LOVE (FREE). - Love here means the sexual appetite; and the addition of "free" is meant to indicate the will to satisfy it without any restraint, but according to one's own inclination. This can be understood in two senses: the one broader and totalitarian, the other narrower and dependent.
1. Understood in the first sense, free love entails: a) exemption from every law of personal morality, which has no reason to exist. Love, in fact, imposes itself upon us without at all asking either our consent or another's, but arises from an impulse of nature; it has no duties other than toward itself; or rather it has only rights. Therefore each person must be free to exercise them in the manner and at the moments he wishes; b) exemption from every social law. Civil, religious, and family authority have nothing to do with it, nor limits or restrictions to prescribe; at most they have the obligation to assure each person the free exercise of love; c) exemption from every law of propriety, of modesty, of social or religious prejudices. All this is unworthy of man; it was born of fear; it fosters and embitters the erotic sense, removing that serene equilibrium which benefits the formation and full development of the personality, as food benefits the invigoration of the body, restoring it to that equilibrium which is broken by the wear and tear and usury of energies caused by daily occupations and labors; d) moreover, free love offers a way of escape to many persons who, for one reason or another, cannot marry. "Without sexual life a human being is incomplete or mutilated. And this, fortunately, women too now finally know. The number of cultured, honest, and industrious women is ever growing, who are not married or for whatever reason cannot be, and yet have sexual relations. They are courageous women, conscious of their own worth, who are preparing better times for their sisters" (Dr. Adamo Lehmann, cited in Förster, p. 59). And B. Russell, the most systematic author on the subject (Le mariage et la morale, French trans., 6th ed., Paris 1930, p. 144) adds: "From the standpoint of pure morality (free love) marks an immense progress over the old system. Traditional moralists deplore it because they see in it a failure that can no longer be concealed. Instead this new freedom of love among the young must be a cause of joy for us, because it is about to create a new generation of men and women, free from every sophistical coyness"; e) finally, free love is an indispensable preparation for happiness without further disappointments in marriage; which holds not only for young men, but also for young women. Experience, in fact, acquired from various adventures, while it will dull the first and most impelling ardors, will in due time favor a happier choice of the companion for the rest of life. This is the thesis of L. Blum (Del matrimonio, Italian trans., Turin 1946, especially pp. 1-33); and it is also the somewhat veiled substance of the very common saying: "the young must sow their wild oats," with which people try to casually excuse the deviations of the young.
2. Not everyone, however, in the theory of free love dares to descend to the ultimate logical consequences, but they give it the meaning of free union, in the sense that spouses must be able to separate at will in order to form other unions, even multiple ones; and to be able to fill, even without any separation occurring, with extramarital relations the gaps or deficiencies or dissatisfactions that they encounter in legitimate marriage.
Love, in fact, freely creates the union; freely continues it, freely abolishes it, as soon as it perceives a more desirable object. "It would be quite ridiculous to want to pride oneself on the false honor of being faithful, to bury oneself forever in a passion, to be dead from youth to all the beauties that can strike our gaze" (Molière, Don Giovanni, Act I, Scene 2).
3. EVALUATION
The theory of free love is deplorable in every respect and condemned by reason and religion for the inversion it inflicts on the true values of life and the sad consequences to which it leads. It is true that love, understood as sexual appetite, favors the full development of the personality and therefore men have the right to seek in it their happiness and their perfection and to seek them freely. For this reason the Church insists greatly on freedom both in the choice of the married state and in the choice of the person of the spouse. It is also true that the sexual instinct is in itself a good and that, since humanity cannot propagate and continue without its being satisfied, it is not evil, in itself, to follow it. But man is not entirely and solely erotic instinct; he also has other feelings, he is above all spirit and is a rational and social creature. He therefore has an end to attain worthy of a rational creature; he has limits and laws to observe so as not to compromise its attainment. And this both with respect to the body and its instincts, and with respect to the soul. Therefore one cannot, nor should one, "isolate the erotic from every other condition and purpose of human life to such an extent as to run counter to the most elementary good sense, to forget the fundamental facts of human nature, to neglect the fundamental demands of real life" (Förster, p. 102).
Nor should the warning of Jesus be forgotten: "There are eunuchs who are so by birth; others there are, made so by men, and still others, who have made themselves so for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let him who can understand, understand" (Mt. 19:12). With these words Jesus has raised up over the centuries legions of men and women who have sublimated the instinct of procreation and, instead of following the attraction of marriage, have preferred to remain continent and chaste for a broader and more spiritual love and paternity or maternity. The reasons with which free love seeks to cloak itself are merely sophisms and come above all from the lack of will to react and to master one's own inclinations, from the presumed impossibility of remaining pure and honest. "Certainly being rational animals is a hard trade, and a hard trade it is to direct one's body with the soul even into the innermost depths of one's being, there where the will is grafted onto the organism. One must toil and bleed, if one wishes slowly to purify and spiritualize these darkened regions, where the past of our species and of ourselves has let too many bad roots sink deep. But our dignity as men and as Christians, the dignity of our bodies, reeds, yes, but thinking; of our bodies become through baptism temples of God; in short, our natural and supernatural worth is attained only at this price... Let us not inflict on humanity the insult and the crime of lowering its principles to the level of its weaknesses; to break in the soul the spring that must make it rise on high is equivalent to impoverishing it of what it has best, of what must make it better" (Mersch, pp. 19-20). Experience, moreover, attests to us the bad consequences of the theory of free love in its two aspects: unhappy unions, concubinage, nudism, birth control, impoverishment of the race, lowering of the level of true civilization, dissolution of the individual and of the family.
In conclusion it can be said: by lending the name of love to all the acts of free love, one does nothing other than unleash, varnish over, and enthrone voluptuousness, abjection, animality, and instead of a free love one has a love totally enslaved to the worst of masters.
The doctrine of the Church, founded on the word of Jesus Christ (cf. e.g. Mt. 5:8, 27-30; 18:6-10), confirms and perfects what reason says, and at the same time, while knowing and assessing the irrepressible difficulties aroused by human nature corrupted by original sin, offers the means (mortification, self-conquest, prayer, the Sacraments) for a happy overcoming of all obstacles and for the serene joy of hearts. "If the grain of wheat falling to the earth does not die, it remains unfruitful; if instead it dies, it produces much fruit" (Jn. 12:24) (v. CASTITÀ; DIVORZIO; MATRIMONIO).