THE THOMIST
A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW
OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY

EDITORS:

THE DoMINICAN FATHERS OF THE PROVINCE OF ST. JosEPH

Publishers:

VoL. XXX

The Thomist Press, Washington 17, D. C.

OCTOBER, 1966

No.4

TOWARD A RENEWAL OF THE THEOLOGY
OF MARRIAGE

PART

I

St. Augu8tine'8 Doctrine and Influence; The Interpretation of
St. Thoma8.

T

HE title, " Toward a Renewal of the Theology of
Marriage," suggests not only a rather general interest
in the theology of marriage and its historical development, but, more particularly, a question about the much
debated issue of birth regulation. This a very good starting
point indeed, because precisely the topic of birth regulation
allures many people either to an attitude of despair and resignation or to statements which obviously run contrary to the
tradition of the Catholic Church. In a few samples chosen at
random one may read: " St. Augustine ... has been virtually
abandoned by Catholics as a guide . . . to sex. . . . He is
307

308

W. H. M. VANDER MARCK

rejected by all Catholics today, as is Pope Gregory the Great,
for whom the sex act is 'always accompanied by sin'"; or
about " the suspicious attitude toward sex held by many of
the early Fathers, who seem to have regarded it as a disagreeable necessity for propagating the species .... " 1 It is indeed very common nowadays to read about " Augustinian
rigorism." 2 Noonan makes reference to " Augustinian sexual
pessimism," and about Pope Gregory the Great we even find
the coined expression: he" out-Augustined Augustine," 3 thereby saying that the doctrine of this Pope on marriage is even
worse than the one of the great bishop of Hippo. One finds
similar expressions applied to St. Thomas, the Scholastics of
the Middle Ages, the Penitentials, the handbooks of moral
theology, the encyclicals of recent Popes, particularly Casti
Connubii of Pius XI, and even to St. Paul himself.
If one realizes the significance of tradition and continuity
within the Church, the outspoken criticism against " the early
Fathers," St. Augustine, St. Thomas, etc., is rather unexpected,
to say the least. It must be feared that no general agreement
on birth regulation will be possible on this basis. The kind
of theological opportunism which either makes use of or rejects
the tradition of the Church according to one's own coincidental
needs and wishes will always be unacceptable to any honourable
member of the Church, progressive or conservative. A fundamentalist and uncritical interpretation of the tradition may be
responsible for provoking such irresponsible criticism. However, this criticism in its turn is often so uncritical in rejecting
the opposite position that it not only makes up the opponent's
point of view but, in the process, also accepts as correct his
1 The Pill and Birth Regulation, ed, by Leo Pyle (Libra Books), London, 1964,
p. 122 and p. 189.
2 See e. g. M. Muller, Die Lehre des hl. Augustinus von der Paradiesesehe und
ihre Auswirkung in der Sexualethik des liB. und 13. Jahrhunderts bis Thomas von
Aquin (-Studien zur Geschichte der kath. Moraltheologie, 1). Regensburg 1954,
passim; H. Klomps, Ehemoral und Jansenismus. Ein Beitrag bur Ubermindung des
sexualethischen Rigorismus. Cologne 1964, p. 50. 114. 115.
3 John
T. Noonan, Jr., Contraception. A History of Its Treatment by the
Catholic Theologians and Canonists. Cambridge, Mass. 1965, p. 143 and p. 150.

THE THEOLOGY

OF MARRIAGE

309

uncritical interpretation of the tradition as well. It seems to
me that the conservatives are right in defending and sticking
to the tradition but wrong in their rejection of the new opinions
on birth regulation, whereas the progressives are right in advocating the new methods of birth regulation but wrong in
criticizing and rejecting the testimonies of the tradition. I
shall first consider the history of the theology of marriage.

St. Augustine.
The teaching of St. Augustine on marriage has been of
paramount importance in the tradition of the Western Church.
Though recently buried under an avalanche of sour criticism
-just as St. Augustine's doctrine of grace was criticised by the
holy monks of 5th century southern France-it has hitherto
always been an uncontradicted authority in the theology of
the West.
To understand St. Augustine one has to keep in mind that he
wrote in a highly controversial situation. Manichaeism said
that all matter had been created by a malicious god. It condemned marriage and procreation because the begetting of a
new human being implicated a continuation of the captivity of
spirit within matter. Pelagianism denied original sin and the
necessity of infant baptism. It thus denied the transition of
any evil from parents to child.
St. Augustine rejects what has to be rejected but at the same
time he confirms what can be confirmed. About Manichaeism
he writes to Honoratus: " I keep to the truth I learned from
them; what I have found to be false I reject." 4 He rejects as
false the Manichaean condemnation of marriage and procreation. Over and over again he repeats that marriage is good.
Against Faustus he upholds the honesty of sex 5 and he quotes
from the first Letter to Timothy: that " some will desert from
the faith and . . . forbid marriage" (1 Tim. 4, I. 3) . He
• " ... quod apud eos verum didiceram, teneo; quod falsum putaveram, respuo"
(De utilitate m-edendi, 18, 86: PL 42, 92).
5 See Contra Faustum Manichaeum, 29, 4: PL 42, 490.

310

W. H. M. VANDER MARCK

refers to the study of Isaac and Rebekah (Gen. 26, 8) and says
that no one, unless he be hard and without feelings, should
reproach a holy man for petting with his own wife.6 He even
defends the polygamy of the Patriarchs: they acted according
to the prevailing custom of their times. 7 When St. Augustine
stresses the fact that they married to beget offspring, he does
not at all deny that marriage is a. society and a bond of friendship and love. If this were not so, he asks, how could old
people or a childless couple be married? 8
What he vigorously condemns, however, is the lustseeking
of the Manichees. Their so-called marriages are plain fornication and prostitution. They try by all means to prevent the
rearing of offspring, lest their god be captured and confined in
the fruit of the womb. So they use the safe period 9 or they
spill their god (an illusion to "onanism"), lest he be cruelly
shackled. 10
St. Augustine does not reject the Manichaean doctrine part
6 " Verum hoc, quod ad mores humanitatis
pertinet, dixerim, ne quisquam durus
et sine afl'ectu idipsum pro crimine obiiciat sancto viro, quod cum coniuge sua
luserit" (Contra Faustum Manich., 22, 46: PL 42, 428). See also St. Bonaventure:
"licet enim viris cum uxoribus iocari (this is the term used by the Vulgate in Gen.
26, 8; Augustine seems to have read " ludere ") et etiam delectari " (In 4 Sent. 31,
a. 2, q. 3: ed. Quaracchi, p. 726).
7 ". • • illo tempore
atque in illis terris hoc factitabatur " (Contra Faustum
Manich., 22, 47: PL 42, 428; De bono coniugali, 25, 33: PL 40, 395).
8 " Bonum ergo coniugii, quod etiam Dominus in Evangelio confirmavit
(Mt. 19;
Jo. 2) ... cur sit bonum merito quaeritur. Quod mihi non videtur propter solam
filiorum procreationem, sed propter ipsam etiam naturalem in diverso sexu
societatem. Alioquin non iam diceretur coniugium in sensibus, praesertinl si vel
amisissent filios, vel minime genuissent" (De bono coni., 3, 3: PL 40, 375).
9 "Nonne
vos estis qui nos solebatis monere, ut quantum fieri posset, observaremus tempus, quo ad conceptum mulier post genitalium viscerum purgationem
apta esset, eoque tempore a concubitu temperaremus, ne carni anima implicaretur?
... non iam uxorem, sed meretricem feminam facit ... " (DB moribus eccl. cath. et
de mOT. manich. II, 18, 65: PL 32, 1373). See also: John T. Noonan, Jr.,
Contraception, p. 120.
10 " ••• perversa lex Manichaeorum,
ne deus eorum, quem ligatum in omnibus
seminibus plangunt, in conceptu feminae arctius colligetur, prolem ante omnia
devitari a concumbentibus iubet, ut deus eorum turpi lapsu potius efl'undatur, quam
crudeli nexu vinciatur" (Contra Faustum Manich., 22, 30: PL 42, 420; cf. 22, 61:
PL 42, 438).

THE THEOLOGY OF

311

and parcel. In agreement with the Manichees, he writes: "We
say that the desire of the flesh, which fights against the spirit,
is bad, and does not spring from the Father. Its origin, however, is not the malicious god of the Manichees but mankind's
own nature as corrupted by Adam's sin." 11
Now here lies the pivotal point of St. Augustine's doctrine of
marriage as it passed into the theological tradition of the West
and-I think it must be added-the very reason why it has so
often been badly understood and interpreted. It is not difficult
to quote a good many Augustinian sentences that sound very
stern and rigoristic. I have quoted a few texts that do not
sound rigoristic at all. Their presence too needs an explanation which I think is to be found at a deeper level. It simply
does not make sense to oppose a series of rigoristic quotations
with a group of non-rigoristic ones. If we are to understand
St. Augustine's theology of marriage, we must stop talking
ethics and search for theological considerations. After all, St.
Augustine's marriage ethics is in a way hardly more interesting
than that of anyone else within the same cultural surroundings.
In this respect he frequently refers to Cicero, 12 Plato/ 3 the
poets, 14 civil law 15 and custom, 16 and we have seen already that
11 " ••• cum Manichaeis
dicimus concupiscentiam carnis, quae contra spiritum
concupisicit, malum esse, atque a Patre non esse (see Gal. 5, 17; 1 Jo. 2, 16) ... ;
istam discordiam duarum concupiscentiarum carnis et spiritus non cum illis per
adienae Deo coaeternae malaeque naturae commixtionem nobis accidisse, sed cum
catholico Ambrosio eiusque consortibus, per praevaricationem primi hominis in
noturam nostram vertisse disserimus" (Opus imperf. contra Jul. VI, 41: PL 45,
1608).
12 See e. g. Contra Jul. IV, 12, 60-61; 14, 72; V, 10, 4!'l: PL 44, 767-768. 774. 808.
13 See e. g. Contra Jul. IV, 14, 72: PL 44, 774.
14 See e. g. Contra Jul. V, 8, 38: PL 44, 807.
15 The marriage
document contains the formula: "liberorum procreandorum
causa." Cf. De nuptiis et concup. I, 4, 5; 10, 11: PL 44, 416. 420; Contra Jul. III,
21, 43: PL 44, 7!'l4; De Civ. Dei XIV, 18: PL 41, 426; Sermo· 9, 11, 18;: 278, 9:
PL 38, 88. 1272. See also: Caesarius of Aries, Sermo 44, 3: Corp. Christ. Ser. Lat.
(Brepols) 103, 196-197; Isidor of Sevilla, De eccles. off. II, 20, 10: PL 83, 812. See
on this document: K. Ritzer, OSB, Formen, Riten und religioses Brauchtum der
Eheschliessung in den christlichen Kirchen des ersten Jahrtausends (=Liteurgiewissenschaftliche Quellen und Forschungen, 38). Munster 1962, p. 27-28. 200-note
261. 353.
16 De bono coni. 7,, 7; 8; 26, 34:
PL 40, 378. 379. 395; Opus imperf, contra Jul.
V, 24: PL 45, 1461.

812

W. H. M. VAN DER MARCK

the bishop of Hippo saw no reason to blame the Patriarchs for
their adapting to the custom of polygamy. Besides, we should
be aware of the fact that St. Augustine until the end o£ his life
fostered serious doubt about one of the most basic problems
of anthropology: the relation of soul and body/ 7 and it should
amaze no one that these doubts affected his opinion about sex
too.
He whom tradition has called the " Doctor of Grace " was
not and never wanted to be a philosopher, at least not after his
conversion to Christ, but a preacher. Nowhere does this become
so overwhelmingly clear as in his controversy with the Pelagian
bishop Julian of Eclanum. He refuses almost stubbornly to go
along with the philosophical reasoning of his opponent. Time
and again he declines to be carried away by the arguments of
Aristotle/ 8 and he even reproaches Julian for being not only a
new heretic but also a religious physicist. 19
What, then, is St. Augustine's real center of interest, the
pivot of his theology? Why does he agree with the Manichees
and maintain against the Pelagians that the desire of the flesh
is bad and does not spring from the Father?
It should be clear from the beginning that the desire of the
flesh (" concupiscentia," " libido ") is not at all identical with
sexual desire, lust or concupiscence. 20 Basically it is not identical with any human feeling or desire. 21 The desire of the flesh
17 See e.g.:
Contra Jul. V, 41, 17; VI, 14, 41: PL 44, 794. 845; Opus imperf.
contra Jul. II, 178: PL 45, 1219. Cf. R. J. O'Connell, SJ, "The Plotinian Fall of
the Soul in St. Augustine," Traditio 19, 1963, 1-35; see thereupon: Rev. d'Et. aug.
11, 1965, 372-375.
18 Contra Jul. I, 4. 12; II, 10, 34; 10, 37; III, 2, 7; V, 14, 51; VI, 18, 56; 20, 64:
PL 44, 647. 698. 700. 705. 812. 855. 862 etc.
19 " Sed novus haereticus, religiosus physicus vis putari"
(Opus imperf. contra Jul.
IV, 134; PL 45, 1429).
20 " Ita hoc dicis, quasi nos concupiscentiam carnis in solam voluptatem
genitalium
dicamus aestuare. Prorsus in quocumque morporis sensu caro contra spiritum concupiscit, ipsa cognoscitur" (Opus imperf. contra Jul. IV, 28: PL 45, 1352). Cf.
Fr.-J. Thonnard, AA, "La notion de concupiscence en philosophie augustinienne,"
in: Recherches augustinennes III, Paris 1965, 59-105.
21 " ••• aliud esse sentiendi vivacitatem,
vel utilitatem, vel utilitatem, vel necessitatem, aliud sentiendi libidinem" (Contra Jul. IV, 14, 65; cf. 14, 67: PL 44, 770;

THE THEOLOGY

OF MARRIAGE

313

as mentioned by St. John (1 Jo. 16) and St. Paul (Gal. 5, 17)
is nothing else than earthly man himself. It may as well be
called orginial sin, or man in need of God's redemption. 22
Fleshly desire or original sin is not a description of man like
any other description. To think this means repeating the
serious mistake that has been made in many popular explanations of original sin. Original sin is not a moral or ethical fault
or deficiency, and in this sense a sin. It is not something
visible 23 but a divine secret. 24 This does not mean, however,
that original sin is something unintelligible, though several
theories on original sin are in fact rather obscure. St. Augustine,
who first used the expression original sin (" peccatum originale ") knew fairly well what he meant, and why a large
part of his writings concerned original sin. The term, one might
say, expresses the core of the Christian message in a negative
way. Holy Scripture does exactly the same thing. It proclaims
the positive message of God's grace and pity, but it also says
that man is blind/ 5 deaf/ 6 ill,"7 a paralytic/ 8 a leper, 29 dead,S0
barren land/ 1 dry bones (Ez. 37) . This does not mean that
every one is blind, deaf, a leper, etc., but that man is deaf,
blind, ill, dead, etc., compared to what God has prepared for
him and what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of
cf. 771); " ... libidinem culpo, non membra; vitium denoto, non naturam"
(Contra Jul. VI, 11, 34: PL 44, 841); "Alia est vis sentiendi, aluid vitium concupiscendi" (Opus imperf. contra Jul. IV, !29: PL 45, 1353).
22 See:
De nuptiis et concup. I, 19, 21: PL 44, 426.
23 " Haec invisibilia et infidelibus incredibilia ... "; " ... et illud credatur quod
cerni non potest" (De nuptiis et concup. I, 19, 21: PL 44, 426).
24 " ••• originalis secreta peccati ... " (Contra Jul. III, 19, 37: PL 44, 7!22).
25 Is. Q9, 18; 35, 5; 4Q, 7. 16. 18; 43, 8; 56, 10; 59, 10; Jer. 31, 8; Zeph. 1,
17; Ps. 146, 8; Mt. 9, 27. Q8; 11, 5; 12, 2Q; 15, 14. 30. 31; 20, 30; 21, 14; Q3, 16 ff. 24.
Q6; Mk. 8, QQ. Q3; 10, 46 ff; Lk. 4, 19; 6, 39; 7, Ql. !2Q; 14, 13. Q1; 18, 35; Jo. 5, 3;
9, 1 ff; etc.
26 Is. !29, 18; 35, 5; 4Q, 18; 43, 8; Mt. 11, 5; Mk. 7, 32. 37; 9, !24; Lk. 7, Q2; etc.
17 Mt. 4, Q3; 8, 17; 9, 35; 10, 1; Mk. 3, 15: 6, 5. 56; Lk. 4, 40; 5, 15; 8, 2; 13, 11;
Jo. 4, 46; 5, 4; 11, Q; etc.
28 Mt. 4, Q4; 8, 6; 9, 2 ff; Lk. 5, 18 ff; Acts 8, 7.
29 Q Ki. 5; Mt. 8, Q. 3; 10, 8; 11, 5; Mk. 1, 40 ff; Lk. 4, Q7; 5, 12. 13; 7, Q2; 17, 12.
30 Gen. 2, 17; 3, 19; Mt. 9, 18 ff; Mk. 5, 22 ff; Lk. 8, 41 ff; Jo. II; etc.
31 Is. 35, 7; 44, 3; Ez. 30, 1Q; cf. Ez. 47; etc.

814

W. H. M. VANDER MARCK

man conceived (1 Cor.
9) . In comparison to his divine
destination man lives in his own human world like a stranger,
a captive, an exile, a displaced person. This is what the Scriptures qualify as death in opposition to life, sin in opposition to
justice, flesh in opposition to spirit, earthly in opposition to
heavenly, blind in opposition to seeing, slavery in opposition to
freedom, etc. This is exactly what St. Augustine means by
original sin, desire of the flesh, or ignorance. He did not, as
the prejudiced German historian, Gross, caustically remarked,
invent original sin. 32 The only thing he invented was the term
he used to describe the miserable condition of man unredeemed,
excluded from the paradise of God's presence.
Original sin, then,. is not a mundane, worldly entity, but the
interpretation of the whole of human existence from the viewpoint of the Christian message. The Gospel opens the eyes of
man born blind to God's human presence within his own
world, but at the same time it must tell him that he was born
blind though he thought he was seeing; that he was dead
though he thought he was fully alive.
Thus, although original sin is not a mundane entity, it is
nonetheless understandable in the light of the Biblical message
about sin, blindness, misery and death, how every particular
evil which man experiences, may rightly be interpreted as a
sign and symptom of God's absence from human existence, as
a concrete result of being excluded from the paradise of God's
presence. The Biblical narrative of Genesis does this when it
considers death, the pains of delivery and the hardness of
labour as so many consequences of Adam's sin. St. Augustine
does this also when he as it were identifies original sin and the
autonomy or disobedience of the sexual organs, faculties and
processes which occur in human life. We have heard already
that he denies in so many words that the desire of the flesh is
nothing else than the sexual desire or lust (note
. However,
it is precisely the experience of this autonomy or disobedience
which induces St. Augustine to call it a consequence of Adam's
32

Julius Gross, Geschichte des Erbsiindendogmas I, Munich 1960, 375.

THE THEOLOGY

OF MARRIAGE

315

sin, a sign and symptom of the corruption of human nature
since the fall, and in this sense bad, evil and sinful. It is not
and cannot be sin, i. e. original sin itself, which is and remains
invisible, a divine secret (note
. However, in as far as
this sexual autonomy or disobedience is experienced by a
person, or group or even a whole population as a kind of
human shortcoming or evil, it may rightly be £nterpreted by a
believer as something which infringes upon his relation with
God. The same applies to any human shortcoming or evil.
And the opposite is also true: everything good or pleasant in
human life may be and should be interpreted and understood
as a grace of God.
So, listening to St. Augustine's explanation of original sin we
are not just listeners to a theory or a complicated piece of
theological reasoning but witnesses of the preaching of the
" Doctor of Grace," one of the greatest religious geniuses the
world has ever seen. He opens our eyes to the light of the
Lord's countenance (Ps. 4, 6) which shines into the darkness
of our everyday life, but he also marks the dismal and grim
shadows where blind people err groping in the dark.
This basic Biblical view of the world, which measures everything exclusively in terms of God's presence or absence explains
St. Augustine's theology of marriage. Apart from the ever
present cultural, or perhaps even personal, emphasis on the
disturbing character of sex; apart from the controversial theological accent on procreation against the fear of the Manichees
that through procreation their god becomes shackled; and apart
from the controversial theological accent on concupiscence, i. e.,
the need of divine redemption against the denial of original sin
by the Pelagians, St. Augustine essentially affirms the goodness
of marriage and sexuality. If he calls the sexual lust bad or
evil or sinful, which in a way he often does, it must be understood that this is basically a theological assertion, not an
ethical one. It does not blame marriage or sexual intercourse.
It serves to make clear that all mankind, newly born children
not excepted, need God's redeeming in Christ. The real theme
and device of almost everything St. Augustine has written

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W. H. M. VANDER MARCK

about marriage is not sex but the text of Romans 5, 12, repeated
hundreds of times: " As sin came into the world through one
man and death through sin, so death spread to all men, who
have all sinned in him." 33
No matter how good and holy marriage and married people
may be, if their children are to be sons and daughters of God,
it will be through the abundance of God's grace in Christ, not
thanks to any efforts on the part of their parents. St. Augustine
knew well enough the theme of sterility and virginity in Holy
Scripture and what it really means. Abraham's wife Sarah was
sterile until God gave her offspring. 34 Isaac's wife Rebekah was
sterile until God gave her offspring (Gen. 25, 21). Jacob's
wife Rachel was sterile until God opened her womb (Gen. 30,
22). Holy Scripture does not deny that the Patriarchs were
able to procreate offspring but it proclaims that only God
himself is the Father of his people (cf. Deut. 32, 18), of the
Son he alone begot. Both the Old and New Testament testify
to this. 35 On the text of Luke 20, 34: "The sons of this age
marry and are given in marriage," St. Augustine comments:
" They do not beget children in as far as they are sons of God,
but in as far as they are still sons of this world." 36
There can be no doubt as to the real and essential target of
St. Augustine's theology. "The objective of this book," he says,
introducing the work on Marriage and Concupiscence, "is to
distinguish the goodness of marriage from the evil of fleshly
desire through which every man is born with original sin." 37
And finishing the same work he writes about the Pelagian
33 This is, as is well-known,
the way St. Augustine understood the Latin translation of the Bible he used: "in quo (=in Adam) omnes peccaverunt." I don't
think the translation really matters since the basic idea is: " all men have sinned."
34 Gen. 11, 30; 15; 16; 17; 18; 21; cf. 17, 16 and 21, 1-2.
35 See:
Ps. 2, 7; Acts 13, 33; Hebr. 1, 5 and 5, 5. See also: Is. 54, 1; Gal. 4, 27;
Jug. 13, 3; 1 Sam. 1; Is 7. 14; Lk. 1; Mt. 1, 18 ff.
36 De nuptiis et concup. I, 18, 20: PL 44, 425.
37 " lntentio igitur huius libri haec est, ut quantum nos Dominus adiuvare dignatur, carnalis concupiscentiae malum, propter quod homo, qui per illam nascitur,
trahit originale peccatum, discernamus a bonitate nuptiarum " (De nuptiis et
concup. I, 1, 1: PL 44, 413-414)-unmistakably a reference to Jo. 1, 13.

THE THEOLOGY

317

OF MARRIAGE

bishop Julian: " ... let him think whatever he wants about
concupiscence, . . . if only he has pity on the children." 38
To close this chapter on the theology of marriage of the
bishop of Hippo I would like to draw attention to his comment
on Ps. 51, 5: "I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did
my mother conceive me." St. Augustine writes: ". . . this
does not accuse the marriage bond but original sin." 39

The interpretation of St. Augustine's teaching in the West.
The further history of the theology of marriage in the West
is for a large part the history of the interpretation of St.
Augustine's teaching. To sketch the lines of this development
is not an easy task. Authors writing about "Augustinian
rigorism " and " sexual pessimism " generally blame Pope
Gregory the Great and the monks of the early Middle Ages for
an increase of rigoristic conceptions about marriage and sex.
These conceptions, it is understood, were a fact in the
century and they thus became the leading ideas of Scholastic
theology and were carried right through into the 16th century.
Only then did a reaction set in. The Humanism of John Mayor
(c. 1470-1540) and Jacob Almain (+ 1515) spread from Paris
and was assured victory by the leading theologians of those
days: Francis de Vitoria and his successors in Salamanca 40 and
the great Spanish Jesuit theologians of the 16th and 17th centuries. Their successful reaction against Augustinian rigorism,
this analysis continues, was completed and confirmed by the
famous handbook of moral theology of the Jesuit, Busembaum,
published in 1650 (or perhaps 1645) and spread in more than
38 " •••

sentiat de ista libidine iste quod libet, ... tan tum parvulis parcat " (De

nuptiis et concup. II, 35, 60: PL 44, 47e).
39 " •••

nee accusat

vox ista nuptiale

consortium,

sed originale

peccatum"

(Contra Jul. II, 3, 5: PL 44, 675). I have come across only one anonymous 1eth
century text that seems to attribute this sin to the parents-in defense of the
Immaculate Conception:
" ... parentum potius erat quam Mariae, quae nondum
erat" (quoted by X. Le Bachelet, art. " Immaculee conception" IV, in: Diet. de
Theol. Cath. VII, Paris 19e7, col. 1018).
40 See:
R. G. Villoslada, S. J., La Universidad de Paris durante los estudios de
Francisco de Vitoria 0. P. (1507-1522) (=Analecta Greg., XIV). Rome 1938.

318

W. H. M. VANDER MARCK

200 editions in many languages, and finally by the authority of
St. Alphonsus de Liguori at the end of the 18th century. 41
Though this analysis seems correct in a way, I doubt if it
takes into account sufficiently the theological aspects of the
development. It puts a rather strong emphasis on discontinuity
and change which, again, sounds at least a bit unexpected. In
proposing their analysis authors like Muller, Klomps and
Noonan have in part, I would say, fallen victim to a principle
which in itself is very sound but needs to be handled with
utmost care. I mean the theological principle of tradition and
continuity. These authors, I think, rightly try to study the
tradition of the Church. They do not, however, sufficiently
distinguish the development of cultural and ethical institutions
and conceptions from the continuity of theological affirmations
implied and present therein. Thus it seems they unconsciously
use a kind of Hegelian conception which perhaps contributed to
the idea of development of dogma-a very ambiguous term, I
think, often concealing rather confused patterns of thought and
analysis.
We have seen that St. Augustine's real interest in marriage
is not ethical but theological. He rejects the Manichaean belief
in a malicious god and for this reason the preventing of conception in marriage. He preaches the need of God's redeeming
grace for every one, and for this reason he stresses the fact that
children are conceived out of the desire of the flesh and are
thus born under the doom of original sin.
The development since St. Augustine is essentially characterized by the loyalty of the later theologians to his teaching.
This respect for one of the greatest theologians of all times,
albeit sincere, often pays more attention to the letter than
to the spirit of the Doctor of Grace. Although one may have
doubts about Pope Gregory the Great and particularly about
his famous letter to bishop Augustine of Canterbury, 42 it is
41 See e. g. M. Muller, Die Lehre des hl. Augustinus von der Paradiesesehe ... ;
H. Klomps, Ehemoral und Jansenismus ... ; John T. Noonan, Jr., Contraception.
u Paul Meyvaret, 0. S. B., " Bede and the LibeUus Synodicus of Gregory the
Great," Journal of Theol. Studies, N. S. 12, 1961, 298-302, writes: "The Libellus,

THE THEOLOGY

OF MARRIAGE

819

absolutely evident in the early Middle Ages and in the theology
of the 12th and 18th centuries and onwards that the emphasis
in regard to marriage has gradually shifted from theology to
ethics. Concupiscence, essentially a theological category for St.
Augustine and basically meaning original sin, often became
completely identified with sexual lust or delectation. What in
St. Augustine was after all of minor importance here became
almost the center of interest. Even taking into account the
cultural surroundings and popular conceptions about marriage,
continence and sexual intercourse, which in many instances
must have been rather stern and rigoristic in themselves, it
becomes nonetheless clear that theology was taking a course
of its own, apart from everyday life. Theology hesitated between loyalty to the letter of St. Augustine and to its task of
diffusing the light of God's revelation to the ordinary people
of God. In spite of the letter of St. Augustine's doctrine reasons
which allow married people to have sexual intercourse-and the
" delectations " connected with it-were gradually increased
and broadened. At the dawn of the 18th century Robert of
Curson (or
1219) writes: "Ordinary married
people do not pay attention to any of the official categories
concerning sexual intercourse. They just love one another.
How could they be condemned for this? " 43 This is repeated
by Godfrey of Poitiers 44 and William of Auvergne. 45

+

except for an interpolated passage in the Responsio on marriage, is unquestionably
an authentic Gregorian work" (p.
1). He promises an extensive
publication on the question of its authenticity which has not yet appeared. He
has repeated this promise in Bede and Gregory the Great, published by H. Saxly
(=The Jarrow Lecture for 1964), Jarrow-on-Tyne, 1965; (fn.
and 40).
43 "Nam vulgus nullum illorum quatuor modorum
(i.e., 1/ procreation,
fulfilling the debt, 3/ preventing fornication, 4/ seeking lust) attendit. Immo de
quadam consuetudine vulgari accedunt laici ad suas uxores, non attendentes nisi
hoc, quod coniuncti sunt in matrimonio, vel quod unus appetit copulari altero, non
attendentes determinate aliquem finem ... Solutio: ... Non enim iudicandum est,
Jaicos ideo esse darnnandos, quia nimis tenere diligunt uxores suas vel quia frequenter
accedunt ad eas" (quoted by M. Muller, Die Lehre des hl. Augustinus von der
Paradiesesehe ... , p. 159-footn. 96) .
•• Quoted by Muller, op. cit. p. 177-footn. 150.
•• Quoted by Muller, op. cit. p. 188. See also: J. G. Ziegler, Die Ehelehre der
Ponitentialsummen von 11:00-1350 (=Studien zur Geschichte der kath. Moraltheologie, 4) . Regensburg 1956, p.

320

W. H. M. VANDER MARCK

More than half a century earlier the famous theory of the
first motions appeared in the works of Robert Pullis (+
1146) / 6 an Englishman, like Robert of Curson. This was in
fact another attempt to mitigate an ethical conception of
marriage whose rigorism was obviously experienced. At the
same time, however, this marks once more the shift of interest
away from theology and into psychological considerations about
first and second motions, away from the desire of the flesh and
original sin into the ethical justification of sexual intercourse
and the pleasures of love.
A single glance into non-theological sources suffices to demonstrate the divergence between official theology and common
opinion and practice. The love songs of minstrels and troubadours, the obligatory school reading of Ovid's "Art of Loving"
and other works of the same type, the " Roman of the
Rose," the " Arabian Nights," Chaucer, Shakespeare, Rabelais,
Bocaccio, Fernando de Rojas' "La Celestina," are so many
signs that amorous intrigue and love played a much larger
part in secular life than they were supposed to do. Chaucer
seems to be well aware of official theology, according to what
is said of the cock Chauntecleer in "The Nonne Preestes
Tale": that his activity in regard to the hens was "more for
delyt, than world to rnultiplye" (4535) . And it was obviously
not at all a common experience for Odenake to hear that his
wife, queen Cenobia, indeed only wanted "to have a child, the
world to rnultiplye" ("The Monkes Tale," 3472) and no more.
" The Marchantes Tale," for example, paints a quite different
picture. 47 It seems to me that this brief encounter with another
part of the Church, well aware of the fact that elfs and fairies
had left where monks carne in 48 and that man does not live
by theory and intellect alone but by living example and human
feelings as well, should convince us at once that the attitude of
See: Muller, o. c. 93-footn. 154a, etc.
" A man may do no sinne with his wyf,
Ne hurte him-selven with his owene knyf;
For we han leve to pleye us by the lawe' (1839-1841); etc.
48 See:
"The Tale of the Wyf of Bathe," 857-881.

46

47

THE THEOLOGY

OF MARRIAGE

321

the Church towards marriage in these centuries showed many
more shades than were represented by official theology, and
that official theology was on the right track, and really much
more Augustinian than it supposed it was, by gradually loosening its tight theoretical control on marriage ethics.
In the meantime it should not be forgotten that in the 12th
century marriage was officially taught to be a sacrament and
that, in opposition to their colleagues of the 12th century, those
of the 13th were convinced that it indeed conferred grace.

St. Thomas Aquinas: St. Augustine rendered intelligible to
himself.
These reflections on the development of the theology of
marriage may be closed by a brief review of the contribution
of St. Thomas Aquinas. The German moralist, J. Fuchs, S. J.,
published in 1949 a very thorough and interesting study about
St. Thomas' sexual ethics. 49 There is a widespread opinion that,
as e. g., Noonan recently wrote, Fuchs is" the best of the commentators on Thomas' sexual ethics." 50 You will allow me
to remark, not against Fr. Fuchs, who is held in high esteem,
but against a pseudo-scientific shibboleth and snobbism, and on
behalf of St. Thomas and of the tradition of the Church, that
this opinion is a grotesque mistake, principally for three reasons
which should be obvious for everyone who studies Fuchs'
publication.
I) It accuses St. Thomas of a spiritualistic anthropology (p.
37, 38), whereas it is perfectly clear that the author himself
starts from a completely Cartesian opposition between flesh
and spirit (p. 37, 59. etc.) and projects this into St. Thomas.
2) Fuchs' book presents an interpretation of St. Thomas'
conception of original sin as a mundane, worldly reality (pp.
53-61) and therefore in competition with "nature." This is,
again, not the opinion of St. Thomas but a projection of the
author himself.
40

Josef Fuchs, S. J., Die Sexualethik des heiligen Thomas von Aqui:n, Cologne,

1949.
6

° Contraception, p.

W. H. M. VANDER MARCK

3) Due to the above mentioned factors the interpretation of
Thomas' sexual ethics is completely twisted and warped.
I suspect that even the author himself now considers his book
an " indiscretion of youth," but it is still quoted by many
scholars 51 as the greatest authority on St. Thomas.
Two remarks should be made about St. Thomas:
1) The fact must be taken into account that St. Thomas
died before he was able to finish his last work. Thus in the
Summa Theologiae the treatise on marriage is lacking. This
constitutes one of the most obvious reasons (though not the
only one) why one cannot quote arbitrarily from earlier works
to present as St. Thomas' conception of marriage and sex something which obviously contradicts, e. g., his treatise on foundamental ethics in the Summa. However, it is almost common
practice to do so. This implies that much so-called " Thornism " has almost nothing to do with either the theology or the
ethics of St. Thomas. 52
2) St. Augustine, writing about original sin, never answered
the Aristotelian questions asked by bishop Julian. St. Thomas
did. We may leave aside the problem of why St. Augustine did
not integrate in his teaching the Aristotelian point of view
brought forward by bishop Julian. It seems, though, that he
was unable to do so, due to his neo-Platonic conceptions. Now
in regard to original sin and in regard also to the seemingly
secondary question connected with it, namely the autonomy
and disobedience of the human sexual faculties, the theological
genius of St. Thomas becomes more manifest than ever.
See, e. g.: M. Miiller, Die Lehre des hl. Augustinus von der Paradiesesehe ... ,
J. G. Ziegler, Die Ehdehre der Ponitentialsummen, p.
L. Brandl, 0. F. M., Die Sexualethik des heiligen Albertus Magnus
(=Studien zur Geschichte der kath. Moraltheologie,
Regensburg 1955, p. 74.
134-135.
H. Klomps, Ehemoral und Janseni:nnus,
85. 99-note
p. 40 ff.
ff; John T. Noonan, Jr., Contraception, p.
17.
52 A very interesting
recent example of criticism on this so-called "Thomism"
is the article of Michel Villey, "Saint Thomas dans l'Histoire des Sources," in:
Etudes d'histoire du droit canonique dediees Gabriel Le Bras, Paris 1965, I, 385895.
51

p.

a

THE THEOLOGY

OF MARRIAGE

The heart of the Christian message is the incarnation of
God. There is not, and cannot be, any competition whatsoever
between God and man, between the Creator and the world
created autonomous by him. Therefore there is not, and cannot be, any competition between Aristotle talking about autonomous human nature and St. Augustine talking about the
incarnate God. So it is perfectly right to say that the whole
complex of human sexual faculties is completely natural, as
Aristotle and bishop Julian say. This does not at all exclude,
however, that this complex can and must be understood also as
either revealing or concealing the countenance of the incarnate
God. So Thomas not only affirms that marriage is a sacrament
like any other 53 but he does not hesitate either to declare that
conjugal intercourse, given its human goodness, 54 is a meritorious act. 55
From the same point of view he can understand why St.
Augustine, for some personal or not so personal reason, considered sex as partly an infringement on spiritual, human personality, and almost identified sex in particular with the desire
of the flesh and sin, i.e., absence of God's countenance. 56 There
is no clear indication, however, that in this respect St. Thomas
shares the courteously reproduced opinion of St. Augustine.
Not only does he realize too well how transitory these sexual
Summa Theol. III, 65, 1; II-II, 100, 2, ad 6.
Cf. Summa Theol. I-II, 21.
55 Suwma Theol. I-II, 18, 5, ad 8; II-II, 40, 2, ad 4.
66 St. Thomas first quotes the Augustinian interpretation of nature:
" ... sicut
Augustinus dicit ... , hoc quod motus genitalium membrorum rationi non obedit,
est ex poena peccati. . . .' Then he goes on: " Sed quia per peccatum primi
parentis ... natura est sibi relicta, subtracto supernaturali dono quod homini divinitus erat collatum; ideo consideranda est ratio naturalis quare motus huiusmodi
membrorum specialiter rationi non obedit. Cuius causam assignat Aristoteles .. .''
(Summa Theol. I-II, 17, 9, ad 8; cf. II-II, 153, 2, ad 2 and ad 8). The same view
appears elsewhere; e. g.: " ... naturalis mors divina potestate inducitur propter
peccatum originale" (op. cit. I-II, 94, 5, ad 2).
There is not the slightest incoherence in this view. In this respect Fuchs' interpretation: " Zweifellos stehen hier zwei verschiedenartige ethische Richtungen (i. e.
Augustine and Aristotle) wenig vermittelt nebeneinander" (Die Sexualethik ...
p. 227 [emphasis added!]; cf. p. 60. 226. 811), rests on a complete misunderstanding. The same applies to the authors who copy Fuchs' opinion.
53
64

324

W. H. M. VANDER MARCK

feelings, experiences and customs are,S7 but neither does the
context, in which St. Augustine's opinion is mentioned, lead us
to believe that this is St. Thomas' personal opinion. For there
he rejects straight away the opinion, also upheld by St. Augustine,58 that sexual intercourse is bad because it momentarily
deprives one of the use of reason. St. Thomas thinks that this
is perfectly normal, and virtuous. 59
Summary.

