The Nuptial Mystery (Ressourcement: Retrieval and Renewal in Catholic Thought | RRRCT)
Overview
The idea of love pervades our society, yet it is nearly impossible to answer the question What is love? especially as we witness the divorce of love from sexuality and of sexuality from procreation. Aware that many people today are skeptical about marriage, Angelo Cardinal Scola nevertheless suggests that only in the category of nuptial mystery do we find a way to adequately describe the phenomenon of love.
A bright new leader in the Catholic Church, Cardinal Scola argues that the male-female relationship lies near the heart of what it means to bear the image of God. Scola’s book explores the essential sexual differences that both separate and unite men and women, and it shows how men and women can realize their purpose in marriage or celibacy.
Conversant with papal teaching and Catholic writers from Aquinas to von Balthasar, Cardinal Scola writes with a deep regard for marriage and the family. His Nuptial Mystery will leave readers with a thoroughly Christian appreciation for incarnate love.
Key Features
- Explores the existence and attributes of love in the context of marriage and family
- Discusses the nature of males and females and their relationship to one another
- Connects the discussion to the image of Christ as bridegroom of the church
Contents
Categories of the Nuptial Mystery: Two Original Theses of Mulieris Dignitatem
- A Theological Sketch of Man and Woman
- Sexual Difference and the Meaning of the “Unity of the Two”
- Human Sexuality and the Imago Dei
The Nuptial Mystery: A Theological Perspective
- The Dynamisms of Nuptiality: Affection, Love, and Sexuality
- A Description of the Nuptial Mystery
- The Nuptial Mystery and Fruitfulness
The Nuptial Mystery and Cultural Changes: The Tasks of Marriage and the Family
- Marriage and the Family and the Crisis of Freedom
- Marriage, the Family, and Life
- Marriage, the Family, and Education
- Marriage and the Family: A Communion of Generations
The Nuptial Mystery: Marriage and the Family in the Light of the Christian Mysteries
- The Features of Marriage and the Family: From Past to Present
- The Insuperable Difference: From Man and Woman to Marriage and the Family
- Fatherhood, Motherhood, and the Mystery of the Father
- Christ, Bridegroom of the Church
- The Holy Spirit and the Truth about Marriage and the Family
- Marriage, Family, and the Eucharist
Appendices
- Appendix 1: From Inter Insignores to Ordinatio Sacerdotalis
- Appendix 2: Affection in the Light of Several Articles of Saint Thomas Aquinas’s De Passionibus
- Appendix 3: The Theological Principle of Human Procreation
- Appendix 4: The Formation of Priests in the Pastoral Care of the Family
- Appendix 5: A Prophecy of the Nuptial Mystery: Reflections on the Teaching of Humanae Vitae
- Appendix 6: The Engagement Period: A Gift and a Task in the Preparation for Marriage
- Appendix 7: The Nuptial Mystery: A Perspective for Systematic Theology?
Top Highlights
“Does not this sort of disincarnate anthropology, so to speak, end in a negation of the woman as a personal subject of ‘desire,’ with the risk of reducing her purely to an object of masculine desire? Similarly, any position that understands the personal dignity of the woman not as its essential premise but rather only as one of its consequences, would end up compromising the value of maternity and virginity.” (Pages 9–10)
“On the other hand, sexual difference helps us understand that the image cannot be reduced to some purely spiritual element.” (Page 9)
“the human being’s sexual nature represents one of the original loci in which he experiences his own contingence. This” (Page 23)
“Mary is the model of man (the human being) as such and, in a particular way, she is the model of women. The” (Page 16)
“allow us to conclude that sexuality is an original, and not derivative, dimension of man.” (Page 9)
Praise for the Print Edition
Everything that pleased fans of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body will please them in this book, for it is a sustained and substantial elaboration of the themes concerning marriage enunciated by the late pope.
—Commonweal
The Nuptial Mystery is an excellent work! Renewing a respect and appreciation for lifelong, life-giving, faithful marriage is an urgent pastoral priority today. This book, which combines impeccable theological scholarship with realistic pastoral compassion, is just what we need.
—Timothy M. Dolan
Angelo Cardinal Scola is without doubt one of the most powerful and exciting theological voices in the contemporary Catholic Church, and his Nuptial Mystery is a theological synthesis of astonishing depth and subtlety. For anyone wishing to undertake a theology of embodiment, of human relations, and of the incarnation itself, this book is essential reading.
—Laurence Paul Hemming
Product Details
- Title: The Nuptial Mystery
- Author: Angelo Scola
- Translator: Michelle K. Borras
- Series: Ressourcement: Retrieval and Renewal in Catholic Thought (RRRCT)
- Publisher: Eerdmans
- Publication Date: 2005
- Pages: 444
- Christian Group: Catholic
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Topic: Marriage & Family