Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

Christian marriage and family are deeply grounded in the trinitarian God. For God is, as Pope
John Paul II said in Mexico, „in his innermost mystery not loneliness, but family.“ 62 As unity
and difference, the trinity is in an analogous sense the source of marriage and family for
which unity and difference are also characteristic.
2. The unity of the Logos with humanity in the Incarnation, the self -surrender of Christ on
the cross and in the Eucharist, and the covenant of Christ with his Bride, the Church, do not
merely find themselves reflected in marriage. Christian marriage is rather the participation in
this divine love and its becoming present in the world. Not only does the testing, proving, and
self-interpretation of the spouses take place in marriage, but also their sanctification.
The sacrament does not abrogate the natural form of marriage, but takes it into the sacramental
mystery. That is not the case with other sacraments. Birth is not baptism. Supper is not the
Lord's Supper. But the marriage of Christians is the sacrament of marriage. Conjugal love is
enriched and sanctified „by Christ's redeeming power“ (Gaudium et spes, 48). Whoever marries
enters into Christ. He or she marries „in the Lord“ (I Co 7:39).
The essential characteristics of fidelity and indissolubility which are proper to marriage by
nature receive a new content and splendor through the sacrament. As an image of the never
ending love between the one Christ and the one Church, the sacramental, consummated marriage
can only exist as an indissoluble bond between a man and a woman. Since it is the „representation
of the consummated union of Christ with the Church,“ marriage can „be nothing
other than indissoluble and permanent.“ Grace fulfils the yearning of nature and gives it the
strength „to be that for which its better knowledge and will strive.“ „Thus, the indissolubility
of marriage is only the fulfillment of that towards which the pure and untainted heart, the
naturally Christian soul ,presses and which only finds its end in death“ (Pius Xll). 63 Love
without fidelity is deception. 'Marriage on trial' or 'marriage for a time' are not marriages, but
life lies.
Christian marriage lives out of the expectation of the eternal marriage feast which it prefigures.
It bears an eschatological character. For „when people rise from the dead, they neither
marry nor are given in marriage but live like angels in heaven“ (Mt 22:30) „In that stronger
bond of love that joins hearts to God and to one another,“ the love of married couples will,
according to the words of Pius XII, continue to exist „in the next life also, just as the souls
will also remain those in which they have dwelt here below.“ 64
CHAPTER TWO: THE FAMILY
The family is a natural community of life of the parents with their children (societas naturalis
parentalis) developing out of the marriage on which God has poured out his blessings on fertility
and it is, at the same time, the cell of human society. Whereas the theology of marriage
has fortunately been deepened in recent decades, the theology of the family is still in its fancy,
which is partially explained by the fact that only marriage and not the family is a sacrament.
Nevertheless, the development of the theology of the family is urgently necessary. For it
would be no minor shortcoming if, as often happens, one would see only the conjugal relationship
of the spouses with its sexual problems but leave the family almost out of consideration,
since the family is exceedingly important particularly for man as threatened by the impersonal
forms of organization of the industrial age. Here it has to be remembered that the
timelessly valid structure of the family is realized in the prevailing social and economic con-
the priestly ministry as an 'acting-in-the-person-of-Christ' is the ministry of a man. The wide realm of the Marian
ministry of the Church as the Bride of Christ is open to women.
62 Pope John Paul II. Homily in Puebla. January 28. 1979 (AAS 71 [1979]:184).
63 Text in Summe Pius' XII. ed. by F. Utz and J. F. Groner (Freiburg, Switzerland, 1954), 1:717, 919.
64 Ibid, n 920.
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