"Juan Pablo II murió, ahora vive para siempre": Testigo recuerda 2 de abril de 2005

ROMA, 02 Abr. 11 / 03:17 am (ACI/EWTN Noticias)

Al cumplirse hoy seis años de la muerte del Papa Juan Pablo II, uno de los testigos de su muerte el 2 de abril de 2005 y miembro de la Oficina de Celebraciones Litúrgicas del Pontífice durante 13 años, Mons. Konrad Krajewski, recuerda la fecha y afirma que "Juan Pablo II ha muerto, eso quiere decir que ahora él vive para siempre".

En un artículo publicado en la edición de este 2 de abril en L'Osservatore Romano, Mons. Krajewski recuerda que fue el ahora Cardenal Stanislao Dziwisz, quien fuera por más de 40 años secretario personal del Papa Wojtyla, quien rompió el silencio alrededor del fallecido Pontífice.

"Estábamos de rodillas alrededor de la cama de Juan Pablo II. El Papa yacía en la penumbra. La luz discreta de la lámpara iluminaba la pared, pero se le podía ver bien. Luego el Arzobispo se levantó. Encendió la luz de la recámara, interrumpiendo así el silencio de la muerte de Juan Pablo II".

"Con voz conmovida, pero sorprendentemente firme, con el típico acento montañero, alargando algunas sílabas, comenzó a cantar: 'Te alabamos Dios, te proclamamos Señor'. Parecía una voz que venía del cielo. Todos miramos maravillados a Don Stanislao. Y la luz seguía al canto y las palabras que seguían: 'Oh eterno Padre, toda la tierra te adora...' y nos daba la certeza a cada uno de nosotros".

Mons. Krajewski añade: "Así -pensábamos- nos encontramos ante una realidad totalmente distinta. Juan Pablo II ha muerto, eso quiere decir que ahora él vive para siempre".

"A pesar del corazón sollozante y con el llanto anegando la garganta, pudimos cantar. A cada palabra nuestra voz se hacía más segura y más fuerte. El canto proclamaba: 'Vencedor de la muerte, has abierto a los creyentes el Reino de los Cielos'. Así, con el himno del Te Deum, hemos glorificado a Dios, bien visible y reconocible en la persona del Papa".

En cierto sentido, prosigue el sacerdote, "esta es también la experiencia de todos los que se han encontrado con él durante su pontificado. Quien entraba en contacto con Juan Pablo II se encontraba con Jesús, a quien el Papa mostraba con todo su ser: con la palabra, el silencio, los gestos, el modo de rezar, el modo de actuar en la liturgia, el recogimiento en la sacristía: con todo su modo de ser. Se notaba inmediatamente que era una persona colmada de Dios".

Durante los últimos años de su vida, señala Mons. Krajewski, "bastaba con verlo para descubrir la presencia de Dios, y así comenzar a rezar. Era suficiente para ir a confesarse: no solo por los pecados sino por no ser santos como él".

"Cuando ya no podía caminar bien, durante las celebraciones, y se volvió totalmente dependiente de los ceremonieros, comencé a darme cuenta de que estaba tocando a una persona santa. A veces, entonces, irritaba a los penitenciarios vaticanos porque, antes de cada celebración, iba a confesarme, siguiendo un mandato interior y una fuerte necesidad de recibir la absolución para poder estar a su lado".

Ese 2 de abril de 2005, cuando salió del departamento del Papa en el Palacio Apostólico "vi a una multitud de gente que caminaba en silencio recogido. El mundo se había cerrado, se había arrodillado y había llorado".

"Estaba quien lloraba solo por el hecho de haber perdido a una persona amada y que luego volvía a su casa como había llegado. Y estaba también aquellos, que unía a las lágrimas exteriores las lágrimas interiores y se daba cuenta de que no era adecuado ante el Señor. Este llano era bendito: era el inicio del milagro de la conversión".

