Infertile marriages

[ADiosgracias]

If the main reason of sex is procreation, it would be a sin to marry someone who already know it is infertile. In that case, having sex just for pleasure and the union of the couple would be a sin?

 

[twf]

The Church requires that couples be open to life - not that they necessarily conceive; that is a matter of Providence and nature. Sterility is not a choice and isn’t always 100% certain - infertility is not a impediment to marriage.

 

[Celticnovice]

Co-sign with twf

 

[couponfit]

If the main reason of sex is procreation, it would be a sin to marry someone who already know it is infertile. In that case, having sex just for pleasure and the union of the couple would be a sin?

It’s perfectly acceptable. Many in the bible were considered infertile but still had children. Couples need only be open to the possibility of God’s gift, life.

 

[fpt]

If the main reason of sex is procreation, it would be a sin to marry someone who already know it is infertile. In that case, having sex just for pleasure and the union of the couple would be a sin?

The marital act is unitive and procreative: the source is love, the end is love.
Marital act is for the bonding of love and the potential fecundation (potential procreation). Procreation is not the same thing than reproduction.

Yes they can , of course, get married.

 

[dewer]

It’s perfectly acceptable. http://www.interbankforex.info/g.gif

 

[manualman]

IIRC undesired sterility is no barrier to marriage or intimacy, but impotence is. I think if you can’t consummate the marriage, you aren’t eligible, but I’m open to correction.

 

[Godfollower]

If the main reason of sex is procreation, it would be a sin to marry someone who already know it is infertile. In that case, having sex just for pleasure and the union of the couple would be a sin?

It’s easy to fall prey to the accusations of the anti-Catholics, and this is one of their most common claims: “Catholics only allow marriage to force more children!” “Catholic marriage is only for kids!”

It’s totally bunk. Here’s what the Catechism has to say about marriage:

I. Marriage in God’s Plan

1602 Sacred Scripture begins with the creation of man and woman in the image and likeness of God and concludes with a vision of “the wedding-feast of the Lamb.” Scripture speaks throughout of marriage and its “mystery,” its institution and the meaning God has given it, its origin and its end, its various realizations throughout the history of salvation, the difficulties arising from sin and its renewal “in the Lord” in the New Covenant of Christ and the Church.

Marriage in the order of creation

1603 “The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws… God himself is the author of marriage.” The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes. These differences should not cause us to forget its common and permanent characteristics. Although the dignity of this institution is not transparent everywhere with the same clarity, some sense of the greatness of the matrimonial union exists in all cultures. “The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life.”

1604 God who created man out of love also calls him to love the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being. For man is created in the image and likeness of God who is himself love. Since God created him man and woman, their mutual love becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man. It is good, very good, in the Creator’s eyes. and this love which God blesses is intended to be fruitful and to be realized in the common work of watching over creation: “and God blessed them, and God said to them: ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.’”

1605 Holy Scripture affirms that man and woman were created for one another: “It is not good that the man should be alone.” The woman, “flesh of his flesh,” i.e., his counterpart, his equal, his nearest in all things, is given to him by God as a “helpmate”; she thus represents God from whom comes our help. “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.” The Lord himself shows that this signifies an unbreakable union of their two lives by recalling what the plan of the Creator had been “in the beginning”: “So they are no longer two, but one flesh.”
. . . .

Marriage in the Lord

1612 The nuptial covenant between God and his people Israel had prepared the way for the new and everlasting covenant in which the Son of God, by becoming incarnate and giving his life, has united to himself in a certain way all mankind saved by him, thus preparing for “the wedding-feast of the Lamb.”

1613 On the threshold of his public life Jesus performs his first sign - at his mother’s request - during a wedding feast. The Church attaches great importance to Jesus’ presence at the wedding at Cana. She sees in it the confirmation of the goodness of marriage and the proclamation that thenceforth marriage will be an efficacious sign of Christ’s presence.

. . . .

1616 This is what the Apostle Paul makes clear when he says: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her,” adding at once: “'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the Church.”

1617 The entire Christian life bears the mark of the spousal love of Christ and the Church. Already Baptism, the entry into the People of God, is a nuptial mystery; it is so to speak the nuptial bath which precedes the wedding feast, the Eucharist. Christian marriage in its turn becomes an efficacious sign, the sacrament of the covenant of Christ and the Church. Since it signifies and communicates grace, marriage between baptized persons is a true sacrament of the New Covenant.

Catechism ¶¶ 1602-05, 12-13, 16-17 (too long to quote the whole thing).

Catholic theology teaches us that marriage is about love of the two spouses for each other in the Lord. A valid marriage requires openness to having children, yes; but that doesn’t mean that child-bearing is the be-all and end-all of marriage. It’s just one small part of the Sacrament.

 

[Windmill]

The procreation and education of offspring is the primary end of marriage. There are other, secondary ends of marriage like mutual love of the spouses and alleviation of concupiscence, but these are not the primary ends of marriage.

What that means is that the couple should not do anything to thwart this end of marriage. Menopause is not a barrier the couple erects between God and their fertility. It is written into the very design of female biology. There comes a point at which God decides the woman is no longer to bear children. This has nothing to do with the woman’s openness to children because it is not a choice for her. Therefore, there is no act of the will involved that is contrary to the ends (primary and secondary) of marriage.