Archbishop of Sydney

His Eminence,
Cardinal George Pell
Cardinal Priest of the Title of S. Maria Domenica Mazzarello

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Home > Our Archbishop > Homilies 2003 > Article	Printable Version

Marriage

St Mary's Cathedral
Ephesians 5:21-32

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
24 August 2003

This beautiful passage about marriage from the second reading is one that gets St. Paul into trouble today. Some only hear the words that the husband is head of his wife as Christ is head of the Church and that wives should submit to their husbands in everything. They go no further than this, often convinced that St. Paul was another grumpy old celibate patriarch condoning the oppression of women.

This first point to be made in Paul’s defence is to urge that we continue on and read the balancing section, about the duties of a husband to his wife. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the Church and sacrifice himself for her as Christ did for the Church. A man must love his wife as he loves his own body; an unambiguous statement of the equal dignity of the sexes; something we take for granted because Christianity has changed this way we regard women.

In pagan Rome baby girls were often left to die; the aristocratic families regularly had many more surviving sons. A wife had few if any civil rights. Christianity liberated pagan women into equality and dignity in domestic life and Paul’s teaching should be set against this pagan background. Many first and second century men, certainly most pagans and probably quite a few Christian men too would have been uneasy about the injunction to love and treat their wives as their own bodies.

When I was growing up priests and teachers probably emphasised the prohibitions too much. But today the pendulum has swung and there is too much silence in pulpits and schools, too few attempts to explain the reasons for Christian teaching on sexuality, marriage and family.

Those energetically promoting the continuance of the sexual revolution, often for financial reasons, are not silent and often resent those who resist them by pointing out the long term advantages of Christian living and the damage done by promiscuity, broken marriages, abortion. They like to run the line that the “Church is hung-up about sex”; “The Church should stay out of the bedroom.” But whether people agree with the Church or not, we all intuitively know that sex is extremely important, more than entertainment. One important reason why people stop church-going is often Christian sexual teaching and one reason many come to Christ is the emptiness and pain of pagan alternatives.

For a start, none of us would exist without the sexual union of our parents. But the significance of our sexuality does not stop there.

Sex is not a comfortable topic for many people. In their discomfort with sexuality, people tend to go to one or other extreme; liberal abandon or conservative prudishness. There would still be some today a bit surprised by St. Paul comparing the unity of Christ and the Church to Christian marriage.

Sexuality is God’s gift to be treasured and celebrated. An asexual Church is as unholy and unredeemed as a sex-mad society. But there is a way through both distortions to wholeness, integration and truth.

Pope John Paul II has pondered this issue, and his bold conclusions have surprised many people. His theology of the body was explained in a series of 129 talks given between September 1979 and November 1984. They build on passages like this one from Ephesians and the theology of the body is very popular among Catholic university students. There are study groups at Sydney University on this very topic.

The essential point is this: by reflecting on sexual difference, male and female, and the desire for union with the opposite sex, we discover the deepest reality of human identity and we even enter some way into the mystery of the Trinitarian God.

The creation story in the Old Testament book of Genesis tells us that Adam and Eve were made for each other. At the core of their beings, man and woman experience a deep desire for unity. We are made to love and be loved.

Our masculinity and femininity draw us beyond ourselves to the other. This “made for the other” is apparent in the differences between men’s and women’s bodies. Neither makes sense by itself, but only in union with the other.

The original harmony between men and women was ruptured when Adam and Eve chose to disobey God. They mistrusted God’s love and plan for them, and asserted their own will over his. But far from making them free, the result was to trap them in selfishness.

They no longer looked on each other as a reflection of God’s image, but with lust and the self-centred desire to manipulate the other.

It is from the trap of selfishness that Jesus – God-made-flesh - promises to free us, and this freedom involves our sexuality.

The Church views the sexual union of man and woman as sacred and sacramental. The Church does not say ”no” to practices such as pre-marital and extra-martial sex because it is against sex, but because it is radically for sex and the total, unreserved, mutual self-giving it expresses in marriage.

Society’s efforts to dodge or avoid the challenge of the Christian sexual ethic have often reaped tragic results and deep personal hurts. The theology of the body offers a fresh insight into who we are and helps us embrace the truth about sexuality. This much criticised passage from Ephesians is a wonderful source for both study and prayer.

Sexuality is a highly sensitive topic. John Paul II recognizes the universality of the human struggle. No person has sexuality perfectly worked out! Redemption is a journey. It takes time.

“Be not afraid!” says the Pope echoing Jesus. Paul’s teaching on marriage and the theology of the body though strong and confronting, are not meant as a condemnation but as an invitation to discover anew the gift and freedom of our sexuality. When so many people are frantically searching for happiness in the wrong direction, following the advertisers and being caught in emptiness and dissatisfaction, Christian teaching still provides genuine peace and freedom, but at some cost.