Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

every child must be a 'wanted child', is not harmless, for new life is here understood as 'producible'
and no longer as a gift. It is even worse when sexual pleasure-gain is set up as an absolute
while self-giving, sacrificial love for the child is made ridiculous. The statistics show a
drop in the birth rate since the end of the nineteen-sixties.
In the third decade of our century, 48 but especially since the Second Vatican Council, 49 the
question about the ends of marriage has been the subject of lively discussion. If one asks
about the inner meaning that inheres in marriage as a natural institution, the awakening and
unfolding of new life is the first to be named. But marriage as an institution also has the objectively
inherent meaning of being a community of life and love between man and woman.
As the Second Vatican Council explains, marriage „is not instituted solely for procreation.“
Even in the childless marriage the „mutual love of the spouses“ retains its proper place
(Gaudium et spes, 50). Incidentally, it is unhistorical to reproach the older theology with not
having understood marriage as a community of love, but exclusively as an institution for the
generation of children. Four hundred years ago under commission by the Council of Trent, the
Roman Catechism was published; this states that the main reason that a man and woman join
together is „the community between the two sexes.“ No other friendship is so deep as conjugal
love which, as an image of the covenant of Christ with the Church, unites „man and
woman with one another in the most intimate love and affection thinkable.“ „The conjugal
gift especially“ consists in the fact that the woman loves „her husband most intimately, next
to God, of all other people.“ 50 In modern society, the married couple will usually not take the
marriage vows for the sake of children first of all. The longing for a mental and physical
community of life and love, for completion, happiness and fulfillment, for desiring and giving
love brings them together. Even Holy Scripture mentions this unification first: „The man said
'This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. ..That is why a man leaves his
father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body“ (Gen 1:23-
24). Christ too took up this saying: „Have you not read that at the beginning the Creator made
them male and female and declared 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother
and cling to his wife, and the two shall become as one? Thus they are no longer two but one
flesh (Mt 19,4-5). St Paul also describes marriage as a community of love: „Husbands, love
your wives, as Christ loved the Church. He gave himself up for her“ (Eph 5:25). The awakening
of new life, the child, is not explicitly mentioned in these passages. Rather, the longing for
mental and physical union is placed in the centre as the force bringing the two sexes together.
It is in this sense that the often quoted words of the encyclical on marriage, Casti connubii of
December 31, 1930, are to be understood: „This mutual inward moulding of husband and
wife, this determined effort to perfect each other can even in a very real sense, as the Roman
Catechism teaches, be said to be the chief reason and purpose of matrimony, provided matrimony
to be looked at not in the restricted sense as instituted for the proper conception and
education of the child, but more widely as the blending of life as a whole and the mutual interchange
and sharing thereof” (n.24).
Couples with healthy sensibilities will, of course, also include a strong desire for children in
their bond of love. Here one must consider that the meanings are closely intertwined, since
personal happiness, fulfillment, and development are realized precisely in giving life and rearing
children. In this sense, children are of inestimable importance for the community of life
and love of the spouses. It must therefore fill one with deep concern when many Christian
couples refuse to have any children and when young mothers who are expecting their third
child are exposed to offensive remarks or receive anonymous letters of ridicule. This is not to
48
Cf N Rocholl, Die Ehe als geweihtes Leben (Dülmen, 1935),61
49
Cf Jakob David, Neue Aspekte der kirchlichen Ehelehre, 2nd ed (Bergen-Enkheim bei Frankfurt am Main,
1966)
50
Catechismus Romanus. Das Religionsbuch der Kirche (1566) (Innsbruck, 1934), pt II, nn 14, 15, 27
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