Covenanted Happiness: Love and Commitment in Marriage (Third Edition, 2009)

Description

The "laws of happiness" as they’re found in Christian marriage and family life

This book demonstrates that marriage, contrary to the caricature of a permissive materialistic outlook, actually deepens, matures, and makes permanent your personal happiness. Cormac Burke candidly and charitably discusses sexual identity in marriage and family life, "family planning," divorce, contraception, the value of children, the family in today’s society, and more. He clarifies and defends Church teachings, showing that only following the Church’s guidance saves married couples from misery and brings them true happiness. Ideal as a gift for newlyweds and for marriage preparation courses.

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foreword by historian of contraception and moralist Dr. Janet E. Smith

This is the book I used in my "pre-Cana" class with an FSSP priest.

ch. 2:

One cannot make a gift unless one has something to give. Every girl who gives herself lightly knows that she has thrown away her virginal self. And in return for what? That virginity, the physical sign and proof that a girl has kept herself whole so as to give herself integrally and definitively, is now no longer hers to offer as the pledge and proof of her definitive gift of self. She has radically devalued herself in her own sight and in the sight of any man who may eventually marry her. It is of course true that a man can similarly devalue himself. But it is nature's way that the woman has to pay her own devaluation at a higher cost.