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Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 5.1 (2002) 76-102



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An Integrated Theology of Married Love

Thomas M. Kelly


VAST AMOUNTS OF MATERIAL have been written on marriage in the past thirty years from a variety of perspectives--psychological, legal, and religious. Sacramentality has also been reconsidered extensively in recent years in an effort to understand the Catholic sacraments in the context of new movements such as postmodernism. Further, since Vatican II, much has been written on the particular mission that laypeople have to the world, especially with regard to moral obligations to contribute to the common good. Few works have tried to combine a consideration of all three--marriage, sacramentality, and social ethics--in a way that is intellectually rigorous and solidly grounded in Catholic theology. This article is the beginning of a more comprehensive work attempting such a synthesis in theological thinking. As such, it seeks to present an integrative understanding of married love--one capable of framing a sacramentality that confirms marriage as a form of discipleship that serves both the Church and the world in an indispensable way.

A work developing new approaches to the sacramentality of married love should not pretend to offer empirical reflections on the [End Page 76] contemporary and existing institution of marriage--that is better left to sociologists, psychologists, and a vast array of other social scientists--though it may well take some of these findings as its point of departure. A theological reflection on married love should also not offer only one way to conceive of this relationship and its attendant spirituality--the phenomenon of married love is much too rich for that. Rather, a theological reflection on married love is ultimately an account of hope (1 Pet. 3:15). It will suggest that in the everyday life of married love it is possible to envision ourselves and our lived experience in ways that are religiously and morally meaningful. For Karl Rahner, theology "should constitute a 'mystagogia' leading [people] to the experience of grace." Thus, the role of a theological reflection on marriage is suggestive. It will take the accumulated wisdom of the tradition and apply it creatively to contemporary issues of import. The state of marriage in the contemporary church is such an issue. Given this context, a theological reflection on married love has much to say about being, relatedness, and sacramentality.

With a clear phenomenology of married love, grounded in a particular understanding of nature and grace, the sacramentality of marriage as an exemplary form of love can be meaningfully and theologically recovered for contemporary pastoral needs. Any honest theological consideration of marriage must include understandings of love not only idealized in a phenomenology, but also actualized in the real. As Rahner warns, "So long as theology remains stuck fast at the merely conceptual level--however necessary this may be in itself--it has failed in its true mission." 1 Historically this has been the greatest deficiency in theological considerations of married love. Various terms have been used throughout intellectual history for the types of love considered by theological reflection. Usually these types were understood as utterly distinct--even in opposition to each other. Rather than look a priori at love "as God intended," let us explore the nature of married love as it is. I would suggest that a serious discussion of marriage as discipleship must begin with a [End Page 77] realistic understanding of married love, not with an idealized version.

All theology, regardless of its denominational allegiance, has at its core a concrete understanding of "nature" and "grace." Every theology at some point must consider the encounter of the infinite with the finite, the specifics of that encounter, and the value of that encounter for human beings. Sacramentality--one's understanding of how grace is present to the world--cannot be discussed outside of the understanding of nature and grace with which one is working. The discerning reader, of course, will eventually uncover all of one's presuppositions anyway, so it is better, and more intellectually honest to...

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