The Truth About Human Love:

Orientations on Conjugal Love, Gender Ideology, and Family Legislation

http://www.conferenciaepiscopa l.es

CONTENTS:
Introduction 1. The Truth About Love: Message of Hope a) The Love of God, Origin of All Human Love b) Human Love: Response to Gods Love 2. The Truth About Love: Inscribed in the Language of the Body a) In the Image of God (Gen 1:27) b) Man and Woman He Created Them (Gen. 1:27) 3. Spousal Love: As Christ Loved His Church a) One Flesh (Gen. 2:24) b) As Christ Loved His Church (Eph 5:25) 4. The Disappearance of the Image of Man a) Gender Ideology b) Beyond Gender Ideology c) Lack of the necessary help d) Reacting to the loss of meaning e) Hope does not defraud (Rom.5:5) 5. Spousal Love, Institution, and the Common Good a) The deception of emotionalism in a utilitarian world b) The injustice of an a la carte world c) Marriage and Family: Essential Elements of the Common Good d) Recognizing Differences is Just, not Discrimination 6. Towards a Culture of Marriage and of Family a) Education of the Sexual/Affective b) Preparation for Marriage c) Just and Adequate Family Policies d) Building up the home and the city Conclusion: Mission and Witness

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Introduction
Vatican Council II dealt at length with marriage and family (Gaudium et spes, nos. 47-52): but holiness is onethat sanctity which is cultivated by all who are moved by the Spirit of God (Lumen Gentium, no. 41) Pope John Paul II likewise, in the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio. Our Episcopal Conference was quick to call attention to the ever-rising sexual revolution, influenced by the so-called gender ideology presented juridically as new rights

Introduction
Nevertheless there was much hope in the testimony of self-giving and holiness on the part of many married couples, and the fundamental role played by these families in the sustainability of human beings and of society itself was strongly felt Just note the World Family Days and the increase in conscious objections raised by doctors, professionals, other citizens

1. The Truth About Love: Message of Hope a) The Love of God, Origin of All Human Love b) Human Love: Response to Gods Love

SHADOWS:

Abortion marriage breakups, exploitation of the poor and the weak (esp. women & children), contraception and sterilizations, premarital sex, degradation of interpersonal relationships, prostitution, domestic violence, addiction to pornography, drugs, alcohol, gaming and internet, etc.

1. The Truth About Love: Message of Hope a) The Love of God, Origin of All Human Love b) Human Love: Response to Gods Love

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them, (1 Jn. 4: 16) God is the absolute and ultimate source of all being; but this universal principle of creationthe Logos, primordial reasonis at the same time a lover with all the passion of a true love.(Deus Caritas Est, no. 10).

 For God made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of Gods glory displayed in the face of Christ. (2 Cor 4, 6). Gods loving design, from all eternity, is that man, in Christ, participate in the divine nature. Each human being is invited to have a personal encounter with Christ and thus discover the truth and the way of love. So that the goal of this journey might be clear and consequently the way plainly indicated, the Synod was right to begin by considering in depth the original design of God for marriage and the family, Familiaris consortio (22.XI.1981), n. 11.

2. The Truth About Love: Inscribed in the Language of the Body

a) In the Image of God (Gen 1:27) b) Man and Woman He Created Them (Gen. 1:27)

CRANACH, Lucas the Elder Adam and Eve 1531 Lime wood, 170 x 69,5 cm Gemldegalerie, Dresden

2. The Truth About Love: Inscribed in the Language of the Body

a) In the Image of God (Gen 1:27) b) Man and Woman He Created Them (Gen. 1:27)
As an incarnate spirit, that is a soul which expresses itself in a body and a body informed by an immortal spirit, man is called to love in his unified totality. Love includes the human body, and the body is made a sharer in spiritual love. Sexuality, by means of which man and woman give themselves to one another through the acts which are proper and exclusive to spouses, is by no means something purely biological, but concerns the innermost being of the human person as such, Familiaris Consortio, no. 11. This corporeal-spiritual totality exists necessarily as man or as woman: there exists no other possibility for a human person to exist

Human sexuality is thus a good, part of that created gift which God saw as being "very good", when he created the human person in his image and likeness, and "male and female he created them" (Genesis 1:27). Insofar as it is a way of relating and being open to others, sexuality has love as its intrinsic end, more precisely, love as donation and acceptance, love as giving and receiving. The relationship between a man and a woman is essentially a relationship of love: When such love exists in marriage, self-giving expresses, through the body, the complementarity and totality of the gift. Married love thus becomes a power which enriches persons and makes them grow and, at the same time, it contributes to building up the civilization of love. (Pontifical Council for the Family, The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality, no. 11

3. Spousal Love: As Christ Loved His Church

a) One Flesh (Gen. 2:24) b) As Christ Loved His Church (Eph 5:25)
God has made use of spousal love in order to reveal His love to His chosen people. Both matrimony and virginity, in their proper form, are a concretization of the most profound truth about man, about his being image of God. Let us first of all bring to mind the vast semantic range of the word love: Amid this multiplicity of meanings, however, one in particular stands out: love between man and woman, where body and soul are inseparably joined and human beings glimpse an apparently irresistible promise of happiness. (Deus caritas

3. Spousal Love: As Christ Loved His Church

a) One Flesh (Gen. 2:24) b) As Christ Loved His Church (Eph 5:25)
Spousal love is committed love: it has an originality and characteristics or marks that distinguish it from other forms of love. Vatican Council II and the Encyclical Humanae Vitae emphasize the following:

fully human; total; faithful and exclusive; fruitful.

