De facto unions and the conjugal covenant

(12) The evaluation of de facto unions also includes a subjective dimension: they are formed by concrete persons with their own vision of life, their own intentions, in brief, their “history”.  We should consider the existential reality of individual freedom of choice and the dignity of persons which may be in error.  However, in a de facto union, the presumption to have public recognition does not only affect the individual area of freedom, and so it is necessary to take up this problem from the viewpoint of social ethics: the human individual is a person and therefore social; a human being is no less social than rational.[9][9]

Persons can meet and refer to shared values and needs regarding the common good in dialogue.  The universal reference point, the criterion in this area, can be none other than the truth about the human good which is objective, transcendent and equal for all.  To attain this truth and remain in it is a condition for freedom and personal maturity, and the real objective of an orderly and fruitful social coexistence.  Exclusive attention to the subject, to the individual, his intentions and choices, without referring to the social and objective dimension, oriented to the common good, is the result of an arbitrary and unacceptable individualism that is blind to objective values, against the dignity of the person, and harmful to the social order.   “Therefore, it is necessary to promote a reflection that will help not only believers but all men of good will to rediscover the value of marriage and the family.  In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we can read: ‘The family is the original cell of social life.  It is the natural society in which husband and wife are called to give themselves in love and in the gift of life.  Authority, stability and a life of relationships within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security and fraternity within society.[10][10] If reason listens to the moral law written in the human heart, it can arrive at the rediscovery of the family. As a community based on and enlivened by love, [11][11]  the family derives its strength from the definitive covenant of love whereby a man and a woman give themselves to one another mutually and together become God’s cooperators in the gift of life”.[12][12]

The Second Vatican Council points out that so-called free love (“amore sic dicto libero”)[13][13] constitutes a factor that breaks down and destroys marriage because it lacks the constitutive element of conjugal love which is based on the personal and irrevocable consent whereby the spouses give and receive one another mutually, giving rise to a juridical bond and a unit sealed by a public dimension of justice.  What the Council calls “free” love, which opposes true conjugal love, was then—and is now—the seed that produces de facto unions.  Later, with the speed of today’s socio-cultural changes, it has also given rise to the current projects to confer public status on de facto unions.