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An assumption at times found in current canonical writing is that Church thinking has been dominated for centuries - right up to Vatican II - by an "institutional" understanding of marriage, and that this is now gradually but surely giving way to a more personalist understanding. In the institutional understanding the social aspect of marriage is emphasized and, concretely, its role as an institution for propagating the human race. This understanding has roots that stretch far back into the past. A lot of its strength developed from the doctrine of the three-fold matrimonial "bona" and, later, from the elaboration of the contractual concept of matrimony and from the requirement of canonical form.