Una Caro: The Limp-Wristed Document that Poetically Pirouettes while the War on Marriage and Family Rages

From the opening passages any hopes you had, that this document might be different from the usual post-conciliar garbage, are quickly dashed.

(Note to my Readers: This analysis of the document covers only some of the points I found troubling. As is the case with most of the garbage coming out of the synodal dicasteries, it very quickly became very tiresome. To be precise, 36 pages of Tiresome. The document is riddled with watered down doctrine, platitudes, ambiguity, and “Cardinal” Victor “Tucho” Fernandez’s very dubious trademark “Love Doctor” lingo. Towards the end Fernandez just can’t help himself anymore and like a schoolboy in love shamelessly quotes one love poem after the other. I kid you not. I am certain my contemporaries will come at it from many more and interesting angles in the coming days. Meanwhile, as usual, I waded through the anti-Catholic drivel with as much courage as I could muster, so you dear reader didn’t have to…)

Una Caro: In Praise of Monogamy, the note from the Dicastery of Faith which was approved by Pope Prevost, is expansive in scope but predictably suffers from a characteristic weakness common to all synodal modernist texts: it treats an ancient, clear, and divinely-established doctrine as if it were a theme requiring modern rediscovery rather than a perennial truth.

While we find ourselves in an age when the very idea of marriage is collapsing under the weight of sexual libertinism, gender ideology, and the cultural glorification of non-commitment, one would think a Vatican document on monogamy would possess the clarity of a trumpet blast. One would be terribly mistaken. The document is nothing of the sort. Instead, Una Caro whispers sweet nothings and prances like a dandy. It is a long, pompous, oh-so-earnest, pastoral meditation—yes, even a beautiful one in places—that refuses to call sin sin, error error, and truth truth. What the Church required was a hammer; what it got was a modernist tap-dance.

From the opening passages any hopes you had, that this document might be different from the usual post-conciliar garbage, are quickly dashed. The Note does not begin with doctrine, nor with divine law, nor even with the natural law that undergirds the whole Catholic understanding of matrimony. Instead, it begins with the introspective, therapeutic language typical of contemporary synodal ecclesial documents. The conjugal bond, we are told, does not arise from two persons “standing one before the other,” but from two people “standing with one another.”

Okay then, Captain Smooch, whatever you say.

The very definition of monogamous unity is phrased not in theological or juridical terms, but in the vocabulary of a marriage counselor. This is not an accidental stylistic choice—it reveals the entire lens through which the document views its subject. Marriage is not first a covenant, an instituted bond or an ontological unity, but a “relationship”, a “mutual journey”, and a “communion of life.”

But hey, what did we expect? The document is after all the artistry of Cardinal Soft Porn himself, aka Víctor Manuel “Tucho” Fernández.

The language may have been innocuous in a popular catechetical pamphlet or in a relationship advice column, but in a doctrinal note it becomes an obstacle. The Church has always taught that the unity of marriage is rooted in something far more solid than emotional proximity or subjective experience. It is rooted in divine law itself: “They shall become one flesh.” Not “they shall become emotionally resonant,” not “they shall grow in interpersonal communion,” but one flesh. The unitive bond is real, objective, irrevocable, and independent of the feelings of the spouses. Yet throughout Una Caro, unity is spoken of as a kind of ongoing emotional project, a dynamic process deepened through tenderness, dialogue, and mutual giving. The emphasis falls so consistently on interiority and relationality that one begins to wonder whether the authors remember that a marriage remains very real even when the spouses sometimes cease to feel all fuzzy on the inside.

The nauseating sentimentality becomes even more disturbing when the Note reaches paragraph 5 and, with startling candor, announces that it will not address “indissolubility” or “fruitfulness.” One can scarcely believe one’s eyes. A Vatican document on monogamy, and it explicitly refuses to discuss the two pillars that make monogamy intelligible. This is the theological equivalent of offering a document on the Eucharist and then refusing to speak about transubstantiation. By bracketing these essential elements, the Note strips monogamy of its doctrinal backbone and leaves it suspended over thin air.

