The Theology of Marriage: Personalism, Doctrine and Canon Law

Description

This work does a good job overviewing the post-Vatican II understanding (misunderstanding) of marriage.

WARNING: Burke is a neo-Jovinian. Beware of Burke's rejection of traditional teaching, esp. his dismissal of the remedium concupiscientiæ* end of marriage and support of "theology of the body", and his Opus Dei bias.

*The paleo-Protestant heretic Jovinian is the first St. Alphonsus mentions as holding the view "that marriage and virginity were equally meritorius".

Don't subscribe to the false personalism that Cormac Burke herein reports; he actually is critical of heterodox misconstruals of it. "Personalism" understood as "the gift of self" does accord with Catholic doctrine on sacrifice.

The foreword by contraception expert Janet Smith mentions some troubling things about this work, but I'm not sure whether she acurately asseses this work. According to Smith,

• C. Burke thinks periodic continence isn't effective and that couples should be having sex all the time! This is opposed to 1 Cor. 7, which exhorts (at the very least!) that couples abstain from marital relations periodically to devote time to prayer.
  • Related: Why doesn't he exhort to virginity?
• C. Burke upholds the Vatican II novelty that inverts the ends of marriage, placing "conjugal love" as the primary end of marriage (cf. Abp. Lefebvre's I Accuse the Council! PDF p. 96 or De Mattei 2013 5.10.b for Cdl. Ottaviani's excellent intervention).

Burke does a good job overviewing and criticizing the post-Vatican II insanities regarding marriage. He also quotes from St. Robert Bellarmine's De Matrimonio.

p. 39n20 (PDF p. 70) seems dismissive of St. Thomas's claim that matrimony “has a minimum of spirituality” (Summa Theologica III q. 65 a. 2 ad 1: "quia minimum habet de spiritualitate, ultimo ponitur inter sacramenta. ").

ch. 3 "The Ends of Marriage" discusses the '83 Code's “good of the spouses” (bonum coniugum) end of marriage (alongside the procreative end). It also mentions Dietrich von Hildebrand and Herbert Doms's disgusting contraceptive sex- and human-worship (cf. "Dietrich von Hildebrand, Phenomenology, John Paul II, etc."). Also, p. 52 (PDF p. 83):

A strong counter-opinion [to the traditional ends of marriage] held that these views of the aims of marriage were too exclusively centered on its procreative function, relegating to the periphery aspects which most people (including the married couples themselves) would hold as being at the heart of the marital relationship: love between man and woman as the main motive of marriage, the promise of personal happiness or fulfillment that marriage seems to offer, and the human values felt to underlie physical sexuality.

Seriously? Most couples value (and not just in their initial "romantic phase") these things more than fertility? Burke, like feminists, criticizes St. Thomas's view (Summa Theologica I q. 98 a. 2) that a wife is helper only in procreation and that man can do/obtain everything else more conveniently with other men.

Re: Burke p. 11 (PDF p. 42), cf.

Rite of Marriage During Mass - March 19, 1969

to

Rite of Marriage During Mass - April 2, 1964

Allegedly, the 1969 Ordo Celebrandi Matrimonium makes it clearer that the spouses are the ministers of the sacrament of matrimony, by making it the Q&A format of the pre-V2 rite only optional. cf.: Barberi, La celebrazione del matrimonio cristiano: il tema negli ultimi decenni della teologia cattolica. (Really, like most Vatican II changes, which don't per se seem bad, they open the door for abuse; e.g., taking the priest more out of the picture of the marriage rite by giving him the option not to question the bride and bridegroom opens the door for couples to think the presence of the priest is not important and that marrying outside the Church is okay!)

Msgr. Burke insightfully ties indissolubility/eternity with monogamy/monotheism (p. 123 // PDF p. 154):

if God wishes to bind husband and wife to one another for life, it is also so that, in the end, he can bind each one of them to himself for eternity.

He also does an excellent job showing that virginity/celibacy is the highest form of marriage, the sacramentum magnum (Eph 5:32), as “we are [all] called to marriage-union with God [vocamur ad coniugium Dei]” (Contra Adimantum Manichaei Discipulum , 13, 3); cf. p. 136n26 // PDF p. 167 for more excellent quotes from St. Augustine in this respect.

Ch. 7 does a good job presenting a stronger argument than the weak "perverted faculty argument" against contraception. The not-just-bodily but most importantly the spiritual unity of husband and wife necessarily contains/implies the procreative aspect.