El sacerdote recuerda además que entre las tareas que le tocaban también estaba "hacerse cargo del cuerpo del Papa difunto. Lo hice por siete largos días hasta el funeral. Poco después de su muerte, vestí a Juan Pablo II ayudado de tres enfermeros que lo cuidado por largo tiempo".

"Ya había pasado como una hora y media del deceso, y seguían hablándole como si estuvieran hablando con su papá. Antes de vestirlo con las vestimentas propias lo tocaban con amor y reverencia, como si se tratara auténticamente alguien de la familia".

Al comentar luego que cada día celebra la Eucaristía en las Grutas Vaticanas, el sacerdote indica que ve "a los dependientes de la Basílica y a todos los que llegan a trabajar a los distintos dicasterios del Vaticano, que comienzan la jornada con un momento de oración ante la tumba de Juan Pablo II: tocan la lápida y le mandan un beso. Y eso pasa toda la mañana".

Finalmente afirma que "si quisiera indicar lo que es lo más importante para la vida sacerdotal y para cada uno de nosotros, mirándolo podría decir: no ofuscar a Dios con uno mismo, sino, al contrario, mostrarlo y hacerse signo visible de su presencia. A Dios nadie lo ha visto, pero Juan Pablo II lo ha hecho visible a través de su vida".

Marriage and Procreation: Avoiding Bad Arguments

by Patrick Lee, Robert P. George and Gerard V. Bradley

In Public Discourse

March 30, 2011

Defenders of conjugal marriage must be careful to not obscure the true nature of marriage—and the state’s true interest in promoting it.

In Part One of this article, we argued that marriage is a union of a man and a woman, committed to sharing their lives together on the bodily, emotional, and rational-volitional levels of their being, in the kind of community that would be naturally fulfilled by having and rearing children together. Since that kind of multi-leveled community cannot be formed by two persons of the same sex—such persons cannot unite biologically in the way that has always been understood to consummate marriage, and they cannot form the kind of community that would be fulfilled by conceiving, bearing, and raising children together—there cannot in reality be such a thing as same-sex marriage (any more than there can be such a thing as polyamorous marriage—that is, marriage involving three or more partners). Since same-sex (and polyamorous) partners cannot form what are, in truth, marriages, the state’s not granting them marriage licenses is not unjust discrimination.

The argument we advanced for man-woman marriage in Part One of this article is sometimes obscured even by proponents of conjugal marriage. It is sometimes argued that the state’s interest in marriage is simply to ensure that as many children as possible are raised in “an optimal setting,” and that this interest justifies “restricting” marriage to opposite-sex couples. But the fact that intact homes are the optimal setting for child-rearing does not by itself justify a policy of recognizing only opposite-sex partnerships as marriages. For a good end (ensuring optimal care for children) would not justify the means (excluding same-sex “marriage”) if it could be shown that the means were unjust—and denying marriage to such couples, if they were able to form a true marital partnership, would be unjust.

If this argument is advanced as the central one—rather than as a secondary confirmation—then it is misleading. For, in that case, the impression is given that the state itself has created marriage—for the extrinsic purpose of child-rearing. In fact, however, marriage is indeed naturally oriented to and fulfilled by conceiving, bearing, and raising children, but not as to an extrinsic end—and this orientation belongs to marriage independently of any action on the part of the state. In a profound sense, marriage is a “pre-political” institution, albeit one that the law and the state rightly recognize, regulate, promote, and protect.

Moreover, if advanced as the main argument, the “optimal setting” argument locates the center of debate in the wrong place. For even if it could be shown that another type of alliance (for example, two men and a woman, religiously active families, or very wealthy families) would tend to produce better child-rearing outcomes, it would not follow that these alliances were also (or alone) real marriages; and the state’s duty not to confuse true marriage with other arrangements—as we will show—would still obtain. Hence the real ground for the state’s duty to restrict marriage licenses to opposite-sex couples—who are of the age of consent, and have other relevant qualifications—is not an extrinsic goal of marriage, but the actual nature of marriage itself. While the optimal setting argument has a confirming evidential force, advancing it as the central argument diverts attention from how marriage is most centrally related to procreation: marriage is intrinsically (and not merely incidentally or instrumentally) related to procreation.

