to lose his freedom, but he rejects the suggestion that he should have any hesitations or regrets: "On the contrary, I am happy to lose my freedom this way" (Anna Karenina, Part V, Ch. II).

            May I refer the reader back to what is written in chapter three on the personalist value of open-to-life conjugal sexuality. According to the anthropological analysis presented there, what confers on married sexual intercourse the status of a totally unique expression of spousal love and union (sufficient to justify its being called the conjugal act) is precisely its sharing in complementary procreative power (cf. C. Burke: "Procreativity and the Conjugal Self-Gift": Studia canonica 24 (1990), 47-49). That is why the unitive-donative and the procreative aspects of the conjugal act are inseparably connected. Contraception in fact turns the conjugal act into a lie, contradicting not only the biological but also the personalist meaning of physical marital sexuality.

            When the "bonum prolis" is seen in a mainly negative light, it becomes impossible to achieve a truly personalist understanding of the deeper mystery of human sexuality. Much the same holds good for the "bonum sacramenti" or the permanent character of the marital bond. Diffidence towards indissolubility, just as towards procreativity, shows a deficient personalism. It expresses the suspicious individualism of the person who fears he will alienate himself if he gives himself. Yet, with his fear of giving, he paradoxically cannot "realize" himself (cf. Gaudium et Spes, no. 24). Again, the person who does not want to love in an exclusive sexual relationship (the "bonum fidei"), frustrates in himself the desire to be the privileged object of an exclusive love.

"Difficult" goods?

            Is there not difficulty and challenge in such a conjugal love? Of course. Does this makes it seem - to those in love - not worthwhile? One may well doubt it. If, as we said earlier, happiness requires an effort, so does love. The love that is not prepared for effort or sacrifice, is not sincere love. This too is a truth that human nature easily understands; fidelity to a life-long love will require sacrifice, but the sacrifices are worth it. Pope John Paul II writes: "It is natural for the human heart to accept demands, even difficult ones, in the name of love for an ideal, and above all in the name of love for a person" (Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, V, 1 (1982), p. 1344).

            St. Augustine (who later developed the idea more fully in "The City of God") distinguished two types of love: "There are two loves, the one of which is holy, the other, unholy; one social, the other individualist; one takes heed of the common good because of the society that is above, the other reduces even the commonweal to its own ends because of arrogant authority; the one is subject to God, the other sets itself up as a rival to God; the one is serene, the other tempestuous; the one peaceful, the other quarrelsome; the one prefers truthfulness to deceitful praises, the other is utterly avid of praise; the one is friendly, the other jealous; the one wants for its neighbor what it wants for itself, the other wishes to subject its neighbor to itself; the one directs its effort to the neighbor's good, the other to its own" (De Gen. ad litt., Bk. 11, c. 15 (PL 34, 437)).

            There is a good love and a bad love. The good love takes one out of self and makes one rise above self; such should be love for children, for parents, for wife or husband... It can lead a person to give his very life for the ones he loves, than which there is no greater love (cf. Jn 15:13). The "bad" love is love for whatever keeps one wrapped up in one's self, and prevents one from giving one's self. Love, if true, is a means of fulfillment and happiness. If false, it becomes a force for frustration and unhappiness.

            Certainly there is a crisis and skepticism about love today, because the pervasive philosophy or psychology of the I-generation has conditioned people to understand love as "something that makes me feel good". Love, if sincere and genuine, should want to make the loved person "feel" good (even though this may not always be achieved because it does not necessarily lie in our power to induce feelings in another). But at a deeper level, love wants the other to be good (without reformist impositions) and to be enriched by the acquisition of values, especially of virtues. That is truly to wish the good of the other (in which, according to St. Thomas, consists the reality of love: "to love is to want goodness for the other" ("amare est velle alicui bonum": I-II. q. 26, art. 4)). And that again is why one can never broach the topic of the juridic relevance of love without stressing that any "ius ad amorem" (however explicated) can only be legitimately posited and evaluated in the light of the correlative "obligatio amandi".

            Our world too has its manichean (as well as its pelagian) tendencies (cf. C. Burke: "St. Augustine and Conjugal Sexuality": loc. cit., pp. 564-565). about sex and marriage. It is experiencing a strong temptation to yield to negative attitudes about the relationship between the sexes, and particularly to pessimism regarding permanence in the marital commitment. Certainly the narrow canonical focus we noted earlier has not been the only source of the modern negative view of the augustinian "bona". Even more powerful counter-factors (also within the Church) have operated: growing individualism, growing psychologism, growing self-absorption. Some would argue that it in consequence has seldom been more difficult for people to maintain a natural approach to marriage. I would concede the argument in part; and contest it in part. The difficulty of maintaining a natural understanding of marriage can be powerfully offset by adequate pre-marital instruction at all its stages (including proper "sex-education" based on christian anthropology, and also on the human appeal and challenge of virtues such as chastity), accompanied by sound pre- and post-marriage pastoral counselling, where people are encouraged to face up to the challenges of genuine self-donation, and of no less genuine acceptance of the other; and are taught to rely on the supernatural means - prayer and especially the sacramental grace of matrimony itself - so as to overcome the inevitable (but normal and fulfilling) difficulties of a life-long covenanted commitment.

            Absence of proper adolescent education in the overall understanding of human sexuality, absence of immediate pre-marriage preparation and of adequate ongoing pastoral counselling throughout married life (all based on the psychological insights provided by true christian personalism), absence of personal prayer and recourse to the sacraments, are the roots of our present crisis. These are deficiencies that can be remedied. Along with greater reliance on the supernatural means, there is need for greater conviction that the fullness of the marital commitment, as presented by the Church, is enormously attractive to man and woman. It is the way out of clinging selfishness, and the way into lasting, worthwhile love. It expresses truths and aspirations which are close to human mind and heart and which, if presented with conviction, easily evoke a strong response.

