Toward the Spirit: Why Faithful Catholics Need to Recover the Patristic and Scholastic Vision of Marriage
Faithful Catholics today find themselves in an unusual position.
On one side stands a secular culture that has largely abandoned Christian morality altogether. Marriage has been redefined, chastity ridiculed, fertility treated as a burden, and self-denial dismissed as unhealthy. Against these errors, faithful Catholics rightly defend the Church's teaching.
Yet another danger confronts us—one far more subtle.
It is possible to defend Catholic morality while gradually losing sight of the theological vision that once animated it.
We may continue to affirm the Church's teachings while forgetting the spiritual principles that gave those teachings their shape. We may preserve the conclusions while neglecting the foundations.
This danger is especially evident in the realm of marriage.
The Catholic Church continues to teach the sanctity of marriage, the evil of contraception, the goodness of children, and the legitimacy of marital relations. Faithful Catholics accept these teachings with filial obedience.
Yet if we were suddenly transported into the world of the Fathers and the great Scholastics, many of us would discover that our assumptions about marriage differ considerably from theirs.
The Fathers viewed marriage primarily through the objective lens of Original Sin, Redemption, and the conquest of concupiscence.
We often view marriage through the lens of subjective companionship, intimacy, communication, and fulfillment.
The difference is not merely one of vocabulary.
It reflects a different spiritual emphasis.
The Fathers never forgot that mankind is fallen.
For them, concupiscence was not simply one aspect of human experience. It was one of the most visible manifestations of humanity's wounded condition.
This is why St. Augustine devoted so much attention to the disorder introduced into human nature by the Fall. This is why St. Gregory the Great repeatedly spoke of warfare against the passions. This is why the monastic movement flourished throughout Christendom. This is why St. Thomas Aquinas could ask whether the marital act itself required an excuse.
To modern ears such questions sound strange.
To the Fathers they sounded obvious.
Not because marriage was evil.
Not because children were unwelcome.
Not because spouses were condemned.
Rather because every Christian was understood to be engaged in a lifelong struggle to bring the flesh into subjection to the spirit.
The Christian ideal was not the harmonious expression of desire.
The Christian ideal was the transformation of desire.
The Christian goal was not simply to use the passions correctly.
It was to subject the passions to reason, reason to faith, and faith to God in the pursuit of Christian Perfection.
This vision permeated the entire patristic and scholastic tradition.
It explains why the Fathers consistently praised continence.
It explains why virginity and continence were universally regarded as superior to marriage.
It explains why spouses who embraced continence by mutual agreement were honored rather than pitied.
It explains why the marriage of St Joseph and The Blessed Virgin Mary occupied such a privileged place in Christian imagination.
The Fathers did not believe that holiness consisted in finding ever more refined ways to accommodate concupiscence.
They believed holiness consisted in overcoming it.
This is precisely where many faithful Catholics today would benefit from a renewed encounter with the tradition.
Without rejecting any teaching of the contemporary Magisterium, we must honestly ask whether our spiritual instincts are still those of the Fathers.
When we discuss marriage, do we speak as often about self-denial as they did?
Do we speak as often about mutual marital continence (abstinence) as they did?
Do we speak as often about mortification as they did?
Do we speak as often about conquering the passions as they did?
Or have we unconsciously adopted a more therapeutic understanding of Christian life in which discipline is viewed primarily as a burden rather than as a path to freedom?
Even debates surrounding Natural Family Planning reveal this tension.
The Church teaches that recourse to NFP may be morally legitimate under appropriate circumstances. Faithful Catholics rightly accept this judgment.
Yet a deeper question remains.
What spiritual disposition accompanies its use?
The Fathers consistently evaluated actions according to the orientation of the will.
They asked not merely what a person was doing but what he was seeking.
Was he moving toward the spirit or toward the flesh?
Toward self-denial or self-indulgence?
Toward mastery of desire or accommodation to desire?
These questions remain relevant.
Even when actions are morally permissible, Catholics should still ask whether they are cultivating the spirit of continence so highly praised throughout the tradition.
The issue is not legality.
The issue is sanctity.
The issue is not what is permitted.
The issue is what is perfect.
For many centuries Catholic spirituality maintained a clear hierarchy.
Marriage was holy.
Virginity was holier.
Intercourse within marriage was lawful.
Mutual Continence (abstinence) was more excellent.
Children were a blessing.
The renunciation of even legitimate goods (children) for the Kingdom was a greater blessing still.
This hierarchy did not diminish marriage.
It illuminated Heaven.
The celibate Christ, the Virgin Mother, St. John the Baptist, St. John the Evangelist, countless monks, nuns, hermits, and consecrated virgins, married saints living in mutual continence as “brother and sister,” all testified to a reality beyond this world.
They reminded Christians that earthly marriage itself points beyond itself.
They reminded Christians that every sacrament is ordered toward a greater union.
They reminded Christians that the ultimate vocation of man is not earthly generation but eternal participation in the divine life.
This perspective is urgently needed today.
For even among faithful Catholics, there is a danger that we become so occupied defending marriage that we forget what marriage exists to serve.
Marriage exists to assist souls on the road to Heaven.
Marriage exists to sanctify.
Marriage exists to train men and women in charity, sacrifice, obedience, chastity and continence. Marital chastity can not be limited to the non use of artificial contraception. The pursuit of perfect chastity (abstinence) must remain the ultimate goal.
Marriage exists to direct man away from self and toward God.
The Fathers understood this.
The Scholastics refined it.
The saints lived it.
And the Church needs to recover it.
The renewal we seek will not come from abandoning the Magisterium.
It will come from recovering the spiritual realism of the Fathers, the theological precision of the Scholastics, and the ascetical wisdom of the saints.
Only then will Catholics once again learn to view marriage not primarily as a sphere for the fulfillment of desire, but as a school of holiness in which the flesh is disciplined, the passions are ordered, and the soul is gradually conformed to the Virginal Christ.
The Church does not need less marriage.
The Church needs a more supernatural understanding of marriage.
She needs a recovery of the ancient conviction that the purpose of the Christian life is not merely to regulate the flesh, but to transcend it; not merely to accommodate desire, but to transform it; not merely to live according to nature, but to live according to grace.
For as the Apostle teaches, "the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh."
The Fathers never forgot that struggle.
Neither should we.