Timothy P. O’Malley’s chapter in “Sex, Love, Families: Catholic Perspectives” raises the question: What exactly is marriage, and on what should it depend most? O’Malley writes:
“Think for a moment about dating websites or apps. Potential lovers meet through a quantified algorithm dedicated to assessing compatibility. Do both of you like to hike? Are you interested in sports or classical music concerts? Are you readers of The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times? If matches do not share these things in common, then the relationship is presumed to be a failure waiting to happen. …
“The focus on sexual compatibility is related to another facet of modern love — sexual attractiveness. Advertising and film in the mid-19th century created what (professor Eva) Illouz calls a ‘canon of erotic allure.’ … This canon proposes to us that youthful flesh, not the aged body, is the norm for romantic compatibility.”
St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle viewed marriage as friendship, and Cicero defined friendship as “mutual harmony in affairs human and divine coupled with benevolence and clarity.”
In the book “Spiritual Friendship,” Cistercian monk Aelred of Rievaulx defines charity as an “affection of the heart and the word, ‘benevolence,’ caring it out in deed.” Here friendship is envisioned as heartfelt love that inhabits our very center, and benevolence is seen practicing the maxim: “Actions speak louder than words.”
No doubt marriage is a loving friendship, a working together in unity and taking decisive action when needed. This being true, what needs to fuel friendship in marriage?
Here we turn again to Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas who say that it needs the bond of virtue. In other words, marriage partners should be directed by the four cardinal virtues of prudence, ruled by justice, guarded by fortitude and moderated by temperance.
In “The End of the Modern World,” Father Romano Guardini worries about our postmodern world becoming an endangered species. Why is this? For one thing we have now gained power over power. For example, the atom. If not controlled, he worried an Armageddon was possible. He likewise worried of becoming matter of fact about this.
How then do we avoid these pitfalls?
It is by earnestly practicing virtues like truthfulness, understanding, reverence, kindness, courage and selflessness. These and those mentioned above have spawned worldly success and, equally important, produced successful marriages. When we are truthful to ourselves, as well as to others, harmony follows.
When we endeavor to understand another and see him or her through his or her eyes, harmony follows. When we stand strong in the face of adversity, we overcome. And when we are well disposed to others, our nation, the world and God, harmony prospers.
Throughout history’s difficulties, the practice of virtue has pulled us through. So too has it helped inspire successful marriages.
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