contraceptive marriages

[Guest TCW]

If two people marry, and one wants to contracept, and the other disagrees, is it a sin for both, or just the one who contracepts? Is it a valid marriage?

[Cam42]

[quote name='TCW' date='Nov 22 2005, 01:36 PM']If two people marry, and one wants to contracept, and the other disagrees, is it a sin for both, or just the one who contracepts? Is it a valid marriage?
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[quote name='Can. 1096']§1. For matrimonial consent to exist, the contracting parties must be at least not ignorant that marriage is a permanent partnership between a man and a woman ordered to the procreation of offspring by means of some sexual cooperation.

§2. This ignorance is not presumed after puberty.[/quote]

[quote name='Can. 1098'] A person contracts invalidly who enters into a marriage deceived by malice, perpetrated to obtain consent, concerning some quality of the other partner which by its very nature can gravely disturb the partnership of conjugal life.[/quote]

Notice that it says that the contracting parties must be at least not igornant that marriage is ordered to the procreation of offspring.

The Catechism states:

[quote name='CCC #2370']Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality. These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, "every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" is intrinsically evil:

Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality. . . . The difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle . . . involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality.[/quote]

[i]Humanae Vitae 16.
HV 14.
Familiaris Consortio 32.[/i]

[quote name='CCC #2399']The regulation of births represents one of the aspects of responsible fatherhood and motherhood. Legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means (for example, direct sterilization or contraception).[/quote]

So, to answer your questions.

1. Is it a sin? Yes. Those who participate in contraception are committing a sin.

2. Is it a valid marriage? There is a dubium at least in this based upon the canons listed and the support of the Catechetical teaching and supportive documents.