Conclusions

The sixteenth century Reformation was not entirely centered on abstract issues of theology, such as justification by faith, or on ecclesiological problems, such as the plenitude of papal power or the priesthood of all believers.

Roman Catholic and Protestant beliefs differed sharply on questions about the sacramentality of marriage, clerical celibacy, divorce and remarriage, and ultimately about the aims and purposes of human sexuality itself. The Catholic reaction, both in its reform mode and in its Counter-Reformation mode, tended to sharpen rather than blunt the differences between the two camps. After Trent, Roman authorities insisted even more vehemently than before upon the role of sex as a disruptive force in society. Catholic writers insisted that sex cre­ated a spiritual defilement from which individuals must be cleansed in order to become pure. Some held that marital sex was morally tolerable only if ordered toward reproduction or the avoidance of fornication, but all agreed that the highest and most worthy type of Christian life required celibate renunciation of sex altogether. Although Roman Catholic doctrine insisted that marriage was a sacrament, it was a marginal sacrament because of its links with the unholy combination of sex and pleasure.

Protestant divines, by contrast, flatly and unequivocally rejected the sacra­mentality of marriage, but paradoxically held matrimony in higher esteem than their Catholic counterparts. The Protestant clergy were, with few exceptions, married men, and most Protestants regarded celibacy as an oddity, graced with no special prestige or privilege. Protestant writers treated sex as a normal part of conjugal relationships, a sign of love between husband and wife, rather than a failing that required a procreative purpose to excuse it.

Since the mid-sixteenth century, sex legislation in Western nations has re­flected the divergent views of sexual ethics that emerged from the religious po­lemics of the Reformation. The sex law of predominantly Roman Catholic na­tions has assumed that sex is impure, that all nonmarital sex is wrong, that contraceptive practices should be illegal, that marriage is indissoluble, and that divorce should therefore be banned. Predominantly Protestant societies, on the other hand, have based much of their sex law on the sexual ethics of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century reformers. Thus their marriage law has characteristically emphasized society’s interest in promoting the family and its welfare, but has left many issues relating to marital sex and contraception to the conscience of the individual, rather than trying to enact norms on these matters into law. Predominantly Protestant societies attempted to discourage divorce, but, unlike traditional Catholic societies, they have also been willing to tolerate it as an unfortunate necessity.

While these differences arc significant, they are outweighed by the simi­larities between Catholic and Protestant attitudes toward sex. The principal features of medieval sex law have not only remained intact in post-Tridentine Roman Catholicism but have also been assimilated within Protestantism. Sub­stantial parts of medieval law on sexual behavior, moreover, not only survived the religious struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but have also found their way into the legal systems of modern secular states.

^9li Nonetheless, the Reformed churches incorporated substantial elements of Catholic canon law, including the canon law of marriage, in their own disciplinary systems. See generally Wilhelm Maurer, “Rcste dcs Ranonischen Rechtes im Fruhprotestantismus," ZRG, KA 51 (1965) 190-253.