De Facto Unions
A De Facto Union is when you have two people living together and the form of their cohabitation is of a sexual kind but is not marriage.
The Second Vatican Council stated: "The Church has always had the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel." (Gaudium et Spes 4).
De Facto Unions are very much a sign of the times, and the church has the duty of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel.
In a document entitled “Family, Marriage and De Facto Unions” , published in 2000, the Pontifical Council for the Family said that De facto unions are human relations, composed of diverse elements, which appear to "ignore, postpone, and even reject the conjugal commitment."
In other words when the church interprets and scrutinizes this sign of the times in which we live, it sees it as contrary to Marriage and to the family. The church holds that the de facto unions existing in society appear to have endangered the true and real meaning of marriage.
De Facto Unions threaten the sacredness of the intimate union of persons manifested through marriage and family. The church sees the family as the future of the society and the good elicited by marriage is basic for the Church.
Many people today no longer treat sex outside marriage as sin, an injustice or a reprehensible conduct but rather think of sex as a commodity available to everyone regardless of their state of life.
Vatican II reminds us that, "married love is uniquely expressed and perfected by the exercise of the acts proper to marriage." (GS 49)
The document (Family, Life and de facto Unions) of the Pontifical Council for the Family acknowledges the constitutive elements found in de facto unions which appear positive to human society. It acknowledges that there is relative stability in these unions.
"Trial" unions are common today, from less "explicit commitment" to "mutual fidelity." Some de facto unions are done due to economic reasons or to avoid legal difficulties while some were done as an alternative marriage breaking through from an unfulfilled previous marriage. Economic problems like poverty and marginalization some times force a man and woman live together outside sacramental or religious marriage.
The same Vatican document (Par. 20) says this: “If the possibility is accepted of a specific love between a man and a woman, it is obvious that this love is inclined (in itself) toward intimacy, a certain exclusivity, the generation of offspring, and a joint life project.
“When this is what is wanted, and in such a way that the other is given the ability to be entitled to this, then real self-giving and acceptance between the man and woman comes about which constitutes the conjugal communion.”
It goes on to speak about “amor conjugalis” or conjugal love. This is not only primarily a feeling, “but essentially a commitment to the other person”. It quotes Pope John Paul II who said that once a commitment has been made and accepted through consent, love becomes conjugal and never loses this character.
What is missing in de facto unions is this commitment, even though there may be tendencies towards it.
The document makes another point, this time, in paragraph 22. Marriage, the foundation of the family, is not “a way of living sexuality as a couple”. If it were only this, it would be just one of many possible ways. Nor is it simply the expression of a sentimental love between two persons. This characteristic is usually present in every loving friendship.
Marriage is more than that. “It is a union between a man and a woman, precisely as such, and in the totality of their male and female essence.”
This union can only be established through an act of the partners’ free will, but its specific content is determined by the structure of the human being, the woman and the man: mutual self-giving and the transmission of life.
Furthermore, because of conjugal love and the commitment that it implies, there is a question of justice here.
The document tells us that, "marriage is therefore a stable, joint project that comes from the free and total self-giving of fruitful conjugal love as something due in justice."
The dictates of justice at the level of marriage are missing from de facto unions.
When speaking about De Facto Unions, it needs to be pointed out that these include partnerships involving cohabitation of a sexual kind among people of the same sex. These Gay or Lesbian partnerships are De Facto Unions because they cannot be called marriage. For there to be a marriage there needs to be a man and a woman. It also needs to be open to life, and homosexual partnerships cannot be open to life.
Part of the problem also is that Society today attempts to justify these unions, be they between man and woman or between people of the same sex and tries to turn them into a legal institution and elevates them to a status similar to marriage.
The fact remains that in spite of the varied reasons of the equivalence and recognition of de facto unions in many societies, they run counter to Christian marriage. The stability of the union of spouses needs to be done through a conjugal communion in marriage.
The concluding words of the document reiterate the best ideals proclaimed by the church.
“The Catholic Church, in following Jesus Christ, recognises in the family and in conjugal love a gift of communion of the merciful God with humanity, a precious treasure of holiness and grace that shines in the midst of the world. Therefore it invites those who are fighting for the human cause to unite their efforts in promoting the family and its intimate source of life which is the conjugal act.”