One of the Note’s most jarring, erm, “failures” is its uncritical use of Hindu religious texts as moral witnesses to monogamy. One expects anthropological observations in a document of this kind but one does not expect direct citation of Hindu scriptures, placed without qualification next to Genesis, as if the Manusmṛti or the Bhāgavatam occupy some analogous moral plane.

The document quotes the Manusmṛti—an ancient Hindu text that also sanctions other “great institutions” such as caste hierarchy, ritual impurity, and the subordination of women—as if its statement about fidelity “unto death” were a morally luminous insight. Then it cites the Bhāgavatam’s tale of Ramachandra, who “respected only one woman throughout his life,” as if this “epic” narrative should bolster Catholic teaching. Finally, it invokes the Tamil Thirukkural, declaring that “mutual love is the essence of the couple.” In each case, the texts are introduced with admiration, as if they organically express the same moral truth the Church proclaims.

One expects “Tucho” at any moment to start quoting the Kama Sutra as well!

This is not the Catholic method. When the Church has historically recognized natural-law echoes in non-Christian cultures, she has always done so with careful distinction, and taste, I might add, precisely to avoid blurring the unique authority of Divine Revelation. But Una Caro does not trouble itself with such distinctions. These pagan sources are presented simply as “other perspectives,” placed in a rhetorical sequence with Scripture and the Fathers. The cumulative effect is not enrichment, but syncretistic leveling. Revelation appears as merely the Christian instance of a universal anthropological pattern.

This move, however, is not naive theological universalism, but rather a deliberate attempt to place Catholicism within a comparative religious framework instead of presenting it as the one true faith that judges all others.

Compounding this problem is the Note’s habit of treating moral deviations with studied gentleness. When it names modern polyamory, it describes it as a “cultural phenomenon,” not as grave sin. When it discusses polygamy, it calls it a “custom of the time.” When it examines modern “multi-partner” relationships, it calls them “objectively difficult situations.” The prophets railed against adultery; Christ condemned divorce; St. Paul declared that fornication excludes from the kingdom of God. But Una Caro prefers the soft murmur of pastoral sensitivity when the sexually sinful world needs to be shaken awake!

Even when it approaches concrete pastoral dilemmas—such as the handling of polygamous converts—it refuses to give bishops clear guidance. Instead, it muses about the “drama” and “complexity” of the situation, leaving pastors with warm empathy and no actionable direction. It is exactly this type of vagueness that has caused so many bishops to shrink from moral leadership. When Rome mutters and mumbles, the shepherds inevitably fall silent.

Throughout the Note, one senses an anthropological drift, a displacement of theological categories in favor of psychological ones. Marriage is constantly framed as an interior journey, a process, a dialogue, a deepening of mutual self-gift. This emphasis, while not false in itself, obscures the fact that marriage is first of all a covenant instituted by God and ratified by the couple through consent. It is not primarily a subjective experience. It is an objective bond. But Una Caro repeatedly speaks as if marital unity rises or falls according to the couple’s interior dynamics. This is the anthropology of modern secular psychology, not the teaching of the Catholic Church.

There are passages of genuine beauty in the Note. There are quotations from Augustine, Aquinas, Leo XIII, and Pius XI that recall the doctrinal strength of earlier generations. There are moments where the Note almost finds its footing and speaks the truth plainly. But these moments float within a larger sea of ambiguity, sentimentality, and anthropological optimism. It is clear that the scheming synodal authors feared too much doctrinal clarity might offend the sensibilities of their god: contemporary man.

What the Church needed was a ringing declaration that monogamy is God’s law, rooted in nature, defended by Christ, essential to society, and binding upon all. What she needed was a firm denunciation of sexual sins that destroy souls and societies. What she needed was a theological articulation that restores procreation and indissolubility to their rightful place. What she needed was clarity without apology.

Instead, she received Una Caro—a document rich in quotations, scope and pastoral tone, but poor in authority, judgment, and guidance. It is a text that refuses to condemn error, that sidelines essential truths, and that introduces foreign religious sources, secular poets and worldly philosophers in ways that blur the uniqueness of Revelation.

The perverted world needed a warning trumpet.

Instead “Tucho” and his modernist deviant dicastery gave us an impotent little flute.

Our Lady, Co-redemptrix, pray for us…

Our Lady, Mediatrix of all Graces, pray for us…

Viva Christo Rey!

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