Ramil D.

Tolentino

14 July 2015

Theology of Marriage

Reflection Paper No. 1

Black or White. Leftist or Rightist. Pro or Anti. In or Out. That is how we perceive the world
nowadays. People seem to always put a dividing line in everything whether in personal or social
relations, economics, politics and it is quite more prevalent when it comes to principles and ideologies.
It seems that when one presents his world view, he tend to ask everyone whether 'you are with me' or
'you are against me'. It is as if we paint the world with only two colors - black and white, or our eyes
can only see two colors and other colors were non-existing and thus disregarded. Even in the matters
regarding with the Church and our faith, people tend to label one either as a progressive or a
conservative. With the prevalence of sophisticated technologies and modern developments, many
questions and issues were being raised, which decade or centuries ago were not a problem. Issues
ranging from morality, sacramentality, ecclesiology to eschatology were brought out, and various
concepts and ideas were established and speculated to answer those issues. In the end, it boils down
whether you belong to progressive or conservative group of the faithful. However, this is further
clarified with the two approaches of morality - the legal approach and the relational-conscience
approach. The former tend to dwell and capitalize on the authority and legal laws of the Church, that
is, the Do's and Don'ts, thus, either you violated something or not. It focuses only on the letters of the
law, and this was quite prevalent in the old times, particularly in the Old Testament and apostolic
times. One does not have to reason out if he had done something wrong if you violated a law then
you have sinned. With the dawning of human sciences, the humanity of every person was taken into
consideration, which is the main concept of the other approach to morality - the relational-conscience
model. The world is not simply black or white but filled with various colors and hues. Every aspect of
humanity is considered, thus, lessens the imputability and culpability of the person. It is not a watering
down or rationalizing of the act but basically answering the why of such an act. As I have stated a
while ago, the world, of course including the humanity, is not merely a black and white but consists of
hues of colors, hence, a person acts because of various motivations and reasons, and this should be
taken into account. St. Thomas Aquinas has a perfect term when it comes to interpreting the law, and
that is "Epikea" [Summa Theologica Pt. II-II, Q.120, Art. 1]. One has to be judged by virtue of justice
using epikeia, determining the real essence of the law, for the sake of humanity (for which the law has
been made) and not for the law itself. Moreover, taking into stance the legalistic perspective, one sees
an individual as a mere object and not as a human being, moving according to the numbers and
letters of the law, thus a person seems to be 'objectified'. Hence, it seems that we fail to heed God's

command to 'LOVE neighbor as one's self'. Pope Francis would be a perfect example nowadays of
this approach. For him, it would be people first before the law, which I submissively agreed. Hence,
the welfare and the salvation of people lies not on the implementation of the 'full force of the law' but
on the 'full compassionate heart of a shepherd'.
The key here would be the Aristotelian concept of 'Golden Mean'. We should not dwell on both
extremes, that is, to be 'ultra-conservatives' who sees and perceives everything according to the
letters of the law, and a mere deviation from it would mean a serious transgression that could affect
one's salvation; or to be 'ultra-liberals' who are lax and seems to be passive in everything, thus,
everything would be quite 'relative' to someone according to his judgment. We have to be always 'in
the middle' by taking into consideration the humanistic approach in viewing and judging everything,
that is, we judge seeing in a broader perspective, taking into account the human dimensions of an
individual, but still without loosing our firm grasp on what is truly right and wrong. If we could live in
this kind of life, then I could say that we are indeed living out the gospel values that Jesus wants us to
do instead of living a pharasaical way of life.