The state does have a legitimate interest in promoting and regulating marriage; indeed, it is obligated to do so. The state exists in order to promote ends that (a) serve all within that society, and (b) can effectively and appropriately be pursued by political society (unlike ends that can best be pursued only by individuals, families, or voluntary associations). Such ends constitute the public good, and clearly include defending against external attacks, preserving internal order, facilitating transportation, providing a judicial system for the fair resolution of disputes, etc. But in virtually every political society, the promotion, protection, and regulation of marriage has been understood as part of the public good. This is partly because regulating marriage, and so distinguishing between who is and who is not married, is a task the state cannot escape. For, though marriage is more than a contract, it still is one (it is more, not less, than a contract), and so the state must adjudicate some disputes about marriage, inheritance issues, child custody, and property when spouses separate. For this reason, among many others, privatization of marriage is a practical impossibility. Further, it is abundantly clear that healthy marriages provide social benefits to all.

But the most important reason that the state should protect and promote marriage—including family, which is marriage in its fullest fruition—is that it is itself an irreducible human good, a distinctive and irreplaceable way in which human persons (men, women, and children) can flourish. Hence the strength or weakness of marriage as a social institution profoundly affects the well-being of everyone in a political society.

The state can effectively and appropriately promote marriage. It does so principally by influencing the public understanding of marriage through its laws and regulations. The public understanding and appreciation of marriage—the marriage culture in a given society—greatly influences people’s capacities to participate as fully and richly as possible in this intrinsic human good. Looked at another way, by conveying a gravely distorted view of marriage, the state can weaken and even undermine its members’ capacities for full and rich participation in this important aspect of human flourishing. So, it is not only appropriate but also morally obligatory that the state promote and protect marriage.

But to do so, the state must promote real marriage, not a counterfeit. The state must not obscure the nature of marriage by equating it with other arrangements which differ essentially from marriage. Suppose the state (through its educational curricula) endorsed disinformation and sophistry—counterfeits of the pursuit of knowledge. By doing so, the state would gravely harm the moral environment by which society helps or hinders the moral development and character of its members. The state would send the message that one need not respect the good of truth, that it is normal and acceptable to subordinate one’s reasoning, in disregard for truth, to the attainment of other ends—which, of course, is just what sophistry is. In that way, the state would gravely damage the interests and violate the rights of its citizens. By the same token, by re-defining marriage so as to include same-sex partnerships, the state would convey the message that marriage, instead of being an objective interpersonal union both good in itself and intrinsically linked to procreation, is a relationship principally defined by emotional connection, the exchange of sexual pleasure, and shared housekeeping—all important but nonetheless ancillary features or entailments of genuine marriage. This would undermine the public understanding of marriage and erode respect for the genuine human good of marriage. In a misguided effort to “expand” access to marriage, the state would make it more difficult for people to enter into and live out true marriages. For marriage is the kind of human good that can be chosen and realized only by persons who have some basic understanding of what it essentially is.

What, then, of the argument advanced by Justices Walker, Marshall, and others regarding infertile heterosexual couples? It should by now be obvious how weak this argument is, that it stems from a remarkably simplistic view of how marriage could be related to procreation. The basic argument is: if marriage were intrinsically oriented to procreation, then couples who cannot procreate (the sterile or elderly) could not be married; but they can be married; therefore, etc. No reason is ever given why one should think that the first premise (the if-then proposition) is true. In fact there are numerous reasons why this proposition could be false. And there is only one reason it could be true: namely, if marriage were—either as a community or as an institution—merely instrumental in relation to procreation, a relationship created simply as a means toward an extrinsic goal. But plainly, as we have shown above, it is not. The comprehensive, multi-leveled union of husband and wife is both intrinsically good and the kind of relationship that would be naturally fulfilled by enlarging into family. Since marriage, thus understood, is good-in-itself, and not a mere means, men and women can marry even if they do not, for any number of reasons, have children.

