what is procreation in marriage

In summary, Augustine provided a systematic theological account, ensuring his position on marriage and sex made sense of the entire biblical witness and the preceding doctrinal tradition. As to the sexual relationship being irrelevant to the family unit, this may be true in the biological sense but in a very real sense the (sexual and non-sexual) intimacy shared between two partners is part of the process of building a secure and loving environment to raise children. So marriage is an arrangement where a man promises a woman "If you agree to be my partner, I'll agree to stay with your for life rather than moving on to other partners." By way of exception, the obligation of inner agreement may cease if a competent expert, after a renewed scientific investigation of all grounds, arrives at the positive conviction that the decision rests on an error.". Long but worth the read, feel I will need to reread it a couple of times to really grasp it fully. This fact alone provides a strong prima facie case for treating sexual partnerships between men and women differently from those that exist between persons of the same sex. It should not come as a surprise that, on all of these counts, gay ‘marriages’ in societies that permit them tend to exhibit markedly different forms of behaviour from their male-female counterparts. Given such interpretations, Saint Augustine was led to conclude that the only justification for sexual intercourse was to perpetuate the human race. Although we should obviously be considering the children’s needs first here, I’m still not sure why this would necessarily exclude homosexual parents. It is the difference between the purpose of the army and the purposes of the individual who volunteers for the forces. At the base of marriage was the concept of openness to the gift of children, not entitlement as a right, or pure subjection to our decision as a choice. Procreation and child-rearing are primary purposes of the institution of marriage, not through maximizing the number of children conceived, but in serving the social purpose of ensuring that society reproduces itself in a manner that provides a secure, loving, committed, and natural context for the conception and raising of children, protecting the interests of both children and society at large in the process. Does that make sense? Hence coitus establishes a real biological union with respect to this function, although it is, of course, a limited biological union inasmuch as for various other functions (e.g., respiration, digestion, locomotion) the male and female remain fully distinct. I definitely agree that it is a positive development that eros can play a greater role in marriage (provided that it does not play the sort of unhealthy mediating role that I describe here). You affirmed more than that, asserting as though it were a fact that Augustine used a specific method: "Augustine himself while a fornicator used what that period regarded as the monthly cycle system.". Only those are infallible which emanate from General Councils representing the whole episcopate, and the Papal Decisions Ex Cathedra (cf. Relationships between men and women are of interest to wider society because men and women can engage in a private sexual union with huge public consequences. 1) Moreover, he says that intercourse which happens to be sterile (as opposed to intercourse intentionally sterile) is not a sin, and this includes not only cases where the spouses do not know that the intercourse is sterile, but also the cases where they know it (Summa Contra Gentiles 3, 122). Governments have an interest in recognizing marriage in law, because the country is stronger in the long-term when couples have an incentive to increase the population. "In effect, it was believed for a long time that married couples who routinely had sexual relations were, in fact, sinning by doing so.". To marry, a couple must, in principle, be able to form a real bodily union—not just an emotional and spiritual union. Fertility is not a condition of marriage, nor is it grounds for divorce. This is why the gender of those in a marriage matters. In informal dialogue with proponents of same-sex marriage over the last couple of years, it has been their failure to grasp what an institution implies, and to reflect upon the purposes of the institution of marriage that has most struck me. In a very poor country where a lot of children is not a good choice, maybe the church will consider family planning without sinning a venial fault. "He may have had personal experience of techniques of contraception, since from fifteen years of his association with his first concubine (Conf. No adult has the ‘right’ to adopt a child. We don't have " full clarity" now with NFP for some couples which means in China, an observant Catholic couple have constant anxiety that a second child will be forcibly aborted by the government as happened in October…..if they have a third child in some provinces, that will be killed….if they have a 4th child,5th,6th,7th…they will be killed. So, the state’s granting marriage licenses only to opposite-sex couples is based on the nature of marriage and does not constitute unjust discrimination. In other words, it was sinful for spouses to have relations regularly. This way – you actually have to change the definition of marriage in dictionaries etc…and that is just not right! What bothers me is that it seems that throughout history, the Church has subscribed to almost the most rigorous view possible. Marriage protects the humanizing norm and ideal of children finding their origins in an aneconomic, pre-technological, pre-political loving exchange of pledged bodies in a lifelong exclusive union. Marriage is that type of community that is both a comprehensive unity (a unity on all levels of the human person, including the bodily-sexual) and a community that would be fulfilled by procreating and rearing children together. Many marriages are successful