cormacburke.me.ke

            Recent decades have seen a remarkable fall-off in the number of Catholics frequenting the sacrament of Penance, one of the two sacraments which they can - and used to - receive frequently. The phenomenon, it should be added, characterizes the "developed" Western world. Africa is certainly an exception; so, it seems, are the countries of Eastern Europe. But allowing for such exceptions, we are in the presence of a pastoral phenomenon that is remarkable, and cannot be without significance. How should we regard it? Are there lessons to be learned from it? Does it matter? If it does, what to be done about it?

A POSTSCRIPT TO THE "REMEDIUM CONCUPISCENTIAE" (The Thomist 70 (2006): 481-536)
------------------
I. CONCUPISCENCE AND MARRIAGE: THEOLOGICAL POSITIONS
II. CONCUPISCENCE AND MARRIED LOVE: A DEEPER ANALYSIS
III. MARRIED LOVE AND MARRIED CHASTITY
CONCLUSION
------------------

            "The Split between the gospel and culture", said Pope Paul VI, "is without a doubt the drama of our time"[1]. The drama is still being played out today in two main theaters, each with very distinctive features.

Marriage: a personalist or an institutional understanding? (Communio 19 (1992), 278-304)

For a large part of this century, theologians, canonists and anthropologists have been engaged in a vigorous debate about the ends of marriage, and at times about its very nature. On the one hand was the traditional (often termed the "procreative" or "institutional") understanding, which presented the ends of matrimony 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 had emerged a new view which, without necessarily denying the importance of procreation, wished at least equal standing to be given to other personalist values linking husband and wife: mutual love, the conjugal union in its spiritual and not just its physical aspect, etc.