Mgr Cormac Burke was an unlikely appointment as an Auditor of the Roman Rota when Pope St John Paul II appointed him in 1986, having spent the years before that in pastoral and academic work in Africa (teaching canon law at the seminary in Nairobi). He remained unusual on the Rota, being notable for sentences which included more searching and lengthy theological expositions than was (or is) usual for the deliberations of that august body. This book collects a number of his articles, and does so in a way that leads the reader into themes that are at the heart of Burke's thought. Although Mgr Burke has re‐worked the essays to make the connections between them more evident, the book remains a collection – with all the advantages and disadvantages that this involves.
Given, however, that the content has been reworked, the definite article in the title will provoke some immediate reflection by readers – especially as the book (though written earlier) will appear alongside Amoris Laetitia. Pope Francis's Apostolic Exhortation echoes much recent writing on marriage by beginning with a lengthy attempt to build a theology of marriage which starts with biblical reflection, and going on to look carefully at the situation of marriage in the world of today. Mgr Burke, by contrast, appears to offer a much more timeless theology, which is attentive to the teaching of scripture but does not start with it in any obvious way. Should one therefore dismiss this book as a throwback to the theology of an earlier age (implicitly condemning the theology that underlies the canon law of marriage at the same time)? Even without considering this additional point, to do so would be to miss the opportunity to engage with some serious and important thought.
Mgr Burke's thought has at its best a passionate commitment to the holiness of married people, and to marriage as the royal road to that holiness. He is also concerned to offer an account of marriage which takes account of the personalist thought that has been so strong a feature of modern Catholic moral theology, and to do so in a way that overcomes the potential trend in personalist thought to an excessive individualism. Indeed Mgr Burke goes so far as to say that he sees personalism as an antidote to individualism, and he outlines a personalist view of marriage which he argues is objective rather than purely subjective and which integrates both the institutional and personal dimensions of marriage in such a way that there is an interrelation between them that is not hierarchical but complementary. Central to this (and to his thought generally) is the notion of the bonum coniugum, which he relates intimately to the idea of marriage as the total gift of oneself and reception of the other. The various essays in this collection all contribute to developing our understanding of the good of the spouses as their sanctification. A thoughtful analysis of St Augustine's thought on marriage points out how the so‐called three bona really are blessings, not merely burdensome obligations, and does much to point how the saint's thought can be reconciled with personalist ideas. Similarly, reflection on the link between the procreative and unitive elements of marriage in the light both of personalist ideas and the view of marriage as sanctifying the spouses undermines the idea that there can be a unitive dimension to the conjugal act which is not itself also open to procreation at a spiritual rather than simply a biological level. Mgr Burke is not afraid to challenge: he is well aware that the vision of marriage being offered is a demanding one, which will involve purification of many elements of the lives of the spouses. But he is never simply negative: the lengthy final essay is an analysis of the idea of marriage as a remedium concupiscentiae which deals a series of devastating blows to that idea.
There is, then, much to welcome in this book, even though it will strike many readers as starting from an unusual place. However, the starting place does sometimes let the author slide into positions which it is difficult to support. The most obvious example of this comes in his treatment of the problem of the marriages of those baptised in whom the life of faith seems to have almost (if not entirely) vanished. Mgr Burke strongly affirms that such marriages are sacramental, but in doing so he allows himself to adopt a position which is both surely wrong and ecumenically unacceptable. He starts from the unexceptional premise that: ‘Protestants, after all, who do not believe that matrimony is a sacrament, nevertheless receive the sacrament when they marry’ (p. 17). A few pages later (p. 20) this has become: ‘The lack of faith of two Protestants who marry does not necessarily prevent them from receiving the sacramental graces of their matrimony’. He surely means (at the strongest) the erroneous content of the faith of the two; the ecumenical imperative to take other Christians seriously requires re‐thinking here, lest the proper desire to affirm the validity of their marriages leads us to question whether they really have faith. A sustained reflection on the ecumenical position might enable a deepening of his position in regard to the sacramentality of marriages where faith is weak, as at the moment his position can leave one thinking that it is a question of ex opere operato being heaped onto ex opere operato. The practical exclusion of the life of faith from a couple's relationship needs the sort of personalist analysis that Mgr Burke deploys elsewhere – especially since one of the pastorally interesting consequences of the law on canonical form is that inter‐church situations are those in which this tends to arise in a canonical context.
However, it is fair to conclude by pointing out that even the defects in this book are ones that provoke further reflection. If nothing else, it should re‐assure those who are not canon lawyers that the discipline is sensitive to the deepest spiritual good of marriage in its deliberations – even if these do not always attain to the profundity of the reflections in this book.
