Virginity – eyebeleave

Amoris Lætitia: virginity and marriage

Arcabas holy family

2104 words, 11 min read

The change of mindset that is at the heart of Amoris Lætitia, in terms of how we are to journey together with and towards God, also has implications on a variety of more specific questions and Pope Francis even spells some of them out in the text itself. One of the most beautiful of these, to my mind, is a re-presentation of the value of virginity and marriage and of their mutual relationship.

If we look back at the development of how virginity and marriage have been understood throughout the history of the Church, we can trace the roots of a long-standing preference for virginity to the words of St. Paul: “[B]ecause of cases of immorality every man should have his own wife, and every woman her own husband. [… But] I wish everyone to be as I am [celibate]” (1 Corinthians 7:2,7) and to Jesus’ words in the Gospels: “When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like the angels in heaven.” (Mark 12:25).

St. Thomas Aquinas then supplements these passages with rational grounds for a higher value being attached to virginity:

“Virginity is more excellent than marriage, which can be seen by both faith and reason. Faith sees virginity as imitating the example of Christ and the counsel of St. Paul. Reason sees virginity as rightly ordering goods, preferring a Divine good to human goods, the good of the soul to the good of the body, and the good of the contemplative life to that of the active life.” (ST II-II.152.4)

At the council of Trent (1545–1563), a claim to the opposite is declared as punishable by excommunication: “If anyone saith that the marriage state is to be preferred before the state of virginity, let him be anathema,” which was re-affirmed as recently as 1954 by Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Sacra Virginitas:

“This doctrine of the excellence of virginity and of celibacy and of their superiority over the married state was, as We have already said, revealed by our Divine Redeemer and by the Apostle of the Gentiles; so too, it was solemnly defined as a dogma of divine faith by the holy council of Trent, and explained in the same way by all the holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Finally, We and Our Predecessors have often expounded it and earnestly advocated it whenever occasion offered. But recent attacks on this traditional doctrine of the Church, the danger they constitute, and the harm they do to the souls of the faithful lead Us, in fulfillment of the duties of Our charge, to take up the matter once again in this Encyclical Letter, and to reprove these errors which are so often propounded under a specious appearance of truth.” (§32)

Now, there have also been examples of a more egalitarian perspective on marriage and virginity, including in the early centuries of the Church, such as the Synod of Gangra in 340 AD:

“Canon 1: If any one shall condemn marriage, or abominate and condemn a woman who is a believer and devout, and sleeps with her own husband, as though she could not enter the Kingdom [of heaven] let him be anathema.

Canon 9: If any one shall remain virgin, or observe continence, abstaining from marriage because he abhors it, and not on account of the beauty and holiness of virginity itself, let him be anathema.

Canon 10: If any one of those who are living a virgin life for the Lord’s sake shall treat arrogantly the married, let him be anathema.”

And the current, 1993 Catechism also speaks about the two states in a balanced way:

“Both the sacrament of Matrimony and virginity for the Kingdom of God come from the Lord himself. It is he who gives them meaning and grants them the grace which is indispensable for living them out in conformity with his will. Esteem of virginity for the sake of the kingdom and the Christian understanding of marriage are inseparable, and they reinforce each other.” (§1620)

Yet, even here there are remnants of a superiority being attributed to virginity:

“Virginity for the sake of the kingdom of heaven is an unfolding of baptismal grace, a powerful sign of the supremacy of the bond with Christ and of the ardent expectation of his return, a sign which also recalls that marriage is a reality of this present age which is passing away.” (§1619)

It is against this backdrop that paragraphs 159-162 of Amoris Lætitia are so important in that they dispel lingering feelings of disparity that even the post-conciliar Catechism contains.

Pope Francis starts off by associating virginity with love and pointing to the Scriptural roots of its value:

Virginity is a form of love. As a sign, it speaks to us of the coming of the Kingdom and the need for complete devotion to the cause of the Gospel (cf. 1 Cor 7:32). It is also a reflection of the fullness of heaven, where “they neither marry not are given in marriage” (Mt 22:30).

