Love is for Life: Pastoral Letter of the Irish Bishops
Appendix I
THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL ON MARRIAGE,
CONJUGAL LOVE AND RESPONSIBLE PARENTHOOD
The relevant passages from the Council are found in the Pastoral
Constitution on the Church in the Modern World:
Marriage and conjugal love are by their nature ordained towards the
begetting and educating of children. Children are really the supreme gift
of marriage.... The God Himself who said, "It is not good for man to
be alone" (Genesis 2: 18) and "who made man from the beginning
male and female" (Matthew 19:4), wished to share with man a
certain special participation in His own creative work. Thus He blessed
male and female, saying: "Increase and multiply" (Genesis 1:28).
Hence, while not making the other purposes of matrimony of less account,
the true practice of conjugal love, and the whole meaning of the family
life which results from it, have the same end: that the couple be ready
valiantly to cooperate with the love of the Creator and the Saviour, who
through them will enlarge and enrich His own family day by day.
Parents should regard as their proper mission the task of transmitting human
life and educating those to whom it has been transmitted. They should realise
that they are thereby cooperators with the love of God the Creator, and
are, so to speak, the interpreters of that love. Thus they will fulfil their
task with human and Christian responsibility. With docile reverence towards
God, they will come to the right decision by common counsel and effort....
The parents themselves should ultimately make this judgement, in the sight
of God. But in their manner of acting, spouses should be aware that they
cannot proceed arbitrarily. They must always be governed according to a
conscience dutifully conformed to the divine law itself, and should be submissive
towards the Church's teaching office, which authentically interprets that
law in the light of the Gospel....
When there is question of harmonizing conjugal love with the responsible
transmission of life, the moral aspect of any procedure does not depend
solely on sincere intentions or on an evaluation of motives. It must be
determined by objective standards. These, based on the nature of the human
person and his acts, preserve the full sense of mutual self-giving and human
procreation in the context of true love . Such a goal cannot be achieved
unless the virtue of conjugal chastity is sincerely practised. Relying on
these principles, sons of the Church may not undertake methods of regulating
procreation which are found blameworthy by the teaching authority of the
same Church in its unfolding of the divine law.
Everyone should be persuaded that human life and the task of transmitting
it are not realities bound up with this world alone. Hence they cannot be
measured or perceived only in terms of it, but always have a bearing on
the eternal destiny of man (Gaudium et Spes 50-51.)
Net publishing courtesy of the Newman Center at Caltech
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