This first part of our study has been largely concerned with
original sin. That the doctrine of original sin has had such an
impact on the theology of marriage is simply a fact with which
history confronts us. This discovery should neither alarm nor
disappoint us.
I) It may be considered proof that we did not waste our time
discussing ethics instead of theology. For, original sin means
lack of grace or absence of God. And hardly anything could
be imagined which is more theological than talking about God's
presence or absence-be it in marriage or elsewhere.
2) I think, however, that we really made a discovery. Like
people who laboriously climb a mountain; on reaching the peak
they can look out over the whole landscape with a single glance.
So too we can now see what has happened to marriage in the
history of theology.
St. Augustine, the Doctor of Grace, preached man's blindness, misery and death according to the Scriptures. In this
respect he put such an emphasis on marriage and sex that later
theologians, not quite understanding St. Augustine's essentially
theological point of view, and remaining loyal to the authority
57 " Non potuerunt autem aliqua praecepta communia affirmativa de temperantia
dari: quia usus eius variatur secundum diversa tempora, sicut Augustinus dicit,
in libro de Bono Coning., et secundum diversas hominum leges et consuetudines"
(Surnma Theol. II-II, 170, 1, ad 3).
58 Contra Jul. IV, 14, 71: PL 44, 774.
59 Surnrna Theol. II-II, 153,
ad
158, 1, ad
cf. I-II, 1, 6, ad 8; etc. Thomas
had rejected this opinion already in IV Sent.
1, 8, ad 6.

THE THEOLOGY

OF MARRIAGE

825

of the bishop of Hippo, came to spread rather rigoristic ethical
views on marriage. Under pressure of common and sound
human feelings this rigorism gradually softened. But on
account of the theological principle of tradition, theology remained loyal to St. Augustine, and for this reason retained a
certain ambiguity. The theological revolution of our days,
springing from the consciousness of all proletarians united (you
will, of course, allow me to use this expression almost exclusively as an historical allusion), rejects the worm-eaten theory,
tears down the old statues, and cries for freedom.
St. Thomas, thanks to whom, I think, we are able to distinguish in St. Augustine's preaching the gold of the Gospel
message from the rubble of outdated culture, would join the
revolutionaries. But he would never allow them to touch the
Doctor of Grace. He really " out-Augustined Augustine." He
understood the message of incarnate God, and so freed humanity and marriage in particular from every suspicion whatsoever.
Marriage-this should be our conclusion-is in every respect as human as humanity can be. It is called to be grace,
i. e., to the presence of God; it should beware of becoming sin
and clouding God's countenance. This is, thanks particularly
to St. Augustine and St. Thomas, the message of the Church
on marriage, today as for nineteen centuries.

PART

II

More Recent Developments of the Theology of Marriage.

I

T BECOMES evident that in listening to the tradition
of the Church we are indeed witnesses to theology and
to the message of God's wonderful light shining into the
darkness of our human existence, not to principles of ethics
which should be valid and obligatory for all times. In other

W. H. M. VANDER MARCK

words: speaking about the tradition of the Church, which is
indeed normative, we should beware of the mistake of supposing as established that this tradition contains a code of
ethical rules. Though this may seem to be the case, and
though this may often be thought, it is in fact untrue.
To some people this may sound as a revolutionary statement,
and in a way it is. For as may be seen from the discussions in
recent years, e. g. about birth regulation, the prevailing opinion
is that the rules and norms which govern this particular question should be taken from the doctrinal tradition of the Church
in the past.
The situation is not as simple as that. The statement that
the tradition of the Church is essentially a theological, not
an ethical one, is not revolutionary at all but in the highest
degree traditional. I need only draw attention to the fact that
the history of the Church's teaching on marriage is completely
dominated by the doctrine of original sin, or, on the other hand,
to the reason which induced St. Augustine to accept the
polygamy of the Patriarchs (footn. 7) or to the remarks of
St. Thomas regarding all customs in the area of the virtue of
temperance, sex included (footn. 57) , not to mention St.
Thomas' exposition on natural law. This implies that the
opposite point of view which expects from the Church in the
past a set of ethical norms basically misunderstands the sense
and meaning of the tradition. We shall see that this implication
is confirmed in recent developments, particularly in the Pastoral
Constitution of the second Vatican Council on the Church in
the Modern World.
Everyone knows that from the beginning the problem of
birth regulation has been one of the most important and most
debated issues the Council had to face. The final outcome of
" Schema 13 "was viewed by many as a disillusionment because
no decision was taken regarding the methods of birth regulation. What exactly happened in and around the Council, and
where do we stand now?
Without going into all the details we may start from the
well-known fact that the topic of birth regulation or birth

THE THEOLOGY

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327

control seemed to be a foregone conclusion within the Catholic
Church, particularly since the appearance on 31 December, 1930
of the encyclical Casti Connubii of Pope Pius XI. The careful
historical analysis of doctrinal development in the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries published by Noonan in his work
on contraception proves conclusively that an unambiguous and
unchallenged general agreement on this Issue never existed
before this date.
Even after Casti Connubii, however, there were several
phenomena and incidents whose real significance was not
understood until much later. At the time the encyclical was
composed, the discoveries made by Ogino and Knaus on ovulation were barely known. The discussions on " periodic continence " or the " rhythm method " started almost immediately
afterwards and continued to stir the minds of the faithful and
the theologians until Pope Pius XII granted a kind of official
" Nihil obstat " in his famous speech to the midwives on 29
October, 1951.
In 1935 Doms published his book on the sense and ends of
marriage 1 which challenged the famous distinction between
primary and secondary ends. A decree of the Holy Office in
1944, supposedly directed against Doms (and similar tendencies), maintained the distinction. 2
In December, 1952 the Holy Office, apparently for the same
reason, placed on the Index a book by the German psychiatrist,
Ernst Michel, 3 and a few months later a publication of the
French priest and physician, Marc Oraison. 4
In the meantime, although it hardly came out into the open,
birth regulation was subject to discussion, and so was the
question of the primary and secondary ends of marriage. Due
Herbert Doms, Vom Sinn und Zweck der Ehe. Breslau 1935.
1 April: Acta Ap. Sedis 36, 1944, 103; cf. Johu T. Noonan, Jr., Contracep,tion,
p. 494-499; John C. Ford, S. J., and Gerald Kelly, S. J., Marriage Questions (=Contemporary Moral Theology, II). Westminster Md. 31964, pp. 16-35.
8 Ehe. Eine Anthropologie der Geschlechtsgemeinschaft.
Stuttgart 1948.-H. Off.,
15 Dec. 1952: Acta Ap. Sedis 44, 1952, 879.
• Vie chretienne et problemes de; la sexualite. Paris 1952.-H. Off., 18 March 1953,
published on 3 Jan. 1955: Acta Ap. Sedis 47, 1955, 46; notice of subjection of the
author: ibid., 89.
1

2

W. H. M. VANDER MARCK

in large part undoubtedly to fear of condemnation by the
Holy Office hardly anything appeared in print.
Then, the discussion was stimulated and existing doubts were
aggravated by the appearance and mass production of simple
oral contraceptives. This coincided with the change of climate
within the Church which marked the transition into the era of
Pope John XXIII. The changes took place slowly and gradually but they were unmistakable. The discussion on birth
regulation and marriage came completely out into the open
and by 1963 the idea of a general agreement within the Church
rejecting all methods of birth regulation apart from rhythm and
sexual abstinence had disappeared. Pope Paul VI as Archbishop of Milan wrote in 1960 a Lenten pastoral letter, published under the title " The Christian Family in Danger," in
which he repeated the statements of Casti Connubii and
thought that continence should be the normal means of birth
regulation. 5 Only four years later as Pope he declared publicly:
"This is an extremely complex and delicate problem," 6 and
he even mentioned the possibility that he might be obligated in
conscience to modify the norms given by Pope Pius XII which
in the meantime, he said, should be considered as still valid. 7
When the second Vatican Council opened in the fall of
there was: on the agenda a Schema of
pages for a Dogmatic
Constitution About the Christian Moral Order 8 and another
one of almost 60 pages On Chastity, Marriage, Family and Virginity.9 The first one referred to and condemned almost every
5 " ••• se una disciplina della fecondita e necessaria---come e da supporre che per
ogni matrimonio, in date circostanze, si richieda-la continenza dovrebbe essere il
mezzo normale per praticarla ': G. B. Montini, "Famiglia cristiana in pericolo,"
Digest Cattolico 1, 1960, N. 4 (1-8) p. 8.
6 " E problema estremamente
complesso e delicato ": Pope Paul VI, Address to
the Cardinals on 23 June 1964, Acta Ap. Sedis 56, 1964 (581-589) p. 588.
7 " Ma diciamo in tanto francamente
che non abbiamo finora motivo sufficiente
per ritenere superate e percio non obbliganti le norme date da Papa Pio XII a tale
riguardo; esse devono percio ritenersi valide, almeno finche non Ci sentiamo in
coscienza obbligati a modificarle ": ibid. p. 588-589.
8 Schema Constitutionis Dogmatica.e De Ordine M orali Christiano, in:
Schemata
Constitutionum et Decretorum de quibus disceptabitur in Concilii sessionibus. Series
prima (=Sacros. Oecum. Cone. Vatic. sec.). Vatican Press 1962, 71-96.
9 Schema Constitutionis Dogmaticae De Castitate, Matrimonio, Familia, Virginitate ibid. 97-154.

THE THEOLOGY

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329

error mentioned since Pope Gregory XVI, from religious freedom to situation-ethics and psychoanalysis. It stressed especially the danger of the words of St. Augustine: "Ama et fac
quod vis"-" Love and do what you like." The second Schema
repeated the well-known point of view of Casti Connubii and
the Holy Office, the condemnations of Oraison, Doms and
Michel explicitly included. 10 It permitted the application of the
rhythm method, but forbade any other method of birth regulation, the pill not excluded. 11 It had something to say on
nudism, women's clothing, beauty-parlours, beauty-contests,
etc. 12
After the dramatic series of events which resulted in the
removal in November, 1962 of the schema on the Sources of
Revelation, both forementioned schema together with fifty-one
others quietly disappeared from the agenda of the Council.
After the initial session a text was drafted which was to
become known as "Schema 17," and later on as" Schema 13."
The first text is dated 25 May, 1963. The chapter on
marriage and family rejected the assertion that procreation
should be something secondary in marriage but it did not use
the common formula on primary and secondary ends. 13 It did
not take the stern stand on birth regulation which had characterized the earlier schema on chastity, marriage, family and
virginity. It said that married people should avoid any intervention vitiating the personal act of sexual intercourse, as this
was contrary to the integrity of conjugallove. 14 This was precisely the argument of those who in this period defended the
use of the pill for birth regulation because it left the integrity
10 See particularly:
p. 106, and footn. 22; p. 117, and footn. 24; also footn. 49 on
p. 126.
11 P. 128, and footn. 14; p. 145, and footn. 25.
12 Footn. 14. The same topics can be found, e. g. in: P. Palazzini, Morale deU'attualita, Rome 1968-and already in his earlier work: Casus Conscientiae, Rome
1958, 2 vol., published in collab. with A. de Jorio.
13 De praesentia efficaci Ecclesiae in mundo hodierno. 85 p.
14 Legi divinae et ordinationi
matrimonii contrarius est etiam omnis deliberatus
hominum interventus qui opus personae actui coniugali proprium vitiat; nee convenire potest talis agendi modus integritati amoris coniugalis ": p. 14.

330

W. H. M. VAN DER MARCK

of the marital act untouched. 15 The schema also appealed to
biologists, psychologists and sociologists to study the question
of birth regulation together with the theologians.
Discussions about the schema by the commissions resulted in
a kind of new introductory chapter presented by Cardinal
Suenens in the fall of 1963/ 6 and in a new schema presented,
discussed and corrected in May, 1964. 17 In the fourth chapter
of this schema there were three pages on marriage and family,
in which particular attention was given to conjugal love.
Children were considered to be a natural consequence of the
marriage bond, but nothing was said about primary and secondary ends. It was recognized that the necessity of regulating
births might provoke an alienation between husband and wife
dangerous to reciprocal faith and calamitous to the children. 18
Married people should not become discouraged when the
ministers of the Church proclaimed the law of God without
being able to present a solution for conflicts between the law
and its concrete applications. 19 An appeal for solution of the
birth control problem was made to " anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, and the spouses themselves with their own
experience and virtue, to collaborate with the theologians."
Two months later, on 3 July, 1964, the schema proper, again
corrected, was ready for the first discussion in the Council_2°
The supplements to the schema, containing among other topics
the chapter on marriage, were distributed later. 21 They were
open to written comment, not to discussion in the Council.
See my book Love and Fertility, London 1965, p. 8£. 84.
Adumbratio Schematis XVII. De activa Ecclesiae praesentia in mundo aedificando. 8 p. cyclostyled.
7 Ecclesia in mundo huius temporis. 17 p. cyclostyled.
The text opens with the
following words: " Gaudium et luctus, spes et angor .... "
18 " ••• coniuges saepe sibi velut extranei evadunt,
unde bonum fidei in discrimen vocatur et ipsum bonum prolis pessumdatur" (p. 11).
19 " ne animo deficiant, si videantur ministri eius (i.e. Ecclesiae), dum legem Dei
inculcant, confiictus non solvere inter legem et difficultates concretas" (p. 11).
•• Schema De Ecclesia in mundo huius temporis (=Sacros. Oecum. Cone. Vatic.
sec.). Vatican Press 1964. 45 p.
21 Schema De Ecclesia in mundo huius temporis. Adnexa (=Sacros. Oecum. Cone.
Vatic. sec.). Vatican Press 1964. 63 p.
15
16

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331

Little change had been made in the schema itself since two
months before, though several restricting clauses in regard to
procreation and methods of birth regulation, due to the socalled conservatives, were clearly visible. Among the scholars
to whom an appeal was made, the doctors were now mentioned
for the first time.
The chapter on marriage in the supplements (" Adnexum
II") was in part taken from the very first schema of May,
1963. It continues to reveal what may be called in a word an
open mentality. It even says that according to the order of
nature not each and every act of conjugal intercourse is directly
destined to procreate, 22 an argument used not only by those
who defended the use of the pill but by advocates of other
means as well. The supplement also suggested that the problem
at hand was completely new/ 3 whereas the former seemingly
" general agreement " had always taken for granted that it
had been covered already by Casti Connubii. Therefore it
should amaze no one, the text continued, that the Magisterium
of the Church does not see from the very first moment how this
new problem should be solved. 24 The scholars involved now,
together with the spouses and the theologians, were: anthropologists, psychologists, biologists, doctors and sociologists.
Unlike the supplement the schema proper was openly discussed during the third session of the Council from 20 October
until 10 November, 1964. The interventions of Patriarch
Maximos IV Saigh and of Cardinals Suenens, Alfrink and
Leger, of bishop Reuss and others, on 29 and 30 October, in
favor of an open and unprejudiced decision on the problem of
birth regulation, are too well-known to need any further com22 " Etsi secundum naturae ordinationem
non omnis et singulus actus coniugalis
directe ad procreationem conferre destinatus sit, talis tamen semper debet esse
indoles et expressio huius actus et coniugum mens, ut ilia generosa dispositio ad
prolem procreandam et educandam foeatur" (p. 21).
28 "Plura problemata
sunt omnino nova" (p. 22).
"' " Propterea mirum non est, quod magisterium Ecclesiae non semper et primo
quodammodo instanti monstrare possit, quomodo principia universaliter valida novis
et complexis quaestionibus et conflictibus applicentur" (p. 22).

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W. H. M. VANDER MARCK

ment. Cardinals Ottaviani, Browne and others voiced an opposite opinion.
In May, 1965 the amended text of" Schema 13" was ready
for print. 25 The third " May-flower," as we might eventually
call it after the May texts of 1963 and 1964 (actually it was the
fourth version of the text on marriage, because the third one
was that of the schema proper of July and of the supplements
of September, 1964), contains a few remarkable changes.
The absolutely unique character of human sexuality is given
unreserved emphasis. 26 This has been maintained in the final
text of the Constitution (N. 51).
Remarkable too is the essentially anthropological and personal description of conjugal love. This description is of a
rather general character but it obviously intends to include
specific sexual activities. The final version, which is in this
respect practically the same as the one of this provisional draft
(N. 62, p. 48), says e. g.: "This eminently human love, as
it is directed from one person to another, can enrich the expressions of body and mind with a unique dignity which ennobles
these expressions as special elements and signs of the friendship
distinctive of marriage." 27 As a matter of fact this is the core
of the argument of those who think that practically all customary methods of birth regulation are humanly acceptable. 28
Mention must also be made of several new clauses underlining the obligation of the spouses to conform themselves to
the objective law of God. 29
We need hardly go into any further details. The commission
giving account of its work on the schema says explicitly that
it has taken a middle course between the two most important
25 (Schema!)
Constitutio Pastoralis De Ecclesia in mundo huius temporis
(=Sacros. Oecum. Cone. Vatic. sec.). Vatican Press 1965. 122 p.
26 N. 64, p. 50. See also the "Relatio,"
p. 108.
27 N. 49. I made some use of the translation
published in the National Catholic
Reporter of 16 Febr. 1966, p. 7. See also: John T. Noonan, Jr., "Contraception
and the Council," Commonweal March 11, 1966 (657-662) p. 658-659.
28 See my book, Love and Fertility, p. 26; also p. 35-63. 87. etc.
29 See e. g. N. 63, p. 49; final text N. 50.

THE THEOLOGY OF MARRIAGE

333

opinions prevailing among the Fathers. 30 It did not intend to
decide theologically debated issues but to leave them open for
further study. 31 The problem of the means of birth regulation
was purposively left to the Papal Commission. 82
The May-draft was discussed by the Fathers, amended
according to their wishes and again ready for print on 12
November. 33 Bishop Hengsbach introduced the text on behalf
of the commission: The problem of the means of birth regulation had been left to the Papal Commission, as before; the
debated issues remained open, although the existence of objective norms was emphasized. 3 ! Technical questions about the
ends of marriage have again been avoided. 35
The November-text was immediately discussed in the Council and thereafter the commission went to work again in order
to write the final draft 36 which was approved by the Fathers
in the first days of December, and then officially accepted by
2309 votes against 75 and promulgated on Tuesday, 7 December, 1965.37
30 " Mens fuit viam mediam inire inter duas opiniones principaliores in aula vel
scripto prolatas" [p. 104 (D)].
81 " ••• modus loquendi adhibitus, post longam disceptationem,
selectus est ut
satisfaceret votis Patrum, qui rogant: . . . d) . . . ut principia generaliora indicentur' quibus via aperta relinquatur operi theologico" (p. 108).
••" Nulla practica solutio proponitur, ut in casuisticam non intretur, et ut res
Pontificiae Commissioni commissa :.Utegre servetur " (p. 107) .
sa Schema Constitutionis Pastoralis De Ecclesia in mundo huius temporis. Textus
recognitus et relationes (=Sacros. Oecum. Cone. Vatic. sec.). Vatican Press 1965.
vols. 61. 91 p.
•• " ... docb·ina Ecclesiae non evolvenda erat in iis punctis quae obiectum Commissionis specialis Pontificiae constituunt. Quaestiones discussae aperte (probably
a misprint for: "apertae '; anyway I do not see an essential difference between
" open questions" and " apparently discussed questions ") manserunt . . . In eis
quae dicuntur de honestate actus coniugalis et fecunditate responsabili, urgentur
ordo obiectivus moralis et magisterium Ecclesiae " (Relationes super Schema Constitutionis Pastoralis De Ecclesia in mundo huius temporis (=Sacros. Oecum. Cone.
Vatic. sec.). Vatican Press 1965, 15 p.; p. 13).
•• " ... commissio ceteroquin iam antea statuit quaestiones technicas de finibus
non esse tractandas" (Schema ... II, p. 18 (A)).
36 Schema Constitutionis Pastorolis De Ecclesia in mundo huius temporis. Textus
et correctiones admissae necnon expensio modorum (=Sacros. Oecum. Cone. Vatic.
see.). Vatican Press 1965.
vol.
155 p.
87 Constitutio Pastorolis De Ecclesia in mundo huius temporis de quo agetur in

334

W. H. M. VANDER MARCK

Changes in the November-text were made according to the
same rules applied before: the debated issues on the ends of
marriage 38 and on birth regulation 39 were systematically
avoided.
Not only did the commission in the last two weeks of
November produce two volumes totaling altogether 400 pages:
the December-draft, officially the penultimate version of
" Schema 13," in fact the final text; the commission had also
been confronted with the problem of the four so-called Papal
"modi."
On Tuesday, 28 November the Cardinal Secretary of State
Cicognani sent a letter to Cardinal Ottaviani, expressing the
wish of the Pope that he should inform the commission responsible for the final draft of " Schema 18 " that a few things
necessarily had to be improved in the chapter on marriage. 40
The doctrine of Casti Connubii and of the address of Pope
Pius XII to the midwives in 1951 should be explicitly mentioned and understood as still valid. The contraceptive methods
mentioned in Casti Connubii, the letter continued, should be
openly condemned. Added were the four " modi " which it
seems-the letter said-must be inserted into the text. 41 The
letter and the four " modi " were communicated to the commission by Wednesday evening, 24 November.
On Friday, 26 November-discussion on the four "modi"
had not yet started-notice was given of another letter signed
by Cardinal Cicognani, dated 25 November, and seemingly
addressed to the commission itself. It said that the " modi "
communicated in the letter of the 24th (the said letter is dated
28!) had to be considered as suggestions of the Pope. Their
wording was not meant to be definitive and therefore need not
necessarily be taken literally. The commission might even use
Sessione publica diei 7 decembris 1965 (=Sacros. Oecum. Cone. Vatic. sec.).
Vatican Press 1965. 88 p.
38 Cf. Schema II, p. 8, Mod. 1, ad e; p. 13, Mod. 15, ad f; etc.
39 Cf. Schema II, p. 8, Mod. 1, ad c; p. "!3, Mod. 4<:!; p. 34, Mod. 93; etc.
40 " nonnulla de necessitate esse emendanda."
41 " aliqui 'modi'
indicantur, qui videntur in textum induci debere."

THE THEOLOGY

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335

a different formulation, provided this took into account the
Pope's suggestions. 42
The rather original procedure will probably one day be
described by historians. Here is what happened to the text:
The first " modus " as drafted by the commission reproves
illicit practices against procreation 43 together with egoism and
hedonism. The commission used this formula, inserted at this
particular spot and not one line higher up, to exclude abortion
and sterilization/ 4 again avoiding the debated issue of birth
regulation.
The second "modus," particularly stressing the good of offspring, was inserted with an addition in order to maintain the
general tendency of the Constitution to avoid the question of
the primary and secondary ends of marriage. 45
The third " modus " proposed a somewhat stricter formulation in regard to the prohibition of means of birth regulation
reproved by the Magisterium. This was admitted in part, with
a restricting clause which speaks about the Magisterium as explaining the law of God. Thus 1) the Magisterium is declared
to be bound by the law of God, and Q) emphasis is put on the
fact that this law needs interpretation.
The third " modus " also contained a footnote with references
to Casti Connubii and to the speech of Pope Pius XII to the
midwives in 1951. Thereupon the commission claimed that
a reference be added to the speech of Pope Paul VI on Q3
June, 1964 expressing uncertainty. Inserted too was a reference
to the fact that some problems had been reserved to the special
42 " Ea, quae per litteras
die XXIV huius mensis datas ... communicata sunt,
... veluti Summi Pontificis consilia in hac re tanti momenti aestimari debent. Ea
autem, ad dicendi modum quod spectat, nihil definitivum habent: quam ob rem,
non sunt necessaria ad verbum accipienda.
Commissio igitur alias quoque enuntiationes afferre potest, quae tamen eorundem
consiliorum rationem habeant, quaeque Sanctitatis Suae optatis satisfaciant. Hae
novae enuntiationes a Beatissimo Patre perpendentur, atque probari sane poterunt,
si Eidem visae erunt cum Sua mente congruere."
43 " illicitis usibus contra
generationem (Schema I, N. 47, p. 43; Constitution
N. 47, p. 43).
44 " Relatio" of the Mixed Commission, 26 Nov. 1965, p. 1.
45 Cf. Schema I, N. 50, p. 46; II, p. 29, Mod 71; p. 251 (" Relatio generalis");
Constitutio N. 50, p. 46; "Relatio " of the Mixed Commission, 26 Nov. 1965, p. 2.

336

W. H. M. VANDER MARCK

Papal Commission. Finally the footnote remarks: " This being
the situation in regard to the doctrine of the Magisterium, the
Council does not intend to propose practical solutions immediately." 46 There is no reference to the address of Pope Pius
XII on 12 September, 1958 about the use of the pill, and it
is said that its addition has been explicitly forbidden by Pope
Paul VI.
The fourth and final "modus" about conjugal chastity was
inserted at a spot where it cannot be identified with sexual
abstinence. 47
On Saturday, 27 November the report of the Commission
was sent to Pope Paul who on Sunday, 28 November simply
accepted the amendments made by the commission.
The commission claimed that the papal " modi " be explicitly
mentioned among the explanations; and so it happened. 48
The introduction (" Relatio generalis ") confirms again explicitly that no decision has been taken on the problem of
birth regulation. 49
Thus the results of the second Vatican Council in regard to
marriage are that no decision has been taken on the two most
debated issues: 1) the ends of marriage, and 2) birth regulation. Concerning the first point one cannot but notice that the
second Vatican Council continues not only the course of former
Councils in general which refused to decide theologically de46 " Sic stante
doctrina Magisterii, S. Synodu.s solutiones concretas immediate
proponere non intendit" (Schema I, N. 51, p. 47; footn. 15-p. 49; Constitutio N.
51, p. 47; footn. 14-p. 49; cf. Schema II, p. 39, Mod. 107, e) and h). Emphasis
has been put on the fact that there is no comma between " Sic" and "stante";
see thereupon: E. Schillebeeckx, 0. P., "Het huwelijk volgens Vaticanum II,"
Kath. Artsenblad 45, 1966 (33-42) p. 41; P. van Leeuwen, 0. F. M., "Huwelijk en
gezin in Vaticanum II," Theol. en Zielzorg 62, 1966 (47-61) p. 59-footn. 6; both
authors were " periti " at the Council.
47 Schema I, N. 51, p. 47; II, p. 35-36, Mod. 98, c)-starting
from: "Idea ... ";
Constitutio N. 51, p. 47; "Relatio" of the Mixed Commission, 26 Nov. 1965, p. 4.
48 Schema II, p. 44.
••" Nonnulli Patres conclusiones practicas, praecipue quae ad regulandam procreationem spectant, expostulaverunt.
Cum vero plures ex illis quaestionibus,
servata continuitate doctrinae catholicae, ulteriori investigationi subiiciantur et
supremo judicio Summi Pontificis reserventur, S. Synodus hac de re agere non
intendit" (Schema II, p. 252).

THE THEOLOGY

OF MARRIAGE

337

bated questions, but particularly the course of the Council of
Trent which refrained from pronouncement on this specific
problem of the ends of marriage. 50 This attitude of two Councils at a distance of four centuries does not exactly encourage
us to consider the problem of the ends of marriage as of paramount theological importance. The pivotal interest of the
Church, it may again be safely concluded, does not concern
ethics but salvation; it does not concern a human institution
but God's grace. Precisely in this way the Church confirms
and preaches the divine dignity of the sacrament of marriage.
As to the problem of birth regulation something amazing has
in fact happened. For a moment it seemed as though there
existed a general agreement that periodic continence was the
only licit method of birth control. If this had really been so,
the Council could never have acted and spoken the way it has.
In this respect a careful evaluation of the chapter on marriage
in "Schema 13 " should, I think, include three points:
1) The problem of the means of birth regulation is an open
question.
2) The Council has expressed, particularly by referring to
Casti Connubii and to Pope Pius XII, the necessity of maintaining the continuity of ecclesiastical tradition.
3) The Council, in the chapter on marriage, in the first part
of " Schema 13 " and in its other Decrees and Constitutions,
particularly on Liturgy, on Revelation and on the Church, has
unambiguously proclaimed that its proper and primary task
and its main concern is to preach the message of God's wonderful grace.
Before concluding, something should be said about the ethical
problem of birth regulation and about the continuity of tradition.
Much could be said about the theology of marriage. At this
particular moment, however, and in these particular circum5 ° Concilium Tridentinum
tom. IX, Freiburg 1924, 966-968: 24th Session, 11
Nov. 1563; also in: H. Denzinger-A. Schonmetzer, S. J., Enchiridion Symbolorum,
Barcelona etc. 32 l963, N. 1797-1812. See also: Cone. Trid. IX, 655 (6-8). 694 (611). 705 (1-2. 9-10), 899 (22-23).

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W. H. M. VANDER MARCK

stances one question stands out in front: Is it possible to find
a realistic solution to the problem of birth regulation without
giving up the continuity of the tradition of the Church? The
answer, I think, should be affirmative.
Given that the primary objective of the Christian message is
God's epiphany in man and in the human world, it should be
evident that God's countenance cannot become visible where
humanity and the human face itself are twisted and distorted.
This is the very reason why the Church, apart from preaching
God's grace and proclaiming his Gospel, also cares so much
about the human character of marriage. 51
Now as to understanding what is really human and what is
not, the Church or Catholics do not have a monopoly. Apart
from all that has been said by the second Vatican Council
in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church and in the Pastoral
Constitution known as " Schema 13 " about the recognition by
the Church of the world's autonomy and of the civilizations and
morals of the different peoples and nations, 52 the following
particular and explicit assertion has also been formulated: " In
fidelity to conscience, Christians are joined with the rest of
men in the search for truth, and for the genuine solution to the
numerous moral problems which arise in the life of individuals
and from social relationships." 53
If this is the truth-and we have to take for granted that
it is-then the first reason to stop quarreling about the moral
problem of birth regulation is that in refusing to do so we
continue to consider all the other Christian Churches and the
world at large as in fact a collection of immoral hedonists.
51 Cf. the second Vatican Council's Constitutio Dogmatica De Ecclesia, Ch. VII,
N. 50, p. 57.
52 See:
Constitutio Dogmatica De Ecclesia, Ch. II, N. 13, p. 15-16; N. 17, p. 19;
Ch. IV, N. 32, p. 38; N. 36, p. 42; Ch. VII, N. 48, p. 54; Constitutio Pastoralis De
Ecclesia in mundo huius temporis, Part I, Ch. I, N. 21, p. 18-9; Ch. III, N. 34, p.
29-30; N. 36, 30-31; etc.
53 " Fidelitate
erga conscientiam christiani cum ceteris hominibus coniunguntur
ad veritatem inquirendam et tot problemata moralia, quae tam in vita singulomm
quam in sociali consortione exsurgunt, in veritate solvenda' (Canst. Past. De
Ecclesia in mundo huius temporis, Part I, Ch. I, N. 16, p. 15-16). I made use of
the translation published in the National Catholic Reporter, 19 Jan. 1966, p. 6,
which omits " moral."

THE THEOLOGY OF MARRIAGE

339

The second reason to eliminate the problem is an anthropological (and ethical) one. It rests on the assumption, which
I will briefly consider, that the essentially intersubjective character of the human act, not biological laws or subjective intentions,54 enables every expression to become an element and
sign of authentic conjugal love, (c£. footn.
even if for the
time being the biological possibility of procreation is in fact
consciously excluded. This does not mean, as has been suggested, (c£. footn.
we can make a distinction between
the whole project of married life and the single act of sexual
intercourse in order to say that the latter must not necessarily
always include the child, whereas the former must. Such a
distinction is basically a biological, not a human one. We
should, I think, stick to the traditional ethical affirmation and
assert that every thing married people do includes the child,
even if they exclude biological procreation, for the child is not a
purely biological product but the human result of their whole
bond of frendship and love which can very well be fostered by
biologically sterile acts. 55
The third reason, finally, why birth regulation need not be
a problem at the theoretical level is that the continuity of
ecclesiastical tradition is in no way endangered. First, because
the essentially theological affirmations of the tradition are not
basically concerned with ethical problems or formulas. Second,
because even some positions at the level of concrete ethics, as
e. g. those of Casti Connubii seem to be, should not be rejected
but interpreted (c£. footn. 54). This cannot be worked out
here and now. It may, however, suffice to draw attention to
some other well-known facts which are no less serious than
54 If one confers the text of " Schema 13," reproving purely subjective intentions.
with the adill·ess of Pope Pius XII of
Sept., 1958 about the use of the pill, they
seem to contradict one another. The words of Pius XII: "(it) depends on the
intention" (cf. my book, Love and FertilitJI, p. 14. 77), are as much in need of a
careful and benevolent interpretation as any other document.
55 See thereupon also:
Love and Fertility, and my paper: "Optimale Nataliteit.
1965
Moraaltheologische aspecten," in: Optimale Nataliteit, Nijmegen-Utrecht

p.

340

W. H. M. VANDER MARCK

frustrating the act of sexual intercourse of its natural effect
(Casti Connubii) , e. g. the death penalty as distinguished from
murdering a man, appropriation in cases of extreme necessity
as distinguished from stealing, etc. In all these cases the
general rule of not stealing, not killing, etc., remains as valid as
ever. The same applies to birth regulation as distinguished
from egoism and hedonism (i.e., frustrating the act of sexual
intercourse of its natural effect); or, according to the famous
speech of Pius XII on 12 September, 1958, to using the pill for
medical purposes as distinguished from frustrating the sexual
act, though according to Casti Connubii the latter is always
bad in itself, and though this is exactly what the pill does, in
medical or non-medical use. In other words, the fact that
certain material, biological acts are evil and forbidden in as
far as they have a determined evil intersubjective sense, meaning and effect, does not at all imply that they could not be
allowed, good and meritorious within another intersubjective
setting.
In short we might say that Casti Connubii, apart from
emphasizing from the very first sentences the sacrament of
marriage, obviously tries to safeguard and to guarantee the
human character of marriage and the authenticity of love;
though this might be done in less detail, for certain methods
of birth regulation may become allowed or even obligatory for
exactly the same reasons. Therefore even Casti Connubii
should not constitute any problem at all, either from a theological point of view or as an ethical assertion. We have to
face the fact that ethical " principles " may be simply less
extensive and applicable than people sometimes think they are.

Summary.
The recent developments of the theology of marriage are
best summarized, it seems, by the document on marriage of
the second Vatican Council. The centuries-old tradition of
appeal to St. Augustine dominated theology until shortly before
the Council. Then, again, that happened which has happened
several times before: the reaction against rigorism broke

THE THEOLOGY

OF MARRIAGE

341

through. Doubting first, then trying, hesitating, searching for
agreement and support, it gradually took on strength and conviction, and spread at an often unbelievable rapidity. It was a
human, reasonable reaction, seldom a reasoned one, and so it
ran into the established positions almost unarmed. New arguments and new authorities had to be looked for in history, theology, biology, psychology, medicine, anthropology, etc. But life
goes on, even without arguments, and so the revolution took its
course and no authority was able to stop it-neither St. Augustine nor anybody else.
The clash between new and old became most evident during
the Council. Looked at from a distance it is not difficult to
see what happened. Part of the Fathers kept to the tradition
and to what they thought was the doctrine of the Magisterium.
Others started from what we might call everyday life. The
arguments of the established position always remained the
same. At the other side, however, arguments and considerations
gradually developed. They grew better and stronger. The
various preliminary drafts of the document on marriage evidently testify to this, as we have seen from various examples.
Nonetheless, the real background of the problem remained
in the dark. After all, why should anyone connect St. Augustine's doctrine of original sin with marriage ethics in the
twentieth century? There were other reasons, of course; discussions had started too late; the problem was not, or did not
seem to be, equally urgent in all parts of the world; etc. I
would think, though, that the unsolved Augustinian enigma
was and remained the principal and main reason of conflict, as
it always has been in the theological tradition of the West.
Therefore it may be doubted if an unambiguous pronouncement on the problem of birth regulation would have been
made, even if the majority of the Fathers should have been
clearly convinced of the licitness of the customary methods of
birth regulation. After all, the continuity of the tradition was
what they cared about most. Anyway the Council avoided the
ISSUe.

We should be very grateful for this result. For in fact it

342

W. H. M. VANDER MARCK

confirms once again that the Church does not proclaim a code
of ethics but the Gospel o£ God's grace whose "Doctor" is
still, albeit sometimes along peculiar ways, St. Augustine. And
i£ St. Augustine is not always well understood, and i£ it is true,
as has been said, that St. Thomas was almost absent from the
second Vatican Council, then there might be every reason to
turn again to the respectful and intelligent interpretation of
St. Thomas whose historical consciousness, knowledge and
analysis have hardly ever been understood.
One single word, to close, about contraception at the present
moment. According to a last-minute addition to "Schema 13 "
(due to the third papal " modus ") the Magisterium o£ the
Church in which-says the Dogmatic Constitution on the
Church-all the faithful participate, 56 cannot forbid any means
o£ birth regulation unless such a prohibition be in £act contained
in the law o£ God. 57 I£ we are to take these pronouncements
seriously, we should, listenting to public opinion within the
Church, i.e., to the Magisterium, 58 stop being anxious about
means o£ birth regulation and apply that love which can do
no evil.

w. H. M. VANDER .1\iARCK, O.P.

Albertinum
Nijmegen, The Netherlands
56 " Universitas fidelium, qui unctionem habent a Sancto (cf. I Jo. 2, 20 et 27),
in credendo falli nequit, atque hanc suam peculiarem proprietatem mediante supernaturali sensu fidei totius populi manifestat, cum ' ab Episcopis usque ad extremos
Jaicos fideles, (S. Augustinus, De praed. sanct. 14, 27: PL 44, 980) universalem
suum consensum de rebus fidei et morum exhibet' (Canst. Dogm. De Ecclesia, Ch.
II, N. 12, p. 14); cf. B. Willems, 0. P., "Kerkelijke gemeenschap enu kerkeilijke
Ieiding in de conciliekonstitutie over de kerk," Tijdschr. v. Theal. 6, 1966 (51-59) p.
54; John T. Noonan, Jr., "Authority on usury and on contraception," ibid. (2650) p. 46-footn. 89.
57 " Filiis Ecclesiae . . . , in procreatione
regulanda, vias inire non licet, quae a
Magisterio, in lege divina explicanda, improbantur" (Canst. Past. De Ecclesia in
mundo ... , N. 51, p. 47).
58 " ••• petunt
... ut hie fusius agatur de apinione publica in Ecclesia. Sed;
subcommissio observavit hanc quaestionem non solos Jaicos respicere, et insuper
iam sub aliquo aspectu tractatem esse sub n. 12 ... , ubi scilicet de sensu fidei "
(Schema Canstitutianis De Ecclesia (=Sacros. Oecum. Cone. Vatic. sec.). Vatican
Press 1964, p. 134 (D)). For the text referred to, see footn. 56. See also B.
Willems, 0. P., ibid. (footn. 56) p. 55.