Thus, the familiar argument rehearsed by Justices Walker and Marshall, which asks how the institution of marriage can be primarily about procreation if infertile couples are still eligible to marry, is easily answered. The answer is that the institution of marriage is not primarily about procreation as an end or goal distinct from marriage. The institution is directly about the marital communion itself, which in its fullest fruition is family; and so it is about children, but principally as members of families. True marriage can exist even where children do not come of the union, but it always remains the type of union that would naturally be fulfilled by children, were they to come. And precisely such a relationship has intrinsic value for the men and women who commit to it as spouses and live it out.

Jesuit-run Gonzaga U. welcomes ‘Vagina Monologues’ after 9-year ban

by Kathleen Gilbert

SPOKANE, Washington, March 25, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Another Jesuit university has allowed a campus production of an extremely explicit play that glorifies female masturbation and lesbianism.

Student supporters of the “Vagina Monologues” celebrated finally gaining permission for the play after administration had consistently banned it for 9 years, according to a report in the student newspaper The Gonzaga Bulletin.

The play was approved by Academic Vice President Dr. Patricia Killen, and will be showed Monday April 4 with a discussion panel following entitled, “Voices on ‘The Vagina Monologues,’ Catholic Tradition, and Jesuit Identity.” On April 6, a discussion is scheduled to explore “the power of storytelling and the place of stories in movements toward social justice,” according to the Bulletin.

Killen sent an email to students after approving the play, noting that the play “contains raw language and explicit descriptions of sexual behavior” but will be “performed in the context of an interdisciplinary academic exploration.”

The development was picked up by the Catholic watchdog group Cardinal Newman Society (CNS), which has tracked the popularity of the play among several Catholic institutions of higher learning. Last year, CNS notes, then-Interim President Thayne McCulloh rejected the play because he “could not ignore the historical context that informs review of the current proposal.”

Gonzaga has become the fourteenth Catholic campus to welcome the Monologues, ten of which are Jesuit institutions.

Savior Siblings: At What Moral Cost? - by E. Christian Brugger

by E. Christian Brugger, D. Phil, Senior Fellow on Ethics and Director of the Fellows Program

In Culture of Life Foundation

WASHINGTON, D.C., MARCH 23, 2011 (Zenit.org ).- Here is a question on bioethics asked by a ZENIT reader and answered by the fellows of the Culture of Life Foundation.

Q: Could you please clarify the concept of a "savior sibling"? Some argue that a child conceived to save his older brother or sister is "conceived to be used." But the child per se is not used at all, only the child's umbilical cord. Please clarify. Sincerely, D.V.M -- Bellflower, California

E. Christian Brugger offers the following response:

A: Lisa Nash, mother of the world's first "savior sibling," said she would do "anything" to save her daughter's life.[1] Her daughter Molly was diagnosed at birth (in 1994) with Fanconi Anemia, a serious genetic disorder in which patients can suffer bone marrow failure, birth defects, developmental abnormalities, a heightened risk of leukemia and premature death. Lisa and her husband Jack were told that the best way to help Molly was to give her a blood and marrow transplant from a genetically matched sibling. But Molly was an only child. Her parents had been considering conceiving again, but decided against it because of the high probability -- about 25% -- that the child would suffer the same illness.

Then Lisa and Jack were told about pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), a screening procedure performed on embryos prior to implantation. Embryos are generated in a laboratory using in-vitro fertilization (IVF), then tested for the desired genetic traits; only those that are perfect matches are implanted into a female uterus. "Abnormal" embryos -- or in this case embryos not genetically matched to Molly -- are destroyed.

The Nashes agreed. After four agonizing trials, and the creation of 30 embryos, the Nashes finally got their disease-free child, Adam, an exact blood match for his sister Molly. He was born in October 2000 at Fairview Hospital in Minneapolis. Specialists successfully transferred tissue and blood from Adam's umbilical cord into Molly's body. And his sister's life was saved.

