The topic of marriage has been on my mind quite a bit as of late. My fiancée and I are in the midst of our wedding (and marriage) planning. We just sent out the cards announcing date and time (so save the date!), and I've been discussing suits with my groomsmen. She's changed her bridesmaids' outfits a couple of times (making picking the aforementioned suits a bit more difficult), and has been meeting with her tailor to make the wedding gown. Today my fiancée and I begin our marriage preparation classes, and last night was the first of three NFP classes. We've even found a little time to read up on some materials and go to a few extra talks to prepare us for marriage: Fulton Sheen, John Paul the Great, Christopher West, and even a few discussions with the local priest.

All of this has caused me to think a bit about the theology which underlies marriage, especially in light of the high divorce rates. There are many people who believe that marriage ought not to be necessarily permanent, and others who want theirs to be permanent, but excuse failed marriages by saying "Too bad, so sad," but then turn around and complain about the Church's teaching against "remarriage" after a divorce.

Still more people of my own generation and the preceding one question why one ought to wait until marriage before having sex. A few of the "old-fashioned" individuals among us would answer in a consequentialist manner only: sex begets children, who need marriage to be raised and who can derail your career; you risk catching an STI if you're not careful; many men (and increasingly, women) just want a relationship until they can have sex with you, and then they'll leave you, which is heartbreaking. All of these reasons are true, as far as they go.

The primary purpose of sex is procreation (biologically the only reason for sex), despite the surprise which many people convince themselves that they have experienced when this exact result follows from intercourse. And children do require a lot of time and effort, not too mention that they deserve a stable home with a loving