The family is the most original and most natural form of the communio personarum. In it the person is conceived, born, sheltered, and accompanied in the unfolding of all three dimensions of personhood. The family is grounded in marriage and is the primary place of generativity — the passing on of personal life.
It is the space in which parenthood exercises its responsibility for education and in which the child experiences the fundamental interpersonal relationships. The family is not merely a social convention. It corresponds to the nature of the human person as a bodily-spiritual being ordered toward community. The home forms its protected spatial framework.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: communio personarum
Marriage
Marriage is the comprehensive interpersonal self-gift of the whole person between man and woman, in which the orderedness of the person toward the personal Thou is concretized in a bodily-sexual way. It is not a mere contractual bond, but a personal act of love, ordered toward permanence and exclusivity and open to the conception of new personal life.
In marriage, the nuptial meaning of the body is realized in its full form. The language of the body becomes the expression of total self-giving. Marriage is the foundation of the family and thus of the most original form of the communio personarum. From it proceeds parenthood, in which the begetting of new personal life has its natural place.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: interpersonal relation
Friendship
Friendship is a lasting mutual affirmation of two persons resting on free choice. Unlike familial relationships, which are given by birth, friendship rests on a free act of the second dimension of personhood. In friendship, two persons recognize each other as someone and affirm each other for their own sake. It is a form of love that is ordered toward permanence and in which the persons respect each other in their dignity. Friendship realizes the interpersonal dimension of being human beyond marital and familial relationships.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: interpersonal relation
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 57, a. 4 (the right of parents and the natural order of the family). Transl. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. New York: Benziger Bros., 1947.