Sexual Ethics: A Theological Introduction by Salzman Todd A. & Lawler Michael G

Author:Salzman, Todd A. & Lawler, Michael G. [Salzman, Todd A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Published: 2012-05-18T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 4

Cohabitation and the Process of Marrying

Emmanuel Ntakarutimana expresses the Central African experience of marrying in the following words. “Where Western tradition presents marriage as a point in time at which consent is exchanged between the couple in front of witnesses approved by law, followed by consummation, the tradition here recognizes the consummation of a marriage with the birth of the first child. To that point the marriage was only being progressively realized.”1 Four years of field experience in East Africa taught us the same thing. We offer three points of clarification. First, the Western tradition to which Ntakarutimana refers is the Western tradition of only the past four hundred years; it goes back neither to Jesus nor to the New Testament. Second, in the received Western tradition, as in the African traditions, becoming validly and indissolubly married is a process, which begins with the exchange of consent and ends with subsequent consummation. Third, two ongoing questions arise: What are we to make of the differences between the Catholic, Western tradition of marrying and other cultural traditions, and how long can the Catholic Church continue to insist that the historically recent Western tradition is the universal tradition for all?

This chapter reflects on these points. In it we try, in Kevin Kelly’s words, to make “faith-sense of experience and experience-sense of faith.”2 That is, we come to the contemporary experience of cohabitation with a Catholic faith, and we attempt to bring that faith into conversation with the experience of cohabitation and how that experience affects the lives of cohabiting couples. We engage in this exercise conscious of the fact that human experience is a long-established source for Catholic moral judgments. This chapter is specifically about the process of becoming married in the living Catholic tradition of past and future. As it reflects on the history of marriage in the West, it necessarily uncovers two facts about the phenomenon contemporary society calls cohabitation. First, cohabitation is nothing new in either the Western or the Catholic tradition; second, as practiced both in the past and in the present, Western cohabitation is not unlike the African marriage of which Ntakarutimana writes. The chapter develops in three cumulative sections. The first section considers the contemporary phenomenon of cohabitation; the second unfolds the Western and Christian historical tradition as it relates to cohabitation and marriage; the third formulates a moral response to this phenomenon in light of theological reflection and our foundational sexual ethical principle.

Before embarking on this exploration, however, it is important to define precisely what is meant by the term cohabitation. The word derives from the Latin cohabitare, to live together. It applies literally to all situations where one person lives with another person: marriage, family, students in a dormitory, roommates in an apartment. An added specification is necessary to distinguish the meaning of the word in contemporary usage and, therefore, in this chapter. Cohabitation names the situation of a man and a woman who, though not husband and wife, live together as husband and wife and enjoy intimate sexual relations.

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