Warsaw, 5-6 September 2009
The Prophecy of Humanae vitae
and the Truth concerning Spousal Love:
Towards a Responsible Procreation
Livio Melina
At a distance of more than 40 years from its publication, the prophetic character of the encyclical Humanae vitae of Pope Paul VI, still today a "sign of contradiction" in the Church and in public opinion, appears in full light. In order to grasp the historical consequences of Humanae vitae and its influence upon current events, we must ask ourselves what really is in play in its teaching. At the time when Humanae vitae was published, the majority of commentators thought that the encyclical treated only a question of conjugal morality, a very delicate issue in the life of many Christian spouses, or a question of social morality, linked to control of the birthrate in front of the phantom of overpopulation. Moreover, it was perceived that in addition to the main theme of the Montini encyclical, there was also implied an ecclesial question relative to the interpretation of that "aggiornamento," which came to be identified with the historical importance of the Second Vatican Council just celebrated: was it finally possible to break with a normative tradition, that - according to some - seemed to reflect a thousand-year underestimation of sexuality in the Christian sphere? I will immediately present my thesis: Humanae vitae has revealed itself as a prophecy of that truth concerning love, which is so essential for the life of men and women.
1. Affective Illiteracy, Pansexualism and An Educational Emergency
When we speak of prophecy, we spontaneously think of a capacity for foreseeing the future: however, this is only one aspect of that which constitutes prophecy in the Sacred Scriptures. Primarily, a prophet is he who, speaking in the name of God, passes a judgment upon the situation being lived and by inviting to conversion, he therefore opens the road to the future. Before entering into the merit of Humanae vitae, I would like to quickly sketch the situation in which we are living, and I would like to do so by the light of that concern also recently expressed by Benedict XVI: the "educational emergency." Education for love shows itself to be strategically crucial for the anthropological question, above all in reference to that which one can define as learning its grammar and its syntax.
And in fact, the phenomenon of a growing "affective illiteracy," diffused among the younger generations, has been reported[1]. One study on this topic has recently been carried out in 90 schools in the area of Southhampton, in England. The study showed that among a population of students that belong to the middle-lower class, in which 40% of the cases live in families composed of only one parent, these children know at the maximum a dozen words related to emotions and affectivity. These are words scarcely differentiated, generally vulgar, and do not allow for subtleties when one searches to define the one's own mood or to understand that of others. The phenomenon is alarming: the incapacity to enter into contact with the world of one's own emotions implies an incapacity to communicate and to establish adequate relations with others.
We could say that this new type of illiteracy, detected by sociologists and psychologists, implies an incapacity to read and to write. An incapacity to read one's own emotions and feelings, which results in their being removed or exploding uncontrollably; an incapacity to interpret one’s interior world and to give it sense inside of a complex frame of meaning. An incapacity to write the storyline of one's own existence and the story of which one is most intimately aware, that therefore remains unexpressed or expressed badly, incomprehensible and unrealizable. The solitude of this vital context, the lack of authoritative points of reference, of teachers, of narrated stories, and of lived communities, hinders the interpretation of emotions and of feelings and obstructs the recognition of a meaning that qualifies and orients them. Without vocabulary, without grammar, without teachers, one does not learn to read and to write. This is the decisive problem for the formation of the person: the necessity of a frame of interpretative reference of lived emotions and affections, that might construct a context of meaning capable of integrating experience, of rendering it comprehensible and constructive.
In order to understand the dimensions of today's challenge, it is necessary to consider that we do not find ourselves in front of a mere absence of education, but also a subversive strategy that tends to modify the culture by means of a manipulation of the language. The educational emergency will consist in helping the young to find once again the essential meanings of the language of the body and of love, by demonstrating their correspondence to the "heart" of man. This "heart" of man is the whole of the original evidence and demands that constitute the basic experience[2]. Only in this manner can we avoid the deformation of consciences and the growth of a true personal liberty.
