[Question]{.underline}: Is a marriage valid if a couple agrees beforehand to limit the number of children by artificial birth control or natural family planning?
[Answer:]{.underline} The Church’s teaching is summarized in Canon 1013 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which states that “the primary end of marriage is the procreation and education of children”. The intention of having children, provided that this is possible, is consequently essential to the very substance of the matrimonial contract, which is for “acts which are in themselves capable of engendering children”. Cf. Canon 1081 (1917 Code).
The importance of children as the primary end of marriage was again stressed by the Holy Office under Pope Pius XII: “To the question: ‘Whether the views of certain recent writers can be admitted, who either deny that the primary end of marriage is the procreation and education of children, or teach that the secondary ends are not necessarily subordinate to the primary end, but are equally principal and independent’ the reply was: In the negative” (Quoted in Bouscaren & Ellis, Canon Law, p. 400).
Yet the 1983 Code of Canon Law embraces the personalist conception condemned less than 40 years earlier by not only placing the two ends of marriage on an equal and independent level, but even listing first the secondary end (i.e. mutual support, or the personal good of the spouses): “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered towards the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring” (Canon1055, §1, 1983 Code).
It is ultimately this new concept of marriage, as being for the couple themselves, and not so much for children, which has resulted in the refusal of Catholics since Vatican II to have large families. Artificial birth control, which is the destruction of Catholic families, is no longer condemned as a mortal sin, for marriage is now considered in a selfish way, as being for the couple itself, rather than an outpouring of love desiring to participate in God’s work of creation and sanctification of His children. The so-called practice of Natural Family Planning, propagated in the post-conciliar church as a “catholic” method of contraception, derives also from the same contraceptive mentality. Since marriage is considered primarily for the couple itself, they consider themselves free to determine the number of children and their spacing. This can be a mortal sin if NFP is employed without sufficient reason, as approved by the Church (e.g. serious eugenic, social or medical reasons, such as danger to the life of the mother through additional children). Whether it be through artificial or natural means that the first purpose of marriage is frustrated, such couples who are not willing to accept all the children God sends them do indeed fail to live up to their marriage vows.
However, this does not mean the marriage vows of couples who limit children by artificial contraception or natural family planning are necessarily invalid. The exclusion of children is certainly a grounds for a declaration of nullity, but only when there is an explicit, provable and positive act of the will to avoid children, that is only when the obligation of having children, as being the fulfillment of the first purpose of marriage, is explicitly excluded. For this is an intention contrary to the substance of marriage itself. The difficulty in such cases is to determine whether it is the obligation of having children which is refused, or whether it is simply the fulfillment of this obligation. (Cf. Bouscaren, Canon Law Digest, I, pp. 532, 533).
Those couples who accept the obligation of having children are certainly validly married, even if they do not always fulfill this obligation, e.g. by limiting the number of their children. This is the case of those selfish couples, without Faith in Divine Providence, who are determined to limit the size of their family for reasons of convenience or simply because they prefer it that way. They commit a grave sin, even if it is by NFP that they presume to do this. They are truly married, but they will never be able to communicate to their children generosity, the spirit of sacrifice, the love of the Cross, of souls and the Church.
Moreover, even if a couple deliberately excludes all children, the Church always presumes, until proven otherwise, that it is the fulfillment of the duty that is excluded, and not the obligation of having children itself, and that consequently the marriage is valid.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.