One last thought:
The reason why having children/being open to children is SO CRUCIAL for a sacramental marriage is because children are the natural fruit of intercourse.
The intention to have children within a marriage is important because you can’t separate children from sexual relationships of any kind without introducing toxic mindsets that defy natural law as set down by God. This includes things like sexual exploitation and abortion.
We talk big all the time about how sex leads to pregnancy, about how birth control can’t always prevent pregnancy because of failure rates, about how people should be avoiding sex altogether if they would rather abort than take care of the child that results from sexual activity. We talk so big on the importance of the family unit within society, and the need to accept life as it comes.
You can’t say “pregnancy is a natural result of sex/is a blessing and we should stop anti-child bigotry in our culture” and then turn around and say, “Married couples, who have exclusive access to sexual intercourse, have every right to never have even one child if they wish.” What if they do end up pregnant one day? After all, they entered into a union thinking that they would never have kids and they would never want any, with every right to do so, and with a limiting mindset like that you expect them to actually understand the nature and responsibilities of marital life?
God gave humans the blessing to be fruitful and multiply: whether the fruit for them is one child or many. God condemned a man to death for spilling his seed instead of being open to children. Throughout the Bible, we see men and women being called blessed for having even one child, and St. Paul even goes so far as to say that childbearing is a unique way for women to find sanctification and thus grow closer to Christ. Procreation is revered as a holy, natural, and good part of sexuality all throughout Scripture, and we’re supposed to assume that we can just cut it out if we decide being child-free is better?
God is a God of Unity and Creation. This is reflected within the marital bed in the form of ecstasy between husband and wife, and the possible procreation that can come from the conjugal act between them.
Our God is not a barren god, and those who take on the sacrament of marriage should not act as if that is who we worship.
If you want to have sex but never want any children to result from that, you are not “burning” with sexual desire fit for marriage: you are struggling with the vice of lust. And that lust is not proper for the sacrament of matrimony or for the health of your soul.
Article on Onan’s Sin: https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-sin-of-onan
Humanae Vitae: http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae.html
The history behind how all Christian churches were against contraception until the 1930s: https://www.crisismagazine.com/2015/reactions-to-the-popes-encyclical-on-contraception
Catechism on marriage, including fruitfulness; feel free to check out the footnotes quoting other writings and Scripture: http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c3a7.htm
Tag: marriage
It is underrated how nice marriage is. Just having someone by your side that has your back no matter what.
Sending this around again because some people should realize that marriage is a team effort in improving each other to be the best people you can be.
St. Gianna and her husband Pietro were thirty-two and forty-two when they met. Sts. Louis Martin was thirty-five when he fell in love with his wife, St. Zélie, who was twenty-seven. God doesn’t always bring you your spouse when you’re in your teens or early twenties.
“People only stayed married so long in the past because a majority of women were stuck in abusive relationships and had no way out!!!” is so full of crap. Just because domestic abuse was not taken as seriously or as well understood as it is today doesn’t mean that all men were abusive assholes until laws changed. There were plenty of loving marriages that faced the worst that life could throw at them (especially considering things like early child death being more common, as an example), and they got through it with selfless love and mutual respect. Something that is very obviously lacking in today’s society of high divorce rates that dismiss the emotional and psychological needs of children in broken families.
I’m not here trying to romanticize ye olden times because they definitely had their problems, but guess what? We got our own problems too. Children are growing up having to hide their true feelings and needs in families rife with divorce and neglect and we throw it under the rug of “““progress”““. Little kids are replacing a missing mother or father with toxic modalities and we pretend that such things are part of “”“familial diversity”””. People are left vulnerable to further abuse and toxicity because they lacked a proper home that they needed and deserved as children but are told that it was “““for the best”““.
Not that civil divorce has no place in this world for reasons of safety/domestic violence (I am not arguing against that, if that wasn’t obvious), but stop using their suffering to cover up the reality that people abuse this system for convenience. People get married not fully understanding the importance of their union and cause others to suffer for their mistakes when they give up. Marriage and family both deserve so much more respect and reverence than this, WE deserve better than this.
It is underrated how nice marriage is. Just having someone by your side that has your back no matter what.
I sure do like this post and how positive it is and how nobody said anything stupid in the notes. Boy howdy marriage with the right person does sound nice.
It is underrated how nice marriage is. Just having someone by your side that has your back no matter what.
It appears that my happy, monogamous and stable marriage has angered the marriage critics.
“For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does.” That is. So fucked up.
Also
Nice job with posting only half of the verse. NOT!
1 Corinthians 7:4
4 For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does
Ephesians 5:25
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
it really be like that!
“God creates a woman for man, to be his helpmate. “It is not well that man should be without companionship; I will give him a mate of his own kind.” (Genesis 2:18, 19) The Divine creation of the two sexes is here suggested as essential from the point of view of fellowship. A helpmate does not mean servile inferiority, but rather that through differences, like a bow and violin, they would complement each other. Sex is not only the Divinely-willed manner in which mankind will increase and multiply; it is also to be the basis of mutual helpfulness. Not to every husband and wife is given the privilege of having a Pentecost of the flesh through the birth of a new physical body, but to every one is given the companionship which God wills should be his lot on earth.”
— Venerable Fulton Sheen, Three To Get Married (1951)
Wide Spread Interests 