After that first sin, the world is virtually inundated by sin There is Cain's murder of his brother Abel and the universal corruption which follows in the wake of sin. Likewise, sin frequently manifests itself in the history of Israel, especially as inFidelity to the God of the Covenant and as transgression of the Law of Moses. and even after Christ's atonement, sin raises its head in countless ways among Christians. 287 Scripture and the Church's Tradition continually recall the presence and universality of sin in man's history:

Today there are numerous Catholics in many countries who have recourse to civil divorce and contract new civil unions. In Fidelity to the words of Jesus Christ - "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery" 158 The Church maintains that a new union cannot be recognized as valid, if the first Marriage was. If the divorced are remarried civilly, they find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God's law. Consequently, they cannot receive Eucharistic Communion as long as this situation persists. For the same reason, they cannot exercise certain ecclesial responsibilities. Reconciliation through the Sacrament of Penance can be granted only to those who have repented for having violated the sign of the Covenant and of fidelity to Christ, and who are committed to living in complete continence.

The Fidelity of the baptized is a primordial condition for the proclamation of the Gospel and for the Church's mission in the world. In order that the message of salvation can show the power of its truth and radiance before men, it must be authenticated by the witness of the life of Christians. "The witness of a Christian life and good works done in a supernatural spirit have great power to draw men to the Faith and to God." 88

In Fidelity to Scripture and in conformity with the example of Jesus, the Tradition of the Church has

In many circumstances, the Christian is called to make Promises to God. Baptism and Confirmation, Matrimony and Holy Orders always entail promises. Out of personal devotion, the Christian may also promise to God this action, that prayer, this alms-giving, that pilgrimage, and so forth. Fidelity to promises made to God is a sign of the respect owed to the divine majesty and of Love for a Faithful God.

Promises made to others in God's name engage the divine honor, Fidelity, truthfulness, and authority. They must be respected in justice. To be unFaithful to them is to misuse God's name and in some way to make God out to be a liar. 77

The Sacrament of Baptism is conferred "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." 85 In Baptism, the Lord's name sanctifies man, and the Christian receives his name in the Church. This can be the name of a saint, that is, of a disciple who has lived a life of exemplary Fidelity to the Lord. the patron saint provides a model of charity; we are assured of his intercession. the "baptismal name" can also express a Christian mystery or Christian virtue. "Parents, sponsors, and the pastor are to see that a name is not given which is foreign to Christian sentiment." 86

Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children. They bear witness to this responsibility first by creating a home where tenderness, forgiveness, respect, Fidelity, and disinterested service are the rule. the home is well suited for education in the virtues. This requires an apprenticeship in self-denial, sound judgment, and self-mastery - the preconditions of all true freedom. Parents should teach their children to subordinate the "material and instinctual dimensions to interior and spiritual ones." 31 Parents have a grave responsibility to give good example to their children. By knowing how to acknowledge their own failings to their children, parents will be better able to guide and correct them:

Whoever wants to remain Faithful to his baptismal Promises and resist temptations will want to adopt the means for doing so: self-knowledge, practice of an ascesis adapted to the situations that confront him, obedience to God's commandments, exercise of the moral virtues, and Fidelity to prayer. "Indeed it is through chastity that we are gathered together and led back to the unity from which we were fragmented into multiplicity." 127

Charity is the form of all the virtues. Under its influence, chastity appears as a school of the gift of the person. Self-mastery is ordered to the gift of self. Chastity leads him who practices it to become a witness to his neighbor of God's Fidelity and loving kindness.

Those who are engaged to marry are called to live chastity in continence. They should see in this time of testing a discovery of mutual respect, an apprenticeship in Fidelity, and the hope of receiving one another from God. They should reserve for Marriage the expressions of affection that belong to married Love. They will help each other grow in chastity.

The Spouses' union achieves the twofold end of Marriage: the good of the spouses themselves and the transmission of life. These two meanings or values of marriage cannot be separated without altering the couple's spiritual life and compromising the goods of marriage and the future of the family. The conjugal Love of man and woman thus stands under the twofold obligation of Fidelity and fecundity.

Fidelity expresses constancy in keeping one's given word. God is Faithful. the Sacrament of Matrimony enables man and woman to enter into Christ's fidelity for his Church. Through conjugal chastity, they bear witness to this mystery before the world.

