These excerpts are from
one of the original drafts meant to be part of the Second Vatican Council - these drafts did not make it into the Council discussions, for obvious reasons!
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DRAFT OF A DOGMATIC CONSTITUTION ON CHASTITY, MARRIAGE, THE
FAMILY, AND VIRGINITY
1. The Church, Model of Both States
All the Christian
faithful constitute one great family which has arisen out of the at once virginal
and spousal union of the Church with Jesus Christ, since never does the Savior
cease by the word of life and the grace of the Holy Spirit to render his Bride,
purchased by His blood, most chastely fruitful. For this reason, the Holy Synod
has decided to extol and defend in a single dogmatic Constitution the nobility
both of chastity in the unmarried and its most beautiful fruit, sacred
virginity, and of chaste marriage and its heavenly fruit, the Christian family.
2. Introductory Note
Since all that is about
to be presented presupposes the divinely ordained differences between the sexes
and their mutual relationship, a few things are said first about the origin and
nature of sex and about man’s dominion over his own
body insofar as this serves the propagation of the human race.
3. The Origin and Nature of Sex
God Himself “from the beginning made man male and female”
(Mt 19:4), and He blessed them, saying, “Increase and multiply” (Gn 1:28). When
He had given this blessing, He saw that all that He had made was “very good” (Gn 1:31). Thus, it is that
the things that in this respect are naturally found in man are also good and
proper, as the Church has often stated in order to proclaim the sanctity and
dignity of marriage. But after Adam’s sin, they demand
a proper modesty and protection (see Gn 2:25 and 3:7), but without any
false or scrupulous shame. By the merits of Christ the bodies of those reborn
have become temples of the Holy Spirit, which is why God can and should be
glorified in human bodies also (see 1 Cor 6:19-20).
It clearly follows,
therefore, that things which pertain to sex should be
considered and treated simply, reverently, modestly, and chastely.
In affirming this original dignity of human sex, however, false over-praise
should be avoided, as if it were precisely by making man male and female that
God made them in His image or as if it were principally by sexual elements that
man were man. For in this mortal life, although human sex also enjoys other
human qualities, it is nevertheless primarily ordered towards marriage and its
spiritual and temporal goods, as Sacred Scripture teaches (see Mt 19:4), until
that time is fulfilled when, as the Lord said, “at the resurrection they will neither marry nor be given in marriage”
(Mt 22:30).
4. Man not the Absolute Lord of the Body
It should be noted that
God alone is the absolute Lord of man’s life and of its integrity, particularly
with respect to what makes man naturally capable of and associates him with God
in the propagation of human life. Attempts to change
one’s sex, therefore, when this is sufficiently determined, are wicked;
nor is it allowed, in order to save the health of the whole man, to mutilate his
genital organs or to render them infertile, if there are other ways to provide
for his health. Nor in any case is or can there be a right to transplant into
the human body the sexual organs of animals which produce the germinative cells
of their own genus, or vice-versa; nor also to try to unite the human germ cells of each sex in
a laboratory, even if this is done without violating modesty and chastity and
solely for the sake of scientific progress.
5.
Chastity in the Unmarried
Every man has the serious but equally honorable
duty to dominate his sexual impulses and feelings by the exercise of chastity by which, with the help of God’s
grace, the flesh and the senses are rightly subordinated to reason, by which
man is raised to higher things, and, through reason illuminated by faith, to
the law of the Gospel. Thus, by chastity sexual relations and intercourse are so
ennobled that they are worthy of man, created in God’s image, and of the
Christian. But the exercise of chastity differs in the unmarried and the
married since only in the unmarried is continence linked with it; and in
addition, while it ordinarily prepares the unmarried for marriage or for sacred
virginity, for the married it is the splendor of marriage itself.
For by divine ordination, revealed
also in the law of nature, that man has a healthy sexual power does not give
him the right to exercise it. That right is obtained only in a legitimate
marriage and indeed within morally prescribed limits. An
unmarried man, therefore, has a serious duty to refrain from actions which, alone
or with others, of their nature constitute perfect or imperfect use of his
properly and specifically sexual power or which by free and conscious will are
directed to such use. The severe warning of the Holy Spirit through the
Apostle should be remembered: “Do not be
deceived: neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor the effeminate
nor homosexuals...will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor 6:9-10). Indeed,
even deliberate evil internal acts against chastity are severely forbidden by
the Lord (see Mt 5:28; 15:18-19). Nor should it be said, especially today, that
they cannot be avoided. For even the unmarried, if they humbly beg for and are
helped by God’s grace, are able to maintain chastity, as the Sacred Council of
Trent already declared and the Church has always taught about them.
