Symposium: “Social Cost” and JPII

This article is in response to “The Social Costs of Abandoning the Meaning of Marriage” by Ryan T. Anderson and is part of the symposium, “Sex and the Polis: Perspectives on Marriage, Family, and Sexual Ethics.”

My college’s ISI chapter recently held a panel discussion on the modern objectification and commercialization of sex.  The final question of our lively event was proffered by an audience member claiming to be in a bisexual, polyamorous relationship.  She scorned the panel’s position–that heterosexual marriage is the proper context of sex–saying that it did not reflect her personal experience of “happiness,” nor the reality we see in the world.  Monogamy is dying, accept it and move on.

Yet is this social “progression” merely a form of creative destruction?  Or, has monogamy so long persisted as the norm for a reason?  Must we safeguard the traditional, natural order to foster human flourishing?

Addressing these questions in his recent IR Symposium article, Ryan Anderson examines how mutating definitions of marriage hold significant ramifications for society and its stability.  He argues that the loss of monogamy, sexual exclusivity, and the expectation of permanency would inevitably create an unstable, untenable society driven by the primacy of disordered desire.  Yet amidst his dire forecasts, Anderson proposed that recognition of its social consequence should be sufficient cause, on some level, to preserve traditional marriage.

As a theology major, however, I preferred to examine the issue through a different lens.  According to JPII’s Theology of the Body, monogamous, heterosexual marriage is not only good because of its social consequences, but because those effects derive from a deeper, theological reality.  Not merely a social construct, marriage is the means through which man and woman strive to reflect the image and likeness of God.

“Man became ‘the image and likeness’ of God not only through his own humanity, but also through the communion of persons which man and woman form right from the beginning.  The function of the image is to reflect the one who is the model, to reproduce its own prototype.  Man becomes the image of God not so much in the moment of solitude as in the moment of communion.”  -Pope John Paul II

In this light, social stability naturally flows from this theological reality as the further “right-ordering” of society.  While addressing the utilitarian cause-and-effect of marriage is necessary and helpful, a restored human anthropology is crucial to forming a greater understanding of who we are and why we are here.  You may be “happy” with your “monogamish” relationship, but are you truly living as you?