Adam is called a "savior sibling," not because -- as in the Christian use of the term -- he sacrificed his life for another, but rather because he was generated -- was brought into the world -- and selected to provide a life-saving remedy for another. His successful gestation meant the difference between life and death for Molly. After implantation, he was not subjected to disproportionately risky procedures for his sister's sake; his organs were not harvested and his body was not violated to save her; using his umbilical cord after birth was harmless to him. And although he was generated for his sister's sake, we cannot presume his parents do not love him today for his own sake, and care for him as best they can.

Yet the fact remains: 29 human embryos were sacrificed to save Molly. His mother, Lisa, stated in 2001 in an interview with CNN, "That's what we had to do for us; and I would hope that people who felt this was inappropriate would feel it was inappropriate for them and not judge me unless they've been where I've been."[2]

Now nobody would ever wish to be where the Nashes were with their daughter Molly; suffering with a child who suffers from a fatal condition such as Fanconi Anemia. Moreover, we cannot scrutinize the level of knowledge or measure of culpability of other people in doing the things they do. In this sense, we should not attempt to judge Lisa Nash's conscience.

But, we can and must make judgments about the objective morality of certain kinds of actions and condemn those actions that are objectively wrong. Moral disapproval of the eugenic selection of IVF embryos using PGD does not principally concern a 'feeling of inappropriateness.' It concerns a judgment that creating and killing human embryos for the benefit of others is always gravely wrong.

Dangerous road
All the endless rationalizing about embryos not being human, or not yet fully human, or not persons, or lacking moral worth, or not being 'like us,' have paved a dangerously tempting path for people in crisis situations to travel down. We unblinkingly focus on the benefits promised at the end of the path and avert our eyes from the monstrous injustices caused to human embryos.

Moreover, bringing a child into the world, not for his own sake but for the benefit of another treats him as a means to an end; it instrumentalizes him. This violates the moral requirement of the natural law (articulated in Kant's "Categorical Imperative" and Karol Wojtyla's "Personalistic Norm") directing that we treat other persons -- precisely because they are persons -- always as ends in themselves. The fact that a "savior sibling" may be loved and cherished after his utilitarian purpose has been served does not erase the wrong done to him in creating him for another's benefit.

Some believe this latter argument is speciously abstract. If parents intend to love the "savior sibling" as much as his older sibling, no harm, and therefore no wrong, is done to him. I would agree only this far: If parents already intended to have another child, conceived the child in licit ways, and then utilized the child's discarded umbilical cord to save another, then certainly there is no wrongdoing in this.

But parents who envisage another pregnancy precisely for the purpose of benefiting one of their other children; and who initiate the pregnancy for that purpose -- even aside from the problems of IVF and eugenic selection of embryos -- have harmed and done wrong to their child. They wronged him by not bringing him into the world as the subject of a loving communion between themselves and the child, but in the context of a relationship of "maker" to "thing made," as a useful (indeed very useful in the case of "savior siblings") instrument to serve their purposes. "But what noble purposes!" the Utilitarian always cries. Indeed, but at what moral cost?

Can anyone doubt that if after two week's gestation (or four, six, eight, 15, 22, etc.), the doctors told the parents that the only way to save the older sibling was to terminate the pregnancy and to culture the embryonic/fetal tissue for creating a life-saving serum, the parents -- having initiated the pregnancy for an instrumental purpose -- would seriously contemplate abortion. Is there any doubt that some, perhaps many, would -- in their desperation for results -- consent to the repugnant alternative? If embryos are considered disposable before implantation, what logic secures their inviolability after implantation?

Dead end
We've come a long way down this dead-end street. Today we generate embryos in vitro, grow them in Petri dishes, biopsy them, select the ones that please us most, mail them to India to be gestated, freeze them and earmark their frozen bodies for a variety of future uses; and when we no longer feel they are useful to us, we magnanimously donate them to science or flush them down the sink.

But since we all were once embryos, and in relation to the fullness of life in the Kingdom for which Christians hope, we are right now in an embryonic kind of existence; when we dehumanize them, we dehumanize ourselves and everyone else.