            With burgeoning declarations of nullity (many justified, many not) we are questionably solving the problematic situation of some persons. But we are not solving the real underlying problem - the huge vacuum left in people's lives when they no longer understand the commitment aspects of marriage as values, i.e. as good and desirable things, when they demand happiness on their own conditions, and prefer the "freedom" to go from one semi-commitment to another, perhaps only half-realizing that their concept of happiness, and above all its real presence in their lives, is shrinking in the process.

            I hold then that we need a fundamental reassessment of the "bona"; seeking a new analysis which shows how the effective uniqueness of the interpersonal conjugal relationship is expressed and defined by these essential characteristics. They reveal to us both the human depth and the juridic implications of the "sese tradere/acceptare". Other aspects certainly enter and certainly matter; but the fundamental personalist richness of marriage is found first of all in the exclusiveness, permanence and openness-to-life of the covenant which husband and wife have wished to establish between themselves.

            A renewed analysis of the augustinian "bona" can help us see that nature has not pointlessly mixed up biology, affectivity and psychology, that the instincts of human love are right, and that "I'll love you for ever", "for me there can never be anyone like you", "of course we're looking forward to having a family"... are closer to the human heart than free love, temporary alliances, trial marriages, shared selfishness, contraceptive relations, sterile unions, wife-swopping, participated calculation.

The "bona" and the bonum coniugum

            A particular comment, in a somewhat different context, could be appropriate here, especially as it leads into the topic of the next chapter, the bonum coniugum. Some authors tend to treat the "good of the spouses" as if it were in the line of the traditional three "bona" which we have been examining, a simply addition or enrichment to those formulated by St. Augustine. In such a presentation, the bonum coniugum appears as a fourth essential element or property, to be added to the three traditionally enunciated. This is altogether misleading. As F. Bersini rightly noted in one of the first commentaries on the matrimonial canons of the new Code: "the «bonum coniugum» has nothing to do with the augustinian «bona»" (Il Nuovo Diritto Canonico Matrimoniale, Turin, 1985, p. 10). The contrary thesis, which provokes no small confusion between essence and end, does not stand up to analysis (see my article, "Progressive Jurisprudential Thinking", in The Jurist 1998 ** p. *).

            It is particularly important here not to let similarity of terms serve to obscure juridical perceptions. The bonum coniugum is an end of marriage (c. 1055); the three traditional "bona" are essential characteristics of marriage. In the augustinian view, the three "bona" refer to "goods" or values of the married state: they are positive features of matrimony that give it dignity. Marriage is good because it is characterized by faithfulness, permanence and fruitfulness. Each "bonum" is predicated of or attributed to marriage. Offspring is a "bonum matrimonii" and so is exclusiveness or permanence. It is evident then that Augustine is speaking of the values or essential properties of marriage, not of its ends or finalities.

            It may help if we present this schematically:

            - bonum fidei: "fides", or the faithful exclusiveness of the relationship, is a "bonum" or attribute of matrimony;

            - bonum prolis: "proles", or the "procreativity" [4] of the marital relationship, is a "bonum" or attribute of matrimony;

            - bonum sacramenti: indissolubility, or the unbreakable permanence of the marital bond, is similarly a "bonum" or attribute of matrimony.

            Here it immediately becomes evident that we cannot proceed to add the bonum coniugum to this list. It would make no sense to say that the "coniuges" - the spouses - are a "bonum" or attribute of matrimony. The fact is that the term bonum coniugum does not express a value or property of marriage, in any sense parallel to that of the augustinian "goods". The "bonum" of this new term is not predicated of or attributed to marriage; it is referred not to marriage (as if it were a value that makes marriage good), but to the spouses (as involving something that is good for them). It denotes not a property of marriage (a "bonum matrimonii"), but something - the "good" or welfare, or rather the "fulfilment", of the spouses - which marriage should cause or lead to. This confirms the obvious point that the bonum coniugum is in the line not of property, but of finality or end. At least since 1983, with the clear wording of c. 1055 (marriage is "by its nature ordered to the good of the spouses..."), no room for doubt ought to remain on the matter.

NOTES

[1] cf: "The tria bona matrimonii of St. Augustine are an important part of the heritage of canonical science. As valuable as they are in the history of canon law today, they do not, of themselves, encourage a consideration of marriage as a consortium omnis vitae. They impede, in fact, such an understanding by reason of their restrictive character": David E. Fellhauser: "The consortium omnis vitae as a Juridical Element of Marriage", Studia canonica 13 (1979), p. 32.

[2] cf. for instance, L. De Luca: "L'esclusione del «bonum coniugum»", in AA.VV.: La Simulazione del Consenso Matrimoniale Canonico, Lib. Ed. Vaticana, 1990, pp. 125-126.

[3] "Sacramentum" here is a term that undoubtedly lends itself to confusion. In its augustinian use, "sacramentum" does not relate to the sacramental aspect of marriage, in the theological sense. "Sacramentum" is used by him in its literal sense of a "mystery", or something with a significance greater than meets the eye. The deeper meaning of marriage, even before the institution of the christian sacraments, is to represent or signify the loving alliance that God wants to establish between himself and his people. In this sense, indissolubility is and always has been a constitutional property of all true marriages, whether christian or not.

[4] "proles" means offspring. What is implied here however is not necessarily actual procreation (which may not come, as in a sterile marriage), but the readiness to share one's procreative power. This is what St. Thomas calls, "proles in suis principiis": Suppl. q. 49, art. 3.