Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Sexualität, Bipolarität: Mittel der Fruchtbarkeit; Einigung als sekundäres Ziel; Ehe: rationale Form der Finalität der Sexualität zu Nachkommen

Kurzinhalt: marriage is the rational form .. of sex and of the finality of sex to the child; so marriage will be an incorporation of the horizontal finality of sex much more than of sex itself

Textausschnitt: 45b Here three points are to be observed. First, marriage is the rational form, the incorporation on the level of reason, not of the child nor of the fecundity of parents, but of sex and of the finality of sex to the child. Not the child, for it advances to the level of reason by divine action, by the infusion of the soul. Not the fecundity of parents, for the marriage is valid even though the parents are sterile. It incorporates sex, for the sexual deficiency of impotence is a diriment impediment; and it incorporates the finality of sex to the child, for the object of marital right is actus per se apti ad prolis generationem. In the second place, marriage is more an incorporation of the finality of sex than of sex itself. Of course, it is just the opposite that seems true to phenomenologist scrutiny, for that ignores the metaphysical principle that what is prior quoad se is posterior quoad nos, r and that the more ultimate final cause enters more intimately into the nature of a thing than the more proximate.

Einfügung Fußnote 73: See Thomas Aquinas, Super Librum De causis, lect. 1. This, I think, touches upon a fundamental methodological error in the analysis presented by Dr Doms. I agree that sex is to be distinguished from fecundity, as impotence from sterility. I agree with the validity of the question, What is the ontological significance of bisexuality? It is only a terminological difference when he asserts that the meaning of marriage is union and I say that the act and end of bisexuality is union, or when in different ways we both place two ends beyond this union. But when he speaks of this meaning of union as immanent, intrinsic, immediate, I distinguish: in the chronological order of human knowledge or of the development of human appreciation, the union is first; but in the ontological order the ordinations to the ends are more immanent, more intrinsic, more immediate to the union than the union itself. For what is first in the ontological constitution of a thing is not the experiential datum but, on the contrary, what is known in the last and most general act of understanding with regard to it; what is next, is the next most general understanding; etc. Thus the proximate end of bisexuality is union; but of its nature, bisexuality is an instrument of fecundity, so that the end of fecundity is more an end of bisexuality than is union; similarly, bisexual union has a vertical finality to higher unions of friendship and charity; and these enter more intimately into the significance of bisexuality than does the union on the level of nature. See my note on immediatio virtutis, in 'St. Thomas' Theory of Operations,' Theological Studies 3 (1942) 376, for references to this line of Thomist thought [Grace and Freedom 64-65]. As to the difficulty that frequently procreation is objectively impossible and may be known to be so, distinguish motives and ends; as to motives, the difficulty is solved only by multiple motives and ends; as to ends, there is no difficulty, for the ordination of intercourse to conception is not a natural law, like 'fire burns,' but a statistical law,s which suffices for an objective ordination.

But, as we argued above, on the essential or horizontal level of natural spontaneity, sex is but a differentiation of fecundity and a means to the adult offspring that is the end of fecundity. If, then, reason incorporates sex as sex is in itself, it will incorporate it as subordinate to its horizontal end, and so marriage will be an incorporation of the horizontal finality of sex much more than of sex itself; nor is this to forget vertical finality, for vertical and horizontal finalities are not alternatives, but the vertical emerges all the more strongly as the horizontal is realized the more fully. Third and last, the incorporation of natural finality to adult offspring involves a redirection of that finality to higher ends. The life of reason and rational appetite has its end, here below, in the historical unfolding of the human good life ((Q"); the life of grace has its end in the triumphant mystical body in heaven (P"). Hence, when the finality to adult offspring (Z") is incorporated on the level of reason, it becomes a finality to educated adult offspring (Y"); and when it is incorporated on the level of grace, it becomes a finality to Christianly educated offspring (X"). The latter subsumption and redirection of lower under higher finality is clearer than the former. Christian parents are the representatives and the instruments of Christ and his bride, the church, and so they generate children to have them regenerated in Christ, and they educate them for their eternal role in the triumphant mystical body in heaven. But just as the life of grace wills offspring for the full expansion of the mystical body, so also the life of reason wills offspring for the continuity of reason's own historical unfolding of the human good life. It is this elevation of lower finality that makes the end of marriage not only the procreation but also the education of children, with the former the material and the latter the formal condition of historical continuity; further, the relativity of history accounts for the relativity in the obligation of parents to educate. But as theologians, let alone parents, rarely think of the historical process, it must be noted that we speak not of a finis operantis but of a finis operis and that we do so in its most general terms. No one will find a motive in the historical process as such. What moves men and women is some concrete aspect of history, a national destiny, the maintenance of a cultural tradition, the continuity of a family; and even this will be apprehended by parents, not in its abstract generality, but concretely as the good of bringing into the world and leaving in it behind them others like themselves. (Fs) (notabene)
47a This brings us to our main analytic conclusion. The process of bisexual fecundity (Z, Z', Z") is in man integrated with the processes of reason and of grace. Such integration takes place by projection, by the incorporation of the lower level of activity within the higher. The incorporation on the level of reason is generically a friendship (Y) and specifically a contractual bond (Y')l the latter has a horizontal finality to the procreation and education of children (Y"), but the former has a vertical dynamism tending to advance in human perfection (Q'). Similarly, the incorporation on the level of grace is generically a special order of charity (X) but specifically a sacramental bond (X'); the latter has a horizontal finality to the procreation and Christian education of children (X"), but the former a vertical dynamism tending to advance in Christian perfection (P'). (Fs) (notabene)