We are in the home stretch of the Annual Catholic Appeal for this year. And though we have made our actual goal, there is always a challenge goal that we are invited to strive toward, so that the good things that are accomplished through this Appeal may be done, year in and year out. If you have already made your pledge, thank you so much for your generosity. If you have yet to pledge, or have misplaced your card, please contact either me (314-385-5090) or Jim Paunicka (314-385-7552) at your earliest convenience. Together, we help to change lives…
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Continuing our ‘conversation’ from last week, here are some of the Church’s key teachings on marriage:
– “Marriage, the clinging together of husband and wife as one flesh, is based on the fact that man and woman are both different and the same. They are different as male and female, but the same as human persons who are uniquely suited to be partners or helpmates for each other. The difference between man and woman, however, cannot be restricted to their bodies, as if the body could be separated from the rest of the human person. The human person is a union of body and soul as a single being. Man and woman are two different ways of being a human person.”
(“Love and Life in the Divine Plan”)
– “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 toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.”
(Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1601)
-“The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by Him with its own proper laws … God Himself is the author of marriage.” The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have under-gone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes. These differences should not cause us to forget its common and permanent characteristics. Although the dignity of this institution is not transparent everywhere with the same clarity, some sense of the greatness of the matrimonial union exists in all cultures. “The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life.”
(Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1603)