Marriage: Its Meaning and Purposes

Abstract

D URING the last few years Catholic theologians have devoted a considerable amount of attention to the doctrine of Christian marriage. Books and articles have appeared in which one discerns a tendency to reconsider various phases of Catholic teaching, especially with regard to the relative importance of the ends of marriage. The tendency has been to emphasize the secondary ends, and the element of conjugal love, which to these authors seem to have been neglected or at least underemphasized in the treatment of marriage commonly found in theological manuals. They feel that the true Catholic teaching would be more clearly presented if less emphasis were placed on what has hitherto commonly been called the primary end of marriage, and more emphasis placed on the personal elements of conjugal love and conjugal community of life. In fact, some seem to go so far as to deny that procreation is the primary end, at least in the sense in which St. Thomas made it primary. Among these writers the one who has made the greatest impression on other Catholic thinkers is undoubtedly Doctor Herbert Doms, Privat-Dozent of the University of Breslau, a priest, and Doctor of Theology. His book Vom Sinn und Zweck der Ebe, first published in German in 1935, had its second French edition in 1937, and has appeared in English in 1939 under the title: The Meaning of Marriage.