A community of life and of love:

By its very nature the gift of the person must be lasting and irrevocable. The indissolubility of marriage flows in the first place from the very essence of that gift: the gift of one person to another person. This reciprocal giving of self reveals the spousal nature of love. In their marital consent the bride and groom call each other by name: "I... take you... as my wife (as my husband) and I promise to be true to you... for all the days of my life". A gift such as this involves an obligation much more serious and profound than anything which might be "purchased" in any way and at any price. Kneeling before the Father, from whom all fatherhood and motherhood come, the future parents come to realize that they have been "redeemed". They have been purchased at great cost, by the price of the most sincere gift of all, the blood of Christ of which they partake through the Sacrament (Gratissimam sane, nos. 11-12).

Fruitful and open to life:

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_v i/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_2507 1968_humanae-vitae_en.html

The darkness of sin:

Revelation itself speaks of that initial light being hidden by sin. From the beginning of creation, man and woman had ceased finding themselves called to communion and one hid himself/herself from the other. Their love saw itself threatened by relations of desire and of dominion (cf. Gen. 3: 16). Despite the meanings of the body being linked to the experience of human love, at times they are not easily perceived in the concrete lives of persons, and even more difficult is its practice. The reductive and fragmentary vision of sexuality, so widespread among large swathes of society, leave many people interpreting these first experiences in an inadequate way, and thus losing sight of the human totality contained in them.

4. The Dissolution of the Image of Man

CONTENTS:
a) Gender Ideology b) Beyond Gender Ideology c) Lack of the necessary help d) Reacting to the loss of meaning e) Hope does not defraud (Rom.5:5)

4. The Disappearance of the Image of Man

Out of 2 apparently opposed currents, come propositions that distort the consideration of man as image of God and, consequently, the consideration of the images of marriage and the family. One and the other result from the same starting point: the unjust valuation of corporeality. Thus, they are unable to see the love of man and woman as a model for all love. Spiritualism, on one hand, views sexuality as unable to be linked to divine love, since bodiliness compromises the transcendence & gratuitousness of higher forms of love. Materialism, on the other hand, which underlies most of contemporary gender theories, seeks to dissociate/separate sexuality from the natural determinations of the body, such that even the sexual difference between man and woman loses its objective meaning.

Gender Ideology
ANTECEDENTS: Radical Feminism & depersonalization of sexuality (sociological interpretation of sexuality Kinsey 1950s)

Marxist influence man & woman class struggle 1970s+)

Liberal individualism [Constructivism; Freudian-Marxist] 1st: Sexuality w/o openness to life: Contraception & Abortion 2nd: Sexuality without marriage: free love / free sex 3rd: Sexuality without love. 4th: Production of children w/o sexual relations: test tube, IVF, etc. 5th: Given the unisex culture as well as radical feminist thought, sexuality has been separated from the person: there shall no longer be man or woman; sex was to become a mere anatomical datum, without anthropological relevance.

Gender Ideology

A first tendency is to emphasize strongly conditions of subordination in order to give rise to antagonism: women, in order to be themselves, must make themselves the adversaries of men. A second tendency emerges in the wake of the first. In order to avoid the domination of one sex or the other, their differences tend to be denied, viewed as mere effects of historical and cultural conditioning. In this perspective, physical difference, termed sex, is minimized, while the purely cultural element, termed gender, is emphasized to the maximum and held to be primary. The obscuring of the difference or duality of the sexes has enormous consequences on a variety of levels (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, On the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Chu rch and in the World , no. 2)

We can say that the core of this ideology is the pseudo-scientific dogma that says that the human being is born sexually neutral. There arises an absolute separation between sex and gender. Gender ceases to have any biological basis: it shall be a mere cultural construction. From this perspective, sexual identity and the roles of persons of one & the other sex are cultural products, without bases in nature. Each one can opt for the gender he/she desires, independently of corporeity. Consequently, man and masculine can designate both the male and the female body; while woman and feminine can mean both the female and male body. Among other genders, they speak of: male, female, homosexual male, homosexual female, bisexual, transexual, etc.

The spread of Gender Ideology

FACTORS: Manipulation of Language (semantics; verbal gymnastics)

[has affected the term marriage, as well as couple, family (they wish to redefine it to include all sorts of manners of living together), ancestors (making father & mother disappear), gender violence in place of domestic violence, etc.

Entered into the LEGISLATIVE ambit!

Beware of the following tendencies/consequences: Queer theories; the theory of the cyborg (cybernetic being/organism, hybrid of machine and living thing) emancipation of the body; change the significant order of corporeality, eliminate nature, a society without sexes and without genders; a society without sexual reproduction, without paternity or maternity. A society thus created shall be subject only to science, to biology and medicine, to biotechnology and genetic engineering. transhumanism and posthumanism

Lack of the necessary help

The lack of the sufficient help/support to marriage and to the family is owing, in large measure, to the presence of such ideologies in FAMILY POLICIES.