He then provides context and nuance, especially with regard to St. Paul’s words:

Saint Paul recommended virginity because he expected Jesus’ imminent return and he wanted everyone to concentrate only on spreading the Gospel: “the appointed time has grown very short” (1 Cor 7:29). Nonetheless, he made it clear that this was his personal opinion and preference (cf. 1 Cor 7:6-9), not something demanded by Christ: “I have no command in the Lord” (1 Cor 7:25). All the same, he recognized the value of the different callings: “Each has his or her own special gift from God, one of one kind and one of another” (1 Cor 7:7).

So, already Paul’s preference for virginity can be read in a personal context and against a background of a recognition of other paths to God, which leads Pope Francis to making the following declaration – again quoting St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, as he does profusely throughout AL:

Reflecting on this, Saint John Paul II noted that the biblical texts “give no reason to assert the ‘inferiority’ of marriage, nor the ‘superiority’ of virginity or celibacy” based on sexual abstinence. Rather than speak absolutely of the superiority of virginity, it should be enough to point out that the different states of life complement one another, and consequently that some can be more perfect in one way and others in another.

To counter-balance the well-known and historically-dominant presentation of virginity being more perfect than marriage, Francis next points to the 13th century English theologian, Alexander of Hales, who:

stated that in one sense marriage may be considered superior to the other sacraments, inasmuch as it symbolizes the great reality of “Christ’s union with the Church, or the union of his divine and human natures”.

Therefore, and here Francis passes the word to St. John Paul II again:

“it is not a matter of diminishing the value of matrimony in favour of continence”.“There is no basis for playing one off against the other… If, following a certain theological tradition, one speaks of a ‘state of perfection’ (status perfectionis), this has to do not with continence in itself, but with the entirety of a life based on the evangelical counsels”. A married person can experience the highest degree of charity and thus “reach the perfection which flows from charity, through fidelity to the spirit of those counsels. Such perfection is possible and accessible to every man and woman”.

What John Paul II does here masterfully is not reject virginity’s claim to perfection, but, by going to its root, which is “a life based on the evangelical counsels” he argues that such perfection – the perfection previously though to be exclusively that of virginity – “is possible and accessible to every man and woman”. Instead of a downgrading of virginity, this is a recognition of the potential virginity – as a putting into practice of the evangelical counsels – of all.

Next follows Pope Francis’ presentation of what virginity and marriage are and how they complement each other:

The value of virginity lies in its symbolizing a love that has no need to possess the other; in this way it reflects the freedom of the Kingdom of Heaven. Virginity encourages married couples to live their own conjugal love against the backdrop of Christ’s definitive love, journeying together towards the fullness of the Kingdom. For its part, conjugal love symbolizes other values. On the one hand, it is a particular reflection of that full unity in distinction found in the Trinity. The family is also a sign of Christ. It manifests the closeness of God who is a part of every human life, since he became one with us through his incarnation, death and resurrection. Each spouse becomes “one flesh” with the other as a sign of willingness to share everything with him or her until death.

After pointing to how married couples can benefit from the witness of virgins, who remind them of “Christ’s definite love”, Francis elaborates the mirror image of this advice by spelling out how virgins can be enriched and encouraged by the witness of married couples:

Celibacy can risk becoming a comfortable single life that provides the freedom to be independent, to move from one residence, work or option to another, to spend money as one sees fit and to spend time with others as one wants. In such cases, the witness of married people becomes especially eloquent. Those called to virginity can encounter in some marriages a clear sign of God’s generous and steadfast fidelity to his covenant, and this can move them to a more concrete and generous availability to others. Many married couples remain faithful when one of them has become physically unattractive, or fails to satisfy the other’s needs, despite the voices in our society that might encourage them to be unfaithful or to leave the other. A wife can care for her sick husband and thus, in drawing near to the Cross, renew her commitment to love unto death. In such love, the dignity of the true lover shines forth, inasmuch as it is more proper to charity to love than to be loved. We could also point to the presence in many families of a capacity for selfless and loving service when children prove troublesome and even ungrateful. This makes those parents a sign of the free and selfless love of Jesus. Cases like these encourage celibate persons to live their commitment to the Kingdom with greater generosity and openness. Today, secularization has obscured the value of a life-long union and the beauty of the vocation to marriage. For this reason, it is “necessary to deepen an understanding of the positive aspects of conjugal love”.