No less today than in the past the
teaching of the Apostle applies, even for young people: “The body is not for immorality but for the Lord.... Do you not know
that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?” (1 Cor 6:13, 19-20). “God did not call us to impurity but to holiness”
(1 Th 4:7). While chastity is not the only nor the primary good in men’s moral
life, still without it the moral life cannot be whole; and no one can deny how
important God considers the life of those who, even outside of marriage, keep
themselves pure and immaculate in this world; for it is not without reason
that, along with charity, modesty, continence, and chastity are also listed
among the fruits of the Holy Spirit.
6.
The Defense and Care of Chastity
If
chastity, which is so important to God, is really to be preserved, it must be
loved effectively and be humbly and vigilantly guarded, defended, and promoted
by apt natural and especially by supernatural means. Human nature itself helps
in this, through a certain innate shame, which develops and
assists if it is imbued with a Christian spirit. That opinion must not be
followed, therefore, which thinks that immodest acts, that is, acts which by
their nature promote sexual desire, must be considered indifferent. A fortiori, that
aberration must be rejected according to which such acts against modesty are
recommended so that, by directly seeking and attaining lustful pleasure in them,
a person may better preserve chastity and avoid the sin of consummated and
perfect lust.
No less condemned is that other
extreme which adduces various reasons of the natural order and even invokes
religion itself and morality in order to defend and spread a veritable cult of
nudity, which neglects men’s condition after Adam’s sin (see Gn 2:25; 3:7). As
for so-called “sexual initiation,” this Sacred Synod is ready to recommend
modest and Christian education and instruction in matters sexual in accord with
individual conditions and needs. Indeed, it blames parents who out of excessive
shame or false modesty neglect or take this serious obligation lightly or who,
thinking themselves incapable of it, entrust it to people who are not fit for
it.
On the other hand, it must
reject that sort of education with is given to boys and girls together, without
any moderation, immodestly, and without consideration of religion. With supreme
loathing, furthermore, the Sacred Synod knows how many and how great
are the detestable onslaughts today against chastity, by which in countless manifestations
of today’s culture, even if under the pretext of play, recreation, science, art
or praiseworthy beauty, souls redeemed by the blood of Christ are in fact
constantly and almost everywhere, even within the family, being encouraged and
even handed over to evil. It urges all, therefore, to arm themselves against
such dangers by prayer, fasting, the sacraments of Penance
and Holy Eucharist, and devotion to the Virgin Mary. They should also
flee what are called near occasions. For how can they honestly pray, “Lead us
not into temptation” (Mt 6:13), if they freely seek temptations? Mindful of the
Lord’s words against those who scandalize, the Church has the right and duty to
repudiate those who give scandal and especially the public corruption of sexual
morality. And civil authority also must guard and defend morality by
appropriate and effective means, especially by assisting the efforts of all,
individuals or groups, to foster public morality, including cases where it is
being harmed by writings, radio programs, television, or other instruments of
human culture.
7.
Some Errors are Condemned
They are seriously opposed to the Church’s teaching who
maintain that even in a healthy man, almost everything, including religious,
moral, and even supernatural matters, are to be explained a priori by
sexuality, with the further accusation that shepherds of souls are to be considered
unworthy and incapable of their office if they do not know these and other
modern claims. It is also an error not to wish to acknowledge internal sins
against chastity or to measure external sin itself by new, e.g.,
psychoanalytical, criteria, opposed to the teachings of the Church. Quite false
are the views, which harmfully insinuate that actions which the traditional
ethics of the Church considers opposed to chastity are instead demanded by
nature itself or by a healthy development of the human person. The worst is to maintain that the most shameful love for
persons of the same sex is the prerogative of a higher culture***.
This Sacred Synod furthermore declares
to be most pernicious the errors of those according to whom, if you believe it,
precisely and above all in the area of chastity, there never or hardly ever are
subjectively and seriously evil acts, especially in the time of youth or among habitual,
occasional, and recidivist sinners, on the grounds that they are presumed to
lack sufficient freedom; or indeed that such actions are inevitable. This error
even reaches the point of maintaining that it is permitted to lead someone to
such objectively seriously evil acts when they are only and at most material
sins. Finally, the Sacred Synod rejects as harmful the errors that maintain
that the Church by its teaching on chastity and modesty harms a healthy and
vigorous education of the young. These views are directly aimed at God, since
God himself says through the Apostle: “Immorality
or any impurity... must not even be mentioned among you, as is fitting among
holy ones” (Eph 5:3).
12. The Power of the Church
As belonging to the
divine order, marriage was entrusted by Christ, not to individuals, but to the
Church that it might preserve, explain, and determine the doctrine and norms by
which it is governed. The Church must exercise this power not only for the good
of souls but also for the benefit of Christian faith and the growth of the
Mystical Body. For this reason, Christ, who wished the Church to defend to the
utmost the indissolubility which he restored to marriage, also gave it the
power, within limits and conditions established by divine law, to dissolve the
bond of all other marriages, both natural and sacramental, always excepting,
however, a marriage consummated after the baptism of both parties.
