Tending the Garden, Part II

Redeeming the Family

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What do we do now? That’s the question with which I ended the first part of this essay. What comes next? How can Christians live God’s plan for marriage in the midst of a thousand cultural pressures to do otherwise?

The answer doesn’t start with programs and policies. Rather, it starts with the human heart and individual marriages. Every single one of us who is married or will marry someday can strive to bring our family life back into greater conformity with God’s words to Adam and Eve in Genesis 1:28. “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth,” (Genesis 1:28).

Notes of Caution

To do that, though, we need to be cautious. We first need to be wary of any tendency towards nostalgia in us, not overly romanticizing the marriages of a hundred or a thousand years ago, remembering that marriage is always work, that it always involves two broken people, and that every generation has its own struggles and opportunities.

We also need to be on guard against reactionary tendencies in our hearts. So much is wrong with how marriage is understood and lived in our culture today, that it’s tempting to buy into a vision of marriage proposed by certain fundamentalists, both inside and outside the Church. This vision is sometimes called Traditional Marriage. But Traditional Marriage is not Catholic marriage. The fundamental ingredients are the same: one man, one woman, joined in life-long union. But the Traditional Marriage movement is Protestant in origin, not Catholic, and grounded in the Protestant doctrine of total depravity.*

Theologically, Traditional Marriage advocates hold that the grace of God isn’t powerful enough to help man and woman transcend the consequences of Original Sin, inside or outside of marriage. As such, they see man’s domination of woman as something to be enshrined, not left behind, in the New Covenant. Traditional Marriage champions also reject the Church’s understanding of sexual complementarity and instead embrace something called sexual polarity. What is the difference?

Sexual complementarity holds that both man and woman are equal in dignity, fully human, a whole person, complete in themselves. They are different, but neither is lacking some essential quality of “humanness.” Man and woman possess their human nature—with its capacity for reason, virtue, and love—in equal measure. The differences in how they possess that nature, though, their masculinity and femininity, allow their union—in marriage, friendship, and work—to bear fruit that neither could bear on their own. In other words, the union of man and woman enriches the human experience.

Sexual polarity, on the other hand, sees specific roles, gifts, and virtues as the exclusive purview of one sex—man is strong, woman is weak; man is active, woman is passive; man is reasonable, woman is emotional—and thinks of the joining of man and woman in marriage not as an act of enrichment, but rather as an act of completion. Each partner brings to the marriage what the other lacks. Often, though, that idea of completion is stressed more with the woman, who sexual polarity believers often see as weaker, not just in terms of physical strength, but also in intellect and key virtues, such as prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice.  

Practically speaking, this is why the Traditional Marriage movement deems the husband not simply the head of the family, but the boss of the family, using contractual language to describe the marital relationship instead of covenantal language. (Contracts involve the exchange of goods and services; Covenants involve the exchange of persons.) This is also why it calls husbands not to serve their wives, as Christ did the Church, but rather to rule their wives, controlling them, not partnering with them. Wives are to accept this control willingly, always deferring, never deciding; always learning, never teaching; always following, never leading; always spending, never earning.

The Catholic Vision

As Catholics, however, we know that Genesis 1, not Genesis 3, is God’s original plan for marriage. In the beginning, God entrusted to husbands and wives a shared mission, shared work, shared dominion. He also entrusted to them a shared dignity, creating Eve out of Adam’s side to signify their fundamental equality as human beings and equal share in His Divine Image. Adam’s first words to Eve were a recognition of this equality, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!” (Genesis 2:23).

Now, in the New Covenant, God has called us out of the cycle of domination and manipulation, making marriage a sign of the relationship between Christ and His Church and calling husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the Church (Ephesians 5:25, 31-32). This is one reason why the Church teaches, “The matrimonial union requires respect for and a perfecting of the true personal subjectivity of both of them. The woman cannot become the ‘object’ of ‘domination’ and male ‘possession,’” (Mulieris Dignitatem, 10). 

This is the kind of marriage to which Christians are called if they want to live God’s plan for marriage and help renew the culture. But what does it look like? What does the Church say are its hallmarks?

It starts with a foundation of mutual trust and respect, where neither spouse seeks to dominate or manipulate. In his encyclical Humanae Vitae, Pope Saint Paul VI describes married love as “a love which is total—that very special form of personal friendship in which husband and wife generously share everything, allowing no unreasonable exceptions and not thinking solely of their own convenience,” (9).

This love, he continues, must always be faithful, freely given and involve the whole person—body and soul, reason and emotion: “It is not, then, merely a question of natural instinct or emotional drive. It is also, and above all, an act of the free will, whose trust is such that it is meant not only to survive the joys and sorrows of daily life, but also to grow, so that husband and wife become in a way one heart and one soul, and together attain their human fulfillment,” (9).