To sum up Francis’ position, virginity and marriage can be seen as reflecting different aspects of the one reality of Christ: virginity its definitive fullness, marriage its trinitarian incarnation and universal closeness. In fact, Francis distills their complementarity in the following words:

Whereas virginity is an “eschatological” sign of the risen Christ, marriage is a “historical” sign for us living in this world, a sign of the earthly Christ who chose to become one with us and gave himself up for us even to shedding his blood. Virginity and marriage are, and must be, different ways of loving. For “man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him” (St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 1979).

When I read the above, it made me think of how its opposite mirrors some of the Christological heresies of the Early Church. In some sense, a valuing of virginity over marriage can be thought of as a form of gnostic docetism that emphasizes Jesus’ divinity and denies the truth of his incarnation, while a preference for marriage, at the expense of virginity, would be aligned with an Arianism that denies the divinity of Jesus and his unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit. To my mind, Pope Francis’ words present virginity and marriage in a truly Trinitarian way, where their diversity expresses the richness and personal nature of God’s love and where their unity is a witness to its all-encompassing universality. It is only when both virginity and marriage are recognized as “different ways of loving” – both made perfect insofar as they are love – that we see the God who is Love, who is Trinity and who is fullness of life (cf. John 10:10).

Man and woman: a communion of persons

In a previous post (that I highly recommend if you’d like to get the most out of this one), I shared my notes on the first eight chapters of John Paul II’s “Man and Woman He Created Them.” There he presents an astonishing view of the human person, derived from the creation account of Genesis. It centers around his argument for the self-consciousness and self-determination of the human person, and, as their consequence, their relating to God as a partner. The human person is set against the background of man’s initial solitude, out of which the differentiation of the male and female sexes arises. In this post I would like to continue sharing my takeaways from John Paul II’s book, where the relationship between the “two ways in which [a] human being […] is a body” is further elaborated.

Here the narrative continues on from the “unity of two beings” established in chapter 8, and emphasizes the value of the human person to God (“God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” Genesis 1:31) and of man and woman to each other, as “an overcoming of the frontier of solitude.” This original solitude of man is already an indication that man is made for woman and vice versa. The “existence of the person “for” the person¹ […] is confirmed, in a negative sense, precisely by [man’s original] solitude.” Such being for each other results in the formation of a communion of persons, where it is the ““double solitude” of the man and the woman, […] which [gives] to both the possibility of being and existing in a particular reciprocity.” The human person’s being created “in the image of God” (Genesis 1:27) lets us deduce that “man became the image of God not only through his own humanity, but also through the communion of persons, which man and woman form from the very beginning.” This is beautifully summed up by John Paul II saying that “[m]an becomes an image of God not so much in the moment of solitude as in the moment of communion.” Man is “not only an image in which the solitude of one Person, who rules the world, mirrors itself, but also and essentially the image of an inscrutable divine communion of Persons.”

All I can say to that is: wow! The clarity of thought, the beauty of the universal image of the human person and its relationship with God that John Paul II presents here is astonishing and seems so fresh and open that I am lost for words!

Turning back to the human person, he extracts yet another profound realization from the Genesis account: “on the basis of the original and constitutive solitude of his being – man has been endowed with a deep unity between what is, humanly and through the body, male in him and what is, equally humanly and through the body, female in him.” The “twofold aspect of man’s somatic constitution” – masculinity and femininity – indicates “the new consciousness of the meaning of one’s body[, which is] reciprocal enrichment.” These “two reciprocally completing ways of “being a body” [… are] complementary dimensions of self-knowledge and self-determination.” It is important to note here that John Paul II does not refer to an individual, when he says “man” in the above quotes (i.e., he is not saying that a single person is constituted by masculine and feminine parts) and neither is he talking about a male human being. Instead, “man” refers to humanity, where human person have these two “ways of being” that have among them a deep unity. This becomes particularly clear also from the following passage, where he says that being male or female “is “constitutive for the person” (not only “an attribute of the person”) [… Man] is [deeply] constituted by the body as “he” or “she”.”