Can the genie ever get back in the bottle? Can we humanize the embryo in the minds of our neighbors and associates? Only with difficulty. If we've dehumanized the fetus to nine months, defending embryos will be onerous.

But encouraging signs are afoot. Just last week, the Oklahoma House passed a bill (HB 1442) that would prohibit embryo-destructive research in the state, and the Minnesota legislature is moving ahead with a bill to prohibit the cloning of human embryos, including so-called "therapeutic cloning."

In the meantime, we can always ask those tempted to run rough shod over our little brothers and sisters, "If you were an embryo, how would you want to be treated?" You know, the Golden Rule and all that.

NOTES
[1] For more information, see http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/200010/18_scheckt_babies
[2] For more information, see http://articles.cnn.com/2001-06-27/health/embryo.testing_1_genetic-diagnosis-genetic-testing-genetic-defect?_s=PM:HEALTH

US Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Urges Not to Include Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Among Protected Categories

WASHINGTON (March 25, 2011)——The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has urged the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) not to adopt a proposed regulation that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protected categories for which discrimination in HUD programs is prohibited.

In comments filed today with HUD, Anthony Picarello, USCCB general counsel, and Michael Moses, USCCB associate general counsel, noted that, when it comes to orientation and gender identity, “a protected classification for purposes of federal housing programs has no support in any Act of Congress and appears at odds with at least one other, namely, the Defense of Marriage Act.” They added that “the regulations may force faith-based and other organizations, as a condition of participating in HUD programs and in contravention of their religious beliefs, to facilitate shared housing arrangements between persons who are not joined in the legal union of one man and one woman.”

“By this, we do not mean that any person should be denied housing. Making decisions about shared housing, however, is another matter,” wrote Picarello and Moses. “Particularly here, faith-based and other organizations should retain the freedom they have always had to make housing placements in a manner consistent with their religious beliefs, including when it concerns a cohabiting couple, be it an unmarried heterosexual couple or a homosexual couple. Given the very large role that faith-based organizations play in HUD programs, the regulation, by infringing upon that freedom, may have the ultimate effect of driving away organizations with a long and successful track record in meeting housing needs, leaving beneficiaries without the housing that they sought or that the government intended them to receive.”

The full comment is available at: www.usccb.org/ogc/HUD-Regulations-on-Sexual-Orientation-and-Gender-Identity(March_2011).pdf

Marriage and Procreation: The Intrinsic Connection

by Patrick Lee, Robert P. George and Gerard V. Bradley

In Public Discourse

March 28, 2011

There is an intrinsic link between marriage and procreation, but this does not mean that infertile couples cannot really be married.

Activists seeking to redefine marriage typically claim that it is unfair—even arbitrary—for law and public policy to continue to honor the historic understanding of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife. Believing that marriage has a degree of malleability that our legal tradition has heretofore failed to recognize, they maintain that “excluding” same-sex partners from marriage violates a moral right possessed by every individual to marry a person of one’s choice (with that person’s consent). Defenders of conjugal marriage reply (in part) that marriage is not malleable in the ways that their opponents suppose. It is by nature oriented to procreation, and so defining marriage as a male-female union is not unjust discrimination. On a sound understanding of marriage, they argue, it is no more unfair to “exclude” same-sex partners from marriage than it is to “exclude” three (or more) polyamorous sexual partners from marriage. Indeed, it is not accurately characterized as exclusion at all.

Those who support defining marriage in such a way as to include same-sex partnerships deny that marriage has any intrinsic relation to procreation. When striking down Proposition 8 (which re-established conjugal marriage under California law after it had been invalidated by that state’s supreme court), Judge Vaughn Walker curtly argued: “Never has the state inquired into procreative capacity or intent before issuing a marriage license; indeed, a marriage license is more than a license to have procreative sexual intercourse.” The same argument was advanced earlier by Chief Justice Margaret Marshall in her majority opinion in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, the ruling that struck down Massachusetts’ conjugal marriage law; replying to the contention that marriage’s primary purpose is procreation, Marshall confidently replied that:

This is incorrect…. General Laws c. 207 contains no requirement that the applicants for a marriage license attest to their ability or intention to conceive children by coitus. Fertility is not a condition of marriage, nor is it grounds for divorce. People who have never consummated their marriage, and never plan to, may be and stay married.

