In Una caro, Bishop Staglianò redefines monogamy as an act of beauty and poetry, not doctrine — a daring cultural and theological revolution.
Newsroom (14/01/2026 Gaudium Press ) Before filing Una caro under “another Vatican document,” the Church invites readers to pause. This text, issued by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and endorsed by its prefect, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, opens not with decrees but with poetry. Among its pages are verses by Wisława Szymborska, Pablo Neruda, Emily Dickinson, and Eugenio Montale — an anthology within theology. The message is clear: when doctrine meets verse, love regains its mystery.
Bishop Antonio Staglianò, president of the Pontifical Academy of Theology, reads Una caro not as a moral prescription but as a cultural manifesto — a rehabilitation of monogamy through the lens of beauty, not obligation. Where the old Church might have cited moral law, this new language cites poetry. Why? Because, as Pope Francis writes, “literary words are like thorns in the heart — they awaken contemplation and set us in motion.”
From Doctrine to Cultural Vision
The document’s innovation lies in its shift from “duty” to “cultural genius.” Monogamy isn’t treated as a rule but as a generative force that has shaped human dignity and relationships. Returning to Genesis, Una caro reads creation not as myth but as anthropology: God creates a partner, not a clone; a companion capable of reciprocity, of dialogue face to face.
From that recognition was born one of Christianity’s most radical contributions — the person as an end, not a means. Between a man and a woman exists not subservience but mutual belonging. As St. Thomas Aquinas warned, polygamy risks turning friendship into servitude. Monogamy, therefore, safeguards freedom by binding it to responsibility. Levinas’s ethical insight echoes here: the face of the other commands, “do not kill me.” The poetic voice reminds us that love is never possession — it is reverence before mystery.
A Response to a Fluid Age
Una caro doesn’t deny modernity; it converses with it. In an era of open relationships, polyamory, and fluid identities, the Church no longer responds with condemnation but with storytelling. It offers a “more beautiful narrative,” one that speaks to humanity’s longing for unity amid fragmentation. If today’s pop culture still obsesses over the myth of “the one,” perhaps it’s because nostalgia for total belonging remains unextinguished.
Against the illusion that intensity grows with multiplicity, the document reinstates the singular. As in the myth of Don Giovanni, endless conquest dissolves meaning. Quantity kills depth. The poetic voice — from Neruda to Dickinson — restores the sacredness of the one and the beauty of homecoming to a single “you.”
The Art of Conjugal Charity
At the heart of Una caro stands the notion of caritas coniugalis — conjugal charity. Not monastic detachment, but the art of two human beings creating a shared world. Citing St. Paul’s famous verses on love’s patience and kindness, the document reframes marriage as a daily exercise in artistry. Love, like poetry, demands discipline: to transform rough human material into beauty.
Sexuality, in this theology, is not a problem to be managed but a language — the embodied grammar of giving and receiving. Citing Karol Wojtyła, Una caro defends erotic pleasure as integral to human dignity when it expresses total self-gift. It’s a bold declaration: passion, purified by fidelity, becomes divine speech. The Church, often accused of repressing eros, here reconciles it with spirit.
Educating Desire Through Beauty
Monogamy, Una caro insists, is not instinctive. It is learned through beauty. Art, literature, and poetry train the heart to see the uniqueness of another person and sustain the tension between freedom and promise. In the age of swipes and screens, this aesthetic formation may be theology’s most urgent mission. Dickinson’s line — “That love is all there is, is all we know of love” — encapsulates the document’s thesis: love cannot be defined, only lived and sung.
Thus, Una caro transforms traditional teaching into an invitation. Instead of imposing faithfulness, it makes us fall in love with the idea of it. In doing so, it shifts the Church’s voice from legislation to inspiration, from rulebook to poem.
The Final Word: Monogamy as Resistance
Staglianò reads Una caro as a wager — that monogamy, far from archaic, might be the last poetic rebellion in a disposable world. A defiance against the trivialization of encounter and the reduction of the other to a profile. Choosing to be “one flesh” is not obedience to law but participation in an epic. Through the repetition of daily fidelity, two “I” become a “we” large enough to hold the world.
As the Gospel once declared, “By this, all will know you are my disciples — if you love one another.” Today, perhaps, that love begins again with two. And its first language, as Una caro reminds us, is poetry.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Vatican News
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