Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Augustinus; Ehe, Jungfräulichkeit, Witwenschaft, temporäre Abstinenz

Kurzinhalt: Fundamental would be the position that in the state of integral nature virginity would have been neither praiseworthy nor virtuous. Hence, ...

Textausschnitt: 4.4 A Qualification

49a It remains that the strength of this upthrust is not to be exaggerated. An integral part of Catholic thought on marriage is the doctrine that virginity is preferable to marriage, widowhood to second marriage, temporary abstinence to use within marriage (1 Corinthians 7.25-40). The precise implications of this doctrine are not too clear. Because of his position on original sin, the Pelagians charged St Augustine with a rejection of Christian defense and praise of marriage. St Augustine answered that marriage was good but concupiscence evil, indeed a disease to be tolerated only for the sake of children. Now it is quite certain that by concupiscence St Augustine does not mean simply the spontaneous tendencies by which two beings are invited to function as parts of the larger unit of the family; along with that natural phenomenon he also means an effect of original sin, a constituent in original sin, an instrument in its transmission, and in fallen nature a fecund cause of actual sin. Such global and concrete thinking was alone possible in the fifth century. It does not admit direct transference to the more elaborate conceptual field of later theology - though, as was lamentably conspicuous in the case of Baius and Jansenius, a realization of the illegitimacy of such direct transference has not always been had. Account, then, must be taken of later development, and in this the main factor would seem to have been the theorem of the supernatural u and its concomitant position that Adam's immunity from concupiscence was not natural but preternatural. Now, since in the lifetime of Aquinas this theoretical advance was still in process of development, it would be easy to attach too much significance to his maintenance in the Sentences of the essentially Augustinian position of an excusatio matrimonii et copulae. In any case that rigorous view seems to have been dropped by moral theologians, while the dynamic Thomist position would take its basis not in the explicit argument of the Sentences for the excusatio, namely, the eclipse of rational control in orgasm, but rather in broader considerations of different states of human nature. Fundamental would be the position that in the state of integral nature virginity would have been neither praiseworthy nor virtuous. Hence, absolutely, what is best for man is the full actuation of all his capacities. But in the disequilibrium of fallen nature, with lower spontaneity taking care of itself, with reason apt to be misled by the historical aberrations of the civitas terrena, with the wisdom of God appearing folly to man, man's best is not full actuation of all potentiality but rather concentration on the higher levels of activity. Such concentration is commended to all, though in the triple form of virginity, w widowhood, and temporary abstinence in marriage. So understood, the counsel does not imply any negation of an objective upward tendency from organistic union to a common pursuit of Christian perfection, though indeed it does emphasize the limitations of such an upthrust under actual circumstances and the need of supplementing it by an opposite procedure. Excellent is the instrumentality of husband and wife to Christ and his bride, the church - an instrumentality that participates the love of the principal causes and brings forth to them the children that extend to full stature the mystical body. Excellent is the Christian home, a focal point that turns aside the influences of the world to rear children in an atmosphere of wholesome fear and love. But the bulwark of that excellence, the palpable proof of its ever doubted possibility, is the greater excellence that rises, not through organistic tendency but immediately, to concern with the one thing necessary, our eternal embrace with God in the beatific vision.