Adultery refers to marital inFidelity. When two partners, of whom at least one is married to another party, have sexual relations - even transient ones - they commit adultery. Christ condemns even adultery of mere desire. 170 The sixth commandment and the New Testament forbid adultery absolutely. 171 The prophets denounce the gravity of adultery; they see it as an image of the sin of idolatry. 172

Some today claim a "right to a trial Marriage" where there is an intention of getting married later. However firm the purpose of those who engage in premature sexual relations may be, "the fact is that such liaisons can scarcely ensure mutual sincerity and Fidelity in a relationship between a man and a woman, nor, especially, can they protect it from inconstancy of desires or whim." 183 Carnal union is morally legitimate only when a definitive community of life between a man and woman has been established. Human Love does not tolerate "trial marriages." It demands a total and definitive gift of persons to one another. 184

When God calls him, Abraham goes forth "as the Lord had told him"; 8 Abraham's heart is entirely submissive to the Word and so he obeys. Such attentiveness of the heart, whose decisions are made according to God's will, is essential to prayer, while the words used count only in relation to it. Abraham's prayer is expressed first by deeds: a man of silence, he constructs an altar to the Lord at each stage of his journey. Only later does Abraham's first prayer in words appear: a veiled complaint reminding God of his Promises which seem unfulfilled. 9 Thus one aspect of the drama of prayer appears from the beginning: the test of Faith in the Fidelity of God.

Yet there are some situations in which living together becomes practically impossible for a variety of reasons. In such cases the Church permits the physical separation of the couple and their living apart. the Spouses do not cease to be husband and wife before God and so are not free to contract a new union. In this difficult situation, the best solution would be, if possible, reconciliation. the Christian community is called to help these persons live out their situation in a Christian manner and in Fidelity to their Marriage bond which remains indissoluble. 157

The deepest reason is found in the Fidelity of God to his Covenant, in that of Christ to his Church. Through the Sacrament of Matrimony the Spouses are enabled to represent this fidelity and witness to it. Through the sacrament, the indissolubility of Marriage receives a new and deeper meaning.

By its very nature conjugal Love requires the inviolable Fidelity of the Spouses. This is the consequence of the gift of themselves which they make to each other. Love seeks to be definitive; it cannot be an arrangement "until further notice." the "intimate union of Marriage, as a mutual giving of two persons, and the good of the children, demand total fidelity from the spouses and require an unbreakable union between them." 155

The forgetting of the Law and the inFidelity to the Covenant end in death: it is the Exile, apparently the failure of the Promises, which is in fact the mysterious fidelity of the Savior God and the beginning of a promised restoration, but according to the Spirit. the People of God had to suffer this purification. 77 In God's plan, the Exile already stands in the shadow of the Cross, and the Remnant of the poor that returns from the Exile is one of the most transparent prefigurations of the Church.

The prophetic texts that directly concern the sending of the Holy Spirit are oracles by which God speaks to the heart of his people in the language of the promise, with the accents of "Love and Fidelity." 85 St. Peter will proclaim their fulfillment on the morning of Pentecost. 86 According to these Promises, at the "end time" the Lord's Spirit will renew the hearts of men, engraving a new law in them. He will gather and reconcile the scattered and divided peoples; he will transform the first creation, and God will dwell there with men in peace.

Certain things are required in order to respond adequately to this call: - a permanent renewal of the Church in greater Fidelity to her vocation; such renewal is the driving-force of the movement toward unity; 280 - conversion of heart as the Faithful "try to live holier lives according to the Gospel"; 281 for it is the unFaithfulness of the members to Christ's gift which causes divisions; - prayer in common, because "change of heart and holiness of life, along with public and private prayer for the unity of Christians, should be regarded as the soul of the whole ecumenical movement, and merits the name 'spiritual ecumenism;"' 282 -fraternal knowledge of each other; 283 - ecumenical formation of the faithful and especially of priests; 284 - dialogue among theologians and meetings among Christians of the different churches and communities; 285 - collaboration among Christians in various areas of service to mankind. 286 "Human service" is the idiomatic phrase.

By canonizing some of the Faithful, i.e., by solemnly pro claiming that they practiced heroic virtue and lived in Fidelity to God's grace, the Church recognizes the power of the Spirit of holiness within her and sustains the hope of believers by proposing the saints to them as models and intercessors. 303 "The saints have always been the source and origin of renewal in the most difficult moments in the Church's history." 304 Indeed, "holiness is the hidden source and infallible measure of her Apostolic activity and missionary zeal." 305

The mystery of Christ is so unfathomably rich that it cannot be exhausted by its expression in any single liturgical Tradition. the history of the blossoming and development of these rites witnesses to a remarkable complementarity. When the Churches lived their respective liturgical traditions in the Communion of the Faith and the Sacraments of the faith, they enriched one another and grew in Fidelity to Tradition and to the common mission of the whole Church. 66

"Liturgical diversity can be a source of enrichment, but it can also provoke tensions, mutual misunderstandings, and even schisms. In this matter it is clear that diversity must not damage unity. It must express only Fidelity to the common Faith, to the Sacramental signs that the Church has received from Christ, and to hierarchical Communion. Cultural adaptation also requires a conversion of heart and even, where necessary, a breaking with ancestral customs incompatible with the Catholic faith." 74

This presence of Christ in the minister is not to be understood as if the latter were preserved from all human weaknesses, the spirit of domination, error, even sin. the power of the Holy Spirit does not guarantee all acts of ministers in the same way. While this guarantee extends to the Sacraments, so that even the minister's sin cannot impede the fruit of grace, in many other acts the minister leaves human traces that are not always signs of Fidelity to the Gospel and consequently can harm the Apostolic fruitfulness of the Church.