With the human person understood as above, the next step is to turn to the unity between male and female that Genesis expresses as: “the two will be one flesh” (2:24). This “is without doubt the unity that is expressed and realized in the conjugal act.” “When they unite with each other (in the conjugal act) so closely so as to become “one flesh,” man and woman rediscover every time and in a special way the mystery of creation, thus returning to the union in humanity (“flesh from my flesh and bone from my bones” [Genesis 2:23]) that allows them to recognize each other reciprocally.” “This means reliving in some way man’s original virginal value [… and for man and woman to discover] their own humanity, both in its original unity and in the duality of a mysterious reciprocal attraction.” “[S]ex expresses an ever-new surpassing of the limit of man’s solitude [… and] always implies that in a certain way one takes upon oneself the solitude of the body of the second “I” as one’s own.”

Finally, chapter 10 (yes, all of this is in only two, short chapters!), highlights the core importance of choice in becoming “one flesh” “While the man, by virtue of generation, belongs “by nature” to his father and mother, “he unites,” by contrast, with his wife (or she with her husband) by choice.” This choice, which is an “expression of self-determination” that is fundamental to the “structure” of the human person, “is what establishes the conjugal covenant between the persons, who become “one flesh” only based on [it].” “When both unite so intimately with each other that they become “one flesh,” their conjugal union presupposes a mature consciousness of the body.” The result is a new “discovery of the […] original consciousness of the unitive meaning of the body in its masculinity and femininity.”

OK, that’s about as much as I can try to cover in one go. John Paul II’s thought is intricate, dense (re-reading a good few times is a must) and has peculiarities of vocabulary (like all good, philosophically meaty texts), but the rewards are rich and will, at least for me, lead to many more re-reads and hopefully new insights in the future. Even the surface I managed to skim here presents the sexual relationship between man and woman as a mirror of the cosmic event of creation (in the rich depth that John Paul II has exposed in these first 10 chapters ), as a mirror of the innermost nature of God’s own Trinitarian life and as a mirror of the fundamental complementarity and reciprocity of human relationships. Consciousness, choice, bodiliness, solitude and a gratuitous giving of one’s self to another self are all weaved into a profoundly illuminating tapestry, which shows off the beauty of a positive, Christian understanding of humanity and sexuality.

¹ Please, note that all italicized emphases are John Paul II’s own, from the original text.

I’m with Müller: Mary’s virginity

Somewhat reluctantly,¹ I’ll now turn to the second of the three most prevalent criticisms that ‘traditionalist’ groups have leveled against Archbishop Gerhard Müller, the new prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. For the context and my take on the first criticism that relates to the Eucharist, see a previous post.

First let us review the Catholic teaching that Mary was a virgin and look at what the Catechism says:

“The gospel accounts understand the virginal conception of Jesus as a divine work that surpasses all human understanding and possibility: “That which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit,” said the angel to Joseph about Mary his fiancée. The Church sees here the fulfillment of the divine promise given through the prophet Isaiah: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son.”” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, §497)

This certainly sets the tone very clearly: the Church (and I) believes that Jesus was conceived by action of the Holy Spirit while Mary was a virgin and that this is an event that is beyond human understanding – beyond what’s considered possible (i.e., I read this as being inconsistent with the regular laws of nature). Let’s look more closely at what is said though about the nature of Mary’s virginity:

“[T]he Church confess[es] Mary’s real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. In fact, Christ’s birth “did not diminish his mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it.”” (CCC, §499)

Finally, let’s see how the Catechism concludes the part dedicated to Mary’s virginity:

“Mary is a virgin because her virginity is the sign of her faith “unadulterated by any doubt,” and of her undivided gift of herself to God’s will. It is her faith that enables her to become the mother of the Savior: “Mary is more blessed because she embraces faith in Christ than because she conceives the flesh of Christ.”” (CCC, § 506)

So, to sum up, I believe the Church teaches that Mary was a virgin before during and after Jesus’s birth, that this was an event clearly outside the regular running of nature and that, while her virginity was very much real, its value is not in the physiological facts that sustained it but in it being a sign of her faith.

With the above in mind, let’s turn to Müller’s words² (note that the changes indicated below are mine, based on the German original and versus the English wording found in a multitude of blog posts):

”[The perpetual virginity of Mary] is not ~~so much~~ about specific physiological ~~proprieties~~ peculiarities in the natural process of birth (such as the birth canal not having been opened, the hymen not being broken wounded, or the absence of birth pangs), but ~~with~~ about the healing and saving influence of the grace of the Savior on human nature, that had been “wounded” by Original Sin. […] The article of faith it is not ~~so much~~ about physiologically and empirically verifiable somatic details.” (Katholische Dogmatik für Studium und Praxis, p. 498)

The first thing to notice is that, if anything, the English translation used (critically) everywhere is more vague than the way I read Müller in the original German. I understand him as saying that Mary’s virginity is not about physiology and about what did or did not happen to her reproductive organs, but about grace, salvation and the person of Jesus. I see it as a reaction to the tomes upon tomes of pseudo–scientific accounts of how Jesus’ birth may have taken place vis a vis Mary’s perpetual virginity. This is about as useful as mediaeval ‘scientists’ writing treatises about lions without ever having seen one. If anything this is even worse, as there is no way for these ‘scientists’ to ever verify their claims.

Müller is not a scientist and he makes it clear that the Church’s beliefs about Mary’s virginity are not situated in a scientific context. As the Catechism (quoted above) also states, Mary’s perpetual virginity “surpasses all human understanding and possibility” and its analysis in terms of physiological categories is an exercise in futility.

Before concluding this little excursion, let me highlight one of the things that Müller said in a part that the quote bandied about by his critics left out: “To a mother, giving birth is not limited only to being a biological process.” This, to anyone who has children, is such an obvious thing to say that it seems hardly worth saying. Yet, in the context of the analyses and criticisms of Müller’s words on Mary’s virginity, it stands out like a beacon of sense in a sea of confusion and misguided breast-beating.³ What was it that went through Mary’s head when Jesus was born? Certainly not thoughts about her own hymen or birth canal, but an immense outpouring of love for her son and an awareness of the extraordinary consequences of her “Yes” to the message brought to her by the angel Gabriel now becoming even more of a gift to the world.

¹ I feel great affection for Jesus’ mum, who is not only an example in following her son, in putting others before herself, in listening and adhering to God’s call, in consoling the suffering and in stepping to the fore when most needed, but also someone with whom I feel I have a personal relationship. Having to discuss their anatomy isn’t exactly what seems most attractive to me, but I do think it is worthwhile given the spurious accusations that I’ll address here.

² As in previous posts, here too I’ll try to be careful about seeing exactly what someone has said before jumping to attack or defend it. So, the original German of Müller’s statement is: »Es geht nicht um abweichende physiologische Besonderheiten in dem natürlichen Vorgang der Geburt (wie etwas die Nichteröffnung der Geburtswege, die Nichtverletzung des Hymen und der nicht eingetretenen Geburtsschmerzen), sondern um den heilenden und erlösenden Einfluß der Gnade des Erlösers auf die menschliche Natur, die durch die Ursünde “verletzt” worden war. … Der Inhalt der Glaubensaussage bezieht sich also nicht auf physiologisch und empirisch verifizierbare somatische Details« (S. 498). And, for completeness sake, here is the original wording of the missing part referred to later in the post: »Die Geburt beschränkt sich für die Mutter nicht lediglich auf einen biologischen Vorgang.«

³ Not wanting to taint the main body of this post with reference to it, I can still not overlook some of the utter nonsense that some commentators have dragged up in the context of this topic. Let me just give one example, which goes as follows: “On this note, to deny that the Virgin Mary was not preserved from childbirthing [sic] pains is an attack on the Immaculate Conception of the same Virgin Mary.” Immaculate Conception?! They may as well bring the instructions on how Noah was to construct the ark into play! [Apologies for the outburst – for those of you not versed in Catholic theology, let me just state what the Immaculate Conception is about: “Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, “full of grace” through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses.” (CCC, §491, emphasis mine) Sheesh!]