Question about marriage

[Timbothefiveth]

So I was reading some saint quotes, and I found that one said that, err, the marital act “other than to procreate children is to do injury to nature”. Of course, I’m wondering what he meant. Did the early church say it was okay to do so if you didn’t use contraception, or that it was only okay for having kids?

 

[AdriannaJean]

I believe, though feel free to correct me if I am wrong here, that at one point the Church’s practice (maybe if not doctrine) was to only condone sexual relations for procreation. Then (I think at Vatican II, but again, correct me if I’m wrong) the Church officially stated that sex had two aspects, unitive and procreative, and that no sexual acts could be morally justified without the presence of both within marriage.

I don’t know what Saint wrote this, not to say that they are wrong, but I am just putting this out there. Many Saints wrote many books and 99% of what is said in those books are true and will help you lead a moral life. That being said, the Saints do not speak with the infallibility of the Pope, so it could be possible that this particular Saint was wrong about this particular issue.

 

[Timbothefiveth]

Has the pope ever made an infallable declaration about this then?

 

[Ron_Conte]

There are two inherent moral meanings to the marital act: the unitive and the procreative. Sexual relations must be marital, unitive, and procreative in order to be moral. However, to be procreative, the act need only be inherently ordered toward procreation (i.e. the natural sexual act).

Humanae Vitae:

Observing the Natural Law

1. The sexual activity, in which husband and wife are intimately and chastely united with one another, through which human life is transmitted, is, as the recent Council recalled, "noble and worthy.’’ (11) It does not, moreover, cease to be legitimate even when, for reasons independent of their will, it is foreseen to be infertile. For its natural adaptation to the expression and strengthening of the union of husband and wife is not thereby suppressed. The fact is, as experience shows, that new life is not the result of each and every act of sexual intercourse. God has wisely ordered laws of nature and the incidence of fertility in such a way that successive births are already naturally spaced through the inherent operation of these laws. The Church, nevertheless, in urging men to the observance of the precepts of the natural law, which it interprets by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life. (12)

Union and Procreation

1. This particular doctrine, often expounded by the magisterium of the Church, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.

The reason is that the fundamental nature of the marriage act, while uniting husband and wife in the closest intimacy, also renders them capable of generating new life—and this as a result of laws written into the actual nature of man and of woman. And if each of these essential qualities, the unitive and the procreative, is preserved, the use of marriage fully retains its sense of true mutual love and its ordination to the supreme responsibility of parenthood to which man is called. We believe that our contemporaries are particularly capable of seeing that this teaching is in harmony with human reason.

 

[Primox]

This isn’t much of an argument, but it’s certainly something to ponder, free of Church doctrine:

Song of Solomon is all frolicking and foreplay. If sex cannot be pleasurable (or unitive) apart from procreative, than Song of Solomon did a poor job of demonstrating that

 

[StCsDavid]

One might think of it this way. God has chosen one way to create human souls, ideally within the covenant of sacramental marriage; however, we all know that often doesn’t happen. Nevertheless, the primary purpose of a man and woman becoming one flesh is to cooperate with this mystery of creation. That’s the natural law. The fact that there is a unitive quality contained within this act is a benefit, a gift, from a loving Father.

So contraception attempts to thwart natural law in favor of human desire. This is what I believe whomever made the original quote stated by the OP was trying to convey. If one engages in sexual relations for any other reason than cooperating with God’s design, then one violates the natural law. Another reason why NFP, which is a total cooperation with natural law, is encouraged.