I could live quite happily with my brother or my dad or my uncle or my son. We could certainly offer each other love and support - almost everything a married couple might-yet however devoted we were to each other-we could never have a marriage. I could do life long companionship with anybody, (or get a dog!).Marriage offers more than just children, and children are not the greatest thing to come of marriage to the detriment of all other gifts. A married couple offers love and support to each other, and by extension, their family and friends around them.
I’m not entirely familiar with the full process and requirements of getting an annulment, so please correct me if I misspeak. In a slightly altered case to your first point, lets say that the couple decided not to have children at the time of the wedding, then they both changed their minds and decided to try. For arguments sake, lets say that the woman turns out to have severe fertility problems and now the man wants to get an annulment so he can marry a fertile wife. From what you said, as low, despicable, awful and sinful as that may be, it’s still allowable, since they didn’t want children at the time of the wedding therefore the marriage was not an official Catholic marriage. If the couple tried from day 1 to have children with the same result, the annulment would not be granted since it was a legal marriage.You’re right, the rules don’t change after day one. The question about intent when the wedding takes place is something that annulment courts would look at if one of the couple asked for an annulment. Unless a Catholic “marriage” has been declard “null” (not a marriage in the first place because they didn’t have proper intent/maturity/form/etc), it is regarded as a marriage. If they don’t have the proper intent, maturity or other disposition to marry, I hope thats would be discovered before the wedding ceremony.
In the hypothetical couple you mentioned earlier, they didn’t have the intent to be open to children that may result from their union. But now let me add a hypothetical situation. It’s 10 years later. All their friends have children and the woman’s biological alarm clock rings. She hears it; he hits the snooze button and ignores her. But she wants a baby with him, and she is no longer satisfied at all with their previous arrangement. She stops telling him when she thinks she’s fertile, so he (not wanting a baby) withholds the marriage act. That goes on for three years. The arguments get worse and worse. The once-happy childless couple now argues about everything, not just about babies but about their whole lifestyle together. They decided to divorce, and being Catholics, they seek an annulment. It comes out during the annulment process that they agreed to never have children when they “contracted” the marriage.
Now, the Church would likely declare that because they were not open to the possibility of children at the time of the wedding, a Catholic marriage never took place. The arrangement they had was not a Catholic marriage.
The rules wouldn’t change for this couple either. In this, your second example of a Catholic couple who enters marriage with the intent of children, only to change their minds later, (assuming no other irregular situations) they did enter a valid marriage on day one. Once a Catholic marriage takes place, the marriage lasts until the death of one of the spouses. No annulment would be granted if they choose to divorce later. Yes, this marriage would be morally allowed–that’s true, but their decision to not have children would not be a moral decision if they didn’t have “just” reasons to use NFP.
From what you say, if a couple exchanges vows with the intent of not having children, then they are not actually married. Therefore, if they later change their minds and do have children, these children are technically born outside of marriage and the family is living in sin? If this intent at the time of marriage is so important to the legitimacy of the marriage, then why do couples not have to undergo extensive interviews to see if they have the correct intentions to marry? From my personal experiences, it seems like any couple that meets a few basic requirements (that can all be proven with documents, like baptismal certificates) can be married in a Catholic church. Somebody may raise an objection to the marriage, but it is considered to be allowable until proven otherwise.We are getting close. There is more than one issue at stake. There is the issue of whether or not the couple is married, and there is the issue of whether they are fulfilling God’s will at any given time. If a couple marries intending to have children, and then change their mind, they are still married (for once married, always married), but their intent and actions may or may not be moral, depending on circumstances. If immoral, it does not affect the legitimacy of the marriage that already exists. Indeed, if immoral, it is a sin against God and against each other in this real marriage.
I do not maintain that. I have never suggested that. Whereas it is truth that one must accept the natural purposes of an act, it is poor extrapolation to indicate that this means it can only be for a single natural purpose.
The people I’ve heard talk about NFP always portray NFP as being >99% effective in preventing pregnancy when the couple wants to. If they are intentionally being misleading, then I think there is a severe problem there.Can we know if an act can or cannot create life? I know of no one who can with any certainty know, at the time of the act, if that particular act can (or will) create life. Many of us do not even know after the act if life was created or not, for God sometimes creates and takes very soon what has been created.
