The Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith, one of the 16 dicasteries that make up the Curia (the Vatican’s administrative and managerial apparatus), published a note stating that sex between two married people not only serves to produce children, but also makes them feel more united with each other, and thus strengthens their relationship. The notes according to the Dicastery were published to defend the value of monogamy (having an exclusive relationship with only one person), and in one passage it says:
monogamy is not just the opposite of polygamy. It goes beyond that, and its in-depth analysis allows us to understand marriage in all its richness and success. This question is closely related to the goal of the unity of sexuality, which does not merely guarantee procreation, but helps to enrich and strengthen the unique and exclusive union and the feeling of mutual belonging.
It is nothing new for the Vatican to say that sex is not just for producing children: Pope Paul VI’s famous 1968 encyclical, theHuman Life History. However, the article still attracts a lot of attention due to the Vatican’s strong opposition to various areas that do not link sex and procreation, such as the use of contraceptives or the possibility of same-sex marriage.
The note, published Tuesday, said Darling (from Latin “one flesh”) – To praise monogamy. This document was written by the cardinal prefect (i.e. the person in charge of the dicastery), Víctor Manuel Fernández, and Monsignor Armando Matteo, secretary of the doctrinal section of the Dicastery (i.e. Fernández’s deputy), and later approved by Pope Leo XIV. Dicasteries are bodies divided according to subject and competence that assist the Pope in guiding the Catholic Church: with a somewhat rough comparison we can compare them to ministries. Each dicastery is headed by a prefect and its members are cardinals, bishops, priests and lay people.
Although they are official documents, the records published by a dicastery have a predominantly symbolic value, namely the orientation of the Church towards certain themes: in short, they do not introduce new doctrines, but limit themselves to the orientation of the interpretation of existing doctrines. They also have less value than encyclicals, which are the Pope’s direct and official expression on a particular topic.
In the introduction to the note, Fernández explains that he decided to publish the note to defend monogamy due to several changes affecting contemporary society. On the one hand, it is the development of technology that, according to the Prefect, leads man to “think of himself as a being without limits, who can obtain everything he imagines”: according to the notes, the thought of himself as an omnipotent being also influences the choice to pursue relationships exclusively, considering that monogamy “in itself implies the free rejection of many other possibilities”.
Fernández then said that he had recently had several discussions with bishops from Africa, where polygamy is widespread and therefore the problem arose of how to deal with faithful who do not live in monogamous relationships. Speaking on the issue, the prefect then noted that non-exclusive forms of relationships are also increasingly widespread in the West, in forms such as so-called polyamory, and more generally in so-called “ethical non-monogamy”, a definition that includes almost all types of relationships that are not based on monogamy.
On these issues, Dicastery’s notes are categorical: “Polygamy, adultery or polyamory are based on the illusion that the intensity of the relationship can be found in a series of faces,” he says.
– Read also: A quick guide to “ethical non-monogamy”
