In February 2008, a Minnesota couple gained international recognition for their 83 years of marriage. Married on February 17th, 1925, at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Hugo, MN, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported that Clarence and Mayme Vail “gained fame . . . with reports that they were the longest-married living couple in the world. They appeared on a ‘Today’ show segment dispensing relationship advice. . . . As word of their epic union spread, reporters from as far away as Korea and Germany called wanting to know their secret.”
In 2011, another Minnesotan’s marriage also made headlines. Former NBA player Kris Humphries married Kim Kardashian in a wedding that cost an estimated $6 million. Their marriage lasted 72 days.
The contrast between the two marriages is striking. One gives witness to the Church’s desire for marriages that are healthy, faith-filled, long-lasting, self-sacrificial, and fruitful. The other marriage showcases a narrow, self-serving, and disposable understanding of the sacrament of matrimony.
Interestingly, the Catholic Church is not alone in recognizing the value of the committed and sacramental relationship that the Vails embraced. Numerous studies also demonstrate that the kind of marriage that Clarence and Mayme Vail modeled leads to stability, better health outcomes, overall flourishing, and lasting joy for both the couple and their children.
Fr. Thomas Morrow wants all couples to achieve a fruitful and lasting marriage, and his book Marriage for God’s Sake: A Guide for Catholics offers both Church teaching and practical steps for generating a healthy, faithful, and lasting relationship. Having led numerous Catholic Couples groups throughout his more than 40 years as a priest, Fr. Morrow combines the richness of Catholic teaching with years of practical experience.
His book opens with three short chapters that highlight marriage (and divorce) statistics, his thoughts on effective communication strategies, and an important reminder that wedding vows are willed but not always felt. Beginning in chapter four, the real beauty of his message begins to unfold as Morrow develops the Catholic understanding of love, respect, friendship, affection, sex, and the blessing of children.
Although all the topics in Morrow’s book are of value, what struck me most was his development of the full and self-giving nature of agape love as well as the importance of friendship and affection. Having an understanding of both agape love and friendship is critical in today’s increasingly isolated and highly sexualized culture.
The Fullness of Marriage and Agape Love
Recognizing that many in today’s culture lack an understanding of the self-giving union that comprises agape love within marriage, Morrow opens the fourth chapter with a discussion on the four different Greek words for love. Referencing both C.S. Lewis’s book The Four Loves and Church teaching, Morrow explains the distinction between each of the loves, and the role each plays within marriage.
Over the course of decades, a depleted understanding of love has emerged (due in much part to the widespread acceptance of birth control and no-fault divorce), distorting the divine, total, selfless, and enduring love that is needed for a lasting marriage. Fr. Morrow tries to correct this misunderstanding.
In contrast to today’s narrow and self-serving understanding of marital love, which the entertainment industry often portrays as an emotional union enhanced by sexual activity (a union which can be dissolved once the emotional or sexual satisfaction wanes), Morrow highlights the Church’s plan for the total and self-giving agape love necessary for a marriage to be healthy, holy, fruitful, and enduring.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says:
Conjugal love involves a totality, in which all the elements of the person enter . . . It aims at a deeply personal unity, a unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul; it demands indissolubility and faithfulness in definitive mutual giving; and it is open to fertility. (1643)
The Catechism also acknowledges that “It can seem difficult, even impossible, to bind oneself for life to another human being” (1648). Therefore, recognizing the divine nature of agape love, married couples can (and should!) avail themselves of God’s grace to better live out this command of life-long, sacrificial love. As the Catechism states, “by coming to restore the original order of creation disturbed by sin, he himself [Jesus] gives the strength and grace to live marriage in the new dimension of the Reign of God” (1615).
Part of the strength of Morrow’s text is his ability to weave the practical elements of living out this self-giving love within the context of daily living. For example, Morrow repeatedly recommends that in order to receive divine strength and grace, couples should pray together daily and regularly participate in the sacraments. Yet, he also acknowledges that couples who are new to daily prayer will find better success if they begin to pray together in short (rather than extended) amounts of time.
In addition, echoing the thoughts of Gaudium et spes, which discusses the nobility and worthiness of selfless, daily deeds, Morrow notably observes that agape love “is usually expressed in quiet, enduring ways, without much fanfare.” He adds that, “this [can often be] the least exciting, and even potentially the most boring of the [different kinds of] love. But it is the most powerful and most rewarding in the long run.”
Friendship and affection within a lonely and overly sexualized culture
In addition to his chapter on agape love, Morrow emphasizes the importance of friendship (philia-love) and affection (storge-love).
Interestingly, the need for people to develop healthy friendships is becoming a nationwide priority. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy declared a national loneliness and social isolation epidemic throughout the country. Despite easy communication through social media and texting, fewer people are connecting in person—living, instead, in a technological world of isolation.
Combine this isolation with an overly sexualized culture, and few people today understand how to develop healthy, wholesome friendships. Many could benefit from Morrow’s tutorial on friendship, affection, and intimacy. Morrow suggests, “It seems that good, selfless, chaste affection has been a casualty in our over-sexed world. Many have lost the art of [friendship and] affection.”
How important this message is. Due to the influence of movies, videos, music, and the proliferation of pornography, many young people wrongly think that emotional and relational intimacy developed through friendship must lead to sexual intimacy. What an impoverished and distorted view of friendship this is!
Likewise, Morrow observes that few married couples understand how to develop healthy affection within marriage. Through his decades of experience working with couples, he has learned that many married couples wrongly think that signs of affection such as a hug, a kiss, or holding a hand, must always lead to sexual activity. Morrow laments, “Affection is such a beautiful expression of love, of intimacy. How sad that it has been co-opted into sex.”
Morrow’s book on marriage is a needed guide in today’s culture. His clear and concise writing is influenced by the rich and deeply profound Catholic teaching, as well as current marriage research and practice. Although I blushed a few times due to his frankness, he leaves little room for confusion on the teaching, the practice, and the benefits of a healthy and lasting marriage.
In just over 200 pages, Fr. Morrow covers critical topics related to faith-filled, healthy, and lasting marriages. In addition to the four types of love, Morrow discusses temperaments, communication strategies, God’s plan for sex, the blessings of children, finances, and the scourge of pornography. He also includes appendices with additional information on the Theology of the Body, the Church’s teaching on IVF, and the effectiveness of NaPro treatments.
G.K. Chesterton observed that, “The disintegration of rational society started in the drift from the hearth of the family; the solution must be a drift back.” Understanding and practicing agape love, friendship, and affection can help us “drift back” to the hearth of the family. Morrow’s book guides readers on how to do so.