14. Errors are Repudiated
The Sacred Synod knows
how greatly the salvation of the Mystical Body of Christ depends on a right
acknowledgment of the divine order with regard to marriage. To defend it, it
knows first of all that it is its duty to condemn all the radical errors of
those who maintain that marriage in its origin and constitution is some merely
social phenomenon in continuous evolution and without any natural or
supernatural value, and that it does not come from God and from Christ and is
not subject to the power of the Church in the new economy of salvation.
Likewise it condemns
those errors by which it is held that the marriage of Christians either is not
a sacrament or that the sacrament itself is something accessory and separable
from the contract itself. It also rejects the view of those who state that the
use of marriage is the specific means for attaining that perfection by which
man is truly and properly an image of God and the Most Holy Trinity. It
severely rejects the errors and theories by which is denied the immutable
divine order with regard to the properties and purposes of marriage. And it
explicitly confutes as a supreme calumny the statement that the indissolubility
of marriage does not come from God but is a cruel invention of the Church, no
less cruelly retained. Finally, it rejects the
theories by which, in an inversion of the right order of values, the primary purpose
of marriage is esteemed less than biological and personal values and conjugal
love, in the objective order itself, is proclaimed to be the primary purpose.
20. Civil Divorce
Spouses are seriously prohibited from seeking so-called civil
divorce as a proper dissolution, as if a valid bond before God could be
dissolved by civil authority; indeed neither is it licit for others directly
and formally to cooperate in such a civil divorce. In no case and for no
reason, even if it is not rarely serious and painful, is it licit for the
faithful, while the sacred bond lasts, to dismiss a wife in order to take
another, as the Lord himself clearly teaches (Mk 10:11), although sometimes civil
authority invalidly allows this.
Sometimes, however, “civil
divorce,” while the bond endures and without contradiction of ecclesiastical
authority, can be sought. So-called simple separation is not to be done
lightly, without just, serious, and proportionate cause.
22. Errors are Rejected
The Sacred Synod must
severely condemn so-called “temporary” or “experimental” or “companionate”
marriages. It also rejects as unworthy of a man and especially of a Christian
those instructions by which through various skills a real hedonism in sacred
and holy marriage is propagated. It also rejects theories by which a violation
of marital fidelity is considered allowed to spouses, either when the mutual
love between the couple has failed or when the sexual impulse is falsely
thought to be impossible to keep within the limits of monogamous marriage.
It is also mistaken to
state that civil authority itself never has the power to punish adulterers, and
indeed with an equal penalty for both men and women. It also rebukes those who
say, and indeed under the pretext of benefitting the Church, that mixed
marriages are generally and in themselves to be fostered rather than tolerated.
That position is also mistaken which maintains that a marriage can be declared invalid
or dissolved solely because of a failure of love. Finally the Sacred Synod
most severely condemns so-called “free love,” by which, under a false pretext
of constructing a new fraternity and society, sin is committed against the
divine order and a lethal wound is inflicted not only on marriage but also on
the family and society.
*** Today
the vice of homosexuality is also quite widespread. Not only is simple
horror at this most foul vice missing, but the claim is being made that it
should be praised and presented as the mark of a loftier love and higher
culture. For, it is said, to love a person of the other sex is easy; but
sexually to love a person of the same sex is not for all, but only for the few
who are suitable and educated for it. That is why that deplorable fact is
spread, that even men of superior genius were addicted to this vice.
35. The Excellence of Sacred
Virginity
If holy Mother Church
has always especially honored chastity as a choice fruit of the Holy Spirit, it
has certainly always regarded as among its supremely precious treasures that
perfect chastity by which a person consecrates himself to God’s service by
sacred virginity and, out of singular love for God, for the sake of the Kingdom
of God (see Mt 19:12), by a spiritual and free decision abstains from marriage
and from its bodily delights. This honor given by the Bride of Christ is still
greater when that chastity is undertaken by a permanent bond and is thus
surrounded by a greater strength and firmness.
By such a consecration, a
man emulates in some ways the purity of the Angels, in some degree already here
on earth he anticipates the state of heaven, is more perfectly likened to Christ
the Virgin, born of the immaculate Virgin, and is more closely united with God,
the most pure Spirit. By such a consecration, with the help of God's grace, a
person can totally hand himself over to the service of the divine Majesty, more
easily engages in the contemplation of divine things, and, free from secular
and fleshly cares, undertakes apostolic works in order to spread the Kingdom of
God.