A NEW FORMULATION OF A NATURAL-LAW
ARGUMENT AGAINST CONTRACEPTION

''THE

naturally given structure of the sexual act"that is a phrase one often encounters in discussions
of contraception. The contention here is that
there is no such thing, if we are talking about the human act;
for human acts have their structure from intelligence. Just
insofar as an action is considered according to its naturally
given structure, it is to that extent not considered as a human
act-i. e., as a moral act-but rather as a physiological process
or as instinctive behavior. Action with a given structure and
acts structured by intelligence differ as totally as nature differs
from morality. Nature has an order which reason can consider
but cannot make and cannot alter. Morality has an order
which reason institutes by guiding the acts of the will.
There is, then, no naturally given structure of the sexual act
as a human act. I do not mean to deny, of course, that there
are given anatomical, physiological, and even psychological
structures. But all sexual acts presuppose and make use in
one or another way of what is given by nature. Masturbation
and homosexual behavior are observed among some of the
higher animals, and such behavior must be admitted to be
natural. It no more violates laws of nature relevant to sex
than orbiting the earth violates the law of gravity. In both
cases, all relevant natural laws will be seen to be fully observed
if these laws are considered in all their complexity. The violation is illusory and the illusion arises from the abstract consideration of one natural law apart from others. In concrete
cases the whole group of natural laws, including those we
usually ignore, leads to unexpected consequences.
As soon as this point is understood, one sees that it is futile
to argue that any act is right or wrong by appealing to its

343

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GERMAIN G. GRISEZ

naturally given structure. The given structure of sexual action
is a matter of fact, and since it is natural, it c;an not be violated.
The morality of sexual acts is a matter of ought, and the
very meaning of " ought" implies that the subject matter is in
our power to such an extent that what will in fact occur is
contingent on our freedom.
Artificial interference in the physiological process of ovulation
for the purpose of remedying sterility-e. g., by means of
rebound therapy-is accepted as moral. Therefore, if the
natural process were the standard of morality, a contraceptive
use of the same hormones would be no less acceptable. Interference in intercourse by transporting semen from the vagina
to the higher parts of the uterus to remedy sterility is accepted
as moral. Therefore, if the integrity of the structure of the
act were the criterion, taking the semen on a trip in the
opposite direction would be equally acceptable.
More basic is the point that the structure of sexual intercourse itself does not occur simply as a given fact of nature.
It depends on choice. Man, unlike the dog, has a fertile
imagination for designing new postures. There are plenty of
possibilities, as the books on technique indicate, for adopting
different arrangements in the coupling of bodies. And there
are plenty of possible sexual acts that do not couple bodies in
a way that would ordinarily be called intercourse-e. g.,
sodomitic relations using the anus, sodomitic relations (which
may be mutual) using the mouth, or simple mutual masturbation-and all such sexual acts are equally suited to heterosexual and to homosexual relationships. As we see from
Kinsey, a biologist viewing behavior merely from a biological
viewpoint can see nothing more or less natural about any of
these acts .
. Clarity on this point-that the structure of human sexual
intercourse is not naturally given-is important for at least
three reasons. In the first place, if this point is understood,
we will waste no time trying to deduce morality from anatomy,
physiology or psychology.
In the second place, we also will avoid the grievous error of

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supposing that if we surrender on contraception, a certain
residual respect for the so-called natural structure of the sexual
act will allow us somewhere to draw a line. Everyone discussing
the morality of contraception should be honest enough to admit
that if contraception is morally admissable, there is no reason
why women should not exchange the natural use for any agreeable unnatural one, and why men should not exchange women
for other men, unless that reason be a psychological one. But
the psychological value-the unhealthiness of such practices
even for those who willingly cooperate in them-while perhaps
true in general, seems impossible to prove as an absolute,
unexceptional universal.
However, I do not want to dwell on this point. One cannot
show in this way that contraception is evil. One can only show
it to be no worse than many acts generally thought to be evil,
since contraception and other so-called " unnatural acts " are
acceptable on the very same principles.
The third, and most important, reason why it is vital to see
that the structure of the sexual act is not naturally given is
that only after gaining this insight can the true issue be
appreciated. That issue concerns the principles according to
which a human being ought to structure his sexual conduct.
Because this structure will be the work of intelligence, and
because its realization can be accomplished only through free
choice, either intelligence must know immediately what the
structure should be, or the structure will have to be articulated
from some prior knowledge. The latter is evidently the case:
the structure of human sexual acts is articulated through a
rational process. Reason proceeds from some principles of
action and concludes to the formulation of possible acts about
which it also pronounces the judgment: Such and such ought
(or ought not) to be done.
Our problem, then, takes us right to the central question of
ethical theory: What is the ultimate standard of right and
wrong in human acts, and how is this standard to be applied?
No meaningful position can be adopted in the contraception
controversy without first taking a clear position on this central

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question, for the concrete issue hangs upon the question of
principles more than on anything else. Thus to start out the
argument anywhere after this question really will be to miss
the point and to beg the question rather than to deal with it.
Most proponents of contraception have made this error by
assuming implicitly that contraception is not intrinsically immoral, and that it thus can be justified by proportionately good
reasons.
Kant attempted to set up a strictly formal standard of right
and wrong, but his theory is inadequate, for such an a priori
rational standard does not provide sufficient direction for
formulating action. Others have suggested that the ultimate
standard must be established by authority, for example, by the
authority of God, but this position either presupposes that there
is an independent norm showing the reasonableness of accepting
divine direction or it implies that there is no reason for anything in human life. Many contemporary thinkers more or less
openly suggest that human arbitrariness, expressed either by
the individual will or by the social consensus, is a suitable
substitute for divine arbitrariness. One form of voluntarism is
neither less nor more reasonable than the other. In both cases,
reason begins only after an arbitrary fiat has been imposed
upon it, and the imposition has to be accepted by blind submiSSion.
Thoughout the history of ethical theory, the proposal has
been made repeatedly that the ultimate standard of morality
is simply given by nature. Man has in fact certain drives,
needs, or wants, and he cannot help but seek to satisfy them.
He will proceed in a more or less efficient way, depending upon
how well he uses the mind with which nature has provided
him as an instrument for obtaining their satisfaction. In
naturalistic theories of this sort the ends are established by
nature, and the imperatives of morality become hypothetical.
"If you want such and such (and you do, willy-nilly), then you
must do so and so." Kant criticized very tellingly heteronomous principles of this kind, even though his proffered substitute
for them was inadequate. Such theories eliminate morality and

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turn human life into a product of technique. Sin is ignorance
or mistake; freedom is an illusion. The good for man is so
completely defined by nature that there is no room for man to
transcend the limited goals set by his humanity and so contrive
his own existence. Much less can such naturalism allow that
man might be elevated by grace to share in divine life.
I would suggest that the only adequate ultimate standard for
right and wrong in human acts is the total possible good that
man can in any way attain. This total possibility is in a
certain sense given, for man does not exist of himself but is
created in intelligence and freedom, with an innate capacity
for indefinite self-transcendence. At the same time, this total
possibility is not some definite end, established by nature,
that could ever be attained by some efficient means. For
this very reason, human intelligence must contrive the structure
of human acts, but only freedom can effectively execute the
order which intelligence proposes, because a finite nature does
not include any necessary and inerrant means for attaining a
perfection that is inherently indefinite and open to the infinite.
Given the task of contriving human existence in the light
of the possibility of infinite self-transcendence, human reason
must start somewhere to give its first direction. Intelligence
looks to experience, not because naturally given inclinations
must be followed, but rather because no human act is possible
if there is no inclination to use as its vehicle. Practical reason,
which must project goals toward which it will direct action,
must form its initial insights concerning all possible goals of
human action by referring to the several modes of inclination
that are naturally given in human nature.
Thus it is that the tendency to self-preservation is transmuted by the alchemy of intelligence into a self-evident principle of practical reason: Human life is a good to be preserved.
The tendency may be egoistic; the principle is non-discriminatory. The tendency is dispersed among many physiological and
psychological drives; the principle is understood more or less
clearly as expressing an intelligible goal, which man makes his
own, toward which all those drives are disposed.

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A number of fundamental categories of human goods are
understood in this way. There are not many modes of human
good altogether: human life, which includes health and safety;
all the arts and skills that can be cultivated simply for the
sake of their very exercise; beauty and other objects of esthetic
experience; theoretical truth in its several varieties; friendship,
both relationship in immediate liasons and organization in
larger communities; the use of intelligence to direct action; the
effective freedom to do what one chooses with the whole
force of an integrated personality; and a proper relationship
to the fundamental principles of reality-i. e., to God.
In this list of basic human goods I think we must include,
as a distinct item and not merely as an aspect of the good of
human life as such, the value of the initiation of human life.
This good consists not merely in generation, but in the initiation
of human life on all its many levels, for physiological, psychological, moral, and spiritual life each must be initiated and the
initiation of human life is not complete until the new person
is equipped with the starting points from which he can proceed
to live on all of these levels. Once his life is begun, each person
has as his own task to carry on and to develop his life in
cooperation with others. Consequently, as childhood progresses
passivity gives place to activity and dependency to autonomy
in cooperative relationships.
There are several reasons for thinking that the good of the
initiation of human life, the procreative good, is a fundamental
human good and that it is distinct from the good of human
life as such.
In the first place, the procreative good is peculiar inasmuch
as it is always an object for action whose eml is a person other
than the agent. One can pursue the good of human life, on the
other hand, in a manner that is directly self-regarding, and on
the level of natural inclination the good of life as such is
represented by the drives which insure self-preservation. Only
indirectly can one pursue the procreative good in a manner
that is self-regarding, since the good primarily accrues to a
person other than the agent himself, and on the level of natural

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inclination the good of procreation is represented by drives that
do not promote self-preservation-which,
in fact, often conflict
with it-although these drives do yield satisfaction for the
agent as well as the achievement of a fundamental human
good in another person.
In the second place, the procreative good is the object of
the ultimate function of all human organisms precisely insofar
as they are organisms. The work of procreation is the work of
maturity and full power; every other function leads on to this
one while for the agent organism as such this function leads to
nothing beyond itself. The good of human life, on the other
hand, is the goal of the weakest and most primitive functions
of the organism. Now, man, of course, is incomparably more
than any other organism. But man is in truth an organized
body, and his perfection as such cannot be reduced to any
higher plane of his existence, as if the highest plane could save
everything below by using it as a means or by encompassing
it in a more eminent mode. The simple physiological process
of human reproduction already is incomparably more important
than the process of reproduction in other animals by the mere
fact that the former terminates in the existence of a human
person while the latter terminates in the being of a beast. Man
is not an incarnate spirit; he is a rational animal. The dualism
implied in the definition of man as incarnate spirit threatens
to become a totalitarianism which will distort the true shape of
man's nature and thus destroy the only solid foundation for a
realistic personalism. And Christian personalism must be realistic, as has been declared repeatedly in the past against
gnostics, manichees, cathars, and jansenists.
In the third place, we can discern the status of procreation
among basic human goods because a whole domain of human
action is devoted to the work of procreation. Having a family
of one's own-this is one, though not the only, unquestioned
goal that most people have in life. The most universal and
ancient human institutions are founded in the light of this
good, for they are instituted to promote it. Marriage varies
greatly from culture to culture, but anthropologists have no

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difficulty in picking out the phenomena to be recorded in all
their variety under this heading. They are the regular phenomena connected with having and raising children. The problem
of population itself is proof of the fundamental and universal
drive, for even in the most primitive cultures there are meansbirth control, abortion, and infanticide-to limit population.
And sexual activity almost everywhere flourishes outside
marriage as well as within it. But people want children and
they usually devote considerable effort to bringing up their
children. From the point of view of egoistic theories of human
action, the whole business will have to be explained by some
implausible account, or it may be absurd, but nevertheless it
goes on, for very few people really are consistently egoistic.
Now someone may be willing to grant the primary and
distinct place of procreation among a group of fundamental
human goods, and he may grant us as well that these goods
provide the starting point for practical reason when it sets out
to articulate possible human acts. But he still will ask how
these fundamental goods provide a practical standard of right
and wrong. How, he will wish to know, do the principles that
render human acts possible determine that a proposed act will
fall in one or the other of these contrary moral classes?
One proposal is to try to see how each proposed act would
in fact affect the realization of all the basic goods, to add up
the good and subtract the bad effects, and by means of such
a moral calculus to judge whether the action ought to be done
or not. This suggestion might seem plausible, especially if it is
added that one must give greater weight to the goods that are
higher in dignity-e. g., to friendship rather than to life-and
that the effects to be measured are the actual consequences as
they impinge upon persons, and benefit or harm them.
However, the suggestion will not work. In the first place, it
is impossible to know what the actual effects of actions will be
unless one limits the inquiry somewhere. In the second place,
and what is more important, it is impossible to subject to a
common measure various concrete consequences in regard to
diverse goods. For example, while friendship as such un-

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doubtedly is more valuable than life itself, since friendship
presupposes life, and adds much more perfection to it, one
cannot measure the value of a hero's life against the value of
the community when the hero lays down his life for some
undeterminable benefit to the community. Heroism is possible,
but moral calculation can never render it intelligible.
In the third place, and what is still more important, the
theory that proposes to measure concrete consequences in order
to assess the moral value of proposed acts also involves an
unavoidable element of arbitrariness. For '¥hich consequences
are to be considered? Thf; consequences upon myself alone?
That is egoism, a completely arbitrary position. The consequences upon all others who will actually be affected by the
act? This alternative seems more reasonable, yet it too is
arbitrary, as vdll readily appear if we reflect upon the various
degrees of responsibility for others that we all recognize. Our
own family, our friends, and strangers do not hold equal place
in our affection, and no one seriously maintains that they
should. Moreover, shall we consider all those who now are
alive, or must we not consider also those who may yet live
after us? The latter cannot be disregarded altogether, and this
is apparent in politics, for example, where we provide not cnly
for ourselves but also for our posterity.
In the fourth place, and what is most important, the theory
that right and wrong depend on actual effects upon the realization of the basic goods runs directly counter to the facts of
everyone's experience of moral obligation. In reality, no one
considers that act alone to be right which results in the greatest
net good. Such a position leaves no room for acts better than
those which are merely right. Yet we all admit considerable
room for heroism-acts good beJJond the call of duty. Nor do
we readily approve an act as right, however good its total
consequences may be, if it directly violates some one of the
basic goods. That is why utilitarians, whose theory is susceptible to attack, for instance, for allowing innocent life to be
violated, always try to provide protections for it and to find
some grounds in the consequences for other human goods for

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excluding such violations. That also is why the secular world
is so interested in the present intramural controversy among
Catholics over contraception. No one who practices contraception can be completely easy about it, and even unbelievers feel
the Church's staunch condemnation as an irritating reminder
that endangers their ease of conscience.
The attempt to determine right and wrong in human acts
by an appeal to their concrete consequences-shown by all
these reasons to be inadequate-seems to me to rest upon a
misconception of the very nature of morality and its essential
conditions. Moral acts are man's own contrivance; moral
agency is the adventure of human existence. It follows that
the moral standard cannot be simply factual, whether the
facts be past, present, or predicted. The moral standard must
be ideal. Moral acts are the creatures of freedom; to judge
right and wrong by actual consequences would be to reduce
morality to teclmique. Moral life is a progress open toward
infinite self-transcendence; if the ultimate principle for our
discrimination of right and wrong were actual consequences
human life would have finite limits. Man not only must be
engaged in his present act, he also must be detached from its
particular effects, or he shall never attain beyond a finite
good. Moral life is autonomous and moral maturity is perfect
autonomy-self-directedness-but
if the standard were concrete consequences man would always have to look for signs
outside himself to use for his norm. That is all human action
could amount to if man's intelligence were no more than a
better way of doing the work of instinct, if man's will were
capable only of following paths laid out for it by nature, and
incapable of proposing its own destination to itself.
Instead of the measure of actual effects, I defend a quite
different way in which fundamental human goods determine the
rightness and wrongness of human acts. The fundamental
human goods must be viewed as participations in Goodness
Itself, which is the only adequate norm of a will open to infinite
self-transcendence. The fundamental human goods make it
possible for practical reason to begin its work, and to articulate

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possible lines of action. They underlie the structure of every
human act that anyone proposes to do. And every act that is
fully human therefore will be good, provided only that it does
not involve the will in setting itself against some human good.
For one would never be willing to oppose any fundamental
human good unless he had been willing, at least implicitly, to
substitute some single good or some one kind of good for the
true and only adequate norm, Goodness Itself.
The good man need not pursue every possible good-in fact,
he cannot do so. But he must avoid directly violating any of
the fundamental goods. Thus some kinds of acts are intrinsically immoral, for some kinds of acts necessarily include in
themselves a turning against some basic good, an aversion
which also inevitably implies an aversion from Goodness Itself.
This standard is a dynamic and an existential one. What is
required for the goodness of a human act is not that it have
the best possible consequences, but that it proceed from a truly
good will, a heart bent upon all the human goods as the images
of Goodness Itself. Such a moral standard alone befits the
dignity and freedom of man. This standard requires of human
intelligence only that some manner of attaining some good be
found, not that impossible calculations be completed. This
standard does not define a good attainable once and for all
by limited means, but it keeps the person open and it presses
him on toward the Infinite Good beyond the human self and
beyond all the particular goods that mankind can comprehend
and surpass. This standard can be internalized in good will,
and brought to life in a personality integrated around such a
will. Yet the standard conforms to our experience of moral
judgment, for it leaves open wide ranges of alternative acts that
would be more or less good although quite different from one
another. There is no arbitrariness about the standard I defend,
for it is simply an orientation toward all the possible goals
of human effort, insofar as they represent man's total possible
participation in Goodness Itself. Nothing is omitted, nothing
is excluded, except partiality and exclusion itself. The goods
accessible to man can direct his effort if his supreme aspiration

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is for the Good Itself. The quantity of good effected could
direct human effort only if man's supreme aspiration were for
quantity itself. Yet even infinite quantity is finite reality. Why
freeze man in the finitude of calculation of consequences when
he should be freed into the open ocean of self-transcendence
toward Infinite Goodness?
A morality that judges in terms of actual consequences either
must know the ultimate good for man and judge acts by their
consequences for that good, or it will be arbitrary. No such
morality can admit that the ultimate good transcends human
comprehension, or all its calculation would become impossible.
Such a morality has two alternatives: with presumption to
assume that man himself can make the ultimate meaning of
reality or, with despair to set aside ultimate meaning as irrelevant. Contemporary man oscillates so rapidly between the
two alternatives that he almost seems to have succeeded in
synthesizing them. The result is that there is nothing so like
man's image of God as man's image of himself-fully competent
to know good and evil, to discern the two one from the other,
but incompetent to master the necessities of existence, wherein
freedom is fulfilled only by honest acquiescence in the inevitability of eyil as the price of some greater good.
Now let us consider contraception. I do not think of contraception as if it were an act already given, the moral judgment
on which would be made apart from and after the understanding of the act. No, I am concerned with a human act, an
act which is performed through a specific choice. It is a mode
o£ behavior selected by someone engaging in sexual intercourse
to prevent or to make improbable the inital attainment of the
procreative good that otherwise would follow from his sexual
act. The very meaning of this act includes a basic human
good. The act precisely is a choice to behave in a way effectively contrary to that good.
I do not condemn contraception because of its bad consequences. No doubt it sometimes has bad consequences for
various human goods, and then if those consequences are
noticed, this sort of behavior will be condemned more easily.

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But I point to something bad that is essential to the act.
Contraception involves setting the will directly against a basic
human good, and this implies foreclosure against some aspect
of human good as good and a consequent aversion from Goodness Itself. The first bad consequence is that one who chooses
contraception loses purity of heart. He is willing to violate
one good when only a principle seems to be at stake, and thus
in principle he is willing to violate other goods, for there is
no more compelling reason not to violate other goods unless it
be a consideration of balanced consequences. One cannot make
just one exception to the principle that he will adhere to goods
as such and be faithful in regarding them as his norm. The
very same considerations which lead one to violate a fundamental good by approving contraception tell equally in favor
of violating another fundamental good-life itself-in difficult
cases. Either one admits intrinsic immorality or one rejects it.
Either one admits that human practical wisdom is bound by
the basic human goods that man can discern, or one claims
sufficient knowledge of the ultimate end of man to employ it as
a standard for moral judgment. Either one admits he is a
creature or one claims to be God.
Some assert that to insist upon the inviolability of basic
human goods in every particular case is to sacrifice the actual
to the merely possible, and the latter they equate, like good
nominalists, with the utterly unreal. But the true issue is not
between actuality and possibility. All the standards for human
action are in themselves ideals, not existent actualities. To
fix one's sights upon the actually existent is to despair of all
progress and to surrender the idea of human life as self-transcending creativity in freedom. I do not say that one should
not practice contraception as if it would violate the right of
a child as yet unconceived to exist. The possible child has no
rights, of course, but to offer this as an argument in defense of
contraception is narrow-minded legalism. I do not say the
statement is legalism, but the use of it as1 an objection is such,
for it reveals the presupposition that good and evil occur only
in cases where duties are fulfilled or rights are violated.

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This is not so. Justice is a virtue, but it is only one virtue,
and to reduce morality to justice is to omit everything that
makes justice a matter of morality and not merely a social
convention. Contraception does not violate justice; it is not
against anyone's rights (assuming, of course, that both parties
agree to it). It violates one of the basic human goods, and
since it occurs in the domain of sexual activity, the virtue it
offends against is chastity, which is the virtue for serving all
the relevant goods by engaging in sexual activity or refraining
from it according as diverse kinds of acts, various intentions,
and differing circumstances may require.
However, it will be asserted that the act defined above as contraception does not imply a direct violation of the procreative
good. After all, other goods are also at stake in sexual intercourse, and the procreative good itself is complex, so that what
violates it in one respect may indirectly promote it in another.
To understand the answer to this kind of objection one must
keep steadily in mind the fact that the act of contraception is
one which we ourselves articulate. In order to contrive it,
some good must provide reason a starting point, and we could
not choose the act except because it seems to serve that good.
Yet we cannot arrive at a fully reasonable judgment by adhering to the implications of one principle and ignoring those of another. Sometimes, we quite rightly act in ways which do
considerable concrete damage to instances of basic human
goods, but then we are acting without willing contrary to these
goods as principles. For instance, a man may offer his own
life by risking it to save a friend, and nothing could be more
morally acceptable than this. But in such an act he defines
what he does in terms of the good at which he aims, and he
only indirectly wills the possible bad consequence for his own
life.
To indirectly will such bad consequences becomes more difficult if they follow from one's own behavior-if one's own choice
is implicated in efficiently causing them. But even in such a
case one might be able reasonably to interpret his act according to the good it serves, and then he need not set his will

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against the principle to an instance of which the bad consequences of the act accrue. From this point of view we can
understand the possible moral acceptability of the conceptionpreventing behavior of a woman who has been raped. If the
act is morally good, it must be understood as self-defensive,
not as anti-procreative. The victim in a case of this kind has
not placed herself within the ambit of the procreative good;
this value in no way informs her behavior because it does not
direct her choice at all.
However, if someone does choose to engage in sexual activity
which may lead to conception, he already has defined his
action in the light of the procreative good. Not that in every
act of intercourse this good must necessarily be sought nor
that it can always actually follow. No one claims that either
is the case. But an act is not fully human if it is not fully
understood, and such sexual activity cannot be understood
without understanding its reference to procreation. Indeed,
there would be no point in trying to prevent conception if one
did not see the relevance of one's action to it. In such a case,
therefore, an act that does nothing except insofar as it effectively prevents conception is formulated precisely as contraprocreative.
It is useless to object that the contraceptive act really is
intended to serve other goods. Undoubtedly, it is intended to
promote indirectly some good or other. But the contraceptive
act in and of itself does not promote any other good or prevent
any other evil. If it did so, we could define it differently than
we do, and then we might reasonably accept it in that other
definition. However, we cannot define our acts arbitrarily, or
merely in terms of results, or merely by the end intended. To
try to omit from the principles applied in judging a human act
any good which cannot be omitted in understanding the act,
is incompatible with the function of human goods as starting
points of practical reason.
Nor is it any help to assert that the good one hopes to
promote is procreation itself-i.e., the education of previously
born children. For this good is not really promoted by the

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contraceptive act. The act of contraception itself happens to
be singularly sterile. Contraception never educated anyone,
although in the order of actual effects contraception undoubtedly can be an efficient way of preventing births which ought not
occur, and where the "ought not" is determined by a sound
judgment of the good of children previously born. But killing
the innocent also can save lives. Lying about fundamental
truths can perhaps serve the truth, at least scientists working
under tyrants have thought so. Even oppression is claimed by
many to be necessary for freedom. One need not look beyond
the sad history of America's treatment of its native population
for a plausible instance. Are we to approve life-saving abortion,
truth-serving lies, liberating oppression? I£ not, there is no
better reason to approve procreative contraception.
To complete my argument, much more would have to be
said. After all, one cannot sketch the foundations of ethical
theory and a difficult application of it in a short paper except
by using broad strokes. But there is one more point that should
be discussed here, both because it is important in itself and
because my view on it has been distorted and misrepresented
repeatedly during the last two years.
My argument against contraception in no way questions the
value of true sexual love. Sexual intercourse can be useful for
the promotion of marital unity and then any married couple
do well to engage in it even if procreation happens to be
impossible. Such intercourse in itself can be a better human
act than intercourse used specifically as a means to procreation.
Moreover, genuine conjugal friendship-which, of course, ought
not to be identified with the act of conjugal intercourse-is
superior to procreation if the two goods as ideal values are
compared absolutely to one another, for procreation only
initiates the human journey toward self-transcendence, while
genuine conjugal friendship presupposes many steps along this
path and easily conducts the couple further toward their goal.
Moreover, the good of procreation is the primary end of
marriage only in the sense that procreation specifies the marital
relationship, and by giving it a meaning grounds its possibility.

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But once marriage as an institution is defined by procreation,
the marital unity which becomes possible is of itself an instance
of a fundamental human good. So good is marital unity directly
and of itself that marriages for which procreation happens to be
impossible nevertheless share the true nature and value of
marriage. Their moral relation to procreation suffices, and this
relation consists in the fact that in marrying the couple consent
to a mutual, exclusive, permanent exchange of rights to engage
in conjugal acts-i.e., acts which in their structure as human
acts are suited to procreation.
Still contraception is to be condemned. Why? Not because
I value marital love less than those who say they want to
help it gain strength by prescribing the tonic of contraception.
Rather because the position I have taken values marital love
more. In reality, contraception does not strengthen marital
love; contraception only makes it easier to have frequent
orgasms in sexual acts which simulate conjugal intercourse.
However, orgasm is not identical with love, although the two
are by no means in necessary opposition to one another.
The following, at least, is true. If anyone suffers from so
strong an urge for orgasm that he cannot forego it without
this abstinence causing trouble for himself or without his
behavior causing trouble for others, then the sexual act by
which orgasm is obtained is not an ideally free and generous
gift of self. If one acts with full freedom in choosing to give
himself by intercourse in an act of love, then he also has such
an ability of self-restraint that he could have chosen to abstain
without bad consequences had his devotion to all the basic
goods required it. Contraceptive intercourse at best would be
an ambiguous act of love. Is it the person saying: "I love
you"? Or is the libido saying: "I want release"? I think that
the force of necessity is something quite different from the
choice of freedom. And I think anyone who is impartial can
notice that many Catholics who are defending contraception
are trading on the ambiguity of the " act of love." They would
be ashamed to try to defend contraception used in the service
of mere physiological urge or psychological addiction. But they

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would be unable to defend it as necessary for the service of true
acts of love. Hence they confuse the two.
Sexual capacity emerges at puberty and breaks upon the
growing personality with a power that is almost explosive.
Perhaps even for physiological reasons, it is difficult to integrate
this new function. Moreover, human sexual capacity is extremely plastic, and psychologically it is available for use as a
sphere of displacement into a mechanical self-gratification
which allows one more or less completely to avoid facing the
risks and opportunities of a fully human life. Sex is the first
good we encounter which we can form as an idol to replace in
our hopes and dreams the fullness of perfection really to be
found only through infinite self-transcendence. At least as
things go at present, the sexual mechanism almost always is
set into play to afford such a displacement and it gains a more
or less firm hold on the emerging moral consciousness of the
child. Thus moral intelligence is confronted with an incomprehensible sphere organized by the semi-human acts of sexual
automatism.
Such pseudo-sex begins easily with masturbation, for if the
child shrinks from trying to master the obstacles in the way of
self-transcendence, he can at least find solace in the self-gratification of worshiping his own phallic idol. I£ girls seem to
masturbate less than boys, this may be mainly because the
whole of a woman's body is her sexual instrument, and so the
perversion of sex into a mechanism for self-gratification is more
generalized in girls than in boys. This pseudo-sexual activity
persists in adolescent sexual acts, such as heterosexual petting
and sometimes also homosexual activities. The same perversion
of true sexual love most commonly matures into a habit of
regular and mechanical sexual acts which is supported by the
practice of contraception.
Such semi-human pseudo-sexual acts are altogether different
from the free gift of one's whole bodily self in genuine marital
love, but for almost all of us the complete exclusion of automatism from true sexual love is a long and hard struggle. The
t'emedy for the difficulties of marriage is love, more and more

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genuine love, including the perfection of fully human acts of
authentic sexual love. That perfection, which promises ever
grander fulfillments of our human desire for ecstasy-fulfillments such as contraceptive couples will never experience-that
perfection, which carries with it freedom for the sexual act in
the joyous ability of perfect self-restraint without the slightest
repression-that perfection is too lovely, too truly and humanly
spontaneous to be confused with genital automatism. Genital
automatism expressing itself in semi-human pseudo-sexual acts
is an enemy of reason and of moral law, but only because it is
an enemy of genuine sexual love, whose spontaneity is that of
choosing to give a gift, and not that of a compulsive urge for
self -gratification.
GERMAIN

Georgetown University
Washington, D. C.

G. GRISEZ

RESPONSIBLE

D

PARENTHOOD
POPULATION

AND OVER-

INTRODUCTION

UE to the highly publicized question of overpopulation,
a theological problem has arisen in recent years, concerning the moral obligation of procreation and the
advisability of the limitation of offspring. Although a solution
to this complex problem is difficult to formulate, a natural
starting-point would be an investigation of the relation between
procreation and the human species, as taught in the sexual
ethics of St. Thomas Aquinas.
Throughout the history of mankind marriage has always been
considered as providing for the preservation of the human race.
St. Thomas was greatly influenced by the fundamental Aristotelian principle: nature seeks above all the promotion and
conservation of the species, for the good of the species is
superior to the good of the individual. The concept of "procreation for the good of the species " has been variously overemphasized or belittled. Man's service to the species has been
de-emphasized in recent years through emphasis on "personal
fulfillment" in conjugal companionship; on the other hand,
marriage " in the service of the species " has been exaggerated
to the degree of placing the procreative faculty at the disposal
of the eugenic policy of a nation or race. Consequently, we seek
the answers to two questions: 1) What is a proper understanding of the principle that " procreation is for the good of
the species"? 9l) Can this principle be applied to the social
contingencies of responsible parenthood and overpopulation?
However, before we can address our attention to these important questions, their general context should be seen at least
through a summary of Aquinas' overall view of sex and
marriage.
S69l

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1. The Essence of Human Sexuality

St. Thomas based his doctrine of human sexuality on a
natural law consideration of man, which in turn stems from
man's very essence-a procedure or methodology built on the
tradition of Aristotle, Stoa (Cicero), and Roman law, and
strongly influenced by Aquinas' own conviction of the essential
goodness of sex and the sexuallife. 1
It is significant to note that Thomas abandoned his master
Albert and followed the thought of Bonaventure, contrary to
all scholastic tradition, in holding the neo-Roman, or Ulpian's
definition of the natural law: "quod natura omnia animalia
docuit," consisting in the natural inclinations inherent in the
nature of all animals. St. Thomas taught that marriage is
founded on the generic element of human nature, and concluded that procreation must be posited as the governing form
of the sexual act.
This does not mean that Thomas classified sex as something
exclusively " animal," neglecting its specifically human characteristics. Man fulfills his inclinations in a manner which is
proper to himself and at the same time common to inferior
animals. Thus, the specifically human aspect of procreation is
to be found in the special needs required in the training and
education of the human offspring. The rearing of young is an
inclination common to the genus of animal, but in man reason
recognizes the necessity of a permanent marital union as a
1 Josef Fuchs, Die Sexualethik des heiligen Thomas von Aquin (Cologne:
Bachem,
1949), pp. 109 ff.,
ff.; W. Onclin, "Le droit nature! selon les romanistes des
XIIe et XIIIe siecles," Miscellanea moralia in honorem E. D. Arthur Janssen
Odon Lottin, Le droit naturel chez
(Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1949), II, pp.
Saint Thomas d'Aquin et ses predecesseurs
ed. rev.; Bruges: Beyaert, 1931);
idem, "Pour un commentaire historique de Ia morale de Saint Thomas," Psychologie et morale aux Xlle et Xllle siecles (5 Vols.;: Gembloux: Duculot,
III, pp. 579-601; Heinrich Rommen, The Natural Law: A Study in Legal and Social
History and Philosophy, trans. Thomas Hanley (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1947);
George Joyce, Christian Marriage: A Doctrinal and Historical Study (London:
ff.; Hans Meyer. The Philosophy of St. Thomas
Sheed and Ward, 1933), pp.
Aquinas, trans. Frederic Eckhoff (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1955), pp. 464, 504-505;
Johannes Messner, Social Ethics: Natural Law in the Modern World, trans. J. J.
Doherty (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1949); Giorgio del Vecchio, Lezioni di Filosofia
del Diritto (lOth ed.; Milan: Giuffre, 1958); Leopold Brandl, Die Sexualethik des
heiligen Albertus Magnus (Regensburg: Pustet, 1955) .

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WARREN REICH

prerequisite for sexual intercourse, in accordance with the
specifically intellectual nature of man. Thus, St. Thomas
proceeds from the order of being to the ethical order: a process
which shows the dependence of Thomistic natural-law sexual
ethics on the Aristotelian view of the various levels of being. 2
The common genus possesses priority, in Aristotle's view of
the various levels of being, inasmuch as the genus is open to
various possibilities of perfection. From this point of view
Thomas speaks of priority in the " via generationis," in the
order of becoming, but not in the order of being and perfection.
On the other hand, the human species is more highly endowed
than the pure genus, because of the faculty of human reason.
Hence, in the order of perfection, nature aims at the species, not
the genus; at humans, not at the animal in man.
The Purpose of Human Sexuality
Since Thomas structures his view of human sexuality upon
the very nature of things, the essential characteristics of sex
guide his consideration of the purpose of human sexuality. 3
This evolution of thought is a plan taken from the spirit of
the Angelic Doctor himself: a progression from the ontological
to the teleological. Aquinas asserts that the various natural and
biological aspects of the sexual faculty are all directed toward
the sex act and procreation.
Thus, the distinction of the sexes itself exists for the procreation of offspring. The sex organs, the male seed, the
material sexual act-all exist for the purpose of procreation,
education and ultimately for the preservation of the species.
This teleology does not depend on what the couple intends in
performing the act: sex has a determined finis operis, distinct
2 Fuchs, Sexualethik, pp. 115 ff.; idem, " Die Ehezwecklehre des hi. Thomas von
Aquin," T. Q. 128 (1948), pp. 416 ff.
3 See Bernard Alves Pereira, La doctrine du mariage selon Saint Augustin
(Paris:
Beauchesne, 1930); Albert Mitterer, "Mann und Weib nach dem biologischen
Weltbild des hi. Thomas und dem der Gegenwart," Z. K. T. 57 (1933), pp. 491556; M. J. Nicolas, "Remarques sur le sens et Ia fin du mariage," R. T. 45 (1939),
pp. 774-793.

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from and unaltered by any finis operantis sought by an individual.
However, to achieve a balanced view of Thomas' teaching on
the purpose of sex, it must be pointed out that the immediate
object of man's sexual inclination is not procreation and progeny, but bodily union in the sex act. It is true that sexual
intercourse is directed to procreation, but sexual union is not
simply and formally the same as the biological act of procreation. The sexual act also involves man's spiritual element:
marriage is a union of love (unio caritatis) in which the spouses
enjoy the highest kind of friendship (amicitia) which, according to Aristotle, is the very basis of their domestic life. Bodily
union produces and fosters mutual love, for every union is the
basis of love. On the other hand, mutual love is the basis of
bodily union, since love is necessary for a true union of lives
(reali8 unio).
Thus, it is the teaching of St. Thomas that the sexual act is
by nature an expression of mutual love, and as such it has a
value which may even be given more importance subjectively
than is attributed to procreation. Yet, typical of medieval
theologians, Thomas scarcely elaborates the personal meaning
of sex, probably because of the medieval attitude towards
postlapsarian sexual pleasure and concupiscible love.
However, it is clear what Aquinas must label primary in
sexual life, and in what sense. He examines sexual life metaphysically, in search of its essential make-up. As a result, he
restricts himself to the view that sexual intercourse is ordered
solely to procreation for the preservation of the species. It
should be emphasized that this expresses a formal and objective
view of the sexual act, based on the generic, natural appetites
of man and the Aristotelian grades of being. At its most fundamental level, sex act signifies procreative act. This natural
teleology is subsumed into the higher levels of being, where the
objectively procreative act gains a richer and more meaningful
form.

