Preparatory schema on marriage and family
Introduction
For over two years leading up to the Second Vatican Council, 150 cardinals and religious superiors—including Archbishop Lefebvre—prepared preliminary schemas for discussion. In total, 72 such preparatory schemas were drafted, covering everything from religious life, to the modern world, to Sacred Scripture.
Archbishop Lefebvre himself testified to the fact that they all reflected traditional Catholic doctrine. Sadly, however, the entire body of work was dismissed at the First Session of the Council. Since they were originally drafted in Latin, the schemas have been unavailable in English for a long time.
Fr. Joseph Komonchak, however, has translated some of them, and we here present his translation of the Draft of a Dogmatic Constitution on Chastity, Marriage, the Family, and Virginity. This translation by Joseph Komonchak will be published in a forthcoming volume by Orbis Books. Used with permission.
Draft of a dogmatic constitution on chastity, marriage, the family, and virginity
Preface
1. The Church, model of both states
All the Christian faithful constitute one great family which has arisen out of the at once virginal and spousal union of the Church with Jesus Christ, since never does the Savior cease by the word of life and the grace of the Holy Spirit to render his Bride, purchased by his blood, most chastely fruitful. For this reason, the Holy Synod has decided to extol and defend in a single dogmatic Constitution the nobility both of chastity in the unmarried and its most beautiful fruit, sacred virginity, and of chaste marriage and its heavenly fruit, the Christian family.
Part 2: Marriage and the family