Module 2 - Marriage

Question 1

GOPFM - sacrament

Answer 1

• The couple’s relationship expresses in a unique way the unbreakable bond of love between Christ and His people.
• Like the other 6 sacraments of the Church, marriage is a sign or symbol which reveals the Lord Jesus and through which his divine life and love are communicated.
• All 7 sacraments were instituted by Christ and were entrusted to the Church to be celebrated in faith within and for the community of believers.
  “established by the Creator and endowed by Him with its own proper laws” (CCC 1603).

Question 2

GOPFM - vocation

Answer 2

• People are called to married life as a life of service towards a spouse.
• Catholics understand that Christian marriage is a covenant, a communion of two people, a vocation and a sacrament that is a sign and source of God’s grace at work in the world.
  “God who created man out of love also calls him to love the fundamental innate vocation of every human being

Question 3

GOPFM - procreation/fecundity

Answer 3

“Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28

Question 4

GOPFM - indissolubility

Answer 4

“Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife, and the two become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24

Question 5

New Testament & Early Church

Answer 5

• “And He said to them, ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her; and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.’”
• Jesus also affirms that marriage is between one man and one woman (affirms the unitive aspect of marriage): “But from the beginning God made them male and female…and the two become one body” (Mk 10:6, 8)
• St Paul, in his Letter to the Corinthians reaffirms that divorce is unacceptable: “a wife must not leave her husband – or if she does leave him, she must remain unmarried or else make it up with her husband – nor must a husband send his wife away (1 Cor 7:10-11)

Jesus affirms that divorce is not part of God’s plan for marriage (and so affirms that marriage is indissoluble): “So therefore, what God has joined together, let no man put asunder” (Mark 10:9). Jesus was affirming the indissolubility of marriage when stating “let no

Question 6

5th Century - St. Augustine

Answer 6

St. Augustine also stated that “The sacramental aspect of marriage itself is the greatest aspect o marriage”. (AUG 4015th Century - St Augustine

Augustine’s writings addresses that the union in marriage is good and permanent “Marriage requires permanence and openness to children”.(Aug 401) This focuses on how God intended marriage for spouses to be united in fidelity and to procreate as stated in GOPFM.

Question 7

Modern Times - 2016

Answer 7

• The sacrament is a gift given for the sanctification and salvation of the spouses, since ‘their mutual belonging is a real representation, through the sacramental sign, of the same relationship between Christ and the Church. The married couple are therefore a permanent reminder for the Church of what took place on the cross; they are for one another and for their children witnesses of the salvation in which they share through the sacrament.’” (AL 72)

In Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetita, he writes that “Marriage is a vocation..The decision to marry and to have a family ought to be the fruit of a process of vocational discernment” (AL 72)

• Code of Canon Law 1832 has changed “The marriage of covenent, by which a man and a woman establish themselves a partnership of their whole life.”

“the unitive aspect is greater than the procreative aspect” (1983 Canon Law)