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3. The Ends and Goods of Marriage
To the question: " What is the connection between the
purpose of sex and the purpose of marriage? " Thomas replies
that the two are essentially bound together, for the sex act is
the marriage act. Since the sex act is a procreative act, and
since marriage is a prerequisite for performing the act of sexual
union, any subsequent mention of the procreative act will be
taken to mean the marital act, and vice versa. Now because of
the great emphasis placed by Aquinas on the bond between
sex and marriage, his treatment of the ends and goods of
marriage reflects and perfects his philosophy of sex. Formally
and essentially, Aquinas insists, marriage is a certain inseparable union of souls, but this union of life and love has sex as its
most natural characteristic, and thus is naturally directed to
the procreation and rearing of offspring to a mature and virtuous adulthood. This clearly goes far beyond the mere biological.
The other, "superadded" levels of marriage have their own
purpose, but all have value for new life.
The higher levels of life of which man partakes (sensitive,
spiritual) specify and determine sexual life. They present
"new" ends of marriage which have a value of their own; and
yet these ends do not supplant, but rather aid procreationeducation with their personal-spiritual values. For example,
mutual aid (mutuum obsequium) pertains exclusively to the
human species, for man inclines naturally to marital companionship and the mutual exchange of domestic life. Furthermore, one of the advantages (or "personal ends") of marital
life is the love or friendship of the spouses which is built upon
and produced by their life in common. This personal union of
love gains great importance by reflecting the union of Christ
and his Church. But Aquinas is not so much concerned with
whether this is a union of friendship, but rather: what is its
natural purpose? The finis of this union is procreation-education.
This hierarchy of ends reflects Aquinas' natural-law view of
marriage. The principle end of marriage (procreation-educa-

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tion) arises from the Aristotelian teaching of the priority of the
generic over the specific, and corresponds immediately to the
most basic level and the most profound inclination of man:
the natural inclination to procreation found in the generic
element of human nature. Beyond this basic goal, as Thomas
expressly declares, other ends are to be treated as superaddita
in the natural-law view of marriage, and, in this sense, as
secondary.
Thomas places the three goods of marriage in relation to the
ends of marriage. To the first (bonum prolis) corresponds procreation-education; to the second (bonum fidei) correspond
both remedium concupiscentiae and mutuum obsequium; and
to the third (bonum sacramenti) corresponds the imitation of
the unity of Christ and his Church as a purpose of marriage.
The bonum sacramenti is rated first in the order of dignity, but
the bonum prolis, at least if it is understood as the intentio
prolis, is the most essential good of marriage.
We can conclude that the Angelic Doctor looked upon the
procreation-education of offspring not only as an end of matrimony, but also as the most essential" good" of marriage. This
good is one which " excuses " the marriage act, but does so from
the goodness of the very nature of matrimony and the goodness
of the natural appetite to procreate. Hence procreation is
thing positively good.
Thomas was influenced by two very different schools of
thought-those of Aristotle and Augustine-and by each of
these both directly and indirectly. St. Thomas appears Augustinian in his general evaluation of sex, which obviously imports
a tone of severity. Yet he has re-thought Augustine's sexual
ethics and has set himself a milder and more positive course.
Aristotle gave the Angelic Doctor a more realistic outlook by
emphasizing the medium virtutis in his appraisal of sex.
Thomas reacted strongly against a long patristic and ascetic
tradition of sexual pessimism by insisting on the goodness of the
institution of marriage. Speaking out resolutely against the
heresies of the
and 13th centuries, he asserted that mar-

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riage is no sin, that the fulfilling of the marriage debt is a
meritorious practice of the virtues of justice and religion, and
that the pleasure attached to it is in no way sinful. No one
affirmed more optimistically the goodness of the natural inclination to procreation for the good of the species than did St.
Thomas: " If corporal nature was instituted by a good God, it
is impossible to say that that which concerns the conservation
of the corporal nature and to which nature inclines is altogether
evil . . . so that it would be impossible to find the mean of
virtue therein." 4
Having considered the broad context of Aquinas' position on
sex and marriage, and having seen that for him the primary
purpose and good of marriage is procreation-education, we are
in a position to ask the further question: what, in a particular
way, is the purpose of procreation? His answer is a principle
which serves as a basis for his entire sexual ethics: procreation
is for the good of the species. This basic principle must be
studied in detail before turning to the consideration of responsible parenthood and overpopulation.
PART ONE

PROCREATION FOR THE SPECIES
St. Thomas teaches that human procreation is for the sake
of the species, and this truth is solidly based on the intention
of nature. 1 It is a principle which Thomas has derived from
Aristotle, and is fundamental to his doctrine on sexual ethics.
We must be careful, however, not to approach a study of" the
good of the species" with a mentality too strongly prejudiced
by the social problems of today, for it is part of a vast and
profound system which is typical of the genius of Artistotle,
and which, as we shall see, Aquinas has developed prior to any
consideration of the concrete notion of human society. 2
• Suppl. 4I, 3 co.
1 " Bonum speciei est de principali
intentione naturae, ad cuius conservationem
naturalis generatio ordinatur." I, 98, I co. "Viri enim et mulieris coniunctio ad
bonum speciei ordinatur." C. G. III, I36. Cf. Suppl. 49, 5 ad I; Mal. I5, 2 ad I2.
2 Cf. Louis Lochet, "Les fins du mariage, N.R.T. 73 (I95I),
p. 570.

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I. THE METAPHYSICAL

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369

VALUE OF PROCREATION

1. Preservation of the Species

To discover nature's innate purposes of generation 3 in regard
to man, we must establish the relation of generation to corruptible and incorruptible things, for man by his very nature has
been established as a sort of medium between corruptible and
incorruptible creatures, his body being naturally corruptible,
while his soul is naturally incorruptible. 4 In other words, what
is the intention of nature in regard to corruptible and incorruptible creatures, of which man's body and soul are examples?
The intention of nature is indicated per se by what is found
perpetually in nature, whereas that which is found in a given
nature only for a time must not be considered the principal
intent of nature, but subordinate to something else; otherwise,
the intention of nature would be nullified, once the thing ceased
to exist. 5 Applying this to corruptible things, the Angelic
Doctor states that there can only be one principal intention of
the nature of corruptible creatures: the good of the species,
because only the species is perpetually and always present in
corruptible things. 6 Therefore, natural generation is ordered
to the bonum speciei of corruptible things. 7 On the other hand,
incorruptible substances have a characteristic of permanence
not only in relation to the species, but in the individual substances as well. Consequently even the individuals are included
in the chief purpose of nature. 8 This poses a special problem
in reference to human generation, which will be discussed later.
• The vital activity of generation, a natural function exercised by man in
common with all vegetative and animal life, is the " origin of a living thing from a
conjoined living principle . . . by way of likeness in the same specific nature."
"Generatio significat originem alicuius viventis a principio vivente coniuncto ...
secundum rationem similitudinis in natura eiusdem speciei." I, fl7, 2 co.
• I, 98, 1 co.
5 Ibid.; cf. In II Sent. 20, 1, 1 ad 3; Suppl. 49, 5 ad 1; I,
2 co.; C. G. II, 93;
IV, 78; IV, 83; Comp. 156; De spir. creat. 8.
·
• I, 98, 1 co.
7 Ibid.
Cf. II-II, 153, 2 co.; C. G. II, 93.
8 I, 98, 1 co.

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WARREN REICit

Basic to an understanding of nature's intention in procreation
is the consideration that reproduction in the world of living
beings is a process enabling creatures to participate more fully
in a likeness to the Creator. All created things exist in order to
attain to the divine likeness, and they do in fact bear a certain
likeness to their Creator, for "the agent makes a product to
his own likeness." 9 Inferior beings tend to the divine likeness
only by being perfected within themselves, for they cannot
actively move, but are moved or passively worked upon. 10 But
higher things, which actively move, tend toward the divine
likeness in the greatest possible manner by being the cause
of others, for in so doing they become co-workers with God. 11
Furthermore, by participating in their specific nature in a
limited way through generation, creatures attain similarity to
God, in whom the divine nature exists perpetually and perfectly.12
Thomas' comment on Aristotle's De anima also indicates that
it is natural for living things to bring forth others like themselves according to species, thereby participating, so far as
possible, in the divine and eternaJ.13 Since living material
things, being corruptible, cannot share in eternal being by
remaining numerically the same, they participate in perpetuity
in the way they can-through generating a thing like themselves according to species. 14 These various explanations for the
9 "Res omnes creatae sunt quaedam
imagines primi agentis, scilicet Dei; agens
enim agit sibi simile." C. G. III, 19.
1 ° C. G. III, 22.
11 C. G. III, 21 and 22.
12 " Creaturae,
per hoc quod participant naturae speciei, pertingunt ad divinam
similitudinem; unde quod aliquod suppositum creatum subsistat in natura creata,
est ordinatum ad alterum tamquam ad finem: et ideo ex quo sufficienter pervenitur
ad finem per unum individuum secundum perfectam et propriam participationem
naturae speciei, non oportet aliud individuum in ilia natura subsistere." Pot. 2, 1
ad 14.
18 Cf. In anima II, lect. 7.
""Quia igitur non possunt communicare inferiora viventia ipsi esse sempiterno
et divino, per modum continuationis, idest ut maneant eadem numero, propter hoc
quod nihil corruptibilium contingit unum idem numero permanere semper, . . .
sequitur, quod unumquodque communicet perpetuitate secundum quod potest:
id est in simili secundum speciem." Ibid.

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" divine likeness " of procreation may be found summarized in
the Summa Contra Gentiles, where Aquinas states that the
species of generating living things attains the greatest possible
similarity with the divine essence, in being perpetuated through
continuous procreation, and in diffusing the goodness of the
species by being the cause of others. 15

Generation of Corruptible N atu1·e
The perpetuation of the species, which Thomas refers to as
something that is" good and best," 16 is a good of nature/ 7 just
as the sex act is an act of nature. 18 The bonum speciei is the
end of procreation, for nature primarily intends a universal, and
not a particular good. 19 If nature primarily regarded the particular nature of a corruptible thing, then a particular good
would be the primary good of that nature. But if we are
seeking the universal intention of nature regarding a corruptible
thing, we are led to a universal good, which would not be
frustrated by the cessation of the particular corruptible thing.
This universal good is indicated by what is perpetual; but in
corruptible, transient things only the species is perpetually
present. 20 Therefore, natural generation does not find its good
in the individual as such, which disappears, but in the conservation of the species which is assured in the process of
continual procreation. Consequently, the advantage of sex is a
good of the species/ 1 and procreation serves the bonum speciei.
The universal intention of nature, i.e., the bonum speciei,
would truly be nullified by the complete corruption of the
15 " Intendit
enim generans formam generati, quae est generationis finis, non
quasi ultimum finem, sed similitudinem esse divini in perpetuatione speciei, et in
diffusione bonitatis suae, per hoc quod aliis formam speciei suae tradat et aliorum
sit causa." C. G. III,
Cf. In II Sent. 15, 3, 3 co.
16 C. G. III,
11 C. G. III,
18 C. G. III,
19 Cajetan, In I 98, 1, n. I.
20 " Omne perpetuum
est per se intentum in natura; unde secundum quod aliqua
se habent ad perpetuitalem, hoc modo sunt de intentione naturae." In II Sent.
1, 1 ad 3.
21 I, 85, 8 ad 4.

WARREN REICH

corruptible nature. 22 The question now arises: how is this
universal intention of nature realized in corruptible things?
This is accomplished in created things through the specifying
element: the form. Genus and species are related as matter
and form. The notion of species is taken from the form, which
is a limited participation in the perfection of the species, whereas the nature of the genus is taken from that which is material
in the thing. Matter, which is the foundation of the individual,
exists for the sake of the form; hence nature strives more for
the form than for the matter. Because the form is the end of
generation, it remains that nature ultimately strives for " the
species, but not the individual or the genus." 23
Every cause of the inferior world tends, by generation, to
communicate to its effect a form like its own. 24 When the
material agent generates, it is in act according to its form.
Acting according to its specific perfection, the individual-or
rather the species acting through the individual-is tending
towards the diffusion of its good in other subjects capable of
receiving this communication. 25 Thus, the terminus of generation is the form of the one generated, and the purpose of natural
generation can be said to be the essence of the species. 26
Moreover, this agent is limited; it does not possess this act
which is its specific form according to its totality, but by
participation. In other words, the species, in the agent of
generation, is not fully in act, but only according to the limitations of an individual possessing a participation. 27 The agent
is limited; the species is in potency for an extension or continu22 " Nihil enim conferre poterit universo, corrupto illo particulari
per se intento."
Cajetan, In I, 98, 1, n. I; cf. C. G. III,
23" Et inde est quod ultima
naturae intentio est ad speciem, non autem ad
individuum, neque ad genus: quia forma est finis generationis, materia vero est
propter formam." I, 85, 3 ad 4.
24 I, 44, 4 ad
25 " Generans
enim agit ad formam generati, cum tamen generatum non sit
dignius generante, sed in agentibus univocis sit ejusdem speciei cum ipso. Intendit
enim generans formam generati, quae est generationis finis." C. G. III,
26 III, 35,, 1 co.; cf. III
1 co.; 5 co.; Suppl. 57, 1 co.
27 This has been well described by Joseph Legrand,
et l'homme dans la
philosophie de Saint Thomas
Vols.; Paris: Desclee, 1946), I, p.

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ation, and yet the species is not fully realized in an individual
agent. Therefore the individual must be subjected to a superior
order in which it might find that perfection or infinity which it
lacks itself, and this it does in the continuing series of partial
realizations within the species. 28 Since no individual possesses
all the perfection of the species, it is in multiplying itself that
it by-passes its own corruptible duration and contributes to the
perpetuation and progress of the species. 29
3. Generation of the Human Composite
Procreation is for the good of the species, because it is only
in the species that perpetuity can be found. This is true of
corruptible creatures, since only the species is perpetually present in them. But now we must turn our attention to a consideration of the complete man, and to the question: how is
perpetuity to be sought in the procreation of man? Man has
been placed between corruptible and incorruptible creatures,
endowed not only with a naturally corruptible body, but also
with a naturally incorruptible souP 0 Whereas generation is
intended by nature for the good of the species in reference to
the corruptible element of man, when we turn to a consideration
of man's incorruptible element, we see that not just the species,
but the individual substances are included in the chief purpose
of nature. Permanence, which is the per se purpose of nature,
can be found not only in man's species, but in the individual
soul as well. 31
Of all created forms, the human soul is superior to all others:
28 " Per actionem
(agentia univoca) suae speciei similitudinem inducunt, et per
consequens esse perpetuum propriae speciei, secundum quod est possibile, conservant." Pot. 7, 10 co.
29 "lllud quod inest causae universali
simpliciter et unite, invenitur in effectibus
multipliciter et distincte." Comp. 102, 2. "Id quod unum est, ... si sit superexcedens, potest esse propria ratio plurium, quia continet in se uniformiter propria
uniuscujusque quae in eis divisim inveniuntur." Ver. S. 10 ad 3. Cf. C. G. II, 45;

III, 24.
so I

98, 1 co.
Substantiae vero incorruptibiles manent semper non solum secundum speciem,
sed etiam secundum individua: et ideo etiam ipsa individua sunt de principali intentione naturae." I, 98, 1 co.
31 "

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WARREN REICH

it is the ultimate end towards which all the beings of the
material world tend. 32 Human generation, then, has a greater
meaning than the mere termination of a physiological teleology:
it also terminates and crowns the entire process of generation
among the various grades of being, for it involves the most
noble form to be found in the order of generable and corruptible
things. 33 Since, on the one hand, the generation and corruption,
the evolution and activity of the entire inferior material world
are ordered to the human soul and the entire human species
which it represents, 34 and since, on the other hand, the movement of the heavenly bodies and the action of separated substances, in Aquinas' opinion, are directed to the preservation, multiplication and perfection of the human race and the
multiplication of souls, 35 Thomas was led to adopt the medieval
anthropocentric view of the universe. 36 This cosmic perspective
of human generation manifests the signal importance of the
individual human soul, which is the most worthy of all forms,
for it has eternal life as its ultimate end. 37
Because of the immortality of the soul, we can conclude that
a multitude of individuals is per se nature's intention, or rather
the intention of the Author of nature, and that procreation,
in this respect, serves only the numerical increase of individuals.38 But Aquinas expressly teaches elsewhere that no agent
intends material plurality as an end, because material multitude
has no certain limit, but tends to infinity. 39 Without limitation
•• In II Sent. 1, !'l, 3 co.
33 C. G. I, !'l!'l; In metaph. I, lect. 1; Ver. !'l!'l, 1 ad 3; Pot. 4, 1 ad !'l contra.
Cf.
Legrand, I, p. !'l86.
•• C. G. III, 1!'l!'l.

••" Sicut igitur agentis particularis in istis inferioribus intentio contrahitur ad
bonum hujus speciei vel illius, ita intentio corporis caelestis fertur ad bonum
commune substantiae corporalis, quae per generationem conservatur et multiplicatur
et augetur." C. G. III, !'l£. Cf. Camp. 171; Pot. 3, 10 ad 4.
36 Cf. C. G. III, !'l!'l, 77-82; Meyer, p. 806.
37 Comp. 171; cf. Pot. 3, 10 ad 8.
38 " Ex parte vero animae, quae incorruptibilis est, competit ei quod multitudo
individuorum sit per se intenta a natura, vel potius a naturae Auctore qui solus est
humanarum animarum creator. Et ideo, ad multiplicationem humani generis, generationem in humano genere statuit, etiam in statu innocentiae." ], 98, 1 co.
•• I 47, 8 ad 2.

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or finiteness, it is impossible to intend something per se, as is
shown by Aristotle. 40 Yet a numerical multitude of perpetuals
is possible and can be per se intended because ' of perpetuals '
designates a finite multitude; perpetuity looks to the perfection
of the universe, for whose integrity a taxative and certain
number is required. In the case of the human race, multiplicity
is restricted by the fact that the number of predestined is
certain. Therefore we cannot say that it is repugnant for the
multiplication of perpetual human individuals to be considered
as the per se intended end of generation. 41
Although it is true that the human soul is a particular
incorruptible thing/ 2 it certainly does not have a complete
species of its own, but is the form of the body in the composite,
corruptible human. 43 Since procreation directly attains only
bodily reproduction, its particular good is not to be found in
the newly generated individuals as such, but in the conservation
of the species which is assured in the process. For Thomas,
this represents a foregone conclusion, resulting from his principle of individuation. 44 Since nature strives more for the form
than for matter, and since the form is the end of generation,
generation is for the good of the species.45
An apparent problem arises from the fact that, for humans,
both the species and the individual are of the principal intention
of nature. 46 On the one hand, Thomas says that the perfection
of the universe envisages species, and not individuals. 47 On the
other hand, human souls are also individuals, but contribute to
40 In metaph. II, lect. 4. See the invaluable commentary
by Cajetan, In I 98, 1,
n. VI.
41 " Non ergo repugnat
multiplicationem individuorum humanorum perpetuorum
ponere per se intentam ut finem generationis; quoniam usque ad certum praedestinatorum numerum complendum erat futura, et non in perpetuum." Cajetan, ibid. Cf.
St. Thomas, I, 23, 7 co.
42 Anim. un., 1 co.
43 Ibid. and ad 14; cf. I, 47, 2 co.
44 See Section 2, supra.
45 I 85, 3 ad 4.
46 I 98, 1 co.
47 C. G. ll, 84; I 118, 3 ad 2; Pot. 3, 10 ad 2.

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the perfection of the universe. 48 How are we to distinguish
between these two types of perfection? 49
We may distinguish between the essential and accidental
perfection of the universe. When Thomas says that the perfection of the universe looks to the species and not to individuals, this refers to essential perfection, for individuals which
are not perpetual pertain to the accidental perfection of the
universe. 50 However, a problem ensues from this, 51 inasmuch
as in another place Aquinas tells us that those things which
are perpetual according to both species and individual pertain
to the essential perfection of the universe. 52 Now rational souls
enjoy perpetuity not only in their species, but also in each
individual. The answer to this conflict may be found in De
potentia, where Thomas says that the essential perfection of
the universe is twofold: perfectio prirna et ultirna. 53 "The
multitude of souls belongs to the ultimate, not the initial essential perfection of the universe," Thomas asserts, " since the
entire transformation of bodies is ordered in some way to the
multiplication of souls, which requires a multiplication of
bodies." 54 Thus, the perfectio prirna essentialis of the universe
envisages the species; the perfectio ultirna essentialis looks to a
multiplication of human souls considered as individuals; and
the perfectio accidentalis of the universe embraces individuals
of a corruptible type.
In short, nature's purpose for human procreation is, more
proximately, the preservation of the species, and more remotely,
the multiplication of eternal souls, limited by the number of
the elect.
•• Pot. 3, 10 ad 4; I 98, 1 co.
49 For a discussion of this problem and a solution to the dilemma, see John
Wright, The Order of the Universe in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Rome:
Gregorian University, 1957), pp. 139-144. Cf. ibid., pp. 13, 20, 36 and 145.
50 In II Sent. 17, 2, 2 ad 6. Cf. Sylvester, In C. G. II, 84.
51 Cf. Sylvester, ibid.
52 Cf. Ver. 5, 3.
53 Pot. 3, 10 ad 4.
54 " Multitudo
animarum pertinet ad essentialem perfectionem universi ultimam,
sed non primam, cum tota corporum mundi transmutatio ordinetur quodammodo
ad animarum multiplicationem; ad quam requiritur corporum multiplicatio." Ibid.

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4. Conclusion

St. Thomas' Aristotelian perspective of nature's pursuit of
the good of the species provides him with a solid philosophical
foundation, not only for the procreative act, but for the construction of a complete theological synthesis of the teleology of
sex in general and the ends of marriage in particular. It is no
surprise that Thomas bases his sexual ethics on a deeply
grounded philosophical foundation, but that his oft-repeated
phrase, procreatio ad bonum speciei, has a profoundly metaphysical connotation is, perhaps, often overlooked.
In attempting to discover the mind of St. Thomas on any
given topic, it is not unusual to find that he has employed a
single term in various ways. 55 In this section the "bonum
speciei" was seen to be a metaphysical concept; later on we
will find that Thomas relates human procreation to the human
species understood as human society. It should be pointed out,
however, that the metaphysical value of procreation, whereby
it preserves the species in the sense of preserving the formal
element of man, is related immediately to the social mass of
humanity, for the preservation of the species for the sake of its
perpetuity constitutes at the same time a function of nature,
whereby procreation is in the service of nature. 56 It is only in
"society," i.e. in the human beings produced by generation,
that the transcendental notion of the species is preserved.

II.

THE SociAL

VALUE

OF HuMAN PROCREATION

A basic principle of Thomistic sexual ethics is that sexuality
has a distinctly social value. Perhaps in no other place was
Thomas more explicit in expressing this concept than in the
Summa Contra Gentiles, where he stated that generation is
ordered to the common good, because it conserves the species.
It should be considered that generation is the only natural act that is
ordered to the common good, for eating and the emission of waste matters
55 M. D. Chenu, Introduction
a l'etude de St. Thomas d'Aquin (Paris: Vrin,
1954)' p. 134.
56 Cf. Albert
Mitterer, "Der Dienst des Menschen an der Natur nach dem
Weltbild des hl. Thomas und dem der Gegenwart," Z. K. T. 56
p. 36.

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pertain to the individual good, but generation to the preservation of the
species.1

We have arrived at the point where procreation ad bonum
speciei must be viewed as procreation ad bonum commune. 2 It
should be noted that in speaking of the social value of human
procreation, ' human procreation ' is taken in its broadest teleological signification, including not only the generation, but
the rearing and education of offspring to full human maturity.
The need for education of offspring to a mature member of the
human community makes of the bonum speciei a community
good.
1. Procreation and the Common Good

The generative faculty, besides terminating in a new individual, extends its value far beyond the individual, for it has a
distinct relation to the community at large, or to the " common
good." The sexual urge terminates in man, not simply as an
individual being, but also as a member of the human species.
In other words, sex, while being the instinct of an individual,
is primarily social in its implications.
Among all natural acts, Thomas considers only the sex act as
having the peculiarity of pertaining to the common good,
precisely because it alone accomplishes the preservation of the
species. 3 Sexual union is a corporal good, for it is directed
towards bodily multiplication, 4 but it transcends the body by
preserving the species, 5 and thereby is ordered to the common
good: " Marriage is directed to the common good." 6 Because
matrimony is a pre-requisite to sexual union, marriage is itself
ordered to the common good: " Marriage is principally directed
to the common good in respect of its principal end, which is the
good of the offspring." 7
It is of special interest to note that Thomas equates the good
1

C. G. III, 123; cf. II-II 153, 3 co.

Actus generationis ordinatur ad bonum speciei, quod est bonum commune."
Mal. 15, 2 ad 12.
• C. G. III, 123; cf. I-II, 100, 11 ad 3; II-11, 153, 2 co.
6 11-II, 152, 4 obj. 3. Cf. C. G. III, 122.
• II-11, 152, 4 co.
7 Suppl. 67, 1 ad 4; 65, 1.
5 C. G. III, 122.
2 "

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of the species and the common good when speaking of the
generative act: " The act of generation is directed to the good
of the species, which is the common good." 8 This unquestionably gives a very concrete significance to the notion of
" species " in the phrase: " Procreation is for the good of the
species."
Another clear indication of the community value of the
procreative faculty is to be found in Thomas' teaching that
sexual sins which are contrary to nature take their malice from
the fact that they harm the species. In his Summa Contra
Gentiles, Thomas teaches that the abuse of the sexual faculty
harms the species more directly than the individual. "Man's
good is not much opposed by such inordinate use. However, the
inordinate emission of semen is incompatible with the natural
good; namely, the preservation of the species." 9 Sins which
go contrary to the sexual purpose of procreation-education deny
the procreative act of its teleology of serving the species. For
this reason it can be concluded that sins contrary to nature
imply an offence against the human species, against humanity.
However, it is not only the species which is harmed by sexual
offences, for in addition Aquinas mentions that it is sometimes
" life in potency " which is offended, and in other places he says
that malice arises from the injury done to the individual.
Thus, for example, without mentioning the harm done to the
actual offspring, Thomas says simply that sins against chastity
are contrary to the life of man in potency. 10 And further:
" The disordering in the emission of seed affects the proximate
life in potency"; 11 " thou shalt not commit adultery: that is
contrary to the life in potency." 12 The "vita in potentia"
reflects Thomas' notion of the human seed as a " quiddam
• Mal. 15, ad U.
• C. G. III,
10 " Maximum autem bonum proximi est ipsa vita hominis, cui opponitur peccatum
homicidii, quod tollit actualem hominis vitam; et peccatum luxuriae, quod opponitur
vitae hominis in potentia, quia est inordinatio quaedam circa actum generationis
humanae." Mal.
10 co.
12 In Matt. 19 (10, 178b).
11 Mal. 15,
co.

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divinum" according to Aristotle/ 3 and the procreative organ
as a "principle of life," 14 both of which represent the totality
of the sexual order.
Yet it is difficult to conceive of harm being done to "life in
potency." Thomas judges the value of "life in potency" to
be of lesser importance than existing human life, but more
highly valued than external goods which preserve life already
existing. 15 The preservation of life is the point of emphasis.
Thomas saw the procreative faculty as something in the service
of life, and an offence against sex as an offence against a vital
good.
Sexual sins are also described as causing harm to the offspring
to be born of an illicit union. By ignoring the sexual command
of education in the very act of procreation, the sin of fornication
is harmful to the good of the offspring to be born, and therefore
is contrary to the love of neighbor. 16 The use of sex outside its
legitimate function in matrimony is a sin against one's neighbor,
because it is against the good of the offspring to be generated
and educated. 17
It is for this reason that Thomas follows the medieval trend
in comparing fornication and other sexual sins with the killing
of a man. After the sin of homicide, by which an actually
existing human nature is destroyed, this type of sin seems to
take second place, for by it the generation of a human nature is
prevented. 18 The malice of fornication is found in the privation
14 I-ll 17, 9 ad 3.
Mal. 15, 9l co.
Propinquius autem ordinatur ad vitam hominis semen humanum, in quo est
homo in potentia, quam quaecumque res exteriores." Mal. 15, fl co.
'" " Fornicatio autem simplex importat inordinationem quae vergit in nocumentum
vitae ejus, qui est ex tali concubitu nasciturus." II-II 154, 2 co. "Fornicatio
autem est contra bonum hominis nascituri." Ibid., 3 co. "Fornicatio simplex
contrariatur dilectioni proximi quantum ad hoc, quod repugnat bono prolis
nasciturae: dum scilicet dat operam generationi non secundum quod convenit proli
nasciturae." Ibid., fl ad 4.
17 Mal. 15, 2 ad 4. Whether this constitutes an injustice is discussed in Part Two
below.
18 " Inordinata
vero seminis emissio repugnat bono naturae, quod est conservatio
speciei; unde, post peccatum homicidii, quo natura humana jam in actu existens
destruitur, hujusmodi genus peccati videtur secundum locum tenere, quo impeditur
generatio humanae naturae." C. G. III, 122.
13

15 "

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of a social good, viz. life and education, which is substantially
the same injury as that committed in homicide. Therefore,
forication is truly an offence against the human species, insofar as it is an obstacle to the procreation of a single human
being.
The sin of fornication is contrary to the good of the human race, insofar as it is prejudicial to the individual begetting of the one man that
may be born. Now one who is already an actual member of the human
species attains to the perfection of the species more than one who is a
man potentially, and from this point of view murder is a more grievous
sin than fornication and every kind of lust, through being more opposed
to the good of the human species. 19

The individual child is, then, a community value, for it is a
member of, is representative of, and radiates into the whole
species. It is for this reason that Thomas can speak of the
offspring as the stepping-stone to the common good: " Marriage is principally directed to the common good in respect of
its principal end, which is the good of the offspring." 20 The
social value of sex in the Thomistic system is founded, therefore, on the teaching that procreation is a good of nature, which
serves human society by assuring the preservation of the life of
the species.
:2. Procreation and Law

The sexual faculty is the only human faculty which serves
the good of the species, or the common good of the human
race. 21 From this fact it obtains a social character which necessitates procreation and marriage being subject to law, for the
common good falls under a determination of law. 22 This illu19 "Peccatum
fornicationis est contra bonum speciei humanae, inquantum impedit
generationem singularem unius hominis nascituri .... " II-II, 154, 3 ad 3. See the
commentary be Cajetan, In II-II, 154, £, n. XIII. Cf. Thomas, ibid., 2 co. and ad
6; 3 co.; I-II 100, 6 co., where adultery is compared to homicide and theft.
20 Suppl. 67, 1 ad 4.
21 C. G. III, 123.
22 " Sed quia concubitus
ordinatur ad bonum commune totius humani generis;
bona autem communia cadunt sub determinatione legis: ... consequens est quod
ista coniunctio maris ad feminam, quae matrimonium dicitur, lege aliqua deter-

WARREN REICH

strates Thomas' basic concept that the procreative faculty is
related to the human social totality. In fact, both the generative act and all things pertaining to the generation of offspring
are said to be subject to both divine and human laws. 23 Thomas
agrees with Aristotle when he asserts that those acts which
pertain solely to the good of the individual are controlled by
the individual; but the individual may not determine the sexual
act, which pertains to the common good and hence to the
lawmaker. 24
That law should govern marriage, as well as procreation and
all other aspects of the sexual life, is perhaps the strongest
indication of St. Thomas' conception that procreation serves the
good of human society. Furthermore, this doctrine shows that
the service of the common good is not a simple result of the
generative faculty. It is not simply a bonum circa, or a moral
value. Rather, procreation is" ad bonum commtine," signifying
a real finis intended by nature. St. Thomas implied this inner
connection, when he related the doctrine on usus venereorum
serving the common good 25 with the principles concerning the
end of law and of the natural order. 26
Human generation is governed by various kinds of laws, for
procreation is ordered to many ends, and must be directed to
these ends by differing principles. 27 Therefore, because generation is ordered to the good of nature which is the perpetuity of
minetur." II-II 154, 2 co.; cf. I-II 90, 2 co.; 100, 11 ad 8. The laws governing
matrimony, which Thomas alludes to here, are treated at length in Suppl. 50 ff. Cf.
also Suppl. 44, 8 co.; C. G. III, 128; II-II 154, 9 ad 8.
28 " Uncle, quum lex instituatur
ad bonum commune, ea quae pertinent ad
generationem prolis oportet legibus ordinari, et divinis et humanis." C. G. III, 128.
Cf. Mal. 15, 2 ad 12; In Polit. II, lect. 17. See Cajetan's commentary on the Third
Part of the Summa, entitled Quaestiones de usu matrimonii, q. 2, n. II: "Ex hoc
namque quod homo est animal sociale et politicum, provenit quod coniugiurn et
ipsius actus debeant sic fieri ut sint sine offensa et periculo offendendi societatem
politicam."
24 "Deterrninare
qualis debeat esse generationis actus non pertinet ad unumquemque, sed ad legislatorem, cujus est ordinare de propagatione filiorurn, ut etiam
Philosophus dicit." Mal. 15, 2 ad 12. Cf. in Polit. VII, lect. 12; II, lect. 17.
26 C. G. III, 1£2.
27 C. G. IV, 78.
•• Cf. I-ll 20, 2; 91, 2.

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the species, it is subject to the natural law; since it is a sacrament, it is governed by divine law; insofar as it is ordered to a
political good (e. g. the perpetuity of a people in some state),
it is subject to civil law; and insofar as it is ordered to the
good of the Church, it must be subject to the government of the
Church. 28 But in each case, Aquinas always speaks in terms
of positive la.w, and did not always distinguish clearly between
natural and positive law, showing how concretely he viewed all
sexual norms. 29
The laws on human procreation are listed as " leges positae," 30 and are said to arise from natural instinct. 31 "Leges
positae" are divided into divine and human laws, and are
explicitations of the natural law. 32 That positive laws should
make explicit what is already implicit in the natural law is a
tenet adopted by Thomas from Aristotle. 33 It is the task of
human law to interpret the inclinations of nature, while the
divine law, in addition to this, supplements the deficiencies in
the natural instinct. 34 Therefore it would seem that St. Thomas
did not consider it necessary to draw impassable boundaries
between the natural law, the divine positive law and human
positive law. The natural law sexual norms are placed on a
28 " Matrimonium
autem, inquantum est in officium naturae, statuitur lege
naturae; inquantum est sacramentum, statuitur jure divino; inquantum est in
officium communitatis, satuitur lege civili." Suppl. 50, un. ad 4. Cf. C. G. IV, 78;
III,
29 This positive
determination of procreation by law can be referred to the
possibility of a demographic policy.
80 " Cum lex instituitur
ad bonum commune, ea quae pertinent ad generationem
prolis oportet legibus ordinari et divinis et humanis. Leges autem positae oportet
quod ex naturali instinctu procedant, si humanae sunt; ... si autem divinae sunt,
non solum instinctum naturae explicant, sed etiam defectum naturalis instinctus
supplent, sicut ea quae divinitus revelantur superant naturalis rationis capacitatem."
C. G. III,
81 Ibid.; C. G. III, U5.
82 Suppl. 65, 1 ad
and ad 1.
88 Odon Lottin,
"La Valeur des formules de Saint Thomas d'Aquin concernant
Ia loi naturelle," Melanges Joseph Marechal, Vol. II (Brussels-Paris: Desclee, 1950),
p. 374.
84 "(Leges divinae)
non solum instinctum naturae explicant, sed etiam defectum
naturalis instinctus supplent, sicut ea quae divinitus revelantur superant naturalis
rationis capacitatem." C. G. III,

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level with established law, for all law is one in serving the
common good. As Rommen remarks, "St. Thomas saw, as one
vast complex, the particularities of the positive law connected
by means of the natural moral law with the eternal law." 35
Consequently, it is not always clear whether St. Thomas is
appealing to a principle of the natural law or of the positive
law in his sexual ethics. He insists that extra-marital relations
are against the law of nature. 36 But he also proposes the case,
in which an unmarried couple are willing and able to educate
properly the children who may result from their union. 37 Is
their action contrary to the intention of nature? Thomas
answers that the good will of the couple does not suffice. The
act, as a natural act, must be so performed that of itself it
guarantees the rearing of offspring, which demands that the
couple be married as a prerequisite to their sexual union. The
principle which Thomas employs in support of this universal
conclusion is a, principle of positive law: " that which is determined by law is judged according to that which commonly
happens." 38 This norm accentuates the sacrifice of the individual good to the common good, 39 and to the good of the
species, 40 illustrating Thomas' Aristotelian respect for the orderof the universe, 41 and showing how positively he viewed the
norms of the sexual life.
Rommen, p. 56.
Suppl. 65, 3 co.
37 C. G. Ill,
II-II 154, co.; Mal. 15, 1 ad 3.
38 "Nee obstat,
si aliquis fornicando aliquam cognoscens sufficienter provideat
proli de educatione; quia id quod cadit sub legis determinatione, judicatur secundum
id quod communiter accidit, et non secundum id quod in aliquo casu potest
ad
"Ideo in legibus matrimonii magis attenditur quid
accidere." Mal. 15,
omnibus expediat, quam quid uni competere possit." Suppl. 67, 1 ad 4. Cf. Mal.
II-II 154, co.
15, ad 14; C. G. Ill,
••" Sicut naturalis inclinatio est ad ea quae sunt ut in pluribus, ita etiam lex
posita secundum id quod in pluribus accidit. Non est autem praedictis rationibus
contrarium, si in aliquo aliter possit accidere: non enim propter bonum unius debet
praetermitti bonum multorum, cum bonum multitudinis, semper sit divinius quam
bonum unius." C. G. III,
4 " " Rectitudo
naturalis in humanis actibus non est secundum ea quae per
accidens contingunt, in uno individuo, sed secundum ea quae totam speciem comequuntur." C. G. III,
•• Pot. 1, 6 ad 4.
35

36

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The fact that St. Thomas used positive law principles for
refuting objections against the natural law by no means diminishes the value or force of the natural law. Rather, it simply
illustrates that the natural law norms of the sexual life have an
inherent connection with positive law, in which they are perfected.42
Marriage is governed by natural law, human law and divine
law for the good of the species. 43 As norms governing human
conduct, do these types of law all visualize and embrace human
society understood as "the human race," or as "this State"?
Thomas did not explicitly make this distinction, but a summary
of his view will provide the answer to the question.
Although St. Thomas saw natural, divine and human law on
one plane, so to speak, in a vast legal complex serving the one
purpose of universal order, each type of law governs man's
sexuality in reference to the human community: not simply for
"humanity" in a vague and general way, but for a specific
society of men, whether this be the entire human race or (in
the case of human positive law) a particular body politic.
Actually, St. Thomas never mentions the common good while
speaking of the natural law, 44 but his thought can be taken
from a treatment of the eternal law, of which the natural law
is but a participation. 45 The eternal law envisages beings in
their relation to one common end which God pursues from all
eternity. 46 Consequently it can be said that the natural law
pursues the good of human nature, which, it is true, is common
to all men, but at the same time is strictly personal to each
man. 47 We can conclude, then, that in the mind of the Angelic
Doctor, even the natural law can be called a community law.
It embraces all human nature and governs the whole of
humanity. 48
Actions pertaining to the generation of offspring are also
•• Fuchs, Sexualethik, p. 174.
•• I-II 91, co.
'"Suppl. 50, un. ad 4.
•• I-II 93, 1 ad 1.
.. Lottin, Psychologie et morale, II, p. 35. "Cf. I-II 94, 1 ad 3.
•• II-II
ad 1. Cf. C. G. III, 136, where Thomas says that the natural law
to "increase and multiply" envisages the whole multitude of men.

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regulated by divine law.49 Aquinas attributes to it a very
tinctive community va.Iue.50 In distinction to human law, which
pertains to the civil community, the divine law is related to a
certain community or " republic " of men under God: 51 it
gathers the " entire human race " under the worship of one
God. 52 Hence, when speaking of actions governed by the divine
law, Thomas must have had " humanity " 53 or the whole
human race in mind.
Human procreation is also governed by human law, both
civil and ecclesiastical. Now before all other types of law,
positive human law pursues the common good and is promulgated to the community. 54 It is enacted for the entire
collectivity. 55 This type of law has in view the utility of society,
to which the individual is ordered as a part to the whole.
Hence it is obvious that those civil laws which pertain to
marriage and procreation refer not only to "human society,"
but to a determined unit of society, such as a particular state.
The same is true of ecclesiastical laws regulating sex life. 56
These apply to a determined society (the Church) and govern
a distinct social group (the faithful) .
3. The Common Good and the Individual

Here we encounter one of the most perplexing and fundamental problems of human activity. For how can the common
good, or the good of the universe, or the good of any created
totum whatsoever, be the supreme created perfection, if man
transcends the entire order of the universe by reason of his
immortal soul? This problem has occupied some of the greatest
•• C. G. Ill, 128 and 125.
50 " Est autem alius modus communitatis
ad quam ordinatur lex humana, et ad
quam ordinatur lex divina." I-II 100, 2 co.
51 " Ita praecepta legis divinae ordinant hominem ad quamdam communitatem seu
rempublicaiTI sub Deo." I-II 100, 5 co.; cf. 2 co.
•• I-ll 98, 2 co.; 8 co.; 6 ad 8.
•• Cf. Lottin, P$JJchologie et morale, II, p. 82.
•• I-II 96, 1; 8; 4; 6.
•• I-II 90, 8 co. Cf. In III Sent. 88, 8, 1, sol. 4.
•• Cf. C. G. IV, 78.