The final, muddled chapter (8. "An R.I.P. for the Remedium Concupiscentiae ") is devoted to "say[ing] goodbye and good riddance to the concept that marriage serves in itself as a 'remedy of concupiscence'" (remedium concupiscientiæ), traditionally a secondary end of marriage (p. xxvi)! Wojtyła also dismissed it as an outdated idea:

• ToB no. 84 §8: "Does the Apostle in 1 Corinthians see marriage only from the point of view of a “remedium concupiscentiae [ remedy for concupiscence ],” as one used to say in traditional theological language?"

I'm not sure why Burke makes such a big deal out of the Vatican II Church rejecting "remedium contra concupiscentiam" or "remedium concupiscientiæ". He shows that St. Augustine said that marrieds can use the evil of lust/concupisence for a good end, yet for some reason Burke seems to think the "remedy" of/for concupiscence devalues the personalist aspect of marriage; yet, he is at a loss explaining 1 Cor. 7:9 ("better to marry than to be burnt") and claims the traditional doctrine of remedium concupiscientiæ makes marriage "a sort of second-class Christian option"* (p. 203), yet he agrees marriage is a lesser good than the continent state! This chapter is a bunch of Modernist muddle. St. John Chrysostom explains 1 Cor. 7 best by saying that St. Paul is exhorting to virginity.

*Jovinian is the first heretic St. Alphonsus mentions as holding the view "that marriage and virginity were equally meritorius".

He thinks there should be a spirituality of marriage, yet he quotes St. Thomas [p. 39n20 (PDF p. 70)] that marriage has "a minimum of spirituality", which explains why there are so few married saints. He, like Wojtyła, seems to think that the celibate state is not superior to the married state.

p. 209n67 quotes St.(?) Escrivá saying that the bodies of the couple constitute the matter of the sacrament of matrimony…

In The Theology of Marriage Cormac Burke has put together a collection of his most innovative theological theses and analyses, offering original insights and analyses that could help in resolving many current debates on the theology of marriage. At the same time his view goes beyond these debates. His writings are marked by an extremely positive view of sexuality and marriage. Ultimately he insists on the matrimonial vocation as a call to holiness; and delineates the particular graces married couples receive and the challenges they must face.

A former civil lawyer, a teacher of moral theology, and a specialist in marriage, Burke found himself unexpectedly called in 1986 to be a judge of the Roman Rota, the High Court of the Church. He began his work there precisely at a moment when theologians and canonists alike found themselves grappling with interpreting and finding the practical application of new magisterial teachings on matrimony - teachings that seemed to some to represent an almost total rupture with tradition.

Central and particularly controversial issues were the new definition of marriage itself and of its ends, the "personalist" way of expressing the nature of marital consent; and, not least, the concept of the bonum coniugum , "the good of the spouse", as a co-principal end of marriage.

Msgr. Burke, well attuned to John Paul II's personalist theology of marriage, sensed the need to seek the roots of these apparently new concepts in the Bible, in Tradition, and particularly in St. Augustine (in whom, despite many modern impressions to the contrary, he sees the first defender of the goodness of the marital covenant). The result over the past twenty five years has been an impressive body of work in theological as well as canonical reviews.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cormac Burke is at Strathmore University, Nairobi, Kenya.

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK

"With all the challenges to the understanding of marriage as given by God through Revelation and reason, and, with the high interest Pope Francis has taken in a renewed appreciation of married love and fidelity, Monsignor Burke's work could not have come at a better time." --Timothy Michael Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York

"Examines important issues concerning the Christian notion of marriage. Will be useful to canonists and to theologians who teach in the areas of marriage and family life." --The Rev. Msgr. John J. M. Foster, JCD, Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA

**

Amazon review:

Abysmal training in many seminaries has led to a generation (or two) of priests that simply have no clue what the church TRULY teaches on marriage and annulment. The Cross of Christ and its relation to marriage, the sanctifying grace that is one of the beautiful gifts to married couples and the way back to a reasonably "happy" marriage are all found in the TRUE teachings of the Catholic Church. Priests today are simply not equipped to properly catechize the faithful in this area.Cormac Burke understands the TRUE teaching of the Catholic Church on marriage and annulment. This enlightening book will be an eye opener for any priest giving "pastoral care" to someone considering divorce or annulment.