Marriage and Family

This essay will examine the article “Marriage” written by Reverend Andrew Greeley. It will begin by finding and stating Greeley’s thesis. Next, this paper will examine the goal Greeley has in writing this article. Following that, this paper will summarize the argument made by Greeley. Once his argument has been presented this paper will analyze the logical consistency of the argument and seek to discover any weaknesses. Finally, this paper will briefly respond to the arguments made in the article. The conclusion of this analysis will be that Greeley’s argument is quite interesting and fairly well-reasoned, though, there are a few interesting implications of his argument.
To begin, Greeley presents a fairly straightforward thesis. His thesis is that humans are meant to have sex and engage in long-term relationships with each other. Furthermore, Greeley contends that the Catholic Church’s past stances and constant encouragement of limiting sex or forgoeing it altogether are incorrect and somewhat harmful. We can infer this thesis from the first question asked in Greeley’s article, “Are human beings biologically and genetically programmed for the marriage bond?” (Greeley 1) Greeley quite readily answers this with a definitive “yes” (Greeley 1). The rest of Greeley’s thesis must be inferred from the rest of his article as Greeley asks and answers several questions regarding the Church’s history on sex. Ultimately his thesis and argument can be easily deciphered.
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