Martin M. Lintner
MELITA THEOLOGICA
Journal of the Faculty of Theology
University of Malta
65/1 (2015): 97–119
The Spirituality of Marriage after the
Second Vatican Council
Introduction
N
owadays “more and more people are coming to accept the insight that
theological reflection is biographically ‘earthed’.”1 Theological reflection
on a spirituality of marriage needs “confidential conversations with those who
[are] immediately affected, that is to say, with committed married couples.”2 This
prevents reflecting theologians from idealizing marriage as well as from being
divorced from the reality of everyday marital life. The following reflections made
by the author of this paper, who as a religious priest follows a celibate life, have been
nourished by many conversations with married couples.3 The personal reflections
of married faithful in the light of faith are a genuine source of moral knowledge; and
supplement reflections on an abstract essence or nature. Paul VI, for example, was
well aware of this.4 He deliberately appointed married individuals and couples to
1
Klaus Demmer, “Sacramental Marriage: A Testimony of Faith in a Secular World”, in Close
to Our Hearts: Personal Reflections on Marriage, ed. Aldegonde Brenninkmeijer-Werhahn and
Klaus Demmer (Münster: LIT, 2013), 11.
2
Ibid., 12.
3
Why should a religious priest speak about spirituality of marriage and the sacramental
meaning of sexual intimacy? He surely is not an expert in this matter. The author, in his pastoral
practice and in many conversations of spiritual accompaniment, has heard couples complain that
they have been deprived of a positive sexual life because of the Church’s doctrine and catechetical
instruction they had received in matters of sexuality and marriage life. The author is therefore
convinced that the Church has the duty to offer spouses a positive view of marital life including
sexual intimacy. The Second Vatican Council opened a way to this. In this article, the author
would like to present the theological and spiritual basis for such an approach.
4
“The Church recognizes the many aspects, namely the many competences; within these
excel the competence of the spouses, the one of their freedom, of their conscience, of their love,
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