and long term without ever involving having or raising children. Father, bless. Editor’s Note: The following is an adapted excerpt from Schafer’s book, “Marriage, Sex and Procreation: Contemporary Revisions to Augustine’s Theology of Marriage,” (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2019). He has one sermon talking about venial sin in which he mentions daily sins that are forgiven easily since they come from our weak nature. But ‘NFP’ could have left us with no children. No, perhaps it was "just" a venial sin to have sex with one's spouse when procreation was not possible, but what pious Christian in their right mind would not be struggling to avoid ALL sin? Dear father Joseph, Mr. Bolin, I hope I do not sound like an idiot, but just to be sure, you are not necessarily agreeing with St. Augustine here that sin is always involved in marital intercourse (aside from normal human sinfulness that taints everything we do), are you? It reminds me of our attitudes towards the land and our food. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Both of them regard it as possible that Augustine employed contraception; neither regard it as a fact: Other forms of marriage also exist, however. He fornicated with one woman for ten years and had only one child….and it's a guess that he used the cycles when he was in fact a manichaean heretic…not a Father yet….a manichaean heretic who believed in contraception. Changes definitively made through recent Church teaching. Inasmuch as he seems to require both a positive procreative intent, and that there either be a real possibility of having children, or, if it is impossible, that this impossibility not be unknown, his analysis and description is incorrect. From Pentecost to Sts Peter and Paul, 6 weeks before Christmas, and St John the Baptist, are more fasts. However, I did not explicitly mention St. Augustine in the second paragraph because the statement is true in some way even apart from St. Augustine's views: given that "in many things we all sin" (James 3:2), that all areas of human life are infected with the "normal human sinfulness" you mention above, there is no reason to think that marital relations will be an exception to that. Read that and save it to your computer. Procreative intercourse is the means by which virtually all persons are conceived into the world, and the sexual union between husbands and wives is the source of our most powerful social bonds, bonds such as the one that you and I share. Indeed, we have many brethren and associates of both sexes sharing our inheritance of heaven who observe continence…. But there is midway the city of Zoar, to save the weak fugitive; because, to wit, when the married have intercourse with each other even incontinently, they still avoid lapse into sin, and are still saved through mercy. In past centuries people in general WERE poorer than they are now, and they generally didn’t have bands of unruly children. You already have the Catholic Faith.’ So I didn’t have to be catechized or turned into Roman. But I know now we were supposed to have more. The reasons people marry vary widely, but usually include the desire to publicly and formally declare their love, to form a single household unit, to legitimize sexual relations and procreation, for social and economic stability, and for the education and nurturing of children. How can you be useful in this world without substantiating your belief? See my piece way above, Aquinas parroted Augustine on sexual matters because Aquinas was a virgin and deferred to Augustine in this area…and thus was wrong whenever Augustine was wrong. There is no more reason to recognize such a union on account of the fact that the couple may happen to be raising a child between them than there would be to recognize a union between any other two persons who happened to raise a child between them apart from a sexual relationship. First, infertile opposite-sex couples can form a biological unit—they can mate (that is, they can perform the kind of act that results in procreation when conditions extrinsic to their conduct obtain). Religious Life or Marriage: is there a vocation to the single life? Thank you for writing the most cogently argued defence of marriage that I have ever read. The sexual communion of spouses is the bodily component proportionate to, indeed part of, the kind of multi-leveled personal community they have consented to in marrying. In legend, Fuxi and Nüwa were together responsible for the, During his reign he introduced the domestication, Different sexes are anatomically very similar; however, they each have different physical mechanisms that enable them to perform sexual acts and, Males also have both internal and external genitalia that are responsible for, Studies with lab animals have shown that destruction, Like females, males have both internal and external genitalia that are responsible for, People marry for love, for socioeconomic stability, to start a, The reasons people marry vary widely, but usually include publicly and formally declare their love, the formation, The reasons people marry vary widely, but usually include the desire to publicly and formally declare their love, to form a single household unit, to legitimize sexual relations and, Beginning in San Francisco in the mid-1960s, this culture, The International Planned Parenthood Federation was founded in 1946 and soon became the world's largest non-governmental, international, This program typified the traditional 1950s nuclear, Rather Tellingly when both men arrived at the Onan story, Augustine saw sex as the sin and Jerome saw the levirate obligation as Onan's sin. I grant that if, and to the degree that overall we get a somewhat negative impression of marriage from Augustine or others, this hinders us from a true appreciation of virginity. (1) The circumstantial evidence you mention would never be considered proof in a court of law.

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