Express divorce Minors wishing to abort without parental consent! morning-after pill Permissiveness in the areas of sexuality and life Post-Abortion syndrome!
MARRIAGE & FAMILY UNDER ATTACK!

Reacting to the loss of meaning; Hope does not defraud (Rom.5:5)

The first and indispensable path is: The witness of true human love lived in integrated sexuality, particularly by married couples and by families.

There is need to recover, through the work of everyone public authorities, teachers, educators, mass media, etc., a language that knows how to distinguish realities which, because theyre different, cannot be equated. We must employ terminologies and forms of expression that transmit clearly and without ambiguity what marriage and the family really are. Behind such neutrality lie personal dramas that the Church is fully aware of. But above all, we must always keep up our HOPE. Good and Truth, the beauty of Love, are capable of overcoming all difficulties The Church, continuing the mission of Christ, always opens up her heart and is ready to help as mother and teacher of all. Nobody should feel excluded, even those who are experiencing same sex attraction SSA.

Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder. Therefore special concern and pastoral attention should be directed toward those who have this condition, lest they be led to believe that the living out of this orientation in homosexual activity is a morally acceptable option. It is not. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, no. 3.

5. Spousal Love, Institution, and the Common Good

Intimate relationship between authentic human love and the good of the human person: The institution of marriage is not an undue interference by society or authority, nor the extrinsic imposition of a form. Rather it is an interior requirement of the covenant of conjugal love which is publicly affirmed as unique and exclusive, in order to live in complete fidelity to the plan of God, the Creator. A person's freedom, far from being restricted by this fidelity, is secured against every form of subjectivism or relativism and is made a sharer in creative Wisdom, (Familiaris consortio, n. 11.)

Marriage and the family are not in fact a chance sociological construction, the product of particular historical and financial situations. On the other hand, the question of the right relationship between the man and the woman is rooted in the essential core of the human being and it is only by starting from here that its response can be found. In other words, it cannot be separated from the ancient but ever new human question: Who am I? What is a human being? And this question, in turn, cannot be separated from the question about God: Does God exist? Who is God? What is his face truly like? Likewise, human sexuality is not juxtaposed to our being as person but part of it. Only when sexuality is integrated within the person does it successfully acquire meaning. Thus, these two links, between the human being with God and in the human being, of the body with the spirit, give rise to a third: the connection between the person and the institution. (Pope Benedict XVI, Address to the Participants in the Ecclesial Diocesan Convention of Rome, 6 June 2005).

 Life has changed greatly and with it enormous progress has been made in the technical, social and cultural spheres. We cannot simply remain content with these advances. Alongside them, there also need to be moral advances, such as in care, protection and assistance to families, inasmuch as the generous and indissoluble love of a man and a woman is the effective context and foundation of human life in its gestation, birth, growth and natural end (Pope Benedict, Consecration of Altar of Sagrada Familia Cathedral, 7 Nov. 2010).

La familia se nos muestra as como una comunidad de generaciones y garante de un patrimonio de The family is the first school of tradiciones (Pope socialization, the most appropriate Benedict XVI, means for the person to be inserted into Encuentro con las the web of social relations. In the family, Familias en Valencia, we transmit a huge & important part of 8-9 July 2006). that vital coming together of the basic
contents of life which we call tradition

 The family is the privileged setting where every person learns to give and receive love. The family is a necessary good for peoples, an indispensable foundation for society and a great and lifelong treasure for couples. It is a unique good for children, who are meant to be the fruit of the love, of the total and generous self-giving of their parents, (Pope Benedict XVI, Encuentro con las Familias en Valencia, 8-9 July 2006).

 The complementarity between a man and a woman in covenantal marriagea privileged image of Godis designed to increase the best of all forms of happiness among human beings: growth in the ennobling habits of the heart, in virtue, in honesty, and in mutual caring, until death do them part. This complementarity is also designed to generate productive, creative, and ever-advancing societies, driven by dreams of perfection yet to come Michael Novak.

Recognizing Differences is Justice, not Discrimination

6. Towards a Culture of Marriage and of Family: Everyones responsibility!

Scientific progress has resulted in advances that are unsettling for the consciences of men and women and call for solutions that respect ethical principles in a coherent and fundamental way.At the same time, legislative proposals are put forward which, heedless of the consequences for the existence and future of human beings with regard to the formation of culture and social behaviour, attack the very inviolability of human life.Catholics have the right and the duty to recall society to a deeper understanding of human life and to the responsibility of everyone in this regard.John Paul II, continuing the constant teaching of the Church, has reiterated many times that those who are directly involved in lawmaking bodies have a grave and clear obligation to oppose any law that attacks human life, (DOCTRINAL NOTE on some questions regarding The Participation of Catholics in Political Life, 2002).

VIDEO OF THE PRESS CONFERENCE: Document Truth of Human Love, Spanish Episcopal Conference http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_ embedded&v=E_FXA1KTop4