To reply to this from the bottom up, yes an action can be ‘not acting’. If you knew you could help a person, and all it took was to cross the street or donate a dollar, but you didn’t, you are not being charitable through inaction. If you had a moral responsibility to act, but you didn’t, you would be sinning through inaction. Parents must take care of their children, for instance, and those who neglect them are certainly sinning by not acting. If you intentionally didn’t have sex when you could become pregnant, it is an action, or inaction, that deliberately avoids pregnancy. You deliberately chose to do something other than engage in sex, because you wished to avoid the outcome of the sexual act. This is not to say, directly, that you have a moral responsibility to have sex, although that is the basis for my question.What is meant by open, is that we participate is that particular act with no actions that interfere with its natural purpose. … That is a common belief. However, it is not the most accurate statement. First, we must look at what we mean by ‘act’. What is the ‘act’ of NFP? Can an ‘action’ be ‘not acting’? That would seem to be contradictory, but it seems to be what you suggest.
You are throwing out a number of different immoral situations for discussion. Prayerful discernment is important before marriage and throughout marriage. I’ll leave God to judge the individual hearts of people in such situations as you’ve presented, but immorality is immorality.…It sounds to me like we’re splitting legal hairs on morality. That does not sit well with me…
Personally, based on the amount of talk of divorce and annulments on this board, I get the feeling that it’s fairly easy to get an annulment, or at least much easier than it ought to be. You shouldn’t be able to break your vows on a legal technicality.
There are plenty of people who are married for life who never had any children, so you can’t link those two together. That’s like saying “a few priests molested kids, so I guess that makes all of them pedophiles.”Annulments and divorce are human tragedies produced by a culture that doesn’t think marriage and sex are for the reproduction of children.
Timothy, I think you and I speak different languages. I said nothing of the sort. I meant that people bear fruit on the culture–for better or for worse. Those who don’t have children still effect the culture. I wrote earlier of “spiritual fatherhood and motherhood”. I am very grateful that I knew a couple who are infertile because they helped me look at my own fertility as a blessing. This thread began to discuss the morality of family planning, and I think if people do not regard fertility and chidren as a desirable blessings it is very hard to keep a moral perspective on their family planning.There are plenty of people who are married for life who never had any children, so you can’t link those two together. That’s like saying “a few priests molested kids, so I guess that makes all of them pedophiles.”
Thanks, that makes things more clearTimothy, I think you and I speak different languages. I said nothing of the sort. I meant that people bear fruit on the culture–for better or for worse. Those who don’t have children still effect the culture. I wrote earlier of “spiritual fatherhood and motherhood”. I am very grateful that I knew a couple who are infertile because they helped me look at my own fertility as a blessing. This thread began to discuss the morality of family planning, and I think if people do not regard fertility and chidren as a desirable blessings it is very hard to keep a moral perspective on their family planning.
The cultural attitude that regards children as optional accesories, rather than desirable blessings produces divorce. While some mock the old attitude of “staying together for the sake of the children”, that attitude helps hold marriages together through tough times, until they’re happy again. I don’t know the statistics, but divorce increased dramatically after contraception became legal. The Church may allow NFP to regulate births, but she encourages couples to be prayerful and generous with life.
Our individual attitudes regarding sex and children effects the culture–for better or for worse.
I will agree that marriage and sex are geared towards life. However, every marriage and every act of sex does not result with the creation of a new life. I think that there is a lack of focus, or rather an overabundance of focus, that is causing the problem. “Society” today (in quotes because I’m making a strawman) treats sex as a momentary act, when in reality it is part of a bond that should last a lifetime. It’s an over focus on the immediate physical act that prevents you from seeing the whole spiritual picture. I believe that to say that “marriage and sex are for the reproduction of children” is a similar over focus. Children are important to marriage, and as the Catechism states, the “supreme gift”, just as the act of sex is important to a sexual relationship, however it is not the only aspect. To focus marriage on a worldly goal, like children, is to be short sighted. We need to do more than just increase physical life, but also increase the spiritual life though love, faith and charity. As anybody in an infertile marriage would tell you, the spiritual life is probably more important than the physical life. The spiritual life may manifest itself as a child, but it may not, and if it doesn’t that does not imply a failure or deficiency in the marriage.You are throwing out a number of different immoral situations for discussion. Prayerful discernment is important before marriage and throughout marriage. I’ll leave God to judge the individual hearts of people in such situations as you’ve presented, but immorality is immorality.
This whole thread discussion going on and on about the meaning of marriage illustrates why there may be so many annulments and why annulments seem easy to get today. People in our culture do not understand marriage. Yet we still want to marry, redefining marriage to fit our personal wants and desires.
Without the understanding the marriage is for life–in both senses, the contracts that people enter are often not for life. You see, our reproductive organs do what they are designed to do–they produce the fruit of the womb. I am not referring now to any specific child so much as the spiritual fruit that they bear on the culture. If we use our reproductive organs as God intended, they bear good fruit for the culture. When used in ways contrary to God’s law, they bear bad fruit. Annulments and divorce are human tragedies produced by a culture that doesn’t think marriage and sex are for the reproduction of children.