"It Should Be Admitted That Love Can Indeed End"

Or so says a German moral theologian.

“If two persons make the definitive decision of a common project of life, this does not mean they cannot review their choice.”

Okay, great, a performance review, maybe every six months or so, even quarterly at the beginning.

You know, because being a spouse is like being a priest, it is, first and foremost, a job. A "project."
Well, of course! Sometimes, on a big project, your team needs to bring in outside help.

Perhaps a second or third marriage should be understood in that light, outside help, to keep the project going on budget and on schedule.
Hell, mistresses and lovers could be looked at that way, couldn't they?
Thanks, Professor Schokenhoff! 

You know, I used to love crunchy peanut butter. 
So when I went to the supermarket, since that's what I preferred, that's what I bought.
It was a "definitive decision," unquestionably.
But upon review, this year I decided I'd rather have creamy.
More to the point, love had indeed ended.
I don't love any kind of peanut butter anymore.

I can't help it.

Snarking aside -what in blazes does this theologian think "love" is, to what adolescent definition does he hold?
An emotion? coupled with a stirring of the loins?
No!
Not just "no," but  HELL, NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
To the Christian, love, and especially marital love is an act of the will, a resolution to persevere in self-donation, an echo, however faint, of God's unconditional and unending love.

It is not the lightly considered acceptance of a responsibility, a burden that one is later free to cast aside.
It is not some temporary preference, which alters when it alteration finds.

A "love" which cost nothing, a "love" that doe not call us to sacrifice, a "love" for which we are willing to lay out nothing - this is not Love.

God's passionate love for his people—for humanity—is at the same time a forgiving love. It is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice.... His death on the Cross is the culmination of that turning of God against himself in which he gives himself in order to raise man up and save him. This is love in its most radical form. By contemplating the pierced side of Christ we can understand the starting-point of this Encyclical Letter: “God is love”.  It is there that this truth can be contemplated. It is from there that our definition of love must begin. 

There has been a bit of a buzz in the nation of Catholicistan here on those Interwebs, about the way instead of our acknowledging that God is love, we make love into our God.
I say that if we know that Love is the highest good, we cannot claim that we have given our love to another unless we have also tried to give God to him.

And how could such a love ever end?