But this argument—that since infertile couples can marry, marriage is not oriented to procreation—is radically unsound.

In this essay we will show how to answer the argument denying an intrinsic link between marriage and procreation, and we will explain why the state is obliged, for the sake of moral truth and the common good, to recognize and protect marriage as a man-woman community naturally oriented to procreation. We will show that this argument presupposes a false dichotomy regarding marriage: that it must be either (1) a mere means in relation to procreation as its extrinsic end, or (2) a partnership that, though perhaps more emotionally intense than most friendships and typically marked by the presence of sexual relations, is nonetheless like other forms of friendship inasmuch as it bears no intrinsic relationship to procreation. And we will describe a better understanding of marriage—one that is in fact historically embodied in our law and in the philosophical traditions supporting it. On this understanding, marriage is a sexual union of the type that is especially apt for, and would naturally be fulfilled by, having and rearing children together, but whose value, precisely as such a relationship, is intrinsic (as an irreducible aspect of integral human fulfillment) and not merely instrumental (as it would be if marriage were properly understood as only a means to procreation and the rearing of children).

The key is to understand the specific type of community marriage actually is—in particular, how it is bodily, sexual, and of a type that would naturally be fulfilled by procreation. In every society, we find something like the following type of relationship: men and women committed to sharing their lives together, on the bodily, emotional, and spiritual levels of their being, in the kind of community that would be fulfilled by procreating and rearing children together. That such a distinctive type of community—marriage—does exist in every society is undeniable. There are, of course other relationships similar in some ways to marriage. For example, men and women may cohabit, regularly have sex together, and view the possibility of having children as a possibly attractive optional “extra,” or perhaps instead as a burden to be avoided. Or, by contrast, two or more individuals may form an alliance for the sake of bringing up children—two sisters, for example, or several celibate religious men or women. But these relationships are not marriages, and no society recognizes them as marriages. Marriage is that type of community that is both a comprehensive unity (a unity on all levels of the human person, including the bodily-sexual) and a community that would be fulfilled by procreating and rearing children together. Moreover, there is an intrinsic link between these two aspects of the community; the comprehensive (and therefore intrinsically sexual) relationship is fulfilled by, and is not merely incidental to, the procreating and rearing of children.

These points can be clarified. First, the bodily, sexual aspect of the relationship is part of and is inherently linked to the other aspects of the marital union. The sexual communion of a man and a woman establishes a real, biological union—a one-flesh union is an accurate description of it—for in this act they are biologically a single agent of a single action. Just as an individual’s different organs—heart, lungs, arteries, and so forth—perform not as isolated parts, but in a coordinated unity to carry out a single biological function of the whole individual (circulation of oxygenated blood), so too in coitus the sexual organs of the male and those of the female function in a coordinated way to carry out a biological function of the couple as a unit—mating. Hence coitus establishes a real biological union with respect to this function, although it is, of course, a limited biological union inasmuch as for various other functions (e.g., respiration, digestion, locomotion) the male and female remain fully distinct.

Now, the human body is part of the personal reality of the human being, and not an extrinsic instrument of the conscious and desiring aspect of the self. So the biological unity just described can be a truly personal unity and a part (indeed, the biological foundation) of the comprehensive, multi-leveled (biological, emotional, rational, volitional) union that marriage distinctively is. When a man and woman make a commitment to each other to share their lives on all levels of their being, in the type of community that would be fulfilled by cooperatively procreating and rearing children, then the biological unity established and renewed in sexual intercourse is the beginning or embodiment of that community we know as marriage. Unlike other forms of friendship, the marital community is structured by norms of monogamy, exclusivity, and the pledge of permanence, partly because of the intrinsic link between it and procreation. The sexual communion of spouses is the bodily component proportionate to, indeed part of, the kind of multi-leveled personal community they have consented to in marrying.