As in all the Sacraments additional rites surround the celebration. Varying greatly among the different liturgical Traditions, these rites have in common the expression of the multiple aspects of sacramental grace. Thus in the Latin Church, the initial rites - presentation and election of the ordinand, instruction by the bishop, examination of the candidate, litany of the saints - attest that the choice of the candidate is made in keeping with the practice of the Church and prepare for the solemn act of consecration, after which several rites syrnbolically express and complete the mystery accomplished: for bishop and priest, an anointing with holy chrism, a sign of the special anointing of the Holy Spirit who makes their ministry fruitful; giving the book of the Gospels, the ring, the miter, and the crosier to the bishop as the sign of his Apostolic mission to proclaim the Word of God, of his Fidelity to the Church, the bride of Christ, and his office as shepherd of the Lord's flock; presentation to the priest of the paten and chalice, "the offering of the holy people" which he is called to present to God; giving the book of the Gospels to the deacon who has just received the mission to proclaim the Gospel of Christ.

Every man experiences evil around him and within himself. This experience makes itself felt in the relationships between man and woman. Their union has always been threatened by discord, a spirit of domination, inFidelity, jealousy, and conflicts that can escalate into hatred and separation. This disorder can manifest itself more or less acutely, and can be more or less overcome according to the circumstances of cultures, eras, and individuals, but it does seem to have a universal character.

Seeing God's Covenant with Israel in the image of exclusive and Faithful married Love, the prophets prepared the Chosen People's conscience for a deepened understanding of the unity and indissolubility of Marriage. 102 The books of Ruth and Tobit bear moving witness to an elevated sense of marriage and to the Fidelity and tenderness of Spouses. Tradition has always seen in the Song of Solomon a unique expression of human love, a pure reflection of God's love - a love "strong as death" that "many waters cannot quench." 103

The various liturgies abound in prayers of blessing and epiclesis asking God's grace and blessing on the new couple, especially the bride. In the epiclesis of this Sacrament the Spouses receive the Holy Spirit as the Communion of Love of Christ and the Church. 124 The Holy Spirit is the seal of their Covenant, the ever available source of their love and the strength to renew their Fidelity.

Difference of confession between the Spouses does not constitute an insurmountable obstacle for Marriage, when they succeed in placing in common what they have received from their respective communities, and learn from each other the way in which each lives in Fidelity to Christ. But the difficulties of mixed marriages must not be underestimated. They arise from the fact that the separation of Christians has not yet been overcome. the spouses risk experiencing the tragedy of Christian disunity even in the heart of their own home. Disparity of cult can further aggravate these difficulties. Differences about Faith and the very notion of marriage, but also different religious mentalities, can become sources of tension in marriage, especially as regards the education of children. the temptation to religious indifference can then arise.

Thus the Marriage bond has been established by God himself in such a way that a marriage concluded and consummated between baptized persons can never be dissolved. This bond, which results from the free human act of the Spouses and their consummation of the marriage, is a reality, henceforth irrevocable, and gives rise to a Covenant guaranteed by God's Fidelity. the Church does not have the power to contravene this disposition of divine wisdom. 144

Christ is the source of this grace. "Just as of old God encountered his people with a Covenant of Love and Fidelity, so our Savior, the spouse of the Church, now encounters Christian Spouses through the Sacrament of Matrimony." 147 Christ dwells with them, gives them the strength to take up their crosses and so follow him, to rise again after they have fallen, to forgive one another, to bear one another's burdens, to "be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ," 148 and to love one another with supernatural, tender, and fruitful love. In the joys of their love and family life he gives them here on earth a foretaste of the wedding feast of the Lamb:

The Love of the Spouses requires, of its very nature, the unity and indissolubility of the spouses' community of persons, which embraces their entire life: "so they are no longer two, but one flesh." 151 They "are called to grow continually in their Communion through day-to-day Fidelity to their Marriage promise of total mutual self-giving." 152 This human communion is confirmed, purified, and completed by communion in Jesus Christ, given through the Sacrament of Matrimony. It is deepened by lives of the common Faith and by the Eucharist received together.

In the living Tradition of prayer, each Church proposes to its Faithful, according to its historic, social, and cultural context, a language for prayer: words, melodies, gestures, iconography. the Magisterium of the Church 15 has the task of discerning the Fidelity of these ways of praying to the tradition of Apostolic Faith; it is for pastors and catechists to explain their meaning, always in relation to Jesus Christ.