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theological and philosophical minds of modem times, and will
certainly not be solved in this work. However, if Saint Thomas
teaches that procreation is in the service of the common good, is
he asserting the predominance of the common good over the
personal good, at least in reference to procreation? It seems
unavoidable for a complete understanding of the social implications of procreatio ad bonum speciei that we treat the problem
of the individual good vs. the common good at least briefly at
this point.
In what way is the personal good related to the common
good? Some authors, insisting on the dignity of the human
person, see in society only a means for the perfection of the
individual. Others, underlining the essentially social character
of man, see in the individual a part of the collective whole, to
which he must be subordinated. Both, however, base their
opinions on the texts of St. Thomas Aquinas. 57
Gilson has said that conflict is inevitable between these two
points of view/ 8 both of which are expressed in the writings of
Aquinas himself. 5 9 "Each individual person," St. Thomas
57

Maurice de Wulf, " L'individu et Je groupe dans Ia scholastique du XIIIe siecle,

R.N. P. 22 (1920), pp. 341-357; Suzanne Michel, La notion thomiste du bien
commun (Paris: Vrin, 1932); Edelbert Kurz, Individuum und Gemeinschaft beim
hl. Thomas von Aquin (Munich: Kosel and Pustet, 1932); Hyacinthus Hering, "De
genuina notione iustitiae generalis seu legalis iuxta S. Thomam," Anq. 14 (1937),
pp. 464-487; Charles de Koninck, De la primaute du bien commun contre les personnalistes (Quebec: Editions de l'Universite Laval, 1943); idem, " In Defense of St.
Thomas: A Reply to Father Eschmann's Attack on the Primacy of the Common
Good," L. T. P. 1 (1944-45), pp. 9-109; I. Th. Eschmann, "A Thomistic Glossary
on the Principle of the Preeminence of a Common Good," Nf. St. 5 (1943), pp.
123-165; idem, "Bonum commune melius est quam bonum unius. Eine Studie iiber
den Wertvorrang des Personalen bei Thomas Aquinas," M. St. 6 (1944), pp. 62-120;
idem, "In Defense of Jacques Maritain," M.S. 22 (1945), pp. 183-208; Bulletin
thomiste 7 (1943-46), nn. 755-774, 1485-1487; 8 (1947-53), nn. 1194-1205; Jacques
Maritain, La personne et le bien commun (Paris: Desclee, 1947); M. B. Gillon, "Le
sacrifice pour Ia patrie et la primaute du bein commun chez les premiers thomistes,"
R. T. 49 (1949), pp. 242-253.
58 Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. L. K.
Shook (London: Gollancz, 1957), p. 327.
59 The various texts on the common good in the writings of Thomas Aquinas
have been gathered by Antoine Verpaalen and appended to the book by ArthurFridolin Utz, Sozialethik, I. Teil: Die Prinzipien der Gesellschaftslehre (Heidelberg: Kerle, 1958), pp. 353-397.

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writes, " is related to the entire community as the part to the
whole." 60 In contrast to this, Thomas has written, " Man is not
ordained to the body politic according to all that he is and
has, ... but to God." 61
Trying to determine the exact position of the Angelic Doctor
is difficult. To begin with, he approached the question in a
context which differed from the decidedly political overtones
with which we surround the problem today. Furthermore, he
has given us no systematic exposition of his doctrine, which
leaves us the difficult task of penetrating his thought and
synthesizing its elements. 62
The Summa Contra Gentiles gives orientation to the problem,
especially in those chapters dealing with Divine Providence
and law. 63 Thomas asserts that the law is made in view of the
common good. 64 He emphasizes the essentially social character
of the individual by invoking the principle of the pre-eminence
of the common good over the particular good. 65 The part exists
for the whole, which is why the good of a nation is " more
divine" than the good of an individual. 66 From this Thomas
does not conclude that man is made for the whole which is
society, but rather that man is ordered to God, the sovereign
good, the common good for all beings. 67
60 " Quaelibet autem persona singularis comparatur
ad totam communitatem sicut
pars ad totum." II-II 64, 2 co. "Ipse totus homo ordinatur, ut ad finem, ad totam
communitatem, cujus est pars." Ibid. 65, 1 co.
61 " Homo non ordinatur
ad communitatem politicam secundum se totum, et
secundum omnia sua; . . . Sed totum quod homo est, et quod potest et habet,
ordinandum est ad Deum." I-II 21, 4 ad 8.
62 Here we will follow the presentation
of Odon Lottin, "Bien commun et bien
prive," in Morale fondamentale, pp. 189-201.
68 C. G. III, IH!-117.
64 " Lex instituitur
ad bonum commune." Ibid., 128.
65 For a detailed study of this dictum
see I. Th. Eschmann, M. St.
6 (1944)' pp. 62-120.
66 C. G. III, 17; 128.
67 " Bonum particulare
ordinatur in bonum commune sicut in finem; esse enim
partis est propter esse totius; unde et bonum gentis est divinius quam bonum unius
hominis. Bonum autem summum, quod est Deus, est bonum commune, quum ex
eo universorum bonum dependeat; bonum autem quo quaelibet res bona est, est

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In this light, the end of law is the perfection of the individual
person, to lead man to his final end. It is true that all the
parts are ordered to the perfection of the whole, 68 but the
rational creature has the character of a whole since it apprehends the entirety of being with its intellect. It is natural, then,
that man be governed in view of his own perfection, and not
solely for the good of the species. 69 Consequently, man must be
directed by Divine Providence toward his own perfection, and
this directive is called law. 70 This, then, is the purpose of the
law given to man by a provident God: to direct man to his
proper end, which is union with God, in whom alone happiness
can be found. 71
It is clear, then, that the Summa Contra Gentiles presents
two lines of thought which are not contradictory: man's personal final end is identified with the common good (or common
end), who is God/ 2
In St. Thomas' Commentaries on the Ethics and Politics of
Aristotle, in which it is difficult to sepa.rate pure exegesis from
his personal remarks/ 3 his point of view is restricted to the
elements of political science, and hence differs from that of the
Summa Contra Gentiles. However, Aristotle only envisages the
government of human society, whereas the Summa Contra
Gentiles studies divine government, embracing the entire universe and its various human societies. According to Aristotle,
it is in view of the common good that laws are established; in
the Summa Contra Gentiles it is in view of the good of the
individual.
bonum particulare 1psms et aliorum quae ab ipsa dependent. Omnes igitur res
ordinantur sicut in finem in unum bonum, quod est Deus." Ibid., 17.
68 Ibid., II:'l.
•• "Creatura autem rationalis divinae providentiae substat sicut secundum se
gubernata et provisa, non solum propter speciem, ut aliae corruptibiles creaturae."
Ibid., II3.
10 Ibid., II4.
11 " Per legem igitur divinitus datam homo ad suum finem praecipue ordinatur.
Finis autem humanae creaturae est adhaerere Deo; in hoc enim felicitas ejus consistit." Ibid., II5.
12 " Bonum summum, quod est Deus, est bonum commune, cum ex eo universorum bonum dependeat." Ibid., 17.
73 Lattin, Morale fondamentale, p. 190.

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It may be asked whether St. Thomas attempted a synthesis
of these two points of view. To understand the relation between
the good of the individual and the common good according to
Thomas, we must look to those works written after the Commentaries on Aristotle, especially the Summa Theologica.
Just as less noble parts are ordained to the more noble parts,
writes St. Thomas, so do the less perfect creatures exist for
the more perfect creatures, such as irrational beings which are
for man. But man exists for an extrinsic end, which is God. 74
Furthermore, just as all the parts are ordained to the perfection
of the whole, so does each creature exist for the perfection of
the entire universe, and the whole universe is ordained to God
as to its end. 75 Thus St. Thomas teaches that the personal
finality of man is God, and yet man is ordained as a part to the
whole universe, which itself has God for its end. It would be
wrong, therefore, to insist that man is subordinated to the good
of the collectivity. 76 Many texts in the writings of Thomas seem
to indicate this, but all must be seen in their context, and only
those conclusions should be drawn from them which St. Thomas
himself intended. Although Thomas makes general statements
affirming the obligation of subjecting the private good to the
common good/ 7 this subordination has its limits, for he also says
explicitly that man is not ordered to civil society in all that he
is, or in all that he has, but everything that man is can be
ordered to God. 78 The decisive principle which Thomas appeals
to is that the good of the whole only surpasses the good of a part
if, on the part of each, it is a matter of goods of the same type .
.. " Ulterius autem, totus homo est propter aliquem finem extrinsecum, puta ut
fruatur Deo." I 65, co.
75 "Ulterius
autem, totum universum cum singulis suis partibus ordinatur in
Deum, sicut in finem." Ibid.
76 Cf. Michel, p. 67.
77 " Cum igitur quilibet homo sit pars civitatis, impossible est quod aliquis homo
sit bonus, nisi sit bene proportionatus bono communi; ... impossibile est quod
bonum commune civitatis bene se habet, nisi cives sint virtuosi." I-ll
1 ad 3.
Cf. II-II 58, 9 ad 3.
78 " Homo non ordinatur
ad communitatem politicam secundum se totum et
secundum omnia sua. . . . Sed totum quod homo est et quod potest et habet,
ordinandum est ad Deum." I-ll
4 ad 3.

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Thus the good of the universe surpasses the good of an individual of the same kind, but the supernatural good of a single
man is worth more than the natural good of the entire universe.79 So too, the good of an individual can be superior to the
common good by reason of its special dignity: in this way
consecrated virginity surpasses the fecundity of marriage. 80
Having completed a survey of the doctrine of St. Thomas,
we must now strive to synthesize his teaching-a task which
Thomas himself never explicitly undertook.
First of all, it is necessary to maintain firmly the dignity of
the human person, for man is not, like the animal, made for
another created being. He is made for God, his final cause; his
end is, not to serve another, but to perfect himself, for he has
an autonomous value. 81 From the nature of things, and independently of some contract or mutual agreement, man is not
obliged to others by any natural bond of strict justice. 82 But
then there is the Aristotelian perspective. Man is naturally
social; he is by no means self-sufficient in striving for his
personal end. The family circle and his social milieu provide
for him that collection of common utilities which are called the
common good, and which are realized primarily through the
submission of individuals to law. Society contributes to the
personal perfection of the individuaL 83
And thus the two points of view are reconciled. Man is
made for his own perfection; the common good of society has
the purpose of assuring this perfection; but this perfection itself
79 " Bonum universi est mains quam bonum particulare unius si accipiatur utrumque in eodem genere. Sed bonum gratiae unius mains est quam bonum naturae
totius universi." I-II 113, 9 ad £. Some scholars point out that there is a fundamental sense in which here, too, the good of the whole is superior to the good of
the particular. Cf. Verpaalen, p. 59.
80 " Bonum commune potius est bono privato, si sit ejusdem generis; sed potest
esse quod bonum privatum sit melius secundum suum genus. Et hoc modo virginitas
Deo dicata praefertur foecunditati carnali." II-II 15£, 4 ad 3.
81 Cf. C. G. III, £5, where Thomas explicitly states that this is in agreement with
Aristotle's teaching.
82 This conclusion is applied later to the notion of " procreation for the common
good of society," see Part Two I, below.
•• De reg. princ. I, I.

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demands that the individual be subordinated to the common
good expressed by laws. In the next section, this perspective
will be applied to the question: is the sexuality of the individual subject to human society?
4. Procreation and the State

The fact that procreation serves the common good of a
distinct collectivity means that this function of nature is placed
within the problem of the individual good vs. the common
good. If procreation is truly directed to the common good of
the collectivity, what is to prevent rulers from insisting, for
example, on sterilization for purely eugenic purposes, and from
making other similar demands of its citizens regarding the use
of the procreative faculty? 84 ·we are confronted with the important question: is " Procreatio ad bonum speciei vel bonum
commune " an admissible principle? If one accepts St.
Thomas' teaching on the relation of the individual person to
the common good as it has been presented in this work, 85
Thomas does not actually say that procreation is for the
" State," but teaches that it serves the good of society, without
further specification. This notion would include whatever form
the social and political collectivity should take. And yet, to
say that " procreation is for the good of the State " can strike
the modern ear as a doctrine of extreme totalitarianism. Procreation can serve the good of society, the good of a certain
country, without being subject to the whims of a certain
regime.
That procreation should stand in the service of a distinct
•• See Joseph Mayer, Gesetzliche Unfruchtbarmachung Geisteskranker (Freiburg
im Breisgau: Herder, 1927). Franziskus Deininger, in his article, "Die Verantwortung des Meschen gegeniiber dem kommenden Geschlecht," T. P. Q. 90 (1937), pp.
274-285, 442-457, advocated an exaggerated eugenics for the sake of the improved
quantity and quality of the race or of the Staatsvolk: favoring the prohibition of
marriages which involve the mixing of races (p. 450), fostering an ever-increasing
hereditary improvement of bodily and spiritual dispositions for the good of the
"race" (pp. 452-453), and declaring those incapable of marriage who lack a certain
measure of intellectual and moral qualities (pp. 453-454).
85 Cf. Section 3 of this part.

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collectivity follows logically from the fact that the common
good can only be realized in and through human society. In
fact, a public society is defined as a union of men whose common purpose is the common good, as for example the citizens
in a city or kingdom. 86 Striving for the common good in society
is basic to the nature of man, for man is by nature designed
for mutual supplementation and thus for sociality. 87 This is
why man is described as being naturally inclined to political
society, 88 in which he must make a contribution for the sake of
the common good of the consociated members. 89 The procreation of offspring is one function which contributes to the good
of society, but this must be measured according to a scale
of values.
When St. Thomas taught that the use of the sexual faculty is
determined by the legislator, he must have had the legislator
of particular political collectivities in mind/ 0 of which he knew
many kinds: monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. In spite
of his preference for monarchy, 91 St. Thomas elevates himself
above political contingencies. 92 It should be recalled that procreation serves the essential common good, or the good of
society with respect to the collectivity of its members and the
totality of its essential ends. Thus, the generation and education of offspring is, in some way, contributing to that good of
society which is not equated with the State, but which the
State itself is striving to serve.
Those who may have balked at Aquinas' concept of procreation serving the common good should be reminded that the
Angelic Doctor also placed virginity and the contemplative life
in the service of the common good of the human race. 93 Both
sexual union and virginity serve the common good, 94 in a
89 Car. I, 4 ad 2.
Contra impugnantes, c. 8.
90 I-II 90, 3 co.
In Ethic. I, lect. 2; C. G. III, 117.
91 I I03, 3 co.; I-II I05, I co.
88 Suppl. 41, 1 co.
92 I-II 90, 3 contra; 95, 4 co.; I05, I co.; I-ll 57, 2 co.
86

87

98 " Quidam vero ab hac (carnali generationi)
abstinentes, contemplationi divinorum vacent ad totius humani generis pulchritudinem et salutem." II-II I52, 2 ad I.
Cf. Suppl. 4I, 2 ad 3.
•• II-II I52, 4 ad 3.

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manner corresponding to the temporal and eternal perfection
of man and the universe. 95 Generation and virginity are" bona
particularia " directed to that end which is the good order of the
universe. 96 On the other hand, the good of the universe is itself
no ultimate end, but finds its perfection in the union of the
blessed with God. 97
Seen against this background, procreation can never be a
purely biological phenomenon; " procreation for the good of
the species" does not result in a racist biology. There is no
question but that Thomas taught that man is a part of the
community as a member of a body, 98 and that the goodness of
man is judged by the relation of his actions to the common
good. 99 This reflects the partial influence of Aristotle, who
leaned toward state socialism or totalitarianism. He was preoccupied with the best form of state, in which the individual is
enveloped/ 00 If this were taken as St. Thomas' decisive position
and applied to his teaching on procreation, the results could be
disastrously harmful to the individual. But the fact of the
matter is that St. Thomas taught that man is not ordered to
the community " secundum se totum et secundum omnia
sua." 101 Of course, there is nothing to prevent man from
willingly regulating his sexual activity according to the needs
of the common good, under the guidance of the virtue of general
or legal justice.
A second reason the State can never have complete dominion
over the procreative faculty is because " man is, according to
05 "Una
secundum statum hujusmodi
futurae novitatis." Suppl. 9I, 5 ad 3.

96

mutabilitatis;

altera

secundum

statum

C. G. I, 71.

ffitima perfectio quae est finis totius universi est perfecta beatitudo Sanctorum." I 73, I co.; cf. I-ll 2, 8 ad 2. See Wright, pp. 74-86 and ll5-I35 for a more
detailed study of the theology of the order of the universe.
98 " In civilibus omnes homines
qui sunt unius communitatis, reputantur quasi
unum corpus, et tota communitas quasi unus homo. I-ll 8I, I co.; cf. I-ll 96, 4 co.;
II-II 64, 5 co.
99 I-ll 92, 1 ad 3.
100 Rommen, p. 13.
101 I-ll 2I, 4 ad 3.
97 "

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his nature, more a conjugal animal than a political animal."
And the reason: marriage is naturally prior to and more necessary than the State, for "the part precedes the whole." Noteworthy is the term, " secundum naturam," which reflects
Ulpian's view of nature: marital partnership is prior to the
State because it is directed to procreation, which is common to
every animal essence, and thus follows the nature of the
genus. 102
This indicates that family life enjoys a certain priority to the
State in the nature of things. In contrast to the community
value which has been so greatly emphasized in this work, great
personal value is attached to procreation. Offspring are generated not only as members of society, but as new eternal beings
possessing an immortal soul, for man is made in the image and
likeness of God. 103 Parents bring into the world, not simply
new members of the species, but individuals who have similarities with their parents. 104 The infant is procreated, not only
for the good of the universe, but as an end in itself, because he
has an immortal soul, and the conjugal union is ordered to this
as well.
Therefore, that redeeming factor, that sublimating element
which, in the final analysis, lifts the notion of human procreation, with all its undeniable relations to the body politic,
from the realm of a purely material function, as a material
supply for a material demand, is the fact of the spirituality and
immortality of the human soul. For man's spiritual form,
capable of living on after death, cannot be the fruit of a mere
100 " Homo enim est animal naturaliter
politicum; et multo magis est in natura
hominis quod sit animal conjugale. Et hoc probat duabus rationibus. Quarum prima
est quod ea quae sunt priora et necessaria, magis videntur ad naturam pertinere:
societas autem domestica ad quam pertinet conjunctio viri et uxoris, est prior, quam
societas civilis. Pars enim est prior toto. Est etiam magis necessaria, quia societas
domestica ordinatur ad actus necessarios vitae, scilicet generationem et nutritionem.
. . . Secunda ratio est, quia procreatio filiorum ad quam ordinatur conjunctio viri
et uxoris est communis aliis animalibus, et ita sequitur naturam generis. Et sic patet
quod homo magis est secundum naturam animal conjugale, quam politicum." In
Ethic. VII, lect.
Cf. Suppl. 41, 1 co.
104 Suppl. 54, 1.
lOS I, 93, 1 co.

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biological causality and the term of such a material process as
generation.
The multiplication of the members of society must be accomplished in a manner befitting the human person (both the
person generating and the one generated) . With this perspective, we see that men are not procreated primarily to assure the
power of the State or economic prosperity. These are real
but supplementary goods, subordinate to the human person. 105
On the other hand, we cannot justify an exclusively " personalist " approach to the question. There should be no minimizing
of the social repercussions and, in fact, the social aims of
procreation. The fact of the matter is that, in the classic
position, nature has placed procreation in a social perspective:
" The sex act is ordered to the good of the species," because
nature seeks what is permanenU 06
We believe that St. Thomas has posed a happy medium
between an "individualist" and a "collectivist" evaluation of
human generation. He obviously did not attempt to clarify our
problem, but his principles are consistent and applicable in
this case. I£ we, along with Thomas, view man as made for his
own perfection, and the common good as having the purpose
of assuring this perfection, there is no reason to hesitate in our
affirmation that procreation serves and is subject to the good of
human society, always keeping in mind the important norm:
the common good is to be preferred to the particular good, if
each is a good of the same order. 107 Thus, we can see that the
good of the species is a value of a very high order, entailing as
it does the perfection of the individuals which it embraces. The
realization of the good of the species thus becomes part of the
order or perfection of the universe, as intended in creation, and
as accomplished, in part at least, by pro-creation.

105

Cf. Clement Mertens, " Doctrine catholique

N. R. T. 74 (1952) p. 1045.
106 Mal. 15, 2 ad 12; I 98, 1 co.
107

I-II ll3, 9 ad 2; II-II 152, 4 ad 3.

et probleme de Ia population,"

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VALUE OF PROCREATION

1. Procreation for the Good of the Sacrament

The religious and spiritual characteristics of procreation complete and perfect the order of the values and ends of this act of
nature. The entire natural order of marriage, considered as a
function of nature and even as serving the common good or
bonum politicum, is now directed to higher purposes among
Christians. With the coming of Christ, marriage was raised to
an entirely new and different plane of existence, on a level not
previously experienced by pagan or Jew: the supernatural,
sacramental level. The bonnrn prolis is now subsumed into the
bonum sacramenti. Procreation for the good of the species has
a distinct spiritual value, for there is a sense in which the bonum
speciei becomes a bonum ecclesiae in Christian marriage.
To the fundamental natural-law teaching on procreation,
Aquinas adds a specifically Christian note when he says the
fruit of human generation not only provides a transmission of
the specific type, but is a person with an immortal soul and
an eternal destiny. 1 God, the author of nature, intends procreation for the sake of the immortal soul/ and this is the basis for
the ordination of procreation to God. It lends to the procreative
act and the task of education not only a spiritual and religious
value, but is the stepping stone to the supernatural level. It
also gives to the reproductive act a more personal and less
purely cosmic meaning than is to be attributed to the propagation of life in the lower species. The Aristotelian perspective is
supplemented by that of Revelation: the purpose of marriage
is to bring into the world immortal persons who are destined to
become sons of God for eternity. This goes beyond philosophical analysis; it involves the history of salvation.
In the state of innocence, the procreative act would have
produced "sons of God," for children would have been born
in original justice, or grace. 3 This would have happened naturally-not as caused by the principles of nature, but because
1

Cf. I 23, 7 co.

2

I 98, 1 co.

3

C. G. IV, 52; I 100, 1 co. and ad 2.

398

W AHREN REICH

original justice was a gratuitous gift bestowed upon man for
the sake of all his descendents, to be propagated to posterity. 4
In the state of fallen nature, the procreation of " sons of
God" is no longer possible. We are all born" sons of wrath," 5
since the gratuitous divine gift of spiritual life has been taken
away by the first sin of the first parents. 6 In our order of
salvation, grace is necessary for sinful man to be properly
ordered to God. 7
In the state of repaired nature in Christ," man" is generated,
so that he may be "generated in the spiritual life," 8 or " regenerated" in Christ 9 through the Church. 10 We are no longer
sons of God by nature, but we are made the adoptive sons of
God by spiritual regeneration through grace. 11 By reason of the
sacrament of matrimony, it is the parents themselves who must
see to this spiritual regeneration. 12
In the present order of grace, we must adjust our entire
thinking on marriage, since it is now a supernatural source of
grace as a sacrament. 13 Of course there is a sense in which
marriage acquired a sacred character from the very beginning,
as an institution blessed by the Creator. Just as Alexander of
Hales before him, 14 Thomas placed marriage among the sacraments of the natural law, calling it the most ancient of all/ 5
but this expression is not very rich in meaning. 16 Although
marriage may in some way have been a sacrament potentially
Mal. 4, 8 co.; In 11 Sent.
3; C. G. IV,
1-11 81,
Mal. 4, 8 contra.
6 Mal. 4, 8 co.; C. G. IV, 50;
1-11 81, co.
7 C. G. III, 147; 150; I-11 ll3,
co.
8 Ill 69, 8 co.
9 Ill
co.; 68, 1 co.
10 In IV Sent. 38, 1, 5 sol.; Ill 68, 9 ad 1; 69, 8 co.
11 C. G. IV, 17;
Ill 8, 5 ad 1;
1 co.; co.; In Ill Sent. 10,
12 C. G. IV, 58; Ill 65,
co.
13 C. G. IV, 78; Suppl.
3 co.; 61, ad 1.
4

5

1, 1 co.

14 B. Le Bras, " La doctrine du mariage chez les theologiens et les canonistes
depuis I 'an mille," D. T. C. IX,
cols.
15 In IV Sent. 1, I,
ad
11-11 7. "Et tamen etiam matrimonium tale (in
officium naturae) est aliquo modo sacramentum habitualiter." Suppl. 59,
ad 1.
16 Le Bras, col.

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by its very nature, at least according to the symbolic way of
thinking so common among the scholastics, 11 Thomas taught
that it did not become a sacrament in the strict sense of this
word until Christ instituted it as such in the New Law. 18 Thus
marriage was distinctly instituted, not only in officium naturae
before sin and in remedium in the state of the law of nature,
but also as a sacrament of the New Law according to the fact
that it represents the mystery of Christ's union with the
Church. 19
The principal end of marriage is the procreation and education of children, and to this end there corresponds the bonum
prolis. But marriage between believers has another end, namely
the signification of the perpetual union between Christ and his
Church, and to this end there corresponds the bonum sacramenti/0 which is the most excellent of the marriage goods. This
is a question of inner disposition, or the proper intention in
reference to marriage.
The conjugal act is good and meritorious if it is ordered to
a virtuous end; otherwise it would be sinful, for no concrete
human act is indifferent. 21 Thomas taught the common scholastic opinion that these virtuous purposes are found in the
bona matrimonii, but he limited them to two: bonum prolis
and bonum fidei (by rendering the marriage debt out of
justice) ,22 Can the bonum sacramenti also be a justifying
purpose of carnal union? St. Albert had thought so; 23 but
Thomas judged otherwise. For him, bonum sacramenti pertains
to marriage itself, because it signifies the property of indissolubility and all those things which result from marriage being
a sign of Christ's union with the Church. 24 Hence the sacra17 Cf. Pedro Abelian, El fin y la significaci6n sacramental del matrimonio desde
S. Anselmo hasta Guillermo de Auxerre (Granada: Colegio de Ia Compania de Jesus,

1939)' 196-!201.
17 Cf. Abelian, 196-!Wl.
19 Suppl. 4!2, !2 co. Cf. In IV Sent. !2, 1, 1, !2 co.; Suppl. 49, 2 co.; C. G. IV, 78; I-II
102, 5 ad 3.
20 Suppl. 65, 1 co.
23 In IV Sent. !26, 11.
21 Suppl. 41, 4 co.
24 Suppl. 49, 2 ad 4 and ad 7; 3 co.
22 Suppl. 49, 5 co.; 4 co.

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WARREN REICH

mental aspect is a good which "excuses" marriage itself,
making it honest and holy," 5 but has no direct meaning for
the marriage act itsel£.26
In Christian marriage, however, offspring considered as a
marriage good includes something more than offspring as a
good intended by nature. 27 For nature intends offspring for
safeguarding the good of the species, whereas offspring as a
good of the sacrament of matrimony includes besides this the
directing of the child to God. 28 In Christian marriage, children
are procreated to be educated "for the worship of God." 29
Therefore, Thomas concludes, the intention of nature must be
supplemented by a personal intention, whether actual or
habitual, directed toward " offspring as the good of the sacrament." 30 Without this relation to God, according to the medieval concept,S1 proles as the good of the species cannot signify
a good simply speaking; it would not be evil, but would be a
conscious remaining in imperfection. 32
When this intention of procreating and educating children for
the worship of God is present, the use of sexual intercourse is
completely inculpable 33 -a teaching which was by no means
unfamiliar to the early scholastics. 34 Marital intercourse for
the sake of the bonum sacmmenti is also described as a good
25

Suppl. 49, 2 co. and ad 7; 5 co.

26 "

Tertium bonum non pertinet ad usum matrimonii,

sed ad essentiam ipsius."

Suppl. 49, 5 co.
27 Suppl. 49, 5 ad 1.
28 " Natura
enim intendit prolem prout in ipsa salvatur bonum speciei: sed in
prole secundum quod est bonum sacramenti matrimonii, ultra hoc intelligitur ut
proles suscepta ulterius ordinetur in Deum." Ibid.
29 "Per sacramentum
matrimonii, quo vir et mulier conveniunt ad prolem generan dam et educandam ad cultum divinum." C. G. IV, 58. Cf. ibid., 78; Suppl. 62,
1 ad 3; 65, 2 ad 5.
80 " Oportet
quod intentio naturae, quae prolem intendit, referatur actu vel
habitu ad intentionem prolis, prout est bonum sacramenti." Suppl. 49, 5 ad 1.
31 Cf. Abelian, 163-164; Brandl, 204-205.
32 " Alias staretur
in creatura, quod sine peccato esse non potest." Suppl. 49, 5
ad 1. " Inter infideles est quidem matrimonium, sed non perfectum ultima perfectione, sicut est inter fideles." Suppl. 59, 2 co.
33 Suppl. 49, 4 co.
•• Abelian, 183.

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use of marriage, 35 holy, 36 a meritorious work of the virtue of
religion, 37 and the chief good of marriage. 38
It can be seen, then, that what procreation accomplishes for
the good of the species cannot be separated from what it does
ad bonum sacramenti, since both are achieved by the same
act. 39 It was typical of both early scholastic 40 and high scholastic teaching 41 that marriage in the natural order was not
isolated from marriage in the supernatural order. It is no
surprise, then, that for St. Thomas the bonum prolis is incomplete without, and is subsumed into the concept of bonum
sacramenti: "There are, then, three goods of matrimony, the
first of which is offspring to be accepted and educated for the
worship of God." 42 Christian parents" propagate and conserve
the bodily and spiritual life simultaneously," Thomas tells us,
for they " come together to beget offspring and to rear them in
divine worship." 43 There is also a sense in which the bonum
prolis borrows something of the bonum fidei in reference to the
bonum sacmmenti. Offspring includes the keeping of faith with
God, because the very reason why it is classified as a good of
marriage is because the offspring is awaited with a view to its
being brought up in the worship of God. Keeping faith with
Causa generandae prolis ad cultum Dei." In I Cor. 7, lect. 6 (13, 208b).
Bonitate sacramenti secundum quod actus non solum bonus sed etiam sanctus
dicitur." Suppl. 49, 4 co.
37 "Actus
conjugalis quandoque quidem est meritorius, et absque omni culpa
mortali vel veniali: puta cum ordinatur ad bonum prolis procreandae, et educandae
ad cultum Dei: sic enim est actus religionis." In I Cor. 7, lect. 1 (13, 209/a). Cf.
Suppl. 41, 4 co. For St. Albert's influence on Thomas in this doctrine, see Le Bras,
col. 2179.
38 " Principalius
matrimonii bonum est proles ad cultum Dei educanda." Suppl.
59, 1 co. Cf. ibid. 41, 1 co.; I 65, 2 co.
39 " Quia igitur
populum fidelium perpetuari oportebat usque ad mundi finem,
necessarium fuit hoc per generationem fieri, per quam etiam humana species
perpetuatur." C. G. IV, 78.
•• Le Bras, col. 2148.
41 Ibid., col. 2172.
42 " Est autem triplex bonum matrimonii:
quorum primum est proles suscipienda
et educanda ad cultum Dei." De art. fid. (16, 122a). Cf. Suppl. 62, 1 ad 3; C. G.
IV, 78.
•• C. G. IV, 58.
35 "
36 "

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WARREN REICH

God is more important than keeping faith with one's wife, and
it is all £or the sake o£ the good of the offspring. 44
That the bonum prolis should include religious education was
an Augustinian concept, 45 which was commonly known and
accepted by the early Scholastics. 46 It derives from the end of
marriage, insofar as it tends to form citizens for heaven, which
presupposes religious education. 47 This distinctly Christian
value is explicitly related by Aquinas to the natural-law teaching on education. 48 Just as the sex act by natural teleology aims
toward a man who is mature in body and virtuous in soul/"
so in the order o£ grace the same sex act tends toward a perfectum esse: the man of grace who is a child o£ God. 50 Just
as, in the natural order, the care which parents exert in the
education of their young can be called a " spiritual womb," 51
so in Christian marriage, parents are directed to a higher goal:
children perfected in grace and the development of the Christian personality.
«" Proles quod est bonum matrimonii, includit fidem ad Deum servandam:
quia secundum quod proles expectatur ad cultum Dei educanda, ponitur matrimonii
bonum. Fides autem ad Deum servanda est potior quam fides uxori. . . . Et ideo
non est inconveniens si propter bonum prolis aliquid detrahitur aliis duobus bonis."
Suppl. 65, il ad 5.
45 Cf. Amandus
Reuter, Sancti Aurdii Augustini doctrina de bonis matrimonii
(Rome: Gregorian University, 1942), 87-89.
•• Cf. Abelian, 163. Though not always explicitly stated by them, it seems presupposed that children be servants of the true God. Cf. Abelian, 183.
47 Cf. Abelian, 183.
Augustine expressed it this way: "In nuptiis tamen bona
nuptialia diligantur, proles, fides, sacramentum. Sed proles, non ut nascatur tantum,
verum etiam ut renascatur: nascitur namque ad poenam, nisi renascatur ad vitam."
De nupt. et cone. I, c. 17, n. 19 (P. L. 44, 424).
48 Suppl. 59, 2 co.
••" Non enim intendit natura solum generationem prolis, sed traductionem et
promotionem usque ad perfectum statum hominis inquantum homo est, qui est
status virtutis." Suppl. 41, 1 co. Cf. In Ethic. VIII, lect. 12; Suppl. 56, 2 ad 9;
65, 3 co.
50 " Est autem in prole duplex perfectio consideranda:
scilicet perfectio naturae,
non solum quantum ad corpus sed etiam quantum ad animam, per ea quae sunt
in lege naturae; et perfectio gratiae. Et prima perfectio est materialis et imperfecta
respectu secundae. Et ideo, cum res quae sunt propter finem, sint proportionatae
fini, matrimonium quod tendit in primam perfectionem, est imperfectum et materiale respectu illus quod tendit in perfectionem secundam." Suppl. 59, il co.
51 " Filius ... continetur sub parentum cura, sicut sub quodam spirituali utero."
II-Il10, 1il co.

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From this we may conclude that the " office of nature ,. opens
onto manifold values much more meaningful than would at
first sight appear. Procreation-education extends to a new
human being, as well as to its physical, intellectual, spiritual
and religious development. This is the greatest good of marriage, its only perfect good, and hence the goal of marriage
which is per se intended by the Creator.
Procreation for the Extension of God's People
Sex acquired a special significance in Old Testament times,
insofar as it directly constituted the basis for the continuity and
the increase of those people who believed in the one God. 52
For the Jews, the alliance between God and His People was
perpetuated by marriage-an alliance which had to last until
Christ should be born of the Chosen People. 53 Hence the
material fact of the propagation of the species takes on a
capital importance for that one nation which was privileged
above other peoples: 54 it was necessary to " touch woman ,.
for the multiplication of the people who worship God. 55 During
this period the practice of virginity was ill-advised; 56 in fact,
polygamy was permitted to the ancient fathers and others for
the sake of multiplying offspring to be reared in the worship of
God. 57
52 " Seeundum quod conditio temporis requirebat,
matrimonio utebantur (Abraham, Isaa.c, et Jacob) ad multiplica.tionem populi fidelis." C. G. III, 137. Cf. ibid.,
136. "Cultus Dei ca.rnali propagatione multiplica.ba.ntur et conservaba.tur." Suppl.
65, 2 ad 4.
53 I-II 98, 4 co.
54 Cf. I-ll 98, 4 co. and ad 1; 5
55 " Haec necessitas
(tangendi mulierem) fuit circa institutionem humani generis,
quamdiu oportuit multiplicari populum Dei per successionem carnis." In I Cor. 7,
lect. 1 (13,
"Quia tempore legis oportebat geuerationi insistere tam mulieres
quam viros, quia secundum carnis originem cultus Dei propagabatur, antequam ex
4 co.
illo populo Christus nasceretur." Ill
56 " Tempore legis Moysi, quando cultus
Dei etiam per carnalem actum propagandus erat, non erat omnino la.udabile a commixtione carnis a.bstinere." Suppl. 96,
5 ad 3. "In tempore quo Deus ad multiplicationem generis humani vel cultus divini
ad
Cf.
homines operi conjugali insistere volebat. . . ." In IV Sent. 33, 3,
Mal. 15, ad 13.
57 " (Dispensatio)
principa.liter sanctis Patribus facta est, et per eorum exemplum
ad alios derivata est, eo temoore quo oportebat praedictum naturae praeceptum

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But in the New Dispensation procreation no longer has this
value. Since the coming of Christ, the increase of the people of
God no longer takes place through carnal generation, but by
spiritual regeneration. 58 The Messiah has already come in the
person of Christ; furthermore, a plentiful progeny is no longer
needed by the Chosen Race, for the notion of ecclesia is now a
universal one. 59 The worship of God is spread to all peoples
through the grace of Christ in this, the period of the fulness of
grace. 6 ° Consequently, during this period the bonum speciei
becomes a bonum ecclesiae, for procreation in Christian marriage has as its end " the perpetuity of the Church, which
consists in the collection of the faithful." 61 The faithful must
be perpetuated until the end of time, and this is accomplished
in Christian marriage, in which husband and wife have the
intention of generating and educating offspring for the worship
of God. 62
If Christian marriage is ordered to the perpetuity of the
Church, does it also serve the multiplication of the people of
God, even in the New Dispensation? Yes, marriage is ordered
to the common utility of the Church by providing it with
corporal increase. 63 However, Aquinas clearly placed no special
urgency or necessity in this value. He taught that begetting
children for the worship of God is a legitimate purpose for the
use of sex in marriage, and is preferred to having children
praetermitti ut maior esset multiplicatio prolis ad cultum Dei educandae." Suppl.
65,
68 "Humanum genus jam multiplicatum,
et populum Dei jam esse augmentatum,
non propagatione carnis, sed generatione quae est ex aqua et Spiritu sancto .... "
In I Cor. 7, lect. 1 (13,
•• Suppl. 59, 1 ad 1.
60 " Veniente Christo fuit tempus plenitudinis
gratiae Christi, per quam cultus
Dei in omnes gentes spirituali propagatione difl'usus est." Suppl. 65, 2 ad 4.
61 " Generatio
autem humana ... ordinatur etiam ad perpetuitatem Ecclesiae,
quae in fidelium collectione consistit." C. G. IV, 78.
62 Ibid.
63 " Ordo et matrimonium
ordinantur ad perfectionem et multiplicationem totius
Ecclesiae .... Quantum autem ad communem Ecclesiae utilitatem ordinantur duo
sacramenta, scilicet Ordo et Matrimonium. Nam per ordinem Ecclesia gubernatur
et multiplicatur spiritualiter, et per Matrimonium multiplicatur corporaliter." De
art. fid. (16, 119b).