Second, such a community is extended and naturally fulfilled by procreating and rearing children together. The child is the concrete fruit and expression of their marital commitment and their love for one another; indeed, each child born of the marriage is the union of the spouses made concrete and prolonged in time. So the cooperative rearing of their children does not establish a new type of relationship, but rather deepens and naturally fulfills the relationship that they have established precisely in marrying. Rearing children is to tend to the marriage, to cultivate its fruit, to serve the good of the parents’ marriage by and through each act of service to each child. As a form of human relationship, marriage is indeed, then, intrinsically oriented to procreation—but not as a mere means in relation to an extrinsic end. The union of the spouses to one another in a relationship whose distinctive structure is what it is because of its aptness for procreation and the rearing of children is no mere instrumental good, but is rather good in itself—an intrinsic fulfillment of those united in the relationship. And it is for this reason that a marriage is and remains a marriage—a true marriage—even if procreation does not result and even if the spouses know that it will not result. With or without children, spouses are in a relationship of the type that is especially apt for procreation and would naturally be fulfilled by their having and rearing children together—their children (if they were to have children) would be embodiments of their marital communion. The marital communion of the spouses is good in itself, and as such provides a non-instrumental reason for conjugal relations, whether or not they are capable of conceiving children; but it is also naturally fulfilled when it becomes part of a larger community, the family.

Given these two points regarding the nature of marriage, it is clear why marriage is the union of sexually complementary spouses. Same-sex partners, whatever the character or intensity of their emotional bond, cannot form together the kind of union that marriage is. To marry, a couple must, in principle, be able to form a real bodily union—not just an emotional and spiritual union. Same-sex couples are unable to do this: the sexual acts that persons of the same sex can perform on each other do not make them biologically one, and so cannot establish the bodily foundation for the multi-leveled union that is marriage. And to marry, a couple must form the kind of communion that would be naturally fulfilled by conceiving and rearing children together. Same-sex couples cannot form this type of union: they (two or more) can form sexual arrangements, and can also form alliances for child-rearing, but the one relationship is distinct and not inherently linked to the other.

Also, given these points about marriage, it is easy to see that infertile opposite-sex couples can form a true marital union. They are able to fulfill the two essential conditions just mentioned for marrying. First, infertile opposite-sex couples can form a biological unit—they can mate (that is, they can perform the kind of act that results in procreation when conditions extrinsic to their conduct obtain). Second, infertile opposite-sex couples can form the kind of bodily, emotional, and spiritual union of precisely the sort that would be naturally fulfilled by procreation and rearing of children together—even though, in their case, that fulfillment is not reached.

It is sometimes objected that infertile couples cannot biologically unite, since their act is not in fact capable of procreating—they cannot (it is objected) perform an act that is procreative in kind, which is necessary for a biological union. However, no couple can directly or simply choose to procreate. The only thing any couple can directly do regarding procreation is to perform the kind of act that will lead to procreation, provided other conditions extrinsic to their conduct obtain. (Thus, children are not products of their parents’ sexual acts: rather, parents should rightly view them as gifts that supervene upon their bodily expression of love in their sexual union.) So, opposite-sex couples who are infertile can perform precisely the same kind of act that fertile couples can perform. In both cases, they fulfill the behavioral conditions of procreation. And so the sexual intercourse of an infertile couple, no less than that of a fertile couple, unites them biologically: they mate, even though, in the case of the infertile couple, procreation will not result. In each case, their sexual act can consummate or embody their marriage.

So, the state’s granting marriage licenses only to opposite-sex couples is based on the nature of marriage and does not constitute unjust discrimination. The state grants a license to do X only to someone presumptively capable of doing X. It is no more unjust discrimination to deny marriage licenses to couples of the same sex than to twelve-year olds, to those already married, or to polyamorous groups of three or more sexual partners: in each case, the license is denied simply because the individuals in question are unable to form with each other the kind of union that marriage is.