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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: drj@jennifer-roback-morse.com 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,

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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: drj@jennifer-roback-morse.com 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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