Valuing Marriage, Family, and Friendship

(Part 1 of 3) Marriage, family, and friendship together form a threefold foundation upon which society flourishes. In our time, all three are under assault. 

There was the Protestant/Puritan/Victorian prudishness, which viewed the body and sexuality as dirty and animalistic and which suppressed and hid this part of our nature (with some exceptions, such as outdoor nude swimming and bathing, which is too much for even our "sexually liberated" era). 

Then there was the Sexual Revolution, which was a reaction against this, oddly keeping the belief that the body and sexuality are dirty and animalistic, but going to the opposite extreme of reveling in it by behaving as animals and exhibiting and using the body as an object. Following this was the rapid destruction of the family and the ubiquitous practice of perverse, selfish, and disordered sexual acts. 

Following this, in my opinion, was another reaction, in many Catholic and other Christian circles, an overvaluation of family, marriage, and sexuality, which has caused its own problems. What are some examples of what I mean? The notion that sexual intimacy is the only or the highest form of intimacy. The framing of all Truth through the lens of marriage and sexuality.

What we need, then, is a solid valuation of marriage, family, and friendship, neither undervaluing, nor overvaluing, any one of the three. In my opinion, the overvaluing of marriage and sexuality actually worsens the assault against true marriage and sexuality. If in our society the sexual relationship is considered the highest and only true form of love and intimacy, and friendship is reduced to a kind of second-rate option, it is then no surprise that those who are not called to true marriage will be under heavy pressure to create false visions of marriage and sexuality, since love and self-gift are the vocation of all people. The best way to defend marriage and sexuality, as the Catechism suggests, is the cultivation of and flourishing of intimate (but chaste and disinterested) friendship.

Marital/sexual relationships should be valued, then, but moderately, in their place. The same applies to familial relationships and friendship. We need all three in order to flourish as a society. We must recognize the excellence and the limitations of all three.

Friendship is limited in that friends cannot achieve total unity, for they are not one flesh. Marriage is limited in that spouses cannot achieve total disinterestedness with one another, because they are one flesh. As it turns out, the excellence of each is also the limitation. Friendship is at its highest in disinterested love which gives birth to virtue and truth; marriage is at its highest in unitive love, which procreates new life. It is for this reason that there are some things a person can say and do with his/her spouse, but not with a friend; and there are some things he/she would say or do with a friend, but not with his/her spouse. (I contend, against what some would say, that spouses are not entirely capable of true friendship.)

Yet, both friendship and marriage, properly lived, are images of Charity, of Christ's sacrificial love. Only in our relationship with Christ can we achieve both total friendship and total unity. And the world needs examples of true marriage and true friendship to guide us to that end toward which we were made.