In practice, this means husband and wife fully share their lives with each other.  There is honesty between them. No secrets are kept. No lies are told. No resentments or fears are allowed to simmer in silence. There is no pretending, play acting, or obfuscating. They hold nothing of themselves back. They are, with each other, fully themselves, expressing gratitude and appreciation, experiencing delight in the other’s successes and accomplishments, trusting the other’s opinions, seeking to fulfill the other’s desires.

Second, the Church teaches that Christian marriage is grounded in a recognition of man and woman’s equal dignity and personal calling. “Authentic conjugal love presupposes and requires that a man have a profound respect for the equal dignity of his wife,” explains Pope Saint John Paul II in Familiaris Consortio. He then quotes Saint Ambrose, “You are not her master, but her husband; she was not given to you to be your slave, but your wife,” (25).

On one level, living this teaching requires that neither spouse considers themselves superior to the other based on their sex. It calls each to see the other as the image of God. It also calls each to see the other as a unique person, with strengths, gifts, and a vocation all their own. Neither husband nor wife can be summed up or defined purely by their sex. They aren’t categories; they’re persons. And how each uses their gifts and responds to God’s call are questions for them to answer as a couple, together, through prayerful discernment, in light of Church teaching and a well-formed conscience (Letter to Woman, 8).

Third, the Church teaches that Christian marriage is to be fruitful—in body if possible, in spirit always.

Openness to life, marked by respect for the female body’s natural rhythms and trust in God’s provision and plan, is part of marital fruitfulness. This love, the Church teaches, “is not confined wholly to the loving interchange of husband and wife; it also contrives to go beyond this to bring new life into being,” (Humanae Vitae, 9).

At the same time, generosity, hospitality, Christian witness, and active concern for the little and the least are part of marital fruitfulness, too. Not in a secondary way, but in a fundamental way, a way that recognizes God’s call to spiritual fatherhood and spiritual motherhood is not some exclusive call to the consecrated nor a consolation prize for the infertile, but the unique task of every man and every woman, the reality to which physical parenthood points and in which it finds its fulfillment (Theology of the Body, 78:5).

Fourth, Christian marriage calls couples to return to the home as much as possible and tend their garden—their family—together. The Church teaches that it is wrong when economic necessity compels mothers to leave their young children for the workforce, and she urges the culture to find ways for mothers to not have to make that choice, including increasing opportunities for women to work from home (Familiaris Consortio, 23). She also, however, teaches that fathers are needed in the home, too.

Above all where social and cultural conditions so easily encourage a father to be less concerned with his family or at any rate less involved in the work of education, efforts must be made to restore socially the conviction that the place and task of the father in and for the family is of unique and irreplaceable importance (Familiaris Consortio, 25).

By this, the Church doesn’t mean that all mothers and all fathers must be present in the home 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Homesteading and homeschooling aren’t New Covenant requirements. But building a life together, not apart, is. Working together, praying together, playing together, eating together, learning together—all that is essential. So too is finding ways to make the home places of production, not just consumption and creating a family culture that is more about formation, than entertainment. More presence in the home, more time in the home, more life in the home—that is the aim.

Last but not least, the Church teaches that Christian marriage should seek holiness before all else—the holiness of the spouses, the holiness of the children, the holiness of society. Holiness comes first. Not stability. Not security. Not wealth. Not professional accomplishments or academic achievement. Not rest or comfort or the good opinions of others. But holiness. Which is love of Christ, love of His Law, love of His Will, love of His Church. Holiness is love, plain and simple. This is the family’s greatest vocation. “[T]he family has the mission to guard, reveal and communicate love, and this is a living reflection of and a real sharing in God's love for humanity and the love of Christ the Lord for the Church His bride” (Familiaris Consortio, 17).

Returning to Christ

Those are the objectives. Those are the priorities. But how each family pursues those objectives and priorities? That’s going to look different—sometimes radically different—from couple to couple, family to family, and even generation to generation, as couples creatively figure out how to live Church teaching in the midst of their own time, place, and economic reality.

It's also going to look different as couples do the hard work of thinking through the Church’s teachings, their own preconceptions of marriage, and their own strengths. Different spouses bring different expectations, desires, and experiences to their marriage. We are not always in the same emotional or spiritual place as the person we love. We’re not always prepared to make the same sacrifices at the same time. Navigating marriage as we wrestle with these truths and ourselves is going to be challenging for everyone, and how we handle those challenges is another topic altogether, well beyond the scope of this essay.

But, for now, it can help to remember there is no one template for what the ideal Christian family looks like. There are right principles to follow. There are right priorities to have. But there is no one right way to incarnate those principles and priorities. Some structures and forms and choices might be better for most. But not for all. Either way, structures don’t save us. Only Jesus does that. He is the key.

If you have been reading these newsletters for the past year, you know the one theme I come back to again and again is Christian freedom. Both Christ and His Bride have entrusted us with a shocking amount of freedom. More freedom than I suspect most of us would have granted anyone, if we were in charge. This is especially true for marriage.

