CHASTITY AND MARRIAGE

"(...) the current marital disaster (...) derives from love understood not in the Christian sense, but in the romantic one, which was transmitted to us by the bourgeoisie of the 19th century. Love as passion, physical attraction, feeling, as sweetness of boyfriend and girlfriend with Cupids and initials engraved on the bark of the trees, sweet words, little messages (...) When all this is over - (and eventually it will be over for everyone), once the magic of the "nascent state" has been exhausted - the conclusion that is drawn is that love is over, since only that type of "love" justifies being together, and it is time to start over with another person, to find the romantic emotion again, to feel something again.

For Rosanna and me there also existed, thank God as for every couple, the delicious "nascent state."  But there has also always existed the awareness that, from the Christian perspective, the law of the union of diverse realities always applies: thus, marriage as affection, but also as a bond, for good and bad, as a personal and, at the same time, social link;  as a pleasure, but also as a duty, often arduous; as a feeling, but also as a will to maintain the initial dream even if one no longer "feels"; as attraction, but, sometimes, also as impatience, even as annoyance;  as a sexual dimension, but also as fraternal solidarity.  Etc. In a word: the realism of those who believe in the Gospel and are aware that, to find love as a solid foundation of that eternal tragicomedy that is the encounter-confrontation between man and woman, one must decontaminate oneself from the feeling (which not by chance derives from "feel"), and not infrequently is also derived from sentimentality presented as love for too many songs, novels and films.  (...)"

"Why I believe" - ​​Vittorio Messori

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