Marriage Consent vis-à-vis St. Thomas Aquinas’ notion on Internal Freedom

“Marriage and Family” is the foundation stone of an authentic human society. It springs from a Divine Institution and it follows the very nature of the human person. “God created humankind in his own image and likeness; calling them to existence through love, he called them at the same time for love”1. In this line, the Council defines marriage as a “covenant of love”2; a covenant which is “freely and consciously chosen, whereby a man and a woman accept the intimate community of life and love willed by God himself”3. Love is essentially a voluntary giving of oneself. In marriage, this act of giving is the one contained in the consent of the spouses, which signifies a mutual giving and accepting – of their conjugality – as something owed in Justice.