In marriage, there is more freedom than law. So, how we navigate fruitfulness, stewardship, and shared dominion, how we balance work and home, how we form our children, work with our children, and play with our children—none of this is dictated by Jesus or the Church. They do not micromanage us. They give us clear but broad parameters, and then, as we’ve discussed, expect us, as couples, to thoughtfully and prayerfully discern how we will live within those parameters.

Your discernment, however, can only be as good as your relationship with Christ. How well you know Him, how much you depend upon Him, how deeply you understand His teachings, how often you go to Him, how clearly you recognize His voice, how deftly you exercise the reason He has given you, how intimately you let His healing graces touch you—that is what will make your discernment fruitful.

Nearly 100 years ago, my great-grandparents’ marriages fell apart without that grace. They did not let Christ into the deepest recesses of their hearts. They did not let Him touch the most raw, bloody, broken parts of their souls. My ancestors got some things right; they all looked, for a time, like the picture-perfect Catholic families so many on social media try to emulate today. But that perfection was just an illusion. And even the illusion couldn’t last long. Because they got the most important thing wrong. (Some of them probably needed therapy, too).

In the end, if we want redemptive, transformative Christian marriages that bless our children and can be like leaven in this hurting world, then we need to let Christ in—all the way in—so He can lay His hands on the most broken parts of us. We need to let Him heal the anxious parts, the scared and insecure parts, the impatient parts, the traumatized parts, the angry parts, the full of regret parts, the lustful parts, the proud and vain parts, the unreasonable parts. We can’t block Him, like we block people online who challenge our worldview. That’s the only way we can build marriages that are grounded in respect for and recognition of each spouse’s personal dignity, that are fruitful, that are a joy to live together, and that are witnesses to the love of Christ.

Again, none of this is easy. None of this is simple. None of this can be accomplished without serious conversation, serious prayer, and serious sacrifice. And sometimes, one person in a marriage can do all the right things and all the right work only to have the other spouse refuse to do the same. Each of us can only do the work we can do. We can’t force anyone else to join us. But that doesn’t make the work any less worth doing.

Marriage is worth the work. You are worth the work.

*Note: Just to be clear, although the doctrine of Original Depravity is Protestant in origin, not all Protestant communities hold to it. And even among many who do, this doesn’t translate to advocacy of the type of Traditional Marriage described above.

Read More

Want to know more about the Church’s teachings on marriage and family? Here are a few places to start.

Church Documents

Humanae Vitae

(And the accompanying study on it I authored for Endow)

Familiaris Consortio

Letter to Women

(And the accompanying study on it I authored for Endow)

Gaudium et Spes

Evangelium Vitae

Books

Man and Woman by Dietrich von Hildebrand

Marriage: The Mystery of Faithful Love by Dietrich von Hildebrand

Men, Women, and the Mystery of Love by Edward Sri

Love and Responsibility by John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla)

Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body by John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla)

Theologies of the Body: Humanist and Christian by Benedict Ashley, OP

Crossing the Threshold of Love by Mary Shivanandan

Also, for more book recommendations regarding the Church’s teachings on women, check out the reading list in this essay: “Welcoming the Wholeness of Women.”

Cook More

Pasta with Pan-Fried Tomatoes, Burrata, and Basil

Back when I lived in Steubenville, I had the best little kitchen garden that kept me supplied with fresh veggies and herbs all summer long. This was a favorite quick summer meal then, and now that we finally have a kitchen garden at this house, it’s a favorite quick summer meal again. Even the kids cleaned their plates when I made it last night.  

Cook Time: 20 Minutes

Serves: 4

Ingredients

·      Extra Virgin Olive Oil, 1/3 cup

·      Garlic Cloves, 4, crushed and peeled

·      Pinch of crushed red pepper

·      Pasta, .5 pound (I used rotini because my kids think it’s fun, but Penne, Rigatoni, or some similar heart thick pasta would work)

·      Cherry Tomatoes, 3 cups

·      Burrata (or fresh mozzarella), 8 ounces

·      Fresh Basil, about 24 small to medium leaves, freshly torn

·      Salt and Pepper to taste

Instructions

1. In a large pot, bring well salted water to boil; add pasta and cook until firm to the bite; drain and return to the pot;

2. While the water boils, heat oil in a deep sided frying pan; add garlic and crushed red pepper; stir for a minute or two, then add tomatoes, some salt and peper, and cook on medium high heat for 15-20 minutes, stirring regularly, and smashing down on the tomatoes with a spatula as they pop out of their skins;

3. When the pasta is done and the tomatoes cooked through, add the pasta and stir; then add the Burrata, breaking it into pieces with your hands; last, stir in the Basil, and add more salt and pepper to taste.

Save More

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Watch More

If you’ve never seen Chef’s Table on Netflix, it’s definitely worth your time. Chris and I started the series way back when Toby was a baby, got bogged down in the less than stellar Season 3, and then stopped. We’ve picked it up again this summer, though, and are enjoying it thoroughly. It combines great story telling with amazing cooking, all while highlighting the deep connections between food, culture, and the human heart.