Amor benevolentiae — ius responsabile - oś interpersonalnego projektu małżeńsko-rodzinnego

Abstract

The pivot of this article is emphasising a paradigm of benevolence ina briefly-outlined personalistic vision of marriage: friendly and dedicated love (benevolence)constitutes the obligation in marriage. One should add to it that a contemporary“decoding” of the interpersonal marital relationship fully confirms its legal identificationas a sexual relationship. Such an understanding of a personal “infrastructure” ofa canonic marriage allows the canonist to precisely — exactly within the law — answerthe question on how a marital contract differs from other bilateral legal contracts madebetween two people. The answer can only be one: interpersonality in a marriage isqualified, namely determined by a heterosexual and total devotion to as well as acceptanceof a man and a woman in a life-long faithful covenant of love and responsibility.As much as sexuality remains in a relation of osmosis with human existence, it projectson the whole phenomenon of a legal (inter)personal meeting of a man and a woman ina marital covenant. A complex and overwhelming personal dialogue in a marriage isbased on the pillar of spouses’ sexual difference which expresses not only a bipolarotherness, but, first and foremost, a complementariness of their natures. It is in this “I”and “you” in sexually-defined dialectics, namely, in a mutual completion of spousesthat a legally relevant structure and dynamics of a “marital nature” appears (“thiswoman’s husband”/”this man’s wife”) — experiencing one’s own “I” in a unity, yetrespecting the autonomy of each of the persons, dimension of “we”. The analyses conductedhere suffice to situate this interpersonal dialectics in the bosom of each authenticmarital-family project (matrimonium in fieri) alongside the amor benevolentiae — iusresponsabile axis.