RESPONSIBLE

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merely as a function of nature, 64 but the people of God are
assembled together by spiritual regeneration. 65 Now virginity 66
and continence in marriage 67 are better suited for spiritual
propagation than sexual activity is. Consequently, there is no
" necessity of touching woman " for this purpose, but only as a
remedy for concupiscence. 68 It is true that the generation of
children has a special meaning as regards filling the number of
the elect, 69 but the number of the elect would be more quickly
arrived at if everyone were continent. 70 We can conclude, then,
that St. Thomas did not advocate procreation of a maximum
possible number of the faithful.
That marriage is ordained to the good of the Church may be
taken as another manifestation of the priority of the social
view in marriage, for Christian parents, by performing the
conjugal act, truly contribute to the perfection of the kingdom
of Christ. They render a service which is parallel to that of the
priesthood: they are corporal and spiritual ministers of the
Church. 71 Socially speaking, Christian marriage presents entirely new values to the world, over and above its various ends
or purposes. By its very nature it possesses a certain sacred
dignity, but by divine origin it is a sacrament; it signifies
something sacred and is ordered to a sacred purpose: the
procreation and education of children for God. The super64

In I Cor. 7, lect. 6 (13,

Non generatione carnali propagandus est populus Dei, sed generatione spirituali colligendus." Ibid., 13,
63 " Tempore gratiae debet insistere magis ad spiritualem
propagationem, ad quam
magis apti sunt caelibem vitam agentes; et ideo in hoc statu virtuosius reputatur
ab actu generationis abstinere." Mal. 15, ad 13.
67 In I Cor. 7, lect. 6 (13,
68 In I Cor. 7, lect. 1 (13,
69 " Est quaedam
specialis multiplicationis ratio propter complendum numerum
electorum." I
un. ad 4.
70 " Generatio
prolis . . . non est ultimus finis conjugii, sed adimpletio numeri
electorum, qui Citius impleretur, si omnes continerent." In I Cor. 7, lect. 6 (13,
65 "

71 " Sunt
enim quidam propagatores et conservatores spiritualis vitae . . .
secundum corporalem et spiritualem (ministerium) simul, quod fit per sacramentum
matrimonii, quo vir et mulier conveniunt ad prolem generandam et educandam ad
cultum divinum." C. G. IV, 58.

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natural inserts itself into the very act of marriage. It is not
merely a question of producing new individuals who will form
a nation, a State; rather, it is a question of forming new beings
whose destiny it is to become sons of God and enter the family
of God. And yet, marriage as a sacrament preserves all those
things which pertain to it as a function of nature and as a civil
function, sanctifying them through the conferral of grace and
directing them to a loftier end. Consequently, we are forced to
conclude that " procreation for the common good " never nullifies or minimizes " procreation for the good of the sacrament."
On the other hand, the social pressures which may in certain
circumstances advise a reduction of the birth rate in no way
subtract from the spiritual and religious value of procreation
and the dignity of Christian marriage.
The grace granted in matrimony sanctifies the spouses, enabling them to perform all those things which are required in a
perfectly Christian marriage: 72 that they may be united by a
truly Christian love; that they may procreate and educate
children in a thoroughly Christian manner; that in their family
life they may provide for their own needs and those of their
offspring; and finally, that their domestic life may be governed
by every natural and supernatural virtue in a responsible way,
including the practice of legal justice in their relations to civil
society.

72 Matrimonium, inquautum in fide Christi contrahitur,
habet ut conferat gratiam
adiuvantem ad ilia operanda quae in matrimonio requiruntur .... Uncle, cum in
matrimonio detur homini ex divina institutione facultas utendi uxore sua ad procreationem prolis, datur etiam gratia sine qua id convenienter facere non posset."
Suppl. 42, 3 co. Cf. C. G. IV, 78.

RESPONSIBLE

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PART

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407

Two

PROCREATION, OVERPOPULATION
RESPONSIBLE PARENTHOOD

AND

With the conclusion of Part One we completed a study of
the goals and values of procreation as contained in the formula,
"procreatio ad bonum speciei." In Part Two we leave the
order of ends and values and enter the order of moral responsibility. Procreation and the entire sexual life have been shown
to be in the service of the species, and of the future of the
species, especially by way of education. Is the good of the
species simply a service which is rendered, without the conscious cooperation of man? Or is the bonum speciei an end of
respon.nble action of a particular married couple? Does the
individual man or married couple have any responsibility towards the species in the act of procreation, independently of
and prior to any laws which may be enacted to govern this
relation?

I.

RESPONSIBILITY

1. Basis of Responsibility

TO THE SPECIES

to the Species

That the answer to the above question should be in the
affirmative is obvious from all that has been said concerning
the relations between the individual and the species, especially
in the case of man, where the relation is one between a rational
individual and the species.
The close union existing between the member and the species
has a metaphysical basis which has already been explored. This
metaphysical basis produces the foundation for the relation of
responsibility between the individual and the species considered
as a universal notion. Responsibility to the species considered
as society is based on an ethical consideration which stems from
the Aristotelian-Thomistic notion of "person."

408

WARREN REICH

Substance is that which exists in and for itself. The incommunicable individual substance reaches its highest level in its
rational form, which is the person. The person is first of all an
ontological entity, inasmuch as it possesses a superiOr incommunicability on account of its soul; but even more so is it a
psychological and ethical entity, capable of performing free
actions and of having rights and duties. Only the person is
master of its own actions. 1
This freedom of and mastery over one's own actions, opening
up onto unlimited possibilities, establishes the value of the
individual man. Man is conscious of the fact that his greatest
potentialities are not realized in the present moment, but can
only be effected through the harmonization of all his powers,
which can best be accomplished in union with other men. The
corporal and spiritual progress of the individual man is essentially bound up with the community. 2
Thus drawn into society, the person must look beyond his
self-fulfillment, for he has a natural appetite to seek the good
of his species. 3 J\1an, being a superior rational creature, has a
rational appetite for a broader common good, whereby he is
drawn to do good for other members of his species, even those
far removed from himself. 4 Consequently, the individual person
is responsible for attaining a greater good, i.e. the bonum
commune, which he is serving. Therefore, the notion of personality implies a relation to one's self and to the surrounding
world: the entire material world with its need for work and
cultural development, but more especially the world of humans,
in which man finds himself responsible to the fellow-members
of the species, who also enjoy individual rights. The essential
elements of personality include, then, freedom, imperishability,
and responsibility for the whole of the world. 5
Pot. 9, 1 ad 3.
I 96, 4 co.; ll-ll109, 3 ad 1; 114, ad 1; III 65, 1 co.
3 C. G. III,
'Ibid.
5 Josef
Kosel, 1953), p.
Pieper, Uber die Gerechtigkeit (Munich:
C. G. III,
1

2

citing

RESPONSIBLE

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It should be noted again that when we speak of having a
responsibility to the human species, we mean the human species
as that concrete unity known as " the human race," as well as
a given part thereof, within the framework of a country, state,
community, etc., of which the individual man is a member.
But it should also be asked whether man is not only responsible for the species, but whether he can be held responsible to
the species? Since the species is made up of spiritual personal
members which make up a real community, it would seem that
the individual could be held responsible to it. The species, then,
is capable of being the object of injustice. 6
Just as the individual person, because of the principle of selfpreservation/ is of necessity interested in his own well-being,
so also must humanity as a community be interested in its
preservation and well-being.
An example of this can be seen in the case of the harm done
to offspring which are the result of extra-marital intercourse or
intercourse between infected partners. In these cases we cannot
speak of committing an injustice against the procreated offspring, for at the moment when the action is placed the offspring does not exist. This is an exceptional case, 8 in which we
must conclude, as in all other such cases in which it is questionable whether or not an action will actually harm a particular
man, that it is the human species (humanity as a community)
which is offended by an unjust action. 9
We can conclude, then, that man is responsible for and is
6 " Da aber die so verstandene menschliche Art, aus geistigen, personalen Gliedern
bestehend, wirklich Gemeinschaft ist, scheint die Moglichkeit einer echten Verantwortung ihr gegeniiber eine Selbstverstandlichkeit zu bedeuten." Josef Fuchs,
"Elterliche Verantwortung fiir das kommende Geschlecht," Sch. Q6 (1951), p. Q34.
7 De Ente et Essentia, passim.
8 "Es handelt
sich hier urn einen Grenzfall, insofern mit der Zeugung als
Existenzgebung auch der Grund fiir den Defekt dieser Existenz gelegt wird; oder
besser: insofern die Verursachung des Defektes nicht der Existenz eines Menschen
folgt, sondern gerade durch die Existenzgebung erfolgt. Die allgemeine Rechtslehre
hat sich mit desem Grenzfall nur wenig befa13t, so daB eine genauere, wenn auch
vorsichtige und zuriickhaltende Btetrachtung angebracht scheint." Fuchs, Sch. Q6
(1951), p. Q35.
• Fuchs, ibid., pp. Q35-Q36.

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WARREN REICH

capable of offending the human species understood as the
human community, even though at times the exact group
of people harmed can not always be precisely delineated.
Although the term " human species " includes the unity of
humans, past, present and future, it should be noted that
responsibility to the species does not imply responsibility for
the ultimate destiny of the species. To what extent the individual can be held responsible for the future of the race will
be considered later. Here we wish only to establish the
principle.
2. Responsibility to the Species in the Use of the Procreative

Faculty
A number of texts in the writings of St. Thomas treat of
responsibility to the human species in the use of the procreative
faculty. 10 Marriage is coupled with virginity 11 and the priesthood 12 in fulfilling an obligation of working for the perfection
of mankind. Before Thomas, Albert had already placed side by
side the importance of procreation for the common good and
the question of the general obligation of service to the species. 13
But in what respect is the procreative faculty committed to
responsible action?
The proper accomplishment of procreation is partly entrusted
to nature's order of sex and partly to individual purpose or
responsibility. 14 The preservation of the species is an effect of
the sexual order, towards which the sexual organs and the entire
sexual life are teleologically directed. From this teleology in the
1

° Cf. C. G. III, 122; Mal. 15, 1 and 2; II-II 154, 2.

Suppl. 41, 2 co.
Ill 65, 2 co.
13 Cf. Brandl, pp. SO and 292.
10 This important
distinction between "Zielgebundener Dienst" and "Ordnungsgebundener Dienst " in the sexual life is brought out by Josef Fuchs in the already
cited article on parental responsibility (Sch. 26 (1951), pp. 222-243), written as a
critique of Albert Mitterer's book, Elternschaft und Gattenschaft nach dem Weltbild des hl, Thomas von Aquin und dem der Gegenwart (Vienna: Herder, 1949),
which questions the validity of Aquinas' teaching on the responsibility of education
and its relation to procreation. The principles expounded in Fuchs' article will be
closely followed in this section.
11

12

RESPONSIBLE

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system of St. Thomas' sexual ethics we can draw an important
conclusion, namely that the procreation-education of offspring
is not left up arbitrarily to the choice of the individual man, but
is determined by the natural law within a certain order. In
other words, since the very nature of coition is determined by
nature, then its accomplishment in a specific way fulfills the
plan of nature. 15 Once the procreative act is set in motion, the
marriage partners do not determine for themselves the purpose
of procreation. The primary responsibility committed to them
is that of preserving the proper order in their sexual relationships.16 Since the reproductive organs of man and woman are
made as they are, only nature (i.e. the Creator of nature)
sees to the accomplishing of the effect: procreation. This is
clearly indicated by Thomas when he says that properly performed sexual intercourse is per se good, even though per
accidens its natural consequence (conception) is excluded, as
in the case of sterility, old age, etc. 17 Sexual activity, which
renders a natural law service to the preservation of the species,
is related primarily to the specific nature of man, and indirectly
to the concrete order. 18
The preservation of the species, then, is not committed to the
care of the free and responsibile man as such, but occurs
through the observance of a fixed order of nature. 19 That which
is entrusted to the responsibility of parents (or potential
parents) is the care of the well-being of the individual offspring
which they procreate and other goods of the concrete order,
which demand of the parents a responsible use of the sexual
faculty in respect to other purposes and tasks, for Providence
has willed that the rational creature cooperate with Providence
in a rational way. 20
Cf. II-II 154, 1 co.; C. G. III,
For more on this distinction, cf. Antonius Lanza, "De fine primario matrimonii,"
ApoU. 13 (1940), pp.
17 C. G. III,
18 I 85, 3 ad 4.
19 " Generatio
. . . in quantum igitur ordinatur ad bonum naturae, quod est
perpetuitas speciei, dirigitur in finem a natura inclinante in hunc finem, et sic dicitur
(1951), p.
esse naturae officium." C. G. IV, 78. Cf. also Fuchs, Sck.
•• C. G. ill, 113.
16

18

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WARREN REICH

This distinction will become more apparent in the following
two examples. Fornication takes its malice from the fact that
the two persons are not bound together in such a way as to
insure that education will follow generation per se, independently of the particular circumstances and good will of the
partners. 21 Such extra-marital intercourse is sinful and is opposed to the natural law. But intercourse between diseased
marriage partners is also against the natural law, when it is
considered morally objectionable. In the first case the sexual
order, which allows of no exceptions, is violated; in the second
case there is a failure to observe the purpose or intention which
marriage partners must take into account, while at the same
time observing the sexual order. Thus, the perfectum esse
specificum of the offspring 22 is embraced within the very notion
of the marriage act, and is accomplished through the observance
of the sexual order, whereas the perfectum esse individuale is
a personal goal committed to the responsibility of the parents.
Violations of the sexual order are, in one sense, offences
against the species. Thus, irresponsible sexual intercourse,
which excludes the possibility either of procreation or of education, is opposed to the good of the human species, namely its
preservation, and harms the interests of the human species as
a community. Penal laws against homosexuality and bestiality, enacted by some States as members of the community
of men, are an indication of how humanity feels about such
offensive conduct.
We will now restrict ourselves to a consideration of that
aspect of sexual activity which is committed to personal responsibility: regard for the object of the procreative faculty and
the circumstances of the sexual act. The perfectum esse individuale would not be accomplished, for example, if the child
procreated were diseased by heredity, even though he were
conceived without any violation of the sexual order. St.
Thomas discusses this in the case of leprous parents. 23 Inter21

22

llfal. 15, I ad 3; 2 ad 12; C. G. III, 123; II-II 154, 2 co.; Suppl. 65, 3.
2 " Suppl. 64, I ad 4.

Cf. Suppl. 41, I ad 4,

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course on their part involves no violation of the sexual order,
although it may be inadvisable. It is a matter of making a
moral judgment from case to case.
Similarly, the preservation of the species is committed to the
care of parents: i.e. those concrete aspects of the preservation of
the species which are not determined by the simple observance
of the sexual order. St. Thomas himself makes moral judgments
on the use of marriage by appealing to the harm that would be
done to the species. There are aspects of the preservation and
well-being of the species which demand taking into consideration the purpose of the procreative faculty whenever sexual
activity is undertaken.
It is precisely the conditions in which the child is procreated
which weigh upon the sense of responsibility of the parents.
The moral judgment which parents must make concerning
procreation is found to be most difficult, not in the proper
observance of the order of sexual functions, but in this broader
field of responsible action, in which the setting in motion of the
sexual activity will have an effect on the child to be born or on
the race. In the previous section we arrived at the principle
that not only the individual, but even the human species can
be harmed by irresponsible action. Applying this to the use
of the procreative faculty, it follows that parents must effect
responsible procreation so as not to harm the individuals to be
born, 24 nor to disturb the well-being of the species and the
individual societies which make it up. Hence the good (that is
to say the quality) of the species demands responsible sexual
activity. For the value of mankind progresses, not so much
though numerical increase as by qualitative development.
Therefore the human community has the right that the accomplishment of this goal not be unduly prevented in an irresponsible way by individual parents. 25
Now just as the proper care (education) of the individual
•• II-II 65, 1 co.
•• Cf. Fuchs, Sck.

(1951), p.
Irresponsibility on the part of parents can
of course involve an offence against a particular State, but the responsibility due to
the species on the part of parents should not be over-emphasized.

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child is committed to the responsible attention of the parents,
and just as the procreation of diseased children is left up to the
moral judgment of the parents, so must the parents consider the
effect of procreation upon the society into which the child will
be born. For example, if the children are destined to grow up
in an overpopulated environment, the parents must be aware
of the possibility that the object of procreation may not be fully
accomplished in respect to the individual offspring, and furthermore that society, in these conditions, may be harmed by procreation which ignores the social consequences of human reproduction. This demands a judgment from case to case. The
norm to be used for making this very difficult moral judgment
on the part of the individual in respect to the needs of society
will be explained in the next section.

II.

THE

Goon oF THE SPECIES AND OvERPOPULATION

1. Procreation and Overpopulation

The human race is beset with certain problems which are the
concern of the entire world community. The common reaction
of mankind to some universal problems is ample evidence.
Disturbances which threaten world peace are discussed at
world-level conferences. 1 Violations of justice against the human dignity of large portions of the race have been prosecuted
in a world court. 2 Hunger suffered by millions over the globe
is considered such a serious problem of humanity as to warrant
coordinated responsible action by most of the nations of the
world. 3
The human race is beset with an additional problem, about
which men are showing a great concern: that of overpopulation.4 The Church admits that this is a very pressing problem
League of Nations, United Nations.
• The United Nations War Crimes Commission, which conducted the Nuremberg
Trials.
• The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization.
• Especially through the World Health Organization and the World Population
Conference.
1

RESPONSIBLE

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415

for modern man. 5 Current population trends present a challenge to sociologists, 6 and the decided concern of moralists. 7
Even without an investigation of the demographic principles
involved, it is obvious that a certain correlation must be maintained between variations in population and the prosperity of
any given region. 8 Any disproportions now existing between
production and population are particular and relative, although
very serious. There exists no ab8olute or total overpopulation,
but only relative or partial overpopulation. 9 It is the latter
which concerns us here: the problem of overpopulation which
exists today, without making any attempts at predicting the
eventual destiny of mankind.
The disproportion which gives rise to overpopulation flows
from social causes, and therefore its remedy must primarily be
sought in a reorganization of the social structure. 10 We do not
intend to present appropriate social cures, or to investigate
the notion of " optimum " population, or to discuss to what
degree a certain measure of overpopulation is helpful to the
5 Pius
XII, "Levate Capita Vestra" (Radio Message on the Feast of the
Nativity, 1952); A. A. S. 45 (1953), pp. 38-42.
6 For scientific statistics
and further bibliography, cf. L.-J. Lebret, Suicide ou
survie de l'Occident (2nd ed.: Paris: Les Editions Ouvrieres, 1958), pp. 25-45;
Alfred Sauvy, Thiorie generale de la population (2 vols.; Paris: P. U. F., 1952 and
1954); idem, De Malthus
Mao-T.%-Tung-Le probleme de la population dans le
monde (Paris: Dencel, 1958).
7 The
following works may be selected from a very extensive bibliography:
Stanislas de Lestapis, La limitation des naissances, (2nd ed., Paris: Spes, 1960);
William Gibbons, "The Catholic Value System in Relation to Human Fertility,"

a

Proceedings of the annual meeting of the Population Association of America
(Princeton: Princeton University, 1949), pp. 107-134; E. Tesson, "L'Eglise et la
regulation des naissances," Etudes 291 (1956), pp. 375-385; Louis Janssens, Morale
et problemes demographiques (Brussels: L'Edition Universelle, 1953); John
Thomas, "Prevalence of People," Social Order 9 (1959), pp. 119-127; idem,
"Catholicism and Population Control," ibid., pp. 147-157; "Notes on Moral Theology," T. S. 19 (1958), pp. 565-568; 20 (1959), pp. 625-626; 21 (1960), pp. 227229, 603; A. Snoeck, "Morale catholique et devoir de fecondite," N. R. T. 75 (1953),
pp.
8 Raymond
'Sigmond, " Optimum populationis et adaptatio procreationis," Ang.
29 (1952)' p. 141.
" Ibid., p. 152.
10 Pius XII, Levate Capita V estra, ibid.

416

W AHREN REICH

common good of human society, as some sociologists say. 11 Nor
is it our point to discuss the innumerable moral questions involved in a solution to the problem of overpopulation.
What we are seeking is an answer to the question: Granted
the existence of a critical problem of overpopulation, does the
teaching of St. Thomas on the social values of procreation and
the sense of responsibility in the use of the procreative faculty
offer to the individual man (or married couple) a directive or
norm for responsible, moral action? We are, for the first time,
seeking to make a moral judgment which is based on the
Thomistic teaching that procreation is for the good of the
species and which is applicable to the present condition of
society.
It is interesting that St. Thomas writes of such a " modern "
problem as overpopulation, although the particular situation
which he discussed possessed the characteristics neither of our
age nor of his, but that of Aristotle.
The concept of the regulation of population expansion is
found already among the Greeks: Plato, Aristotle and the legislators upon whom Aristotle comments in his Politica. 12 The
Greek notion of society was that of the stable world. The
notion of progress was in general alien to them. Furthermore,
the State had absolute right of control over the individual. 13
Applying this doctrine to the population problem, their desire
was to maintain population at its existing level, so as to avoid
the poverty and social disturbances which would be attendant
upon an expansion in the population.
St. Thomas, commenting on Aristotle, admits that, if we are
to accept Aristotle's premise that personal possessions are to be
maintained at a stable level within a given family, i.e. if there
is to be no possibility of further expansion, then human generation itself must in some way be controlled. 14
11 Cf. Raymond 'Sigmond, Philosophia socialis, Vol. II (Rome:
Angelicum, 1953),
p. 25.
12 'Sigmond, Philosophia socialis II, p.
18 Cf. Jacques Leclercq, Marriage and the Family, trans. Thomas Hanley
(New
York: Pustet, 1941), p. 258.
14 In Polit. II, lect. 6.

RESPONSIBLE

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In this teaching Aristotle differed from Socrates. Socrates
was in favor of the equality of possessions, but not by determining the quantity of generation, for he thought the number of
sterile and fertile women would balance things off. Aristotle,
however, expressed himself in favor of a determined limitation/ 5
in order to avoid poverty and the vices that spring therefrom. 16
Aristotle (and Thomas with him) saw that not to follow a
regular pattern in reproduction would bring harm to the State. 17
One method Aristotle proposed for regulating the population
was through limiting the size of the family by law. 18 Of course,
for Aristotle the regulation of the population normally referred
to the unit of the civitas, which is surrounded by walls,
is so united as to be a single unit, and is expected to be sel£sufficient.19
Thomas did not confine the problem to such a narrow perspective. Expansion in population can transcend the limits of
a closed economy in a given territory by means of emigration.
This recommendation is found in a text which deals with the
proposition of Phaleas of Chalcedon, who suggested that the
ideal order in the State is established by an equal division of
possessions among the citizens. 20 The outlook of Aquinas is
much broader than that of the Greeks. According to him, if a
solution cannot be found within the limits of a particular State,
then it can be sought within the limits of a more universal
society.
St. Thomas does suggest the restriction of children, 21 but
without discussing the problem of birth control. He confines
himself to rejecting the chief means which the ancient state
applied for controlling the birth rate, i.e. the toleration of
homosexuality. 22
Another solution offered by Aristotle is to exterminate the
superfluity of children, preferably by means of abortion performed before " sense and life " are present, for an abortion performed after these are present is reputed by the law to be
10

Ibid.

'"Ibid.
17 In Polit. IT, Iect. 13.
18 In Polit. ll,lect. 17.

In Polit. Ill, lect. 2.
•• In Polit. IT, Iect. 8.
21 In Polit. IT, lect. 8 and 17.
•• In Polit. II, lect. 15.

19

418

WARREN REICH

homicide and is a greater sin. 23 A further solution offered, was
that generation should be restricted to a certain time and age,
namely to that age of life when the man and woman are most
likely to produce the most perfect children. If procreation were
so restricted, then there would be avoided an excess of children.
Once the parents have passed four or five years beyond this
" perfect age," then " relinquere debent procreandi studium." 24
To summarize the teaching of St. Thomas on overpopulation,
it can be said that his outlook was broader than that of
Aristotle, but it was still limited by the conditions of his time.
Demographic questions were of little interest in that period,
for populations had been decimated by the barbarian invasions,
epidemics, wars, etc., so that it is not proper to speak of
demographic expansion in those centuries. 25 Hence St. Thomas
does not make much of the problem, but says simply: " Let the
surplus number of men be sent to form other cities, or (let it
be done) in another way." 26
Concerning Aristotle's basic principle of a stable population
within a stable economy, Thomas sees the problem with his
usual response to reality when he says that one cannot aim at a
proportionate equality in the distribution of property which is
vital for a political community, and at the same time allow an
infinite growth of the population. 27 But he remains aloof in his
own conclusion: " Either nothing should be established con23 In Polit. VII, lect.
This part of the Commentary on the Politics was not
written by St. Thomas, but by Peter of Alvernia who, nevertheless, can be said to
reflect the true thought of St. Thomas. Peter explains that it is not actually the
intention of Aristotle to advocate that certain infants be exterminated, but simply
that this was the lex gentium. Nor was he positively favoring abortion, but simply
wanted to say, that if some must be killed, it would better be performed "ante
sensum et vitam," but only as the lesser evil: " non sicut bonum secundum se, sed
sicut minus malum."

•• Ibid.
25 Cf. Raymond 'Sigmond, Fundamentum morale politicae demographicae (Rome:
Angelicum, 1956), p. 14.
•• " Superexcrescentes viri mitterentur ad alias civitates constituendas, vel quocumque alio modo." In Polit. II, lect. 8.
27 In Polit. II, lect. 6, 8 and 18.

RESPONSIBLE

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cerning the measure of possessions, or along with this something
should be regulated concerning the number of children." 28
St. Thomas wrote explicitly about the problem of overpopulation, but his teaching is of limited value for the conditions
under which the problem of overpopulation exists today. However, it seems appropriate at this point to review what Thomas
has said in other contexts concerning the number of the total
multitude of men to be procreated. In other words, if the
number of births should be restricted in the face of overpopulation,29 would this in any way contradict what Thomas has
taught elsewhere concerning the numerical values of procreation?
In a previous section on the " metaphysical " values of procreation, we saw that the multiplication of individuals within
the species is of secondary importance, for the essential perfection of the universe consists in having a large number of
different species, thereby filling many grades of goodness. 30
Specific goodness exceeds individual goodness as the formal
exceeds the material. Thus, generation and corruption of individuals is the means of perpetuating the species, in which the
perfection of the universe per se consists. 31
Mere numerical multiplication is not intended by an agent,
since it can go on indefinitely. 32 Generation cannot endure
forever: consequently there is a certain number of things
capable of being generated. 33 St. Thomas applied this principle
to individual men, who are intended as individuals because of
the perpetuity of their soul. But even in this case God does not
intend an indefinite number of men, for every cause intends to
produce something definite. 34 Only as many corruptible creatures are intended by God as are necessary to preserve the
species fittingly. But rational creatures are the most important,
••" Vel nihil statuendum est circa mensuram possessionum, vel simul cum hoc
ordinandum est aliquid circa numerum filiorum." In Polit. II, lect. 8.
•• Cf. In Polit. II, lect. 8 and 17.
30 In I Sent. 44, 1, 2 ad 6; In II Sent. S, 1, 4 ad S.
31 Ver. 5, 3 ad 2; C. G. II, 84.
33 IIIIO, S co.
32 I 50, 4 ad 4; C. G. I, 69.
•• I 28, 7.

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especially those which achieve beatitude. Hence the number of
men to be procreated is determined by the number of the elect. 35
Regarding the religious value of procreation, we have already
seen that a multitude of men has a special value, because of
man's immortality and beatitude, if the latter is attained. 36
Only the elect are per se and principally ordered to the good of
the universe, and thus their number is per se determined. 37 And
so, generation exists to fill this number of elect which has been
predestined by God. 38 But towards the end of the world,
" when human nature is arriving at the fulness of its perfection
and the number of the elect is already complete, generation will
cease." 39
In the New Dispensation men are procreated ad cultum
Dei, 40 but sheer numbers are not the intention of God, for He
is honored in the Sacrament of Matrimony when the offspring
are further ordered to God. 41 Furthermore, even in New Testament times, procreation is intended to fulfill the number of the
elect predestined by God/ 2 which is known only to God.
In the last analysis, then, the number of men to be procreated
is reduced to the number of the elect. We can presume that
Divine Providence will see to it that this mysterious number
of men is reached, while expecting on the part of man only
that he observe the designs of nature and act prudently in the
use of his faculties. St. Thomas nowhere proposes a "natalistic" policy, even ad regnum Dei.
2. Responsible Procreation

The use of the procreative faculty ought to be truly human,
which means, in the first place, that it must be a reasonable act,
or one guided by right reason, for the good of man consists in
•• I 23, 7.
Ibid.
•• Ibid.
38 Suppl. 81, 4 contra; cf. C. G. IV, 83; I 23, 7.
3 ° C. G. IV, 88; Suppl. 91, 2 contra; ibid. 97, 8 co.
•• C. G. IV, 58; I 65, 2.
41 Suppl. 49, 5 ad 1.
42 Suppl. 81, 4 contra; cf. C. G. IV, 88; I 28. 7.

85

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being in accord with reason. A rational approach to procreation
was insisted upon by Thomas because of all the positive values
of sex: the fact that it performs a service of nature in
preserving the species; the fact that it contributes to the
common good of the race; the consideration of its surpassing
value for the individual, embracing as it does the notion of
education to the full and virtuous man; the special relation
which it establishes to the good of the Church. In view of such
a positive appraisal of the procreative faculty, Thomas was led
to emphasize the necessity of the absolute preservation of the
order of reason in the use of the sexual faculty. 1
That the procreative act be truly a responsible one is made
more and more difficult, however, by the seemingly infinite
number of factors involved in such a decision-individual,
family and social factors. Here we are speaking of a " reasonableness " in regard to weighing the circumstances of an individual act, and not that reasonableness by which an action is
constituted specifically good by conformity to " right reason,"
that is to say, according as the object is suitable or unsuitable
to reason. 2 Saint Thomas explicitly taught that sexual activity
derives its specific morality from its conformity or lack of
conformity to right reason. 3 But man's actions must be directed
in a rational way, not only specifically, but also individually by
reason of their circumstances. 4 Man alone possesses understanding and reason, and consequently he can grasp in what
different ways a thing may be good or bad, depending on its
suitability for various individuals, times and places. 5 We may
assert this of the sexual order, and conclude that the individual
'" Quanto aliquid est magis necessarium, tanto magis oportet ut circa illud
rationis ordo servetur .... Usus autem venereorum est valde necessarius ad bonum
commune, quod est conservatio humani generis. Et ideo circa hoc maxime attendi
debet rationis ordo." II-II 153, 3 co.
2 I-ll 18, 5 co. and ad I; Mal. 2, 4 co.
8 I-II 18, 5 ad 8; 1 ad 8. " Cognoscere mulierem suam et cognoscere mulierem
non suam sunt actus habentes obiecta differentia secundum aliquid ad rationem
pertinens; nam suum et non suum determinantur secundum regulam rationis ....
In tantum autem sunt actus humani in quantum sunt actus rationis." Mal. 2, 4 co.
• C. G. ill, 118.
• I-II 18, 3 co.

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marriage act in concreto ought to be submitted to a rational
evaluation of the effects and repercussions of begetting new life. 6
We have seen that certain concrete aspects of the preservation of the species have been committed to the responsible action
of man. 7 The well-being of the species and of the particular
societies which make it up is an adjunction of the use of the
generative act which constitutes a personal goal for parental
responsibility. 8 We seek, in the writings of St. Thomas, a virtue
or virtues which regulate the responsibility to the species in
the use of procreative activity.
a) Prudent Procreation

Human fecundity must be a rational fecundity in respect to
the present and future condition of the species. But an objection may be raised. Will not Providence take care of family
needs and population: problems? Is not a" rational" approach
to procreation contrary to Divine Providence? To this we
should answer with St. Thomas that " among all others, the
rational creature is subject to Divine Providence in a more
excellent way, insofar as he becomes a partaker of Providence,
by being provident both for himself and for others." 9 In other
words, Aquinas takes the view that in giving man reason, God
intended him to work out Divine Providence in his own life, for
Providence is accomplished through secondary causes. 10 Human
generation is governed by Divine Providence, but in an essentially different way than in lower creatures, for generation is a
voluntary action for man, and has been committed to his
responsibility by Divine Providence. 11
6 Only the " praeambula,"
and not the actual procreation can be the object of
man's choice; effectual procreation is dependent upon conditions over which man
has no control. Cf. in Joa. 1, lect. 5 (19: 720b); C. G. II, 89; Pot. 2, 3 ad 13; Ver.
5, 10 co.; 13, 4 co.
• See supra, Part Two, I, 2.
8 This is treated more in detail a) and b).
• "Inter caetera autem rationalis creatura excellentiori quodam modo divinae
providentiae subjacet, inquantum et ipsa fit providentiae particeps, sibi ipsi et aliis
providens." I-II 91, 2 co.
1 °C. G. ill, 77; cf. ibid., 64; 113.
11 C. G. III, 113.

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Now the literal meaning of providence is foresight, which is
one of the component parts of the virtue of prudence. 12 Consequently, being provident about human procreation may rightly
be called prudent procreation or responsibile parenthood.
Because of the complexity of the present-day marriage situation, there is needed a virtue which governs and regulates complex, contingent, variable, and even future situations. Such is
the virtue of prudence which inclines man to sort out the
infinite number of individual circumstances/ 3 venture a prognostication of contingent events which will at least be verified
in most of the foreseeable cases, 14 and make a more or less
probable conjecture concerning future things. In short, prudence is wisdom about human affairs/ 5 the application of right
reason in matters where there is no fixed way of achieving an
end. 16
It can clearly be seen that the complex contingencies of
human reproduction ought to be submitted to the direction of
reason. In the prudent decision whether or not to procreate,
not only the needs of the common good, but all the values and
ends of sexual union must be compared according to a scale of
values, for man is only prudent when he seeks out and considers
all the aspects of a proposed action and then effectively solves
the practical problem. 17 The Angelic Doctor presented certain
cases, commonly discussed among medieval theologians, in
which various external circumstances had to be taken into
consideration in judging the morality of sexual intercourse in
individual situations.
For example, a question widely disputed in the Middle Ages
was the permissibility of sexual intercourse at sacred times,
i. e. on those days which ought to be specially dedicated to the
spiritual life.18 Thomas upheld the traditional prohibition,
12
18

II-II 49, 6 co.
II-II 47, 8 ad !2.

><I-II 96,
15

ad 8; II-II 47, 9 ad 2.

II-II 47, 2 ad 1.

16 Ibid., ad 8. For a more detailed study of St. Thomas' teaching on prudence,
see Josef Pieper, Traktat iiber die Klugheit (Munich: Kosel, 1955).
17 II-II 49,
co. and ad 8; in Ethic. II, lect. 8; VI, lect, 7.
18 Cf. Dominikus
Lindner, Der
Matrim<Jnii (Munich: Kosel and Pustet,
1929), pp. 156 ff. For St. Thomas' position see Suppl. 64, 7.

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because sexual pleasure so clouds man's reason as to make him
unfit for spiritual things. To contravene this prohibition is
sinful, but not gravely so, even when intercourse is sought for
pleasure. 19 But the granting of the marriage debitttm is permitted at this time, so that the petitioner may avoid the
occasion of sin. 20
Aquinas also taught, commonly with his contemporaries, that
intercourse during menstruation would be harmful to the child
who may be conceived/ 1 and consequently forbidden. 22 However, in such a case many values had to be weighed against one
another. If the marriage debt were requested during this period
and the wife could not dissuade her husband from his intentions, intercourse would be permitted and any eventual harm to
the child would be excused for three reasons: the uncertainty
of conception, the husband's right to intercourse, and the moral
harm he may suffer (danger of fornication) .23 In both of these
cases, a prudent judgment of the circumstances indicated the
advisability of intercourse because of the necessity of allaying
concupiscence. The personal marital needs of the spouses can
be of greater importance than other " external circumstances." 24
In more recent times an external circumstance of considerable
social importance has arisen, which must be considered in the
prudential judgment concerning procreation. This is the social
fact of population pressure. Now, it is the task of prudence
to consider not only the good of the individual, but the common
good as well, for Scripture instructs us that " charity is not
self-seeking," 25 and right reason tells us that the common good
is better than the good of the individuaU 6 Accordingly,
married people must consider not only their private good, but
22 Ibid., co.
Suppl. 64, 8 co.
23 Suppl. 64, 4.
Ibid., 9 co. and ad 1.
24 Cf. Suppl. 64, 4 ad 3.
21 Suppl. 64, 3 contra.
25 I Cor. 13:5.
•• " Cum ad prudentiam spectet recte consiliare, ac judicare, et ea praecipere, quae
ad debitum finem conducunt; ea non modo privatum respicit bonum, sed etiam
commune multitudinis bonum." II-II 47, 10 co.; cf. 50, ad 3. Prudence which is
directed to the common good is called political prudence, and is related to legal
justice. II-II 47, 10 ad 1; 11 ad 1.

19
20

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also the common good of society in their prudent inquiry,
judgment and effective implementation of the means necessary
for preserving the values and obtaining the various ends to be
achieved in the procreative act. This calls for the comparison
of an end of nature with a contingent factor (demographic
dynamism) in such a way that human action may not hinder,
but may serve as well as possible the human common good.
This is an example of the exercise of prudence, for in the
judgment of prudence universal principles of reason are applied
to the facts of a particular case, from which there is derived a
practical conclusion,Z7 which cannot guarantee the certitude of
a demonstrative science. 28 It is precisely the estimation of the
contingent elements (which is properly left to the area of
human responsibility) , which is the most difficult phase of the
prudential judgment, for the realities which surround man's
concrete activity are of an almost infinite variety. 29 The innumerable individual facts must be reduced by some methodic
order to a few categories which recur with some regularity,
" quae ut in pluribus accidunt." 30
The reduction of the myriad contingencies of population
dynamics to a practical norm demands critical study of the
science of demography, presentation of its conclusions in the
form of laws and theories, and an evaluation of the same. 31
Because of the obvious difficulties involved, the prudent judg27

II-II 47, 3.
In Ethic. VI, lect. 4. "Quia vero materia prudentiae

sunt singularia contingentia, circa quae sunt operationes humanae, non potest certitudo prudentiae
tanta esse, quod omnino sollicitudo tollatur." II-II 47, 9 ad 2; cf. I-ll 14, 1 co. 4
ad 3.
29 " ••• quasi infinitae diversitatis."
II-II 49, 3 co. "Est autem utilis contingentiurn cognitio secundum quod est directiva humanae operationis quae circa contingentia est." In Ethic. VI, lect. 3.
30 " Quia infiuitas
singularium non potest ratione humana comprehendi, inde est
quod sunt incertae providentiae nostrae ut dicitur Sap. 9. Tamen per experientiam
singularia infinita reducuntur ad aliqua fiuita quae ut in pluribus accidunt, quorum
cognitio sufficit ad prudentiarn humanam." II-II 47, 3 ad 2.
81 This problem is not included within the scope of our study.
For a thorough
presentation of demographic principles, doctrine and theories, cf. 'Sigmond, Fundamentum morale, pp. 26-73.
28

426

WARREN REICH

ment concerning these contingencies is best made by public
authorities, through an act of governative prudence, possibly
resulting in the formation of a demographic policy. 82
Does this absolve the individual person from an obligation to
be prudent in his procreative activity vis a vis any population
problems which may exist? By no means. St. Thomas teaches
that the prudence whereby a " city or kingdom " is governed is
political prudence, which is called regnative or governative prudence in the ruler, and political prttdence, simply so called, in
the subjects. 33 Thus, the individual shares in the political prudence of public authority by participating rationally in public
policies through his individual actions, for attaining a due end
within society. 34 The individual citizen must show discernment
in rationally serving the common good jointly with the superior
whose orders he obeys. 35 In fact, it is impossible to practice
individual (personal) prudence while completely abstracting
from the social effects of individual acts, for, as St. Thomas
says, it is impossible to achieve one's own individual good
independently of the common good "of the family, state or
kingdom." 36 Since man is a part of the home and the state,
" he must needs consider what is good for him by being prudent
about the good of the many." 37 Therefore, we can conclude
that an individual married couple has an obligation to the
30 The word " policy " should be understood 'in the broad sense, as a consistent
collective action, without necessarily implying direct legal intervention by the State.
cr. ibid., p. 9.
33 II-II 48, un. co.
•• II-II 47, 11 co. and 12 co.; 50, 1 co. and 2 co.
35 II-II 50, 2 co. and ad 2.
•• II-II 47, 10 ad 2.
37 Ibid.
Lottin notes that St. Thomas never treated ex professo the parallelism
between individual prudence and governmental prudence. (See Psychologie et
mwole II, p. 41.) Aquinas taught that the individual shares in social prudence,
but we should point out that the "individual couple's" judgment on the social
effects of procreation, made under the guidance of "political prudence," loses the
character of mere "individual morality," and must be seen in the context of
domestic (or family) p1'Udence as an act of domestic morality, since, according to
Thomas, the family (as well as the state) is not merely quantitatively different
from the individual, but is a specific reality formally distinct.