On the other hand, one witnesses today to a paradox: while all of society is invaded by that which is called a pervasive "pansexualism," it happens too often that only in the pastoral life of the Church there is a difficulty of speaking about sexuality, in such a way that the faithful are left without a statement, without a word of orientation, without a word of advice. There seems to exist a timidity that leads either to silence or to a misunderstood reference to the judgment of the individual conscience. A guilt complex weighs heavily for a recent past in which one spoke of sexuality too often or maybe rather in terms unilaterally negative. This has provoked a widely diffused self-censure and an ambiguous reference to the individual conscience. Certainly influential has been Puritanism, a current with a Protestant basis that from the 17th to the 19th century conditioned European and North American Christianity, and also had considerable influence in Catholicism. Its fundamental spirit can be expressed through a series of equations that propose at first an identification between God and morality, then between morality and normative prohibitions, and finally, between these moral prohibitive norms and sexual repression. From this equation results that identification between religion and sexual repression that still dominates the public imagination and is exploited by the media every time that one wants to denigrate the preaching of the Church and force her into silence.
It is of the maximum urgency, therefore, to overcome this self-censure and that guilt complex: we can do this only by finding once again a full awareness of the beauty and greatness of the word that the Church receives from Revelation concerning human love and sexuality. Humanae vitae was prophetic precisely because it anticipated a fair analysis of this situation, and as a testimony to the truth about human love, has opened the way to the future.
In this presentation, I would like to trace the pastoral and doctrinal course of the pontifical Magisterium during these 40 years, developing amidst a tight confrontation with a cultural sphere marked by radical transformations of custom and mentality. It is an itinerary that progresses from the prophecy of Pope Paul VI in Humanae vitae to the theological meditation on agape of Deus caritas est, passing by way of the theology of the body proposed by John Paul II. In this way, the complete panorama of that theology of love will become clear, that theology of love in which we also insert the commitment to educate for a truly mature sexuality and for responsible fatherhood and motherhood.
2. The Prophecy of Humanae vitae
The heart of the teaching of Humanae vitae, as has been authoritatively indicated, is found in paragraph 12, where Paul VI affirms "the inseparable connection (indissolubilis nexus), established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act."[3] As is evidenced by this formulation, but also by the context of the paragraph, the doctrinal foundation of the ethical norm is seized at the level of the personalistic value of the conjugal act and not by respect for simple physiology: in fact, it regards that sense of "true mutual love" and "its ordination to the supreme responsibility of parenthood," that was inscribed in the being itself of man and woman by the Creator. This principle has a character so “in harmony with human reason,” that Pope Paul VI believes that our contemporaries are particularly capable of seeing it.
The Montini encyclical desires, therefore, to reclaim the personalist dignity of conjugal sexuality and of human procreation, in order to preserve their integral meaning of love, respecting the intimate connection between the unity of bodies and the openness to the transmission of life. In fact, when it becomes intentionally separated from procreation, human sexuality additionally loses its meaning of integral gift of self and of full acceptance of the other person: contraception inoculates in the corporeal act of the reciprocal donation between man and woman the poison of a lie, which intimately falsifies the act, making it a self-giving without a total gift of self, an acceptance without true hospitality. We can truly say that a contraceptive act is no longer a conjugal act: in its objective intentional structure it is not any different from forms of sexual activity realized in order to reach a mere hedonistic individual satisfaction and incapable of constructing a true personal communion.
On the other hand, procreation that does not derive from a sexual conjugal act assumes the aspect of a technical-productive activity, regulated by the logic of the efficiency of means as regards the desired results. In this activity, therefore, the personal dignity of the child is no longer respected. This child is no longer welcomed as a gift that comes from a gift, but instead comes programmed and produced like an object, over which one can always exercise the power of verifying its correspondence in respect to the initial project. We can thus affirm that the doctrine of Humanae vitae is a defense of sexuality as a true expression of spousal and personal love, and is at the same time also a defense of the personalistic dimension of human procreation.
