II – The Family based on marriage and de facto unions

Family, life and de facto unions

(9) It is useful to understand the substantial differences between marriage and de facto unions.  This is the root of the difference between the family originating in marriage, and the community that originates in a de facto union.  The family community comes from the covenant of the spouses’ union.  The marriage that comes from this covenant of conjugal love is not created by any public authority: it is a natural and original institution that is prior to it.  In de facto unions, on the other hand, reciprocal affection is put in common but, at the same time, the marriage bond, with its original public dimension that gives the foundation to the family, is absent.  The family and life form a real unit which must be protected by society because this is the living nucleus of the succession (procreation and education) of human generations.

In today’s open and democratic societies, the State and the public authorities must not institutionalize de facto unions, thereby giving them a status similar to marriage and the family, nor much less make them equivalent to the family based on marriage.  This would be an arbitrary use of power which does not contribute to the common good because the original nature of marriage and the family proceeds and exceeds, in an absolute and radical way, the sovereign power of the State.  A serenely impartial perspective free from any arbitrary or demagogical positions invites us to reflect very seriously in the different political communities on the essential differences between the vital and necessary contribution to the common good of the family based on marriage, and the other reality that exists in merely emotional forms of cohabitation.  It does not seem reasonable to hold that the vital functions of family communities, whose nucleus is the stable and monogamous institution of marriage, can be carried out in a large-scale, stable and permanent way by merely emotional forms of cohabitation.  The family based on marriage must be carefully protected and promoted as an essential factor in social existence, stability and peace, in a broad future vision of the society’s common interest.