RESPONSIBLE

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427

species from the virtue of prudence to consider overpopulation
(if it exists) among the total responsibilities of parenthood
when judging whether or not to procreate.
Now prudence is an intellectual virtue which guides all the
moral virtues, indicating what truly corresponds to reason in
the practical order. It dictates the need for responsible action
in general, but directs other virtues, residing in the other
faculties, in regulating the medium rationis. 38 What are these
other moral virtues in the sexual order?
b) Other Virtues Governing P1·ocreation

Generally speaking, chastity is the virtue which realizes the
order of reason in venereal acts. 39 It receives its importance
from its special relation to the common good, in so far as the
generative act conduces to the common good of the species/ 0
but it is a virtue which regulates sex acts according to right
reason, primarily and principally by preserving order in the
interior appetite for veneral pleasure, 41 and secondarily by
preserving order in the external actuation of the sexual faculty
in a way proportinate to its due end. 42 Chastity taken strictly
in the former sense 43 constitutes part of the cardinal virtue of
ternperance.44 Although temperance, and not justice, is the
preferred norm of virtuous conduct in the Thomistic system of
sexual ethics, nevertheless these two virtues should not be
divorced, for the preservation of the species has a role to play
in determining the degree of chastity. 45
ss II-II 47, 6 co.
89 II-11 I5I, I co.; I53, 3 co.
••" Et quia virtutes ordinantes ad alium directe pertinent ad bonum commune;
et similiter virtus castitatis, inquantum actus generationis deservit bono communi
From this ordination to the common
speciei." 1-11 IOO, 11 ad 3; Mal. I5, ad
good St. Thomas deduces much of his sexual morality: the evil of fornication
(II-II I54, 4 co.; Suppl. 65, 3 ad 4), the gravity of imperfect acts of impurity
(II-II I 54, 4 co.), and the peculiar malice of sins contra naturam (Ibid., 11 co.).
"Mal. I5, I co.; 4 ad I; cf. 11-II I5I, 1 co.; 153, ad
I54, I co.
•• Mal. I5, I co. and co.
•• These two aspects of chastity are distinct and separable: cf. Mal. I5, I co .
.. 11-II I5I, 3 co.
•• Fuchs, Sexualethik, p. 309.

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WARREN REICH

Now, since temperance pertains to the sensitive part of man,
it is directed to individuals. 46 But because our problem pertains
primarily to the social aspects of sex we must consider a virtue
which pertains to the rational part of man and which could
regulate sexual activity precisely as it is ordered to the good
of the community. This is the virtue of justice. 47
We are speaking here not of that justice which may be
violated by adultery, 48 nor of that justice which requires that
the marriage debt be granted. 49 Instead, we are especially
concerned with the relation of procreation to the common good.
Because the relation of the individual to the common good of
society is governed by legal or general justice, 50 and since the
procreation of children serves the common good by preserving
and promoting the good of the human species, we must conclude
that the use of the procreative act is governed by legal justice.
This can certainly be predicated of the conjugal act insofar as
it accomplishes the preservation of the species through the
simple observance of the sexual order, for procreation is directed
by the inclinations of nature to the natural preservation of the
species. 51
But beyond this, the very decision to accept or refuse offspring, based on a judgment of the circumstances involved, and
abstracting from the observance or failure to observe the sexual
order established by nature, essentially touches upon the social
structure of a nation. Hence in particular cases, and for the
sake of the common good, general justice may require a more
"II-II 47, 10 ad 3.
" " Etiam temperantia et fortitudo possunt referri ad bonum commune: unde de
actibus earum dantur praecepta legis, ... Magis tamen prudentia et iustitia, quae
pertinent ad partem rationalem, ad quam directe pertinent communia, sicut ad
partem sensitivam pertinent singularia." Ibid.
ad 4; II-II 154, 1 ad
•• I-ll, 73, 7 co.;
•• Suppl. 41, 4 co.; 49, ad 3; In I Cor. 7, lect. 1 (13,
a and b).
60 " Virtus boni civis est iustitia generalis, per quam aliquis ordinatur ad bonum
commune." II-II 58, 6 contra. "Talis iustitia, praedicto modo generalis, dicitur
iustitia legalis: quia scilicet per earn homo concordat legi ordinanti actus omnium
virtutum in bonum commune." Ibid., 5 co.
"' C. G. IV, 78.

RESPONSIBLE

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429

abundant or even a less prolific multiplication oi the race. 52
From this we need not conclude to a positive legislative intervention on the part oi the public authority, ior the common
good is the source of many obligations which are not expressed
in positive codification. 53 In fact, it cannot be established that
there exists between the procreating family and society at
large a debt of offspring to be paid " ad aequalitatem " in strict
justice. Consequently, justice as a general virtue must direct
the acts of other virtues, 54 the performance of which will
establish a medium rationis in this matter. If this norm is
violated, an injustice is indeed committed against a special
object, viz. the common good, which is contemned; but by the
intention of the agent it is a general vice, since man can be led
to any sin if he has contempt for the common good. 55
A virtue similar to legal justice, governing in a particular
way man's relation to his country, is the virtue of piety/ 8
which inclines man to show homage to his country and his
fellow-citizens: "cultum exhibere patriae." 57 Whereas the
virtue of legal justice looks upon the bonum patriae as a
bonum commune, 58 pietas was the Roman virtue of patriotism
52 St. Thomas gives examples of when it is wise to abstain from marriage for the
good of society: cf. C. G. III, 136; Suppl. 41, co.
53 " Lege humana non prohibentur
omnia vitia, a quibus virtuosi abstinent sed
solum graviora, a quibus possibile est maiorem partem multitudinis abstinere; el
praecipue quae sunt in nocumentum aliorum, sine quorum prohibitione societas
humana conservari non posset." I-II 96, co.
54 " Et sic oportet
esse unam virtutem superiorem quae ordinet omnes virtutes
in bonum commune, quae est iustitia legalis, et est alia per essentiam ab omni
virtute." Il-11 58, G ad 4; cf. I-11 GO, 3 ad
61, 5 ad 4; In Ethic. V, lect.
55 " Iniustitia
est duplex. Una quidem illegalis, quae opponitur legali iustitiae.
Et haec quidem secundum essentiam est speciale vitium: inquantum respicit speciale
obiectum, scilicet bonum commune, quod contemnit. Sed quantum ad intentionem
est vitium generale: quia per contemptum boni communis potest homo ad omnia
peccata deduci." 11-11 59, 1 co.; cf. In Ethic. V, lect. 1.
56 " Tullius
ponit unam specialem virtutem, pietatem, quae ordinat ad bonum
patriae." I-11 60, 3 ad
Josef Pieper remarks that the modern term "piety" does
not accurately express the word pietas. Cf. his work, Uber die Gerechtigkeit, p. 117.
07 "Ad pietatem
pertlnet exhibere cultum parentibus et patriae .... In cultu
autem patriae intelligitur cultus concivium, et omnium patriae amicorum. Et ideo
ad hos principaliter pielas se extendit." 11-11 101, 1 co.
58 "Pietas
se extendit ad patriam secundum quod est nobis quoddam essendi
principium: sed iustitia legalis respicit bonum patriae secundum quod est bonum

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WARREN REICH

whereby the individual was bound to his country as the source
of his origin. 59 Piety essentially obliges us to show both reverence and service to our country as the source of our being, 60
but in reference to the common good. 61
For this reason we may say that piety governs the social
contingencies of the procreative act. What can piety demand of
us? This is determined by whatever is fittingly rendered to that
which is the source of our being, our education, and our government. 52 In fact, in time of need, piety can require that special
services be done for our country. 63 This could be taken as a
partial norm for the decision whether or not to procreate under
certain pressing social conditions. However, the duties of piety
are limited, relative to our own means and the personal claim
of the one to whom they are rendered. 64 It should be noted
that the " services " rendered out of piety are not gratuitous,
but are strictly due, and so piety is a part of justice; but because
it is not possible to make a return secundum aequalitatem of
what is owed from piety to one's connatural principle of being
and government, this virtue is only a potential part of justice. 65
And yet, perhaps this very tie of connaturality upon which
commune. Et ideo iustitia legalis magis habet quod sit virtus generalis quam pietas."
Il-11 101, 8 ad 8.
•• Thomas borrowed the notion of pietas from the Romans, and principally from
Cicero (cf. II-II 101, 1 contra. In the Roman mentality, pietas is a manifestation
of unselfishness and magnanimity, or of humanitas. For St. Augustine, it came to
express the essence of caritas. Although the teaching on piety is a traditional basis
for the pre-eminence of a common good, it had no fixed relation to the community
as such, viz. the political community. For more details on this, cf. I. Th. Eschmann,
M. St. 5 (1948), pp. 127-181; 140-141.
60 " Pietas
exhibet et officium et cultum: ut officium referatur ad obsequium,
cultus vero ad reverentiam sive honorem." 11-11 101, 2 co.
61 "Personis in dignitate constitutis
potest aliquid exhiberi dupliciter. Uno modo,
in ordine ad bonum commune: puta cum aliquis ei servit in administratione reipublicae. Et hoc iam non pertinet ad observantiam, sed ad pietatem, quae cultum
exhibet non solum patri, sed etiam patriae." 11-11 102, 8 co.
62 11-II 101, 2 ad 1; ad 2; 8 co.
63 Cf. ibid., 2 co. and ad 2.
64 " Cultus et officium debetur omnibus sanguine iunctis et partirae benevolis, non
tamen aequaliter omnibus: sed praecipue parentibus, aliis autem secundum propriam fa.cultatem et decentiam personarum." Ibid., 2 ad 8.
65 II-II 80, un. co.; 101, 8 co.; In .Ethics. VIII, lect. 14.

RESPONSIBLE

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piety is based would prompt individuals prudently to consider
the needs of their overpopulated country, where this would
be the case, since such needs of mankind are not always felt by
the individual.
On the other hand, it would be difficult to determine and
measure a certain obligation from piety in the very act of
procreation for the following reasons: 1) the one who would
be the recipient of this debitum (in this case, our country and
fellow-citizens) is a remote object, whose claim to our obsequium is correspondingly diminished; 66 2) the actual need of the
country is difficult to measure and apportion, 67 and cannot in
any case be paid" ad aequalitatem "; 3) finally, there are many
other personal values having prior claim in the conjugal act
which the virtue of piety must respect. 68
3. Conclusion

The virtue of prudence is the norm of action from which we
conclude to the need for a sense of responsibility in procreation.
To be truly prudent, married people must be concerned for their
own good, for the good of their family, and for the good of" the
city and the realm," demanding a corresponding practice of
personal prudence, domestic prudence, and political prudence. 69
So guided, they must judge when it is and when it is not
expedient for them to bring another child into the world. Not
only the condition of the spouses and the family, but also,
although more remotely, the condition of the common good is
an external circumstance which may indicate that the number
of children should be limited. One such exigency of the common
good of society is population pressure. The prudent couple
66 " Per prius debetur
aliquid parentibus quam patriae et consanguineis: quia
per hoc quod sumus a parentibus nati, pertinent ad nos et consanguine'i et patria."
II-II 122, 5 ad 2; cf. ibid. 102, 1 co.; 8 ad 8.
67 Cf. II-II 101, 2 ad 8.
68 " Exhibitio
honoris vel cultus non solum est proportionanda personae cui
exhibetur secundum se consideratae, sed etiam secundum quod ad exhibentes
comparatur." Ibid. 102, 8 ad 8; cf. 101, 2 ad 8.
69 II-II 47, 11; 50, 8 co.

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WARREN REICH

must be concerned about demographic considerations, because
as rational creatures they participate in a rational way in the
good of the commonweal. The exercise of political prudence
may result in a population policy on the part of the public
authority and a responsible acceptance or refusal of procreation
on the part of individual families. We believe that this conclusion follows logically from what Aquinas has taught on the
common good in general and the relation of procreation to the
common good.
Thus, parents incur a certain responsibility in respect to the
social equilibrium of the species, but in a manner generally
more remote than their responsibilities to themselves, their personal marital needs, and the total human condition of their
family, for "man ... is more inclined by nature to connubial
than political society." 70
To say that prudence is the guide to responsible parenthood
by no means rejects the other virtues mentioned. 71 Each contributes to a fuller knowledge of what reason demands, but prudence is the guide of all the moral virtues. Legal justice, the
virtue which effectively regulates the social contingencies of
sexual activity in reference to the true common good, is essentially directed by political prudence. 72 Both general justice and
political prudence are found principally in the legislator, but
secondarily in the subjects, who likewise exercise a rational
responsibility for the common good.
Whereas legal justice directs all the virtues in caring for the
common good, 73 piety more particularly can be said to provide
a norm for the responsible use of the sexual faculty related to
the bonum patriae, although admittedly there are difficulties in
applying both of these virtues to the relation of the individual
to demographic problems.
It should not be thought that responsible parenthood signifies
the emancipation of the conjugal act from the objective order
70

Suppl. 41, 1 contra.

71

See

b), supra.

•• II-II 47, 10 ad 3.
73

Legal justice deals secondarily even with the interior passions: II-II 58, 9 ad 3.

RESPONSIBLE

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488

of nature, or the total subjection of the generative faculty to
the current exigencies of the socio-economic situation of
society. 74 Rather, we say simply that it can be concluded from
the teachings of St. Thomas that individual married couples,
with whom the decision of procreation always remains inviolate,75 are obliged to make a decision to procreate what for
them would be the optimum number of children. The norm
derived from the teachings of Thomas is essentially that of
prudence, which inclines married people to make a judgment
whether to accept or refuse offspring, taking into account their
own personal needs, the proper education of their offspring, in
harmony with the other values of the family, and with an
awareness of the exigencies of the concrete social order, including the condition of overpopulation, in such a way that the
common human good may not be harmed, but rather promoted.
That such is the obligation of married persons is a conclusion
which follows from the principles enunciated by St. Thomas on
the social values of procreation and the responsibility which the
individual has towards the species in the use of the sexual
faculty.
WARREN REICH,

M.s. ss. T.

Holy Trinity Mission Seminary
Silver Spring, Maryland

.. This latter attitude was condemned by Pope Pius XII in "Levate Capita
Vestra," loc. cit., and in his Allocution to the "Fronte della Famiglia" and the
Association of Large Families, A. A. S. 43 (1951), 856.
75 ll-11 104, 5 co.

NOTES ON OUR CONTRIBUTORS
WILLIAM H. M. VAN DER MAReK, 0. P., S. T. D., author of the book, Love
and Fertility, whose studies on marriage have appeared in Optimale
Nataliteit, is Professor of Theology at the Albertinum, Nijmegen,
The Netherlands.
GERMAIN G. GRISEZ, Ph. D., author of the book, Contraception and the
Natural Law, whose natural-law studies on contraception are well
known through various media, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Georgetown University, Washington, D. C.
WARREN REICH, M.S. Ss. T., S. T. D., whose present work is an abstract of
a dissertation prepared under Josef Fuchs, S. J. at the Gregorian
University in Rome, Italy, is Professor of Theology at the Holy
Trinity Mission Seminary, Silver Spring, Maryland.
FREDERICKM. JELLY, 0. P., S. T. L., President of the Dominican Educational
Association, frequent contributor to a variety of publications, is
presently engaged in research for his Doctoral degree at the Dominican House of Studies, Washington, D. C.
THOMAS R. HEATH, 0. P., Ph. D., author of the book, In Face of Anguish,
a member of the editorial staff of THE THOMIST, is Professor of
Theology on the Pontifical Faculty of Theology at the Dominican
House of Studies, Washington, D. C.

434

BOOK REVIEWS
The Secularization of Christianity. By E. L. MASCALL. New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1966. Pp. xiii +
$6.00.
The thesis of this book is best expressed by the author's closing words:
" The conclusion to which I have found myself forced is twofold: first that
what we are being offered is not a reinterpretation of the Christian religion
but a substitute for it, and secondly that the arguments offered, from whichever field of study they have been drawn, are quite unconvincing. This does
not mean that traditional Christianity has nothing to learn from the new
techniques and discoveries; on the contrary, it can be revivified and enriched
by them. This task should be enough to occupy fully at least one generation
of theologians and one cannot prescribe in advance what its results would
be. All I can hope to have done in the present book is to show that there
is no valid ground for the failure of nerve which has stampeded many contemporary theologians into a total intellectual capitulation to their secular
enviornment." Dr. Mascall, Professor of Historical Theology at the University of London and an Anglican priest of the Oratory of the Good
Shepherd, is highly qualified for the task which he has undertaken. His
many other writings have provided a scholarly treatment of several
problems considered in The Sec1darization of Christianity.
The circumstances of this book's composition were the publication of two
others. One is the famous little paper-back Honest to God by the Anglican
Bishop of Woolwich, Dr. J. A. T. Robinson, who has startled the world
with his revolutionary ideas. The other, a longer and more professionally
theological work, is The Secular Meaning of the Gospel by Dr. Paul van
Buren, Associate Professor of Theology at Temple University. Mascall has
selected these two as " outstanding expressions of a radical and destructive
attitude to traditional Christianity which has obtained a foothold in many
academic circles in the United States and the United Kingdom, though until
the publication of Honest to God it was little known to the general public
and to the majority of the parochial clergy." Consequently, he has made
the two main chapters of his book a detailed analysis and critique of both
works. The rest of the book examines the intellectual setting in which the
ideas of Robinson and van Buren are placed. Three chapters, therefore, are
devoted to the philosophical, scientific and Biblical impacts of the question.
The author has written much more at length on the philosophical impact in
his book Words and Images, and on the scientific impact in Christian
Theology and Natural Science, but now adds to his writings an evaluation
of modern Biblical studies.
Chapter One, " The Changeless and the Changing," establishes the

485

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BOOK REVIEWS

author's philosophical platform in this problem, and is headed by a
quotation from Pope John XXIII: "The substance of the ancient doctrine,
contained in the ' deposit of faith ' is one thing; its formulation is quite
another." In this section are firmly founded the theological principles and
Christian convictions which form Mascall's criteria in judging the works of
Robinson, van Buren and others throughout the book. He gives three
reasons why it is so important for the Christian theologian to relate the
changeless revealed datum of Christian truth to the constantly changing
intellectual framework of the world in which he lives. The first is for
Christian instruction, since Christians themselves inevitably share in the
intellectual climate of their time. The second reason is apologetical, in that
the Church must commend its message to those outside it in language
which they can understand. And thirdly, for the sake of social action,
Christians should be able to see the relevance of their faith to the problems
of contemporary society to influence the solution of these problems in
accord with Christian concepts about man's nature, his destiny, his
condition, and his resources.
This most urgent and difficult theological task has been the occasion, in
Mascall's thinking, of two extreme positions. One is the reactionary
extreme, represented by Karl Barth, who exaggerated the changeless aspect
of Christianity and considered contemporary thought, if not contemporary
political history, as altogether irrelevant to the primary concern of the
Christian theologian. This movement of Biblical theology has looked upon
the examination of the Christian documents by modern critical techniques
and the expression of Christian truth in contemporary non-Biblical idiom
as outside his proper consideration. In opposition to this another school
in Protestant theology, represented by Robinson and van Buren, has recently
appeared. It goes to a radical extreme in demanding that the traditional
faith of Christianity be completely transformed in order to conform to
contemporary secularized man. These men, including Dr. Schubert M.
Ogden as the most extreme exponent, indulge in " reduetionist theology "
by retaining the word "Christianity," and even calling it "real" or
"authentic" Christianity, while reducing it to something that no one
would normally describe as Christianity.
Behind this movement of the deliberate secularization of Christianity
lies the famous program of "demythologizing" started by Dr. Rudolf
Bultmann. His basic assertion is that the New Testament writers have
presented the life and teaching of Jesus with mythological notions which
are quite unacceptable to the man of today, and that these myths can be
rejected while retaining the kerygmatic character of the Christian message
as a proclamation of the unique salvific and eschatological act of God in
Jesus. For Bultmann, the demythologizing process is really a reinterpretation of the mythology of the New Testament in terms of the existentialist

BOOK REVIEWS

437

philosophy of Heidegger, i.e. Christian beliefs are to be evaluated entirely
in terms of their effect upon one's present existence. He lumps together as
myths Hebraic cosmogony, belief in demons, Christ's resurrection, and the
traditional Trinitarian and Christological concepts, presumably because they
are all incompatible with the contemporary intellectual climate. At the same
time, Bultmann makes excessive demands upon modern man to respond to
the preaching of the Word of God with an existential commitment of the
Heideggerian type. Consequently, he would seem to rule out the possibility
of an authentic existence for a sincere non-Christian or non-Heideggerian.
At this point Mascall pauses briefly to consider Paul Tillich's contribution to the task of expressing the traditional faith in contemporary terms.
He accepts substantially the opinion of Fr. George H. Tavard in Paul
Tillich and the Christian Message that this outstanding figure has provided
the possibility of a genuine advance in Christologieal understanding. But
it is observed that a very similar theme was worked out as long ago as
1878 by Vladimir Soloviev, whose Lectures on Godmanhood was published
in English translation in New York in 1944. The author also leaves open
to serious doubt the success of Tillich's efforts to make the Christian
message relevant to modern man.
Maseall points out the two principal phases in the movement of
reinterpreting Christianity. The first is that the New Testament must be
radically demythologized according to Bultmann's program, although Tillich
took a philosophical instead of a Biblical starting-point. The second is
that the necessary reconstruction must be made on the basis of Heideggerian
existentialism, although van Buren departs from this by basing his demythologizing on the philosophy of linguistic analysis. In this context the author
makes some pertinent remarks about Professor R. B. Braithwaite's An
Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief, T. R. Miles' Religion
and the Scientific Outlook, and Dr. Peter Munz's Problems of Religious
Knowledge. He concludes that these three writers, along with Robinson,
van Buren, Bultmann, and Tillich, " agree in an evident determination to
abolish altogether, or at least reduce to a minimum, the supernatural
element and emphasis which has characterized Christianity throughout the
ages." This elimination of the supernatural seems to rest upon three main
types of argument, which may be found separately or in combined forms.
The first is the philosophical type, based on existentialism or linguistic
empiricism, which has, however, had the happy effect of forcing the philosophers of theism to re-examine their own proofs and to understand their
own position more profoundly. The second type flows from the assumption
that scientific discoveries have disproved the existence or at least the
relevance of supernatural realities. Thirdly, it is argued that the supernatural element of the Gospels is without any historical foundation, but
is the result of the mythological notions from the primitive Church. The

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BOOK REVIEWS

latter two lines of argumentation are examined m the last two chapters
of the book.
The author proceeds toward the conclusion of the first and most crucial
chapter of the book, by returning to the two extreme positions which he
rejects as solutions to the problem of relating the changeless in Christian
truth to the constantly changing situation of mankind. The first would see
certain verbal formulas as adequate, exhaustive, and final expressions of
the Gospel for all time, whether they be selected texts of the Bible, or from
the decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, or the confessional documents of the
Reformation, or certain dicta of fathers, scholastics or reformers, or the
famous collection of documents in Denzinger. The second extreme position
in this regard assumes that divine truth is so utterly indifferent to the
empirical events of the Church's history that its formulation in one particular context is unrelated to its formulation in any other, and so it is of
no real significance that the Christian faith received its classical formulation
in the intellectual climate of the Greco-Roman world instead of the Mexico
of the Aztecs or the Japan of the present day. Thus the Church's theological task is to discard the past as a positive hindrance and simply to
adjust the Gospel to the thought-forms and verbal customs of the local and
contemporary enviornment, whether it be Hinduism in India, Confucianism
and Taoism in China, or modern secularism in technocratic Western society.
Between these two extremes of dogmatic absolutism and agnostic relativism,
the doctrine of analogy represents the most determined attempt to solve
the very real problem as to how the finite inhabitants of a finite world can
possibly think or speak of an infinite being.
Mainly from the historical experience of Christianity's transition from
a Semitic to a Hellenic culture, and as a consequence of his own theological
stance, Mascall proposes three principles which he considers essential if we
are to commend the Christian way of life and thought to cultures which
have not yet received it. First, we must be clear in distinguishing the
substance of the ancient doctrine from its formulation (as Pope John XXIII
indicated). Secondly, although always ready to adapt the formulation, still
we should be anxious to share the blessings which have come to us in our
Christian heritage. Thirdly, by a process of cross-fertilization between the
Church and the hitherto non-Christian culture, we must be receptive to the
insights of others in making the new formulation, since we are not only
concerned with the adaptation of Christianity to novel situations, but with
the integration of new people and cultures into the historic Body of Christ.
Strictly speaking, therefore, only one Christianity exists in every time and
place so that there is really not an African Christianity of the third century
or a European Christianity of the thirteenth century, or an Asian Christianity of the twentieth century. He comments that the task has been begun,
and some of the greatest contributors have been such Catholic scholars as
Professor Zaehner, Dom Aelred Graham, Fr. Victor White and Bernard

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439

Kelly. He also remarks that the task faces a different situation in Asia,
which has highly developed systems of philosophy, and in Africa, where
there is almost no native philosophical thought, but elaborate social and
religious patterns. In addition, we must remember that the impact of
Western secularism upon Asia and Africa has been greater than that of
Christianity, and that the attractions of Marxism, with its promise of an
earthly beatitude, are always present.
The author concludes his first chapter with the comments that, although
this book is concerned with a critique of one particular type of program
to reinterpret the Christian faith in the secularized society of the West,
still it seemed to him essential to see the task in the broader perspective
of the Church's confrontation with the contemporary world as a whole.
He wishes to show that the program endorsed by Robinson and van Buren,
is not radical enough because of its provincial conformity to the alleged
demands of twentieth-century secularized man, which would discard the
Christian wisdom of centuries and also ignore the profound insights of other
great world religions. As anxious as he is to see Christian doctrine presented
in a relevant way to contemporary Englishmen and Americans, he is even
more anxious that what is presented to them shall be truly Christian
doctrine and not some substitute for it. Likewise, he is aware that such a
provincialized program may make the Gospel unintelligible to a much wider
and less secularized body of people. Finally, he would solve the problem
of the relation between the changeless and the changing in Christianity in
this way. While all formulations of Christian truth are necessarily limitecl
by human speech and thought patterns, the truth itself (the "substance
of the doctrine " as distinct from its " formulation ") exists in its fullness
in the mind of Christ. And it is because the Church, of which the theologian
is a member and an agent, is Christ's Body that the formulations are
genuine, though partial and inadequate, expressions of the unformulated
substance of Christian truth in the mind of him who is Truth itself.
Chapter Two, a detailed analysis and critique of van Buren's The
Secular Meaning of the Gospel, bears the book's title "The Secularization
of Christianity." Mascall points out that the author's special approach
is indicated by the additional phrase: " based on an analysis of its
language," and that he is concerned not with commending the Gospel to
modern man outside the Church, but with secularizing its understanding
by the Christian man already inside the Church, who only then will be
able to relate his life to the world in which he lives. For van Buren the
task at hand is not to Christianize the secular mind, but to secularize the
Christian mind. He takes quite literally the words written by Dietrich
Bonhoeffer in a Nazi concentration camp under conditions of severe physical
and emotional distress: "Honesty demands that we recognize that we
must live in the world as if there were no God," and assumes that a
Christian can be a twentieth-century Christian only by adopting completely

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the intellectual outlook of other twentieth-century men in a secularistic
society. He is interested in secularizing theology, but has no theology of
the secular, which would correspond to the theocentric humanism found
in Jacques Maritain's True H1tmanism, or to the vision of the scientist and
technician transforming the world according to the divine designs as
portrayed in Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's The Divine Milieu. He has not
heeded the apologetic for supernatural religion which has been developed so
brilliantly from a purely scientific and empirical standpoint by the French
biologist, M. Remy Chauvin, in his work God of the Scientist, God of the
Experiment. The whole notion of Christian sociology, as exemplified in the
social movement inspired by F. D. Maurice, becomes for him simply
irrelevant, if not pernicious.
Rejecting both Bultmann and Ogden for not conforming adequately to
the demands of the radically empirical outlook of modern secularized man,
van Buren undertakes the task of secularizing Christianity with the
philosophical tool of linguistic analysis, particularly under the influence
of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. On this basis, there are two
principles of interpretation which he applies to Biblical, patristic and
conciliar expressions of Christianity. First, statements of faith are to be
interpreted as expressing, describing, or commending a particular way of
seeing the world, other men, and oneself, and the way of life appropriate to
such a perspective. Secondly, the events of the New Testament documents,
centering in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, constitute the norm
of the Christian perspective. As a consequence of his secularist empiricism,
he interprets the Easter event of the Gospel in a purely natural way.
Jesus, who was truly man and so could not be also God, died, and thus,
like any other dead man, cannot now be alive. The resurrection is the
experience of the apostles "catching" the freedom of Jesus who gave
himself for others in death. Christianity is the " contagion " of this freedom
of Jesus caught by others from the primitive witnesses and spread over the
ages. Van Buren reinterprets the Council of Chalcedon and classical
Christology about the unchanged and unconfused union of the two natures
in the person of the Word, as meaning that the history of Jesus is a bit
of quite ordinary human history and should not be confused with the
Christian perspective which, through its contagious character, it has inspired. Several other concepts of the Christian faith, as Revelation, Predestination, Creation,
Providence, Sin, Justification, Sanctification, the
Church as the Body of Christ, Baptism, Preaching and the Lord's Supper,
receive similar reinterpretations, and are still called Christian.
In Chapter Three, somewhat satirically titled " Emotion Recollected in
Tranquillity," Mascall makes a reconsideration of Bishop Robinson's Honest
to God. He explains that his minute examination of this book may appear
finicky and fault-finding to many, but it was necessitated by the fact that

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441

such a popular theological work can cause much confusion without the
proper clarifications. The author does not think that Robinson realizes the
implications of his words, which seem to express a despair of converting the
world to Christianity and a decision to try converting Christianity to the
world. He is so desirous of including within Christianity every sincere
person, even those who profess atheism and agnosticism, that he is prepared
to atheize and agnosticize the Christian faith to embrace within it the
professing unbeliever. This is certainly not taking with sufficient seriousness
secularism or contemporary unbelief, which knows what it rejects in Christianity. Most intelligent people who call themselves " atheists" understand
what belief in God is, and are not refusing to accept Him merely because
most Christians speak of Him as the "Old Man in the sky." His concern
about the Christian belief in a God " out there " being a hindrance to the
Gospel is unwarranted according to Mascall, who considers that the ordinary
Christian makes the necessary adjustments concerning the mental pictures
of God, while professional intellectuals would be familiar with the
analogical nature of our language about God. Even if a God " out there"
were a Christian idol that had to be destroyed, something much more radical
than what Robinson will propose as a substitute is needed to commend the
Gospel to the contemporary secularized man. The author observes: " It
is interesting to speculate what kind of book Robinson might have written
if he had had behind him the Catholic tradition, with its doctrine of grace
as perfecting nature and not destroying it."
It may be interesting to note here that Mascall, more than once in
the book, appeals to this principle of balance between grace and nature in
his critique of the secularizers of Christianity, a principle whose prominence
in Catholicism has been greatly fostered by the Thomistic theological
tradition. He continues by expressing his surprise that Robinson would
think " traditional Christian theology has been based upon the proofs for
the existence of God," when one has but to read the first question of the
First Part of the Summa Theologiae by a Catholic like St. Thomas Aquinas,
or to be at all familiar with the works of a Protestant like Luther, to realize
that it is based upon divine revelation. The author also calls upon the
Thomist commonplaces that God is "being itself" (ipsum esse) and that
with creation there are more beings and not more being, to answer Robinson's charge, taken from Tillich, that the supernaturalistic view holds God
is a being, not being itself. In his desire to remove any kind of supernaturalism, Robinson even condemns the picturing of God as a Person.
When he states that " the word ' God ' denotes the ultimate depth of all
our being, the creative ground and meaning of all our existence," Mascall
comments that this is a thoroughly traditional statement if the word
' creative ' is taken in its normal theological sense. But Robinson and
Bonhoeffer do not accept it in St. Thomas' sense that God preserves all
things in existence, since they are hostile to the concept of God as creator of

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the whole universe. The author seriously doubts that speaking about God
to modern man in ' depth ' imagery in place of ' height ' metaphors will
solve the problem of making C.hristianity relevant. He sympathizes with
Robinson's view that academic theology has been almost completely
irrelevant to the lives of ordinary people, but laments that he has found
inspiration only in fragments of Bultmann, Bonhoeffer and Tillich.
Many more comments might be made about Mascall's criticisms of
Robinson's program of radically recasting Christianity in the secularist
mold, which puts into the melting all the traditional teachings without
finishing with a product as purely and unmistakably secularized as that
presented by van Buren. For the purposes of this review, however, we
should now consider briefly the author's fourth chapter, "Science, the
Secular and the Supernatural." He carefully and clearly defines what he
means and does not mean by the secular and the supernatural. The secular
embraces the whole body of thought and activity concerned with man's
life in ' this world ' from human conception to bodily death. It is not
synonymous with' material,' since a man who denied God and immortality
but attributed the highest value to mathematical knowledge or the appreciation of music could be called a secularist, but not a materialist. In contrast,
the supernatural includes the whole body of thought and activity concerned
with man's life in 'this world ' as deriving ultimately from ' another
world' in which it finds final destiny beyond bodily death. In this sense
it has nothing to do with spooks and hauntings, nor is it synonymous with
the miraculous, which may be purely natural in its purpose, e. g. restoring
health to a sick man. With these distinctions in mind, Mascall is here
mainly concerned " to show that it is possible to recognize the legitimate
claims of the secular without becoming a secularist and without abandoning
the traditional Christian belief in the primacy of the supernatural." Applying this to his critique, he mentions that Robinson's failure to make such
a clarification has caused his writing to be both ambiguous and confused,
while van Buren appears to be perfectly clear and quite simply a secularist.
The author also applies his principle of the proper relationship between the
secular and the supernatural to a criticism of Dr. C. H. Waddington's
Science and Ethics and The Ethical Animal, which he considers to be the
most impressive attempt to erect a secularist humanism on the basis of
modern science. This " scientific humanism " has had a considerable influence upon our modern technocratic civilization and on theologians like
Ogden, van Buren and Robinson. He concludes the chapter with a brief
but brilliant defense of miracles in a response to the objections of a
scientific age.
The fifth and final chapter, "Fact and the Gospels," examines more
minutely the third reason for the current anti-supernaturalist attitude
among theologians today, namely the sort of Biblical scholarship of

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Bultmann and his followers which explains the supernatural element in the
Gospels and primitive Christianity generally as a result of the mythopoetic
activity of the early Church in its reflection upon its own religious experience. Although he makes no pretensions of being a Biblical scholar,
Mascall, as an educated outsider, considers himself competent to criticize
this position for a number of reasons. One is that the Biblical scholars, while
for the most part they confidently express their conclusions, are very
much at odds with one another. In defense of the basic historicity of the
Gospels, the author argues quite convincingly that the position of the
form-critics, who state that the Gospels are primarily evidence for what
their writers believed about the events which they recorded, and are only
secondary evidence for the events themselves, is equally true of secular
history and biography. This position, therefore, does not demand the
assumption that we cannot get behind the beliefs of the writers and of the
community to which they belong, to the events themselves. Even contradictions or proven errors on particular points do not necessarily destroy the
credibility of the narrative as a whole. Mascall comments that he is not, of
course, attacking responsible Biblical scholarship, but that it is of prime
importance to emphasize " that any argument against the authenticity of
some incident recorded in the Gospels is entirely valueless if it is based
upon an explicit or implicit presupposition against the supernatural and
the miraculous." For it is illogical to deal with a case in which the unique
factor of the Incarnation is involved and apply to it criteria from a general
range of experience from which that factor is ex hypothesi absent. A good
portion of this concluding chapter is devoted to a critique of Dr. John
Knox's The Church and the Reality of the Christ, which "reduces all
theology to ecclesiastical psychology." Mascall observes that van Buren,
Robinson, and Knox, while differing a good deal in their interpretation of
the factual character of such traditional and central objects of Christian
faith as the virginal conception and physical resurrection of Christ, are
all anxious to accept them " as edifying myths, expressing aspects of
Christian existence in a moving and evocative way."
To whatever extent anyone may accept or reject the theological position
and critique offered by Dr. Mascall in The Secularization of Christianity,
I am confident that he would agree with the reviewer in New Blackfriars
who said: " This is a book which absolutely demands a reply from the
other side on the same academic level." I would add that it also demands
from those on Mascall's side a concerted effort to develop a truly Christian
theology of secularity which can meet the challenge of relevance to contemporary man. And this book requires reflective reading by all who want
to follow intelligently the current theological debates.
FREDERICK

Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D. C.