We can locate here the ethical and anthropological difference of recourse to periodical abstinence, which uses the help of natural methods, in order to regulate the birthrate. The object of the moral judgment is not the "natural methods," but those choices of abstinence (and those acts of exercise) of sexuality, undertaken when there exist serious motives, evaluated with responsible discernment on the part of the spouses, to avoid a new pregnancy. The abstinence of sexual relations during the fertile period of the woman is a behavior that does not negate the unitive dynamism of the conjugal relation: this abstinence also expresses the spousal relationship, but in the form allowed by procreative responsibility. It is an act of personal and bodily realization of love, even if it does not occur through physical union. Other ways of expressing unity can and must be found by the spouses. On the other hand, the exercise of sexuality during the infertile periods of the woman does not negate the procreative meaning of the sexual conjugal acts, which come to be respected in their dignity and their intention of openness, even if they do not possess a biological procreative function. Therefore, both in the case of abstinence and in that of the exercise of sexuality, we are treating of acts that are fully conformed to the virtue of conjugal chastity and that express spousal love.
It is interesting to note that the teaching of Humanae vitae is located exactly at the dawn of that vast and complex cultural phenomenon that goes under the name of the "sexual revolution"[4] and that has led to the present climate of diffused eroticism. The sexual revolution is the programmatic attempt to separate the exercise of sexuality from the institution of Matrimony and from the prospect of paternity and maternity. The massive diffusion of contraception makes possible the claim to a sexuality free from institutional, or even only stable, ties. Separated from ties both natural and traditional, inside of which is found its meaningful context, the exercise of sexuality comes to assume a single reference point and criterion: the "libido," the satisfaction of the desire of the single person.
In this manner, the final consequence of this phenomenon is that sexuality becomes separated even from the sexual difference between man and woman. From the moment that "gender" becomes understood as a cultural construct, and thus also as an object of individual choice, not even the natural sex must be a bond and a reference. This "malleable" sexuality, free from any link with procreation, becomes individualistic: in democratic society, we can verify a push towards a historical transformation of intimacy. [5]
Far from producing an authentic liberation, the sexual revolution seems instead to have provoked a sexual obsession of the masses. This concerns a cultural proposal that reduces sexuality to an exercise of the genitality, and thus considers it to be a mere object of consumption, whose enjoyment on the part of the individual is in itself normal and good. It is therefore an attempt at a radical secularization of sexuality, that, stripped of every content of mystery and transcendence, loses its most intimate longing: to build a communion of persons. Sexuality becomes simply an occasion of pleasure[6], but the search for pleasure as an end unto itself deprives sexuality of the innermost promise that animates it and renders it so fascinating.
The prophetic character of Humanae vitae consists precisely in having grasped the crucial character of a phenomenon of historical consequence: the transformation of social customs. Going against the current, in respect to the prevalent mentality, the encyclical of Paul VI affirmed the principle of a sexuality that would be truly an expression of love, like a personal and integral gift, capable of constructing an authentic community and open to life. As I will now attempt to demonstrate, the successive Magisterium of the Church, with John Paul II and Benedict XVI, has developed the potential of this prophecy, forming it into an always richer and more articulate theology of love.
3. The Analogy of Love in John Paul II: The Anthropological Question
It has been rightly observed that John Paul II, in his abundant teaching on the subject, but particularly in the cycle of Wednesday catecheses in the first years of his pontificate, instituted an intimate connection between the matrimonial and the anthropological questions[7]. In other words: when we speak of conjugal love, man and the truth of an anthropological concept are in play.
