My view of being-in-love is that (like everything except God and the Devil) it is better than some things and worse than others. Thus it comes in my scale of values higher than lust, selfishness, or frigidity, but lower than charity or constancy - in fact about on a level with friendship. Like everything (except God and the Devil) it therefore is sometimes opposed to things lower than itself and - in that situation - good; sometimes to things higher than itself and in that situation, bad. Thus being-in-love is a better motive for marriage than, say, worldly advancement, but the intention to obey God's will by entering into an indissoluble partnership in all virtue and mutual charity for the preservation of chastity and the admission of new souls to the chance of eternal life is better even than being-in-love.
The trouble arises when poets and others set up this "good" thing as an absolute, which many do. An innocent and well-intentioned emphasis on the importance of being-in-love with one's spouse (i.e. its superiority over lust or ambition as a basis for marriage) is in fact widely twisted into the doctrine that only being-in-love sanctifies marriage and that therefore as soon as you are tired of your spouse you get a divorce. Thus the over-praising of a finite good, the pretense that it is absolute, defeats itself and corrupts the very good it set out to exalt; and what begins by wanting to to beyond the prayer-book idea of marriage ends by reducing marriage to mere concubinage. Treat "Love" as a god and you make it a fiend.
Blessings,
No comments:
Post a Comment