M. JELLY, 0. P.

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Evil and the God of Love. By JoHN HicK. New York: Harper and Row,
1966, pp. 404, with index. $6.95.
God and the Permission of Evil. By JAcQUES MARITAIN. Translated by
Joseph W. Evans. Milwaukee: Bruce, 1966, pp. H!l, with index of
proper names. $3.75.
The Lord of the Asburd. By RAYMOND J. NoGAR, 0. P. New York:
Herder and Herder, 1966, pp. 157. $3.95.
Nostalgia for Paradise. By SISTER SYLVIA MARY, C. S.M. V. New York:
Desclee, 1965, pp. £30 with index. $4.75.
After one of his lectures Raymond Nogar was questioned: "If spacetime history is of the essence of man, and the making of history his free,
creative and personal prerogative and obligation, how is it possible to
tolerate and to justify the suffering and annihilation of so many people who
suffer and are annihilated for the simple reason that their geography sets
them in the pathways of history? " (p. 84). The first sentence of John
Hick's book reads: " The fact of evil constitutes the most serious objection
there is to the Christian belief in the God of love" (p. ix). Jacques
Maritain very early in his book comments that the problem of evil,
injustice, cruelty " is at the origin of many forms of atheism, at the origin
also of what one could call in many the bewildered Christian conscience "
(p. 3) . Sister Sylvia Mary informs us that the various mythical versions of
an " original paradise, lost through some fault, are of immense importance,
and they constantly recur. They reveal the fact that in the heart of man
there is a perpetual nostalgia" (p. 11).
All four of these books, then, deal in one way or another with the problem
of evil. Hick, in an impressive work, faces it fully and attempts an historical
and systematic theodicy for our times; Maritain engages only one, though
crucial, aspect of it; Nogar brings the light of his studies on evolution to
bear on it; and Sister traces the nostalgia for paradise through the myths of
ancient cultures as a sign of God's gracious influence on men struggling in
the valley of darkness.
John Hick suggests for Evil and the God of Love a fuller, more descriptive
title: " A critical study of two responses to the problem of evil that have
been developed within Christian thought and an attempt to formulate a
theodicy for today" (p. 3). The two responses he sees as Augustinian and
Irenaean, and his own theodicy, though mainly Irenaean, accepts some
elements from the Augustinian. Four theological and four philosophical
themes dominate in the Augustinian tradition. The first four are: that
creation is good; that pain and suffering are a consequence of the fall of
man; that the fall was a felix culpa since it brought redemption; that there
is final moral balancing in heaven and hell. The second four are that evil

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445

is a privation, a kind of non-being; that metaphysical evil, i. e. the imperfection in aU creatures below God, is basic; that it is better to have many
beings on various levels of perfection than all on the highest level (the
principle of plentitude); that the universe should be looked upon as a work
of art (the aesthetic principle) .
Irenaeus differs from this tradition mainly on three points. He did not
place an original perfection in man but saw him as created weak a.'l.d
immature yet invited by God to grow spiritually. Thus, secondly, the fall
was an understandable lapse and the physical evils of pain and suffering
(his third point) must not be regarded as punishment but rather necessary
environment in which man is to " make " his soul. To these themes Hick
notes some others taken from the thought of Fredrich Schleiermacher who,
while not consciously following the teaching of Irenaeus, did develop similar
themes independently. "Original perfection" to Sehleiermaeher is the basic
structure of human nature whereby it can come to a consciousness of God.
It is " original " not in time but exists in all men as a fundamental and
constitutive element. " Original sinfulness " is seen as that element in all
men which impedes their God-consciousness, its root is man's " sensuousness," his flesh. Schleiermacher teaches further that the finite mode of our
life is not sinful but that our anxiety and fear about it is. God, according
to Schleiermacher, since He made man and put him in this environment,
can be called the author of sin, but sin as ordained to the redemption. Thus,
sin becomes a kind of instrument of God to assist Him in His holy work.
Schleiermacher teaches, finally, that God's good purposes will win out in
the end, that all men will be saved, that there can be no abode of eternal
punishment.
From these elements Hick constructs his theodicy for our day. He accepts
from the Augustinian tradition the goodness of creation and, especially, the
felix culpa doctrine. But he denies that pain and suffering are the consequences of the fall of man. Accepting the modern findings in evolution and
regarding the Adam and Eve story as myth, Hick simply affirms that there
never was an original sin. " The story of the fall does not describe
genetically how our human situation came to be as it is, but analyses that
situation as it has always been. . . . From his first emergence from the
lower forms of life he has been in other than perfect fellowship with his
Maker. We cannot speak of a radically better state that was; we must
speak instead in hope of a radically better state which will be " (pp. 181italics his). Hick accepts, then, the Irenaean-through-Schleiermacher
tradition that man was always imperfect but capable of growth in God
consciousness, that one could call this capability " original perfection " but
Hick would rather not. He sees as the basic deficiency of the Augustinian
tradition the lack of a personal dimension, i.e. that a personal God is creating a world for human persons, calling to them, loving them, helping them
to come to eventual fellowship with Him. The Augustinian outlook tends

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to regard the universe as a thing in which man is the highest "thing";
it regards evil as so many shadows which tend to bring out the light laying
across God's "painting." It is anxious to discover balance and symmetry
and for this reason emphasizes the final moral balancing in heaven and hell.
Hick denies the eternity of hell but for the reason that God's purpose of
having man " make his soul " seems largely unfulfilled on earth, Hick comes
out strongly for the Catholic doctrine on Purgatory. There is no hell, but
there definitely is purification beyond the grave.
Regarding human sufferings Hick is strongly opposed to the distinction
between the willing and the permitting of them by God. That distinction
does not make sense, says Hick, since God is omnipotent. It does make sense
in men who are not strong enough to avoid evil effects in many of the good
things they do; but God, obviously, is strong enough. Therefore we cannot
say that He merely permits suffering, He wills it directly. He wills it as a
means of strengthening men in their pilgrimage towards God.
Somewhat as a corollary to this, though not in the same stark terms,
Hick calmly accepts God's responsibility for sin. God made man weak. It
should come as no surprise to Him that His weak creation would sin. He
criticizes the Augustinian conception of the " original perfection " of man as
an attempt to get out of putting the responsibility for sin on God. If man
had absolutely no tendency to sin, if he lived in God's presence, then how
in the world could he have sinned? Sin would then be a creation ex nihilo;
and Hick dismisses that as unrealistic. However, though weak, man is
still free, still possessing a genuine though limited autonomy from God.
Otherwise there could be no true love, trust, admiration of God by men, no
true fellowship between God and man; and it is for this ultimate and eternal
fellowship with Him that God created man.
In summing up Hick's position, then, we may say that it is personal
rather than impersonal; eschatological, looking towards the future, rather
than nostalgic, looking towards the past; "realistic," accepting God's
responsibility for sin, rather than "naively idealistic." At the same time
it recognizes the genuine freedom of man and especially the great good
involved in the redemption of man by Christ.
Obviously, we have not tried to bring in everything of Hick's book, have
not even tried to summarize it. The above represents an attempt at a fair
presentation of his thought. We have skipped, for example, his treatment of
St. Thomas, which is generally fair and accurate, as well as his treatment
of modern Catholic thought, presented mostly through analysis of Charles
Journet's The Meaning of Evil, which Hick criticizes sharply and somewhat
contemptuously. It is the only sour note in the book. These elements are
not the crucial issues. Hick's understanding of original sin, punishment,
God's will, and the eternity of hell are.
I accept, first of all, the general observation that the Augustinian defense

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of evil, deriving from neo-platonic elements, is too impersonal. Hick
himself, citing Maritain, notes, however, that Aquinas does relate an essentially aesthetic vision of the universe to redemption and in that way
"personalizes " the problem (p. 103) . Thomas writes: " The justification
of the ungodly, which terminates at the eternal good of a share in the
Godhead, is greater than the creation of heaven and earth, which terminates
at the good of a mutable nature" (S. T. 1-2, q. 113, a. 9). Also at the
beginning of his tract on the Incarnation he notes that " God allows evils
to happen in order to bring a great good therefrom; hence it is written,
' Where sin abounded grace did more abound.' Hence, too, in the blessing
of the paschal candle we say, '0 happy fault that merited such and so
great a Redeemer'" (3; q. 1, a. 3, ad 3). Hick does not gloss over these
texts. But I think he is right in claiming that the Augustinian and
Thomistic presentation does depend perhaps too much on the view of an
" impersonal " universe, with occasional corrections of that view in texts
such as these just cited.
Again, Hick is right in presenting the Augustinian conception of the
perfection of Adam and the terrible calamity of the fall as the traditional
explanation of the evils in the world. But recent Catholic scriptural scholarship has commented extensively on this tradition. If Hick had been familiar
with Dubarle's The Biblical Doctrine of Original Sin, first published in
French in 1958, or with many other books and articles that have appeared
in Catholic journals during the fifties, he never would have said that the
ancient myth of the origin of evil in the fall of man is still regarded by
us as giving hard historical data (cf. p. 282). The Council of Trent
deliberately passed over a doctrinal draft in which Adam's gifts were
described in the classical way to affirm simply that the first man lost "the
holiness and righteousness in which he had been constituted." The present
situation of Catholic thought on the matter of original sin, evolution, and
all the problems raised by modern science, is not absolutely fixed. Paul VI
received wide publicity in his recent statement on these things, but it was
meant as warning against too easily accepting whatever one finds in the
conclusions of modern thinkers; it was not meant to shut all the doors on
responsible theological investigation.
The weakness of the Irenaeus-Schleiermacher-Hick synthesis lies in
Hick's objection to his own thesis. In his view God seems to have allowed
evil to come into the world as a kind of small domestic animal. But then
it got out of control. The sadistic cruelty, the deliberate destruction of
personality, the crushing of human beings, the mass murders of the concentration camps-is God responsible for these? Hick's answer is ambiguous.
On one page he emphatically says no, on another he says it is wrong to
exonerate God from all responsibility for sin. Hick never answers this
contradiction. When he treats of the excessive evils in the world he uses,

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for the first time, the expression "mystery." Apparently these are the
only things that stump him; all the rest are severely under Hick's rational
control. He fails to see that the whole business is a mystery; that if the
small domestic animal is going to grow into a ravenous beast then the
small domestic animal is a mystery. He cites very early in his book the
famous distinction between problem and mystery made by Gabriel Marcel.
But he distinguishes evil in the sufferer (to whom it is a mystery) and in
the onlooker, to whom it is a problem (p. 10). In the sufferer, then,
suffering is an experienced mystery which must be faced. " But it does not
at all follow from this that the intellectual problem of evil is a false or an
unreal problem, or that our obligation to grapple with it is in any degree
lessened" (p. 10). Marcel would probably answer that it is simply
impossible to treat it as a problem. If suffering is in the one suffering it is
also in the one watching. Can one watch another suffer without being
profoundly touched, without being " mystified " in some way?
The small domestic animal is a mystery. The absolute goodness of God
is a mystery. And it seems better to state the mystery from the beginning,
as the author of Genesis does in symbolic terms, which the Augustinian
tradition follows. This does not mean that we must subscribe to all of
the Augustinian tradition about the fall of man. Trent did not accept the
view that the first man had fantastic powers of perception. Adamwhether one or many-was probably very primitive, but as C. S. Lewis
suggests in his Problem of Pain-a book Hick recognizes as "an eloquent
presentation of the traditional concept "-the fact of primitiveness does not
exclude holiness. A child before possessing any knowledge of technology
whatsoever can still experience a genuine sense of the presence of God and
can achieve a deep degree of prayer and holiness. Adam could have been
like that, shaggy, if you will, but still holy and marvelously close to God.
And nowhere in the Augustinian tradition is the claim that the first man
was beatified, which Hick seems to imply, for that surely would make sin
impossible. He was holy, close to God; but he was free. The mystery of
sin begins there. But as Dubarle suggests, the " original sin " episode in
Genesis does not end with the sin in the Garden, it goes on to the murder
of Abel by Cain, the growing sensuality and violence before the flood, and
the universal pride at the tower of Babel. One must bring all these incidents
in to have the full explanation of the origin of evil as presented in Genesis.
Sin began as the small domestic animal but its destructive seed flowered
darkly into universal division and discord. But it did begin. It seems a
weakness for Hick to say that there was no beginning to sin, no original
sin, that mankind was always the way it is. That is more difficult to accept
than the " sin ex nihilo " theory he ascribes to the Augustinian tradition.
It is, however, precisely to re-examine this problem that Maritain has
written his little book God and the Permission of Evil. He immediately

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449

places a triple distinction in God's activity which may be helpful. God may
will, or permit, or admit. The willing touches the being and goodness in
creation, the permitting touches moral evil, the admitting touches the evil
of nature. In creating a tree, for example, He wills its existence, growth,
productivity while at the same time willing indirectly, or admitting, the
losses and evils which come to the tree. He directly wills the tree and He
directly wills the laws which cover the tree, generation, corruption etc.
But the life, which participates in and shows forth God's life, and which is
constantly being renewed in succeeding generations of trees, is the important element. Death is necessary for the constant re-appearance of new
life, a new life which suggests, in some ways, God's eternal newness. God
does not, then, will the life of the tree in the same way that He wills its
death; the first He wills directly, the second indirectly. "I am the God
of the living." This distinction does not hold for moral evil. He permits
that. As Maritain says, " Of course, to permit is something voluntary and
free; it is not to will to prevent. But to say that for certain reasons I
permit or do not will to prevent a thing I abhor, is not at all to say I
will this thing even the least bit; it is not at all to say that I will this thing
italics his).
permissively" (p. 1, n.
And so from the beginning Maritain takes a strong stand against Hick's
position on the responsibility of God for sin. Deus nullo modo est causa
peccati, neque directe, neque indirecte. The sentence from Aquinas is one
hinge of Maritain's book. The second hinge is this other sentence from the
same source: Defectus gratiae prima causa est ex nobis. These two
propositions, that God is completely innocent of causing sin, and that the
first cause of sin is man, are accepted by every Catholic. The difficulty, of
course, is in understanding them, or rather in gaining some true light about
them.
Maritain criticizes some Thomists of the 16th and 17th centuries for
over-reacting to Molinism, and for not seeing what he calls the principle
" which is like a beacon illuminating the whole debate: this is the principle
of the dissymmetry, the fundamental, irreducible dissymmetry, between the
line of good and the line of evil" (p. 9, italics his). What we say of the
causality of God in the line of good we cannot say in the line of evil, and
it is Maritain's contention that many Thomists, though not all, have treated
evil as though it were in the line of good, and this error has reached into
their explanations concerning God's permission of evil, and divine predestination.
Hick comments that both the Augustinian and the Calvinistic doctrine on
predestination are the back doors through which the traditional innocence
of God regarding sin becomes God's responsibility for sin. In other words,
a sinner may be responsible for his own sin, God having not a hand in it,
but long before that man had committed his sin he had been picked for hell

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BOOK REVIEWS

(in the Calvinist "positive reprobation" doctrine) or at least not included
among the saved (in the " negative reprobation " Thomistic refinement of
the Augustinian teaching). In the Calvinist doctrine, Hick says, "we
cannot be content to believe that God loves and accepts us unless we are
assured that He hates and rejects someone else. The feeling that there
must be this contrast appears in Calvin's thinking: 'election itself,' he says,
' could not stand except as set over against reprobation.' " Hick goes on.
" But why not? Why could not God, if He wishes, elect all to salvation? "
(p. 132, italics his). Maritain feels the same way. "'I choose all,' said the
little Therese of Lisieux. Cannot God do the same?" (p. 104). Though
perhaps Hick would wince at the technical language used by Maritain to
make his point, he would nevertheless agree in substance with the conclusions.
Maritain writes: "By His antecedent will God chooses them all (conditionally); by His antecedent will they are, with a total gratuitousness,
all chosen (conditionally, since to be conditioned or uncircumstanced is the
proper characteristic of the antecedent will)" (p. 104, italics his). Maritain
goes on to show that God still has preferential choices and loves which are
his own reason, but these have to do with a privileged group within the
elect. But " the great mass of the general run of the elect " God deals with
according to the normal course which befits fallible liberties. " Each has
been conditionally chosen, by the antecedent will; each is loved specially
for itself, with that love which wills that all be saved if the creature does
not obtrude any obstacle by its own initiative of nothingness" (p. 105).
Hick objects to the sin " ex nihilo " theory of the Augustinian tradition.
But it is precisely this that Maritain defends, not only for the original sin
but for every sin. Man in "not considering the rule" nihilates. This
negation "flowers " into the privation which is at the heart of every sin.
" Without me," said Our Lord, " you can do nothing." Maritain shows how
that 'nothing' can mean not only "not anything," but more mysteriously,
the nothingness which is the beginning of every sin. Without God man
can sin.
It is impossible to reproduce here the arguments proposed by Maritain
establishing the consequent permissive decree of God (instead of the more
traditional doctrine of an antecedent decree); impossible also to show how,
while disagreeing with many Thomists, he still remains solidly in the
Thomistic tradition. His arguments are cogent and convincing. They have,
indeed, shed much light on that most difficult of all subjects, predestination.
And they open the way for dialogue with men like Hick who simply cannot
accept that God is all good while at the same time choosing only some men
for salvation. Hick, of course, goes much further than Maritain, or any
Catholic thinker, in holding for the actual salvation of all. But in any
case the real value of Maritain's book, in the context of this dialogue, is

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451

to show us how God can permit sin without willing it, and how man can
take the initiative in the line of evil. The book also contains a partial
explanation for a principle taken from St. Thomas which Hick cannot
understand, i. e. what can fail, will fail. Maritain holds with Thomas that
every creature is naturally fallible; " God can no more make a creature,
angel or man, naturally impeccable than He can make a square circle"
(p. 37, italics his). But the certainty of his failing is taken rather from the
coUective. " That in a town of bilious persons a fight break out at some
moment or other between some two individuals-this is inevitable, necessary, certain. That such a fight break out at this or that moment between
these two particular individuals is neither inevitable nor necessary nor
certain " (p. 95) .
Raymond Nogar's The Lord of the Absurd is something of a personal
diary or metaphysical journal written out of the experience gained from the
many lectures he gave on the subject of evolution. As he was thinking and
talking about evolution his own mind was evolving towards different
emphases and attitudes. The book records the evolution of some of these
attitudes. He has gone from the " picture people " over to the " drama
people"; has seen the necessity of letting the dust of one's theological,
philosophical, or scientific presuppositions settle before entering into true
dialogue with others; has noticed the nuisance of the " falling inflection "
and of " flying the flag " ; has rejected the " package deal " ; has developed
a " philosophy of waste " ; has seen the terror of history; has tasted the
truth of a piece of pumpernickle; has pondered the world of Teilhard de
Chardin; has been affected by the sincerity of some atheists; and has met
the Lord of the Absurd.
It all adds up to a very fascinating, courageous book. The picture
people are those who see the world as static, completed, and who tend in
their own lives to be the same way. The drama people have their eye out
for the dynamic, the incomplete, the epigenic, and their lives, too, reflect
their values. Nogar in his many lectures gradually understood that more
and more of his audience were drama people, that the day of the impersonal
world-views is doomed; and he gradually felt himself drawn into this drama.
His studies in evolution itself prepared him, but the lectures, the drama of
the lectures, his deep involvement in seeking the truth in the give and
take of dialogue and debate, became to him an exhilirating and a necessary
way of life.
At one lecture he was presented with the following: "Well, sir, you seem
to be in the unenviable position of having to affirm the evolution of the
whole man on the one hand because science demands it, and having to
affirm the transcendence (and therefore non-evolution) of the soul just
because your Church tells you to. We scientists do not have to play such
games; we just affirm evolution and deny the soul. It's simple and honest

BOOK REVIEWS

that way." Nogar reflects on that statement. He shows how the student
was really "flying a flag," the flag of science with all its presuppositions;
and of course the answer for N ogar was not to fly his flag of theology with
its presuppositions. The answer was to engage in some kind of honest
dialogue. This the student seemed incapable of doing, but later, after the
lecture, he did. Nogar pointed out to him that not all science had solved
the problem of the matter-spirit complex, that a sampling of articles in
recent issues of the British neurological journal, Brain, would reveal that
the mind-body problems was still very much disputed. However, the real
power of Nogar's reflection falls back on the theologian. He much more
than the scientist is a "flag-flyer." Nogar can number on one hand the
philosophers and theologians he knows who are really concerned about the
factual evidence for evolution. They are still too preoccupied with wanting
to fly a family flag. And that is a tragedy.
It is the same with the "package deal." Nogar's particular problem is
with Thomism. When it is-and it has been-presented to him as a
package deal, as something he must accept as a total system, he simply
cannot accept it. Not any more. Too much has happened, too much new
knowledge has been discovered. Not just scientific knowledge, but philosophical insights from men as far from Thomism as Jean Paul Sartre. Nogar
would simply declare that the truth is where you find it, no matter where
you find it. St. Thomas has given him some great insights, and for these
he shall be forever grateful. But he must keep his mind open to other insights, and especially to the insight of the universe as a space-time entity.
"For him (Aristotle), as for all the Greek philosophers, and all the
medieval systems which were based upon the Greek insight, time remained
incidental to the ultimate explanation of existence " (p. 88). But time and
history are not incidental.
N ogar takes us through a brief survey of the myth of eternal return
which has been replaced in some areas of modern thought by the myth of
the shifting sands. Neither of these myths can take the terror out of
history, whether it be world history or one's personal history. "History
is the unique occasion, the stage, as it were, on which each individual enters
fully into the drama of salvation history and works out his role in the divine
plan. In this view, a transcendent orientation safeguards freedom and
personal creativity against the tyranny of the few. Yet each man must
freely, creatively and personally work out his salvation through the
contingent circumstances of his own daily existence. The infinite distance
which separates this view from both the myth of the eternal return and
the myth of the shifting sands is that whereas they attempt to remove
the terror of history by an act of rationalization, Judaeo-Christian theology
of history arises from, and ever depends on, an act of supernatural faith "
(p. 90).

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458

The indifference of the established religions to history, to all the
enormities of history, and their preoccupation with the transcendent and
eternal has brought many men to atheism. If God is above all this, if
God does not dirty His hands in the sordid events of our times, if God
does not care much for the masses, the enslaved, the exploited-and those
who were witnesses to God were assuming that attitude-then simply
enough God didn't exist. Max Scheler breathed a sigh of relief when he
discovered that there was no God. He was chained no longer by an intolerable oppression. Thus, as Nogar says, "it is a bolt of atheistic lightning
. That bolt has forced the Godwhich has cleared the air today " (p.
people to re-examine their beliefs about God and to re-examine their witness. God is in history. And if history sometimes seems absurd then a Lord
of the Absurd must be found. The Christian finds Him on the Cross.
But it is not enough to find, one must witness. N ogar cites Vatican
II's document on the Church in the modern world as a tentative statement
of the witness asked of Roman Catholics. Translating that and his own
experience into personal terms he sees not so much the need today for a
demonstration of God's existence as a demonstration of His personal presence among us. " Those who think they have to establish an ordo universi,
a great chain of causes, to introduce God to twentieth-century atheists, have
not grasped the kind of unbelief into which we have become trapped. We
are drama people, not picture people" (p. 138 italics his). Nogar at this
point would agree deeply with John Hick's re-interpretation of the problem
of evil in terms of a more personalistic theodicy. Indeed, Hick's book is
written by and for drama people not pictu,re people. The explanation of the
evil in the world in terms of shadows in a painting is precisely a picture
explanation; the other view, that the evils are environment for the
painful process of " soul-making," is a drama-explanation.
There is an interesting confirmation in Nogar's book of a statement made
by Hick which I first questioned but now, after reading Nogar, accept.
Hick says that some people present the " problem of goodness " as an
answer to the problem of evil. Fosdick, for example, is quoted early in the
book: "What to do about all the world's goodness on the basis of no God?
... How can we ... explain them as the casual accidental by-products of
physical forces, going it blind ? I think it cannot be done" (p. 11). Hick
disagrees. The atheist, he says, is not obliged to explain the world at all.
He can simply accept it at its face value as an enormously complex natural
fact. Nogar tells of a conversation with Professor George G. Simpson of
Harvard, one of the great men in evolutionary theories. "If order," Nogar
argues in Simpson's presence, " is such a sign and symbol of intelligent
direction . . . and if there is an indisputable evolutionary dynamic order
which prevails throughout the universe, how can a man escape the existence
of an orderer ... ? " (p.
. Simpson's reply is that the world, M he sees

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BOOK REVIEWS

it, is "self-sufficient, independent, self-contained in its materials, agents,
and laws. For all we know, so the universe has always been, and so it
will always be. By this only honest logical method I know, apart from
cultural customs and emotional inclination, which may at times tourh us,
your God who orders and governs and provides and designs is just not
necessary" (ibid.). This was perfect exemplication of Hick's remark that
the atheist can accept the world at face value as an enormously complex
natural fact.
Nogar accepts, then, the inconclusiveness to the modern mind of the proof
from order. From then on he thinks of other ways. His insight gradually
comes. " From a picture of order alone, there is no sense of the dependence
in being. The question is not: Why this order, or why that order? The real
question is; Why not nothing? It is only from the awarness of contingency,
the ' queasy ' feeling that your existence is leaning hard on nothing,
balanced on the precipice of non-being, that calls into question your selfsufficiency" (p. 78 italics his). Nogar also points up the fact of disorder,
waste, and chance in evolution. If successful novelty of species is the theme
of pre-history, failure and extinction is the counter theme. Even that great
optimist, Teilhard de Chardin, at the end of his famous book, The Phenomenon of Man, meditating on the millions of species that have been lost in
the long evolutionary process, remarks that such a way looked to him very
much like the way of the cross. One must develop a philosophy of waste,
observes Nogar. But what comes from his book is not so much a philosophy
as a theology of waste, a theology of the way of the cross.
Sister Sylvia Mary's book, Nostalgia for Paradise is really an exploration
of the treasures hidden in the myths and symbols of ancient cultures. She
writes, as does Hick, Maritain and Nogar, from an explicit Christian
belief. Her hope is that what is good in the ancient religions and cults
can somehow be brought together as evidence of the presence of the true
God and as prophetic of Christ. Hick says succinctly that his book was
not written " to demonstrate that Christianity is true, but that the fact of
evil does not show it to be false " (p. x) . Sister's apologetic is somewhat
different. She shows that elements in the ancient myths-a god becoming
incarnate, for example, or rising from the dead-should not be construed
to mean that Christianity is therefore false, but rather the perfect fulfillment of all history. I suppose it is Nogar's thesis put in reverse. He insists
that God is present in secular history today, even when that history is
absurd. Sister backs up all the way to pre-history or at least to the earliest
recording of history in the legends and the myths to find her Lord of the
Absurd.
Her concentration, as her title would suggest, is on the element of
nostalgia for the perfect place and the perfect time and the perfect
person, the yearning for paradise that existed in the minds and hearts

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455

of the most primitive peoples. " The memory of a ' lost paradise ' has
never ceased to haunt the minds of men, arousing in them a mysterious
nostalgia, a longing for some perfection, some happiness, freedom and complete sense of well-being of which it feels itself to have been deprived.
Throughout mythology and folklore, expressed in a vast variety of ways,
this longing has persisted. . . . The Greeks and Romans looked back to a
Golden Age which would return once more. The Aztecs of Mexico believed
that all their misfortunes were due to the fact that one of their gods had
left them, but were also convinced that one day he would return . . ."
(p. 13). And so with the Hindus, the Andaman Islanders, the primitive
tribes in the Malay peninsula, the Hottentots, the Puri Indians, the
Eskimos, the Celts. About these Sister remarks that their idea of Paradise
was more spiritual than most others having in it a great desire for union
with the divine. " The Irish Elysium was either beyond the seas or under
the water, and often it was thought of as revealing itself suddenly on this
earth as through a mist: a very Celtic strain " (p. 15) .
Together with this nostalgia the myths and legends also reveal an
element in, the heart of man that is perverse. Sister cites Mircea Eliadewhose studies she gratefully acknowledges as her chief source-to the effect
that history shows man to have " a deeply rooted repugnance to abandoning
himself totally to sacred experience as clearly as it shows his powerlessness
to resign that experience wholly" (p. 120) . The transcendent reality of the
sacred both attracts and repels; it calls out to man but at the same time
it terrifies him. And out of the terror comes resistance, comes sin, comes
evil.
" The primitive myth of a dreamlike age of the beginning when there was
neither death nor birth, but which was brought to an end when a murder
was committed is widely known in the jungle villages of the equatorial zone,
extending from Africa, through India to South East Asia, Oceania and
Brazil" (p. 52). From Babylonia, we learn from Campbell's The Masks
of the Gods, there gradually arose a progressive, temporally-orientated
mythology " of a creation once for all, at the beginning of time, a subsequent fall, and a work of restoration still in progress" (cited p. 53).
One would think that these various myths would tend to underline the
basic truth of the Augustinian tradition in explaining the origin of evil.
If the myths contain a nostalgia for a lost paradise, why then, there must
have been a lost paradise in the dim beginnings of the human race? Sister
neither affirms nor denies. She leaves us with a question. After analysing
the Genesis story of the fall, and especially pointing up Adam's reaction to
the sound of God's voice in the Garden after the fall-" I heard the sound
of thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid "-as a vivid description of the
realized presence of God from which man draws back in alarm, she asks:
"Is that nostalgia which appears to lie in the heart of the human race a

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BOOK REVIEWS

nostalgia for a lost paradise in which it once lived and which lies, as it
were, buried in the vast subconscious of humanity? Or, on the other hand,
is it a ' nostalgia ' for that union with the living God from which Adam
turned away? Is it a dim response and yearning aroused by the hidden,
magnetic love of God, who never ceases to whisper to each soul ' Where
art thou? ', and is forever drawing us to Himself in love? " (p.
She
does not answer that second question but rather suggests that it may be so.
Again, on page 166, she writes: "There is a 'nostalgia for Paradise' in
every culture, a sense of incompleteness and need which surely arises either
from the fact of a ' lost Paradise,' a ' nostalgia ' in the collective subconscious of our race for a condition which it once enjoyed but which it has
now lost, or which is simply the response of the depths of the soul of man
to the magnetic yearning love of God" (italics hers). She cites Eliade as
definitely favoring the historical state before the Fall (p. 119). She seems
to favor the response to God's love and the desire for future union with
Him. It would seem, then, that while the myths lend more credence to the
" nostalgic " explanation of paradise, they do not rule out the eschatological.
Catholic teaching can be understood not as an either-or but as both. It
is almost inconceivable that there never was a first serious sin, that there
never was a time when man turned his back on God and decided to go it
alone. And if that is true then there was a time when man did walk in
innocence. The innoncence, as we have said, is compatible with primitive
conditions; the paradise was rather more interior than exterior, a consciousness of God's presence. But after the sin God certainly called to man by a
thousand voices, the echo of which is heard in the myths. " God, who at
sundry times and in divers manners spoke in times past to the fathers by
the prophets, last of all in these days has spoken to us by his Son " (Heb.
1: 1). The immediate sense of that text cannot be disputed; it has nothing
to do with myths. Still, Sister points out the vaster possibilities. God spoke
through the prophets, but before that, God spoke at sundry times in divers
manners through the myths. That is her contention, and I think she is
right.
To set down some general criticism of these four works, I believe Hick's
book is somewhat too rational; Maritain's too technical; Nagar's, too much
in reaction to "tribal " Thomism; and Sister's, too naively credulous. The
hidden premise of John Hick's book is that the ultimate court of appeals
for the doctrines of faith is human reason. The book is almost a reduction
of the faith to reason, for if you ask him why he disagrees, for example,
with certain elements in the Augustinian tradition, l:e would say they are
not rational. It is not rational, in the light of recent discoveries in
paleontology, to hold for an original sin; it is not rational to hold for an
eternity of hell. But then, it is not rational to hold that God became man,
or that He was crucified for us, that He died, that He rose again. In the

BOOK REVIEWS

457

matter of hell, the Catholic Church has never taught that this or that
man was damned; she has taught that this or that man was saved. God
has not given to the Church the infallible vision of a particular man in
hell. He has, of course, given the fact of hell. So my soul is in the state of
hope. And I think I have to leave the matter there. I do not understand
God; I do not understand sin. I do not understand the fantastic goodness
of God; it is beyond my reason. But so is sin. And so is eternal punishment.
I am a creature, I am a sinner hoping that I shall one day receive God's
mercy, that all men will. But in the meantime I am not bold enough to
make my reason the measure of God's intelligence.
I fear that will sound like cant to John Hick. I hope not, because I have
derived immense profit from his book. Would that we Thomists would drop
our technicalities and present the truth in the way Hick has. " Thomism,"
wrote Paul VI, " has suffered the inconvenience of scholastic formalism."
Jacques Maritain has devoted his life to the presentation of the Thomistic
insight to the modern mind, and I have copied out whole passages from
his works that sing with new beauty, passages which have proven to me
both that St. Thomas does have something important to say, and that it
can be said newly, in burning prose that sets the whole heart on fire for
God. But the book before us is rather technical for general reading.
Actually it is an edited tape of three seminars Maritain held for the Little
Brothers of Jesus, students in theology. The fact, too, that in it he answers
some of the objections put to him by another theologian in the Revue
Thomiste adds to its intra-mural, technical quality. But for all that, it is
still a stirring statement.
Raymond N ogar has written a courageous book. He is an American
Dominican, the first, I think, to dissent publicly from our cautious, sceptical
attitude towards new thought. We must give up the package deal, and
settle down to responsible scholarship that investigates without bias the
things that are being proposed today. I agree with that, though I also
think we have turned a corner; and there is a danger that in the turning
we shall forget the street we came from. Nogar says St. Thomas has given
him insights. But when reading Nogar's earlier book, The Wisdom of
Evolution, I thought then that the method, the careful acceptance of the
facts, and the wonderful optimism throughout, were directly in the spirit
of St. Thomas. In his earlier book he composed a kind of Summa; in this
one he has written a series of Questiones Disputatae that have arisen from
his former statement about evolution. But both show he has received more
than an occasional insight from St. Thomas. This is also true of the old
heros of the 1930's he now rejects, perhaps less so. But it seems an overreaction to dismiss Chesterton as tiresome, Belloc as bigoted, Dawson as
dated and pedantic, and so on. A man ought to keep his pieties, especially
when they are still so operative in him. Would Nogar be offended if I

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BOOK REVIEWS

should say that his book shows the Chestertonian love for debate and
laughter, and especially the love of life? Or that Adler's precise and logical
prose is there? I don't think so. Nogar is very much standing on the
shoulders of these men, and with their help he is able now to criticise them.
Although I accept Sister Sylvia Mary's main point, that God was and
is present among primitive peoples and that His voice can be discerned in
their legends and myths, she has overstated it for my tastes. Her method
reminds one of that kind of exegesis of Scriptures practiced by devout and
holy people, and even by some of the Fathers of the Church. Every word,
even the number of letters in the word, have special mystical meaning.
So Sister tends to over-exegete the myths. Secondly, her inclusion of
analyses of Christian documents, legends in the Middle Ages, or St.
Catherine of Genoa's revelations about purgatory, for example, gives the
book an anomalous character and weakens the main thesis. Still, as
an introduction to this kind of literature, as bait for more serious study of
the Greek mysteries, the Orphic cults, the Hindu and Buddhist doctrines,
and so on, the book would serve very well.
It might also serve to give leads into the influences behind some contemporary thought. This quotation from Goullart's The Monastery of Jade
Mountain about Taoism suggests, does it not, a strong influence for
Tailhard de Chardin? ''Existence is visualized by them as a glorious, everascending spiral of evolution. The whole universe, they teach, is a
marvelous, vibrant Unity wherein everything, visible and invisible, pulses
with life and consciousness. As consciousness develops through the experience of existence, its vessels-men and other sentient beings-are swept
onwards and upwards by the mighty stream of the eternal Tao to higher
forms of expressions and activity. Man does not die; he merely extends to
new fields of consciousness. Nothing is lost and nothing is dead in this
divine economy, and no being is left in unhappiness and suffering forever
by the Infinite Love" (cited, p. 194).
THOMAS

Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D. C.

R. HEATH, O.P.

BOOKS RECEIVED
Anderson, James F., St. Augustine and Being: MetaphyhicaJ Essay. The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966. Pp. 76.
Armstrong, R. A., Primary and Secondary Precepts in Thomistic Natural
Law Teaching. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966. Pp. 193.
Ashmore, Jerome, Santayana, Art, and Aesthetics. Cleveland, Ohio: Press
of Western Reserve University, 1966. Pp. 139. $5.00.
Bruke, Carl F., God is for Real, Man. New York: Association Press, 1966.
Pp.
$1.75.
Callahan, Daniel (Editor), The Secular City Debate. New York: Mac$5.95 (hardcover). $1.45 (paper).
millan Co., 1966. Pp.
Chao, Albert, A Review of Pertinent Theories of Personality. Taiwan
Normal University, 1966. Pp. 340.
Crawford, S. J., Anglo-Saxon Influence on Western Christendom. New
York: Barnes and Noble, 1966. Pp. 109. $3.00.
Cronin, Timothy J., S. J., Objective Being in Descartes and in Suarez.
Rome: Gregorian Press University, 1966. Pp.
$6.00.
de la Bedoyere, Michael (Editor), Objections to Roman Catholicism. New
$.75.
York: The New American Library, Inc., 1966. Pp.
Flannery, Austin, 0. P. (Editor), Vatican II: The Church Constitution.
$4.95.
Priory Press, 1966. Pp.
Frankena, William K., Some Beliefs About Justice. University of Kansas,
1966. Pp.
Gleason, Robert W. (Editor), The Essential Pascal. New York: The New
American Library, Inc., 1966. Pp. 848. $.75.
Goldbrunner, Josef, Realization: The Anthropology of Pastoral Care.
$6.00.
University of Notre Dame Press, 1966. Pp.
Harrington, Wilfrid, J., 0. P., Record of the Fulfillment (The New Testament). Priory Press, 1966. Pp. 538. $7.50.
Kanellopoulos, Panayotis, Ascent to Faith, tr. Mary P. Gianos. New York:
Exposition Press, 1966. Pp. 101. $4.00.
Kitaro, Nishida, Intelligibility and the Philosophy of Nothingness. Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1966. Pp.
$5.50.
Kretzman, Norman (Translator), William of Sherwood's Introduction to
Logic. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1966. Pp. 187.
$5.50 (hardback).
(paper).
Kroner, Richard, Between Faith and Thought. Oxford University Press,
1966. Pp.
$4.95.
Lamb, Matthew L., O.C.S.O. (Translator), Thomas Aquinas-Commentary
on the Epistle to the Ephesians. Vol.
Magi Books, 1966. Pp. 313.
$5.95.

459

460

BOOKS RECEIVED

Larcher, F. R., 0. P. (Translator), Thomas Aquinas-Commentary on the
Epistle to the Galatians. Vol. 1. Magi Books, 1966. Pp. f!11. $5.50.
McLean, George F., 0. M. 1., Christian Philosophy and Religious Renewal.
Catholic University Press, 1966. Pp. 174. $4.95.
McLean, George F. (Editor), Christian Philosophy in College and Seminary. Catholic University Press, 1966. Pp. 193. $5.50.
Macquarrie, John, Principles of Christian Theology. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1966. Pp. 477. $7.95.
Mitchell, Kenneth R., Pyschological and Theological Relationships in the
Multiple Staff Ministry. The Westminster Press, 1966. Pp. f!73.
$6.50.

Murray, Jolm Courtney, S. J. (Editor), Religious Liberty: An End and a
Beginning. New York: Macmillan, 1966. Pp. 19f!. $4.95.
Nogar, Raymond, 0. P., The Lord of the Absurd. New York: Herder and
Herder, 1966. Pp. 157. $3.95.
Peter, Rev. Carl J., The Doctrine of Thomas Aquinas Regarding Eviternity
in the Rational Soul and Separated Substances. Rome, 1964. Pp.
131.

Privat, Edouard (Editor), Saint Dominique en Languedoc. Cahiers de
Fanjeaux, 1966. Pp. 178.
Van Steenberghen, F., La Philosophie au XIIIe Siecle. Louvain, Switzerland: Editions Nauwelaerts, 1966. Pp. 594.
Wyszynski, Stefan Cardinal, The Deeds of Faith. New York: Harper and
Row, 1966. Pp. 187. $5.95.