Love of husband and wife joined together in pure intimacy.

Anne Lastman

Contemporary society seems to have lost the understanding and the meaning of conjugal honour (Casti Connubii, citing the Angelic Doctor) or even the will or knowledge of how to protect conjugal honour.

Why?

Perhaps many reasons can be cited for this loss of knowledge but first what might we call conjugal honour? My understanding of conjugal honour is that union between husband and wife in which no other can share or enter in.  Only a betrothed couple may share that conjugal honour. That intimate community which resembles that of the divine community. A community where life abides. No other community can say that they contain that mystery which is in married state with all its secrecy, laws, language and love. No other community demands such honour as does the conjugal community. 

It’s in this community which both (husband and wife) enter and vow to remain united until the time comes for one or the other or both to go.  Sometimes leaving the community individually at other times together, hand in hand, they move to that greater community of which their own conjugal community was a forerunner and foretaste of. We have in our contemporary time, in our day lost the sense of conjugal honour and its meaning because of the changes in sexual understanding and morality which has entered this time. 

“It was because you were unteachable” he said “that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but it was not so from the beginning” (Mt 19:8).  

It’s because in the past two generations we have been found to be unteachable and a pseudo type of relationship became confused with conjugal intimacy and conjugal honour.  A forced and artificial application of the conjugal state has been forced upon society. A societal invention. A pseudo conjugal state which cannot even contemplate but only simulate the intimate community where conjugal honour resides and its where “life” can abide. 

Beginning with  “living together”  which can be said to be a trial run or even a probation marriage where if difficulties appear the intimate community of the couple can be disbanded  or even when desires wane and something new is sought then that community which can envelope and protect life is abandoned.  

The couple entering pseudo marriage cannot establish the intimate community which lasts the term of life, the same life that they hide from view because of the agreed temporariness of their pledge based only on physical responses.  Otherwise the union would be sought to be made whole and total. The Conjugal union would be so honoured that it would seem to be right that that union be protected from intrusion into that intimate community so that life residing there would know that honour.

Probation intimacy, divorce, make to fade that intimate community (where love abides) because both are a rejection or refusal of that knowledge about conjugal honour. Conjugal honour has slowly been withdrawn from the intimacy of the couple. 

Rejection of conjugal honour cannot see that in every woman is written the code word   “mother.” In that conjugal community “mother” has a special meaning. And male has the code word “father” with its own special meaning. These two words are the result of honour given to both who’ve entered that special intimate community which constitutes married state or marriage. Conjugal honour is deeply written into the sexual act and may not to be violated because “it was not so in the beginning” (Mt 19:8.)

Loss of conjugal reverence has led to abortion and its obscene growth.  Loss of knowledge about conjugal reverence has meant that there are several generations who have not known or been taught about holiness of the body and how the body has been designed to be honoured because it has been created to be a part of an intimate community in the image of divine, because like the divine it was designed to perpetuate life.   Not a group or community of people gathering with the same beliefs and ideals but an intimate community so holy and where only two may enter and be held together there to continue the work of furthering creation. The template community designed by God “in our own image” (Gn1:27). This new intimate community is to imitate that love and life.  

We have abortion to horrendous numbers. We have purposely sterile relationships.  We have death demanding calls (euthanasia/assisted suicide) because first there was a loss of honour. Loss of conjugal honour. Loss of conjugal awe. Loss of conjugal reverence and unholy intrusion into that space of intimacy where only honour, respect, reverence, and awe should have abided because this sacred place is the office of the nature of love.  The understanding what intimate love is and be manifested.   

Modern sexual couplings (experimental/life choices/refusal of conjugal intimacy) cannot declare conjugal honour because of the pseudo nature of  that intimacy fails part of its mandate, donation from him to her and her to him and their individual donation gives a gift of wholly and completely of themselves to the other. No other can ever replicate the original donation and from that donation …life.

Within every marriage there abide three persons, the husband, wife and Holy Spirit (lord and giver of life) who enters the union and remains.  The spirit does not know how to be party to fourth or fifth, sixth, intrusion. The holiness of that union is so because the Spirit has accepted the troth of fidelity and the spirit does not know how to be unfaithful.

Understanding of the language of the body not in prudishness but with respect, reverence and awe because it’s the way God deemed the mystery of life

A return to the understanding of how God desired life must needs be the new overtures spoken to humankind and speak to them of their precious spousal nature which is not to be used and abused, discarded, because reverence for their bodies has been rejected and the community of intimacy invaded by an intruder, and the gift designed in that community, the infant discarded, but they are to hear their true story which is that they have been created for life and great honour. 

The new language must the speak truth within these times, the truth which has been lost or even forgotten or a distant memory, as an echo of something which happened long ago.   It must speak of the conjugal mystery and honour due to it which tabernacles life. It must do this because due to the loss of such knowledge the language spoken in this day serves death. The new language for recovery of treasures of the Garden (conjugal intimacy) must speak of Holiness and speak the word…life.