This thesis, developed precisely in reference to Humanae vitae, is founded by means of the elaboration of a true and proper "theology of the body," which for the first time expounds in an organic manner the vision of human corporeality that arises from Revelation, investigated in light of original human experiences. The human body, marked by sexual difference, is a "sacrament of the person:" a visible sign of the invisible reality that constitutes us as unique and irrepeatable subjects[8]. The human body, far from being reduced to the physiological dimension taken into consideration by the empirical sciences, is permeated by subjectivity. It is in the body that man discovers his irreducible difference from other living beings. Thus, he experiences in the visible world his original solitude and at the same time his call to communion in the encounter with the person-body of the woman. Exactly in this way, the possibility of a singular experience of intimacy and the possibility of a unique reciprocity is revealed to him: the body manifests its nuptial meaning.
For this reason, bodily gestures must be understood as signs of a language, a language that is called to express and to realize the communion of love of the persons, in which nature and person are intertwined in an indissoluble manner[9]. In order to understand the meaning of the language of the body, it is necessary, above all, to place it within the sphere of communication between subjects.
Here we find two levels of meaning: one perennial and the other unique and unrepeatable. The first regards the "objective sense," of which the body itself is not the author, that which has been "spoken by the word of the living God." [10] The second, of a "subjective" character, is that of which man himself is the author, through the necessary and continuous "rereading" of the original truth. The Pope observes that in this rereading, in reality, something "more" takes place: man becomes with God "co-author" in the language of the body, assuming and consenting to the original meanings that are proper to creation.
In this way, the positive meaning of human sexuality and the dignity of man, the subject of love precisely in his essential unity of soul and of body, appears in full light. [11] In this sense, if the meaning of the body is the call to the gift of self and to acceptance of the other, the condition of a full realization of this vocation is self-possession, which one realizes through the acquisition of virtues, in particular, the virtue of chastity. Chastity is not to be understood as the repression of passions and of affectivity, but rather as the virtue of true love. This virtue is the interior strength that allows drives and emotions to be expressed with full respect for the personal dignity of the other person, realizing in this way an authentic communion of persons in the act of conjugal love.
It emerges, therefore, that precisely in their limits and in their presupposing a personal maturation, the so-called "natural methods" assume an indirect moral value. They do not substitute the person and the persons of the spouses in their acting. They do not artificially manipulate the meanings of the conjugal act, but respect the personalistic value. Demanding and encouraging the formation of necessary personal dispositions, they place themselves at the service of love.
In one of his catecheses on human love, John Paul II had affirmed just this:
By itself, the knowledge of the “rhythms of fertility” -though indispensable- does not yet create that interior freedom of the gift that is explicitly spiritual in nature and depends on the maturity of the inner man. This freedom presupposes that one is able to direct sensual and emotive reactions in order to allow the gift of self to the other “I” on the basis of the mature possession of one’s own “I” in its bodily and emotional subjectivity. [12]
The novelty of such a language and of such an approach to the theme of sexuality provoked a great sensation in public opinion. In fact, it addressed a radical overcoming of that puritanical misunderstanding that, as we have already mentioned, had for centuries imprisoned Catholic sexual morality in a false and reductive interpretation.
We can therefore understand the accusation of Nietzsche against Christianity, raised by Pope Benedict XVI in his inaugural encyclical: Christianity has poisoned eros, turning to bitterness the most precious thing in life[13]. Well then, the catecheses of John Paul II caught unprepared prejudices and accusations and opened the way to a rediscovery of the value of the body in Christianity. As has been observed: "with John Paul II, suddenly it became beautiful to be Christians," exactly because we could see the attractiveness of Christianity and the correspondence with that which men and women most desire in the profundity of their hearts.
At the same time, however, the spiritualist misunderstanding, that had colored personalism and suggested orientations divergent from that of Humanae vitae,[14] was also overcome. In this misunderstanding, in fact, the value of the interpersonal relationship of love, understood as the "primary end" of the conjugal act, had led to a reduction of the "procreative end," collapsing it into a biological vision. In reality, the perspective of the theology of the body of John Paul II, while it clearly show the personalistic dignity of the conjugal act, knows how to recognize in the acceptance of fecundity an intrinsic meaning of the same personal donation. This openness to fecundity can not voluntarily be excluded without threatening the entire value of the personal donation. There is revealed here the intimate indissoluble unity of the three factors that constitute that which is called the "nuptial mystery": the sexual difference, the unity of the flesh, and the fecundity.[15] These indicate the fundamental grammar of love, beginning from which men and women can compose, without committing errors, the unique and original poem of their stories of love, in the life of the couple and in that of the family.
