Nov 16 Mon
Is there a contradiction between the unitive aspect of marriage and procreation?
Leo XIV commented on the Second Vatican Council's teachings on marriage and the family.
To this end, the Council does not merely reaffirm the teachings’ values and aims, but proposes a renewed conception of marriage as an intimate partnership of married life and love. It describes the legal dimension of marriage as a contract; the “conjugal covenant” recognizes this union as the human act whereby spouses mutually give and accept each other.
The mutual self-giving of man and woman, such that they are no longer two but one flesh, demands “total fidelity” and the “unbreakable oneness” of the spouses, finding vivid expression in the procreation and upbringing of children. As a reflection of the Divine Trinity, conjugal and parental love, through the Sacrament of Marriage, is governed and enriched by Christ’s redeeming power, so that spouses may love one another just as He loved the Church and gave Himself on her behalf.
Regarding marital fruitfulness: conjugal love is not limited to erotic attraction, which it nonetheless includes, but involves the entire will of the spouses, revitalizing the affections of their hearts and expressing itself through sentiments and gestures of tenderness. Embracing the good of the whole person of both man and woman, who are equal in dignity, this love pervades the spouses' entire lives, finding expression in acts proper exclusively to marriage.
Furthermore, the fruitfulness of conjugal love is expressed in the procreation of children, the supreme gift of marriage. By transmitting and educating human life, which must never be rejected, spouses become cooperators with the love of God the Creator, and are, so to speak, the interpreters of that love.
Called to this human and Christian responsibility, they are bound to allow themselves to be guided by sound judgment regarding their own good and that of their children, whether already born or yet to be born. Such a judgment, which, in the final analysis, the spouses themselves must form before God, requires that their conscience conform to divine law, as interpreted by the Magisterium of the Church in the light of the Gospel.
These two aspects, the loving communion and the procreative fruitfulness within marriage, do not imply a true contradiction … between the divine laws pertaining to the transmission of life and those about authentic conjugal love. They affirm, instead, that “when there is question of harmonizing conjugal love with the responsible transmission of life,” one must “preserve the full sense of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love.”
From this it follows both that from the moment of its conception life must be guarded with the greatest care, renouncing abortion and infanticide; and that the acts themselves which are proper to conjugal love and which are exercised in accord with genuine human dignity must be honored with great reverence.
The family can be defined as a school of deeper humanity and the foundation of society, calling upon all those with social responsibilities, especially in the political and cultural spheres, to fulfill their duty to work efficiently for the welfare of marriage and the family.