MARRIAGE ESSENTIALLY DIFFERS FROM DE FACTO UNIONS

VATICAN CITY, JAN 21, 1999 (VIS) - The Pope this morning received prelate auditors, officials and lawyers from the Tribunal of the Roman Rota in the Clementine Hall on the occasion of the opening of the judicial year. The focus of the Pontiff's speech was on the analysis of the nature of marriage and its essential connotations in the light of natural law.

Having highlighted "the widespread deterioration of the natural and religious meaning of marriage," John Paul II stated that today "the very value and utility of the institution" are doubted. "Thus it is not possible to ignore the growing phenomenon of simple de facto unions and the insistent public opinion campaigns whose aim is to obtain conjugal dignity for unions including those between persons of the same sex."

"Conjugal love is not above all based on feelings, it is rather a commitment to the other person, which is accepted with a precise act of will. It is exactly this which qualifies this love, making it conjugal. Once the commitment is made and accepted by consent, love becomes conjugal, and never loses this character."

With the simulation of consent, the marriage rite acquires a purely exterior value, which does not correspond to "a reciprocal gift of love, of exclusive, indissoluble and fertile love. How can one fail to be astonished if a marriage of this kind is doomed to failure?"

"In the light of these principles, the essential difference existing between a mere de facto union - even if claimed to be founded on love - and marriage in which love means not only a moral but also a rigorously juridical commitment, can be established and understood." In the same way, "the pretense of attributing a 'conjugal' reality to the union of persons of the same sex is also revealed as being incongruous."

The Pope concluded by highlighting that "only in the union of two people of the opposite sex can the individual be fulfilled, in a synthesis of unity and mutual psycho-physical complementarity. In this perspective, love is not an end in itself, and is not reduced to the bodily meeting of two beings, but is rather a deep interpersonal relationship, which reaches its summit in full reciprocal giving, cooperating with God the Creator, the ultimate source of all new human life."

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