the liberation of lifelong love
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8/9/2019 The Liberation of Lifelong Love
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Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com email: [email protected] 760/295-92782007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of theRuth Institute.
The Liberation of Lifelong
Love: Church Teaching on
Marriage
by Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.
The Liberation of Lifelong Love: Church
Teaching on Marriage is the opening of my
contribution to a new book called Women,Sex & the Church: A Case for Catholic
Teaching. I realize that many of my readersare not Catholic. However, I still
enthusiastically encourage you to consider
purchasing this book. Many of the chapterscontain valuable information from the social
sciences that will be helpful to anyone from
any faith tradition making the case fortraditional sexual morality.
Catholic and non-Catholic readers alike willbetter understand Catholic teaching in these
important areas. As you can imagine, the
secular media doesnt usually tell the wholestory! So this book is of value to anyone
who wants to learn for themselves what the
Catholic Church teaches about the whole
variety of issues normally called feminist.
Because of my agreement with thepublisher, I am not able to reprint the entire
chapter. The extract below gives you aflavor of the ground I cover in my chapter.
You can get more information about thebook, Women, Sex & the Church: A Case
for Catholic Teaching, by clicking the link.
The Liberation of Lifelong Love:
Church Teaching on Marriage
Marriage is a universal human institution,
defineduntil recentlyas the preferredcontext for both sexual activity and child-
rearing. Until the last forty years, every
society understood that some contexts for
sex and childbearing were preferable toothers.
Opposition to this traditional view of
marriage has increased in recent times. We
are told that society should not privilege
one form of relationship or family over anyothers. But privileging is, by definition,
the exact point of the marital institution: the
very existence of the institution proclaimsthat some relationships are more socially
significant, more socially productive, and
more socially desirable than others. Sincethe Catholic Church offers one of the richest
and most robust teachings about marriage,
the Church has faced particularly strongcriticism for her teachings.
In the current debate between the traditionalview that marriage is Something, and the
modern view that marriage is Whatever We
Say It Is, the Catholic Church holds firmlyto the view that marriage is something in
particular.
The Church teaches that marriage is the
lifelong, sexually exclusive, sacramental
union of one man and one woman,established by the consent of the spouses,
characterized by love and a common life,
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0819883204?ie=UTF8&tag=jenniferrobac-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0819883204http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0819883204?ie=UTF8&tag=jenniferrobac-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0819883204http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0819883204?ie=UTF8&tag=jenniferrobac-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0819883204http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0819883204?ie=UTF8&tag=jenniferrobac-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0819883204http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0819883204?ie=UTF8&tag=jenniferrobac-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0819883204http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0819883204?ie=UTF8&tag=jenniferrobac-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0819883204http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0819883204?ie=UTF8&tag=jenniferrobac-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0819883204http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0819883204?ie=UTF8&tag=jenniferrobac-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0819883204http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0819883204?ie=UTF8&tag=jenniferrobac-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0819883204http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0819883204?ie=UTF8&tag=jenniferrobac-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0819883204http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0819883204?ie=UTF8&tag=jenniferrobac-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0819883204 -
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Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com email: [email protected] 760/295-92782007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of theRuth Institute.
and ordered to the good of the spouses and
the procreation and education of children.
In some cases, the Church teaches that the
separation of spouses may be legitimate, andeven civil divorce can be tolerated. But
remarriage (without annulment) is always
forbidden. According to Catholic teaching,sexual activity outside of marriage is always
wrong. This includes both adultery (sexual
relations between a married person andsomeone other than the spouse) and
fornication (sexual relations between
unmarried persons). Obviously, then, the
Church objects to nonmarital cohabitation,and out-of-wedlock childbearing.
These, it is safe to say, constitute the hard
teachings of the Catholic Church regarding
marriage. Apart from her teaching oncontraception, abortion, and possibly the all-
male priesthood, no other teaching has
caused the Church so much bad publicity
and ill-feeling.
Over the past forty years, many women have
become convinced that marriage is not intheir best interest. Some women believe
marriage is unnecessary. Others think that it
is or has been harmful to them. The views ofwomen like these, orchestrated, I will argue,
by socialist and other secular feminists, have
been instrumental to weakening theinstitution of marriage.
But the weakening of this foundationalinstitution has also harmed women in some
distinctive ways. Without a robust culture of
marriage, women have been left with the
burden of caring for children with far less
support from men than would have beenconceivable in prior ages.
Married women are happier, healthier, moresexually satisfied, and more financially
secure than their unmarried, cohabiting, and
divorced counterparts.
Moreover, the alternatives to marriage havebeen particularly harmful to children, quite
apart from the loss of material support from
their fathers. Since women on the whole
care deeply about the welfare of theirchildren, the negative outcomes to children
caused by the decline of marriage must also
be counted among the harmful effects onwomen.
Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. is an
economist and the Founder and President of
theRuth Institute, a nonprofit educationalorganization devoted to bringing hope and
encouragement for lifelong married love.
She is also the author ofLove andEconomics: It Takes a Family to Raise a
Village andSmart Sex: Finding Life-Long
Love in a Hook-Up World.
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