The term "mystery" suggests a complete openness of the experience of human love. Indeed, it does not indicate that which remains obscure and unknowable to reason, but rather that which is revealed of what is in itself beyond the possibilities of comprehension of reason: thus a revelation through the form of a sign. In what sense, therefore, is the experience of human love a mediation for an analogical reference to God, in what mode is it a way to a knowledge of God the Creator?
If we consider the act of love, we find that it always contains the relation of a person who loves to another who is loved and who, on a certain level of consideration, is the ultimate and unsurpassable point of reference: the person is loved for himself. And still, the dynamism of love addressed to the person is in itself encompassed in a preceding causality that exceeds it.[16] We are speaking of the act of original love, that envelops all of creation and implies a radical goodness of creation, for which it is worthwhile to be loved. This leads to recognizing that human love is preceded by a creative original love, which is manifested in human love and makes it possible.
The Way of Charity in Benedict XVI: The Theological Question
The teaching of Benedict XVI begins exactly at this point in order to develop an even more profound theology of love, to which he dedicates the inaugural encyclical of his pontificate. Love constitutes in fact the center itself of the Christian message: "God is love." We are not dealing with a philosophical idea but the adhesion of faith to a historical event: "We have come to believe in the love God has for us." (1 John 4:16) That which characterizes this ulterior stage of teaching is the emphasis on the intimate connection between the question of love and the theological question.
The Pope follows an indication of Saint Augustine, ever as relevant today. The great Father of the Church, almost following and commenting on Psalm 41 with its unnerving question: “They ask daily, 'Where is your God?',” offers a way of responding: “If you see charity, you see the Trinity.”[17] The visibility of the intimate mystery of the One and Triune God is made possible by the life of charity, which is realized in the Church. Thus, in a world like our own, in which there is being dramatically diffused a spiritual blindness in front of creation and an intellectual blindness towards other evidence for the existence of God, the question of an authentic love, animated by charity infused by means of the Holy Spirit, acquires the value of witness to God.
Human action, through the indwelling of the divine Spirit, gives birth to charity lived among men. This action represents a unique testimony to the glory of God, a true epiphany of his glory among men.[18] In particular, Matrimony and the Christian family acquire a permanent sacramental meaning for the world: precisely by realizing an authentic communion of persons in charity, they are called to give witness to the saving presence of God among men.
This implies that transparence of the archetype is the necessary condition for approaching knowledge of the original love. The divine image in man is realized precisely when he, in love, expresses the communion of persons, united in the fruitful gift of themselves. The analogy of love (ανά λόγος: discourse that ascends from below) signifies the similarity in the always greater dissimilarity: human love grants access to the divine love that precedes it and that offers itself to human love as a light and a strength to realize love according to truth.
At the same time is the catalogia (κατά λόγος: discourse that descends from above) of the revelation of the Trinitarian love in Christ that reveals to man the ultimate meaning of the same human love: in the symbolism of the love of Christ the Spouse for the Church his Bride is manifested the value of conjugal love as a sacrament. Here we find once again a second key affirmation of the encyclical of Pope Ratzinger: "Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is monogamous marriage." [19] The revelation of God in the history of Israel, that culminates in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, manifests the definitive dimension of love and at the same time opens to man the possibility to realize the original design of God. "God's way of loving becomes the measure of human love."[20] The anthropological truth of conjugal love, that in its original structure is constituted by the triple dimension of sexual difference, the gift of self, and procreation, is the created icon of the divine Trinitarian love. [21]
In this manner, the pericoresi between the act of faith in the divine revelation and the practice of love, also and specifically of conjugal love in its truth, is drawn even tighter in the inner unity of the Christian event. Human love between man and woman has its own truth, its own language, its own grammar, that is ultimately founded upon the original project of God, instituted in creation and definitively revealed in Jesus Christ. Respect for the inseparable unity between the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning of the conjugal act is part of the grammar of love, that is, of that system of rules that allows for authentic communication between persons. "I fear that as long as we believe in grammar, we will continue to believe in God," Friedrich Nietzsche had affirmed. [22] Truth is the inescapable context that intentionally embraces all of our discourses, even those that try to negate it, and truth is ultimately founded on God. Even the grammar of love has its origin in God Creator and Redeemer; to negate it means to obscure his face.
Conclusion
“Christianity is not a work of persuasion, but of greatness”[23] With this beautiful quote from Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Pope Benedict XVI indicated before the bishops of Switzerland the key point in which he sees the formidable challenge of the new evangelization. The greatest difficulty, which we run up against in educative work, is not so much making ourselves understood, but rather losing the initial greatness that Christianity proposes in amazement. In this case, Christianity can only appear as a series of fastidious rules and not as a vocation to realize a poem of love.
What is ultimately in play with Humanae vitae? This was the question with which we began. The rapid journey in the development of the theological thought linked to the teaching of John Paul II and Benedict XVI has demonstrated that it is not only a simple norm of sexual morality which is in play, that could be practically eluded or easily changed in the future. It has become evident that to the question of matrimonial sexuality there are linked both the anthropological and the theological questions, precisely since these basic themes are linked to love. Once again, here is a manifestation of the interior organic unity of the Catholic truth, in which the whole is always implicated in the part, from which it draws meaning and to which it contributes essentially. For this reason, it is never possible to separate the truth concerning God from that concerning man, the faith to believe from the practice to realize in everyday life.
The rupture of the intimate link between sexuality and openness to procreation is the expression of a process of radical secularization of human love, that becomes progressively reduced to the utilitarian and individualistic dimension of the search for pleasure for oneself. A search that, thus directed, experiences an always greater frustration of desire and even an impoverishment of pleasure. The defense of love as "mystery" is therefore at the same time a defense of God and a defense of man. Ultimately, it is also a defense of desire and even of pleasure.
For this reason, the complete and indivisible preaching of the truth about human love, taught by Humanae vitae, is an integral part of evangelization and of the commitment to building an authentic civilization of love and a culture of the family.[24] The Church, when she teaches these truths, does not do so because she is obsessed with sexual themes, and if she goes against the current, it is not to repress, but rather to collaborate in the authentic joy of men and women, indicating to them the way of love.
[1] Cf. A. Oliveiro, “Le nostre emozioni alla ricerca di un alfabeto”, in Avvenire, 1 marzo 2001.
[2] Cf. L. Giussani, Il rischio educativo, Rizzoli, Milano 2005, 15-21.
[3] Paul VI, Encyclical Letter Humanae vitae, 12. Among the many theological comments that affirm it, particularly authoritative, in as much as it comes from the personal theological advisor of Paul VI, who had an important role in the preparation of the document, is that of C. Colombo, L’insegnamento fondamentale di Humanae vitae, Milano 1989, 411-412.
[4] The ideological reference point is the work of W. Reich, La rivoluzione sessuale, Feltrinelli, Milano 1963 (German original edition: 1936); for a description of the phenomenon, see. F. Giardini, La rivoluzione sessuale, Edizioni Paoline, Roma 1974.
[5] Cf. A. Giddens, La trasformazione dell’intimità. Sessualità, amore ed erotismo nelle società moderne, Il Mulino, Bologna 2005 (English original edition: 1992)
[6] Cf. J. Noriega, Il destino dell’eros. Prospettive di morale sessuale, EDB, Bologna 2006.
[7] This affirmation is by C. Caffarra, Prefazione, in Giovanni Paolo II, Familia via Ecclesiae. Il Magistero di Papa Wojtyla sul matrimonio e la famiglia, a cura di G. Grandis, Cantagalli, Siena 2006, 7-16. The Wednesday Catecheses are collected in: Giovanni Paolo II, Uomo e donna lo creò. Catechesi sull’amore umano, Città Nuova – Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Roma 1985. Indicated for its critical rigor and for the introduction, the recent English edition: Man and Woman He Created Them. A Theology of the Body. Translation, Introduction, and Index by Michael Waldstein, Pauline, Boston 2006.
[8] Giovanni Paolo II, Uomo e donna, cit., XIX, p. 90; LXXXVII, p. 345; see also: J. Merecki, “Il corpo, sacramento della persona”, in L. Melina – S. Grygiel (a cura di), “Amare l’amore umano” L’eredità di Giovanni Paolo II sul Matrimonio e la Famiglia, Cantagalli, Siena 2007, 173-185.
[9] Giovanni Paolo II, Uomo e donna, cit., CIII, pp. 397-399. (5 janvier 1983).
[10] Ibidem, CIV and CV, pp. 400-405 (catéchèses du 12 janvier 1983 et du 19 janvier 1983).
[11] Cf. G. Marengo, “Legge naturale, corpo e libertà”, in L. Melina – J. Noriega (a cura di), Camminare nella luce. Prospettive della teologia morale a partire da “Veritatis splendor”, Lateran University Press, Roma 2004, 631-641.
[12] Giovanni Paolo II, Uomo e donna, cit., CXXX, 488 (catéchèse du 7 novembre 1984).
[13] Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter Deus caritas est, 3
[14] Cf. G. Mazzocato, “Il dibattito tra Doms e neotomisti sull’indirizzo personalista”, in Teologia 31 (2006), 249-275.
[15] Cf. A. Scola, Il mistero nuziale. 1. Uomo-Donna, Pul-Mursia, Roma 1998; 2. Matrimonio-Famiglia, Pul-Mursia, Roma 2000 (English translation: The Nuptial Mistery, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids MI 2005, translation prepared by Michelle Borras).
[16] Cf. L. Melina – J. Noriega – J.J. Pérez-Soba, Camminare nella luce dell’amore. I fondamenti della morale cristiana, Cantagalli, Siena 2008, 125-127.
[17] Saint Augustin, De Trinitate, VIII, 8, 12.14. Cf.: J. Granados: «“Vides Trinitatem, si caritatem vides”: vía del amor y Espíritu Santo en el “De Trinitate” de San Agustín», in Revista Augustiniana 43/130 (2002), 23-62.
[18] I take the privilege of referring to my book: L. Melina, Azione: epifania dell’amore. La morale cristiana oltre il moralismo e l’antimoralismo, Cantagalli, Siena 2008.
[19] Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est, 11.
[20] Ibidem.
[21] A. Scola, “Il mistero nuziale. Originarietà e fecondità”, in Anthropotes XXIII/2 (2007), 57-70. For a more systematic treatment, by the same author, see as well the volume already cited: Il mistero nuziale: una prospettiva di teologia sistematica, Lateran University Press, Roma 2003.
[22] Cited in L. Irigaray, Éthique de la différence sexuelle, Le Minuit, Paris 1984, 109 ; Nietzsche’s affirmation can be found in Die "Vernunft" in der Philosophie, 5. In the same sense, Jacques Derrida also affirmed that the epoch of meanings is essentially theological and presupposes God (De la grammatologie, Minuit, Paris 1967, 41)
[23] Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Romans, III, 3, cited by Benedict XVI, Address at the conclusion of the meeting with the Bishops of Switzerland, 9 November 2006.
[24] See also: C. Anderson, A Civilization of Love. What Every Catholic Can Do to Transform the World, Harper One, New York 2008; L. Melina, Per una cultura della famiglia. Il linguaggio dell’amore, Marcianum, Venezia 2006.