Married love particularly reveals its true nature and nobility when we realize that it takes its origin from God, who "is love," (6) the Father "from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named." (7)
Marriage, then, is far from being the effect of chance or the result of the blind evolution of natural forces. It is in reality the wise and provident institution of God the Creator, whose purpose was to effect in man His loving design.
In paragraph 8 of Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI claims, as can be expected from such a religious person as he, that marriage came about in human culture only because it was created by God, and not as the effect of cultural and societal development. I'm not sure if in 1968 we understood how marriage came about in the development of culture, but I feel like the Pope is purposely brushing off the notion that marriage and the emotions and ties that come with it came from natural forces and not directly from a creator. Actually now that I think about it he's demonstrating how creationists like himself think that everything in nature, as he basically says, has come about purely from "the effect of chance or the result of the blind evolution of natural forces." Since humans are intelligent social creatures and we have been able to organize ourselves into civilization and create our own cultures, ideas like marriage are by definition not the effect of chance or blind natural forces. This makes me think of how "Beyond ... reason" explains how writers will construct their arguments to reassure their target audience of their beliefs and ideals but aren't necessarily completely sound arguments.
I'm not saying that everything the Pope puts forth in Humanae Vitae is wrong because it's written predominantly from a fundamental Christian point of view - just that in the light of understanding the origins of culture and society and its norms lets us see around the religious overtones in these sorts of writings.
it's interesting too that the rules of marriage are different from culture to culture as well. It's not like the entire world follows the religion of the Pope, say in some Native American cultures if a woman wanted a "divorce" (what we'd think of it as) she would place her husbands' things outside of her door and the matter was over.
ReplyDelete