This is the fourth article in a wonderful series on the transmission of life and responsible parenthood as printed in The Arkansas Catholic. Reprinted with permission. (Bishop Sartain is from Memphis, TN and served as Vicar General of the Diocese of Memphis and Pastor of St. Louis Church before his appointment as Bishop of Little Rock.)
In an often-quoted and often-misunderstood section of the letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul begins a passage about wives and husbands with these words "Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ." (Ephesians 5 21).
In the late fourth century, St. John Chrysostom suggested that young husbands should say to their wives "I have taken you in my arms, and I love you, and I prefer you to my life itself. For the present life is nothing, and my most ardent dream is to spend it with you in such a way that we may be assured of not being separated in the life reserved for us ... I place your love about all things, and nothing would be more bitter or painful to me than to be of a different mind than you" (Homily on Ephesians 20 S).
John captured well Paul's teaching that wives and husbands are to be subordinate to one another - in other words, they are to consider the other's good as of greatest importance, they are to sacrifice for one another as Christ himself has done, and as a couple they are to see themselves as subject to Christ. The concept of mutual subordination is a way of expressing the particular kind of love which characterizes Christian marriage, which is a "union of loves" so complete that two become one.
In the Roman Catholic Church, it is ordinarily understood that husband and wife are ministers of God's grace and confer on one another the sacrament of matrimony by declaring their consent before the Church. They are chosen instruments of God in one another's lives - and not just the day of the wedding, but "until death do us part." They are literally to help one another get to heaven! Moreover, their vocation entails not only being one in love for each other, but also being God's instruments as a couple, most especially instruments of his creative power in giving life to children. Their love looks beyond itself and seeks to raise up new lives.
These two meanings or values of Christian marriage - the "unitive" and "procreative" - are intimately, inseparably, linked; they cannot be divided without affecting the couple's spiritual life and compromising their marriage and the future of their family. In fact, if a person enters marriage with the deliberate intention to exclude children from the marriage, the consent is invalid. Just as the persons of the Trinity are "fruitful" in love for one another and in creation, so the love of husband and wife is intended to be fruitful in love and offspring. Married couples are cooperators in the love of God the Creator and are, in a certain sense, its interpreters.
Being "cooperators" and "interpreters" of the creative love of God carries both extraordinary joys and extraordinary responsibilities. An especially intimate and personal responsibility of every couple is making decisions about the regulation of births. Just as the crown of creation was human life, so the supreme gift of marriage is a human person, and the vocation of husband and wife entails honoring this capacity of their love with special care.
The Church does not teach that couples should have a certain number of children, but it does offer teaching about responsible parenthood, which can be summarized in these five points:
Interwoven among these aspects of responsible parenthood is the understanding that the two great meanings or values of marriage - the "unitive" and "procreative" - are never separated. A love that is complete and faithful, a love which holds nothing back from the other, will remain open to God's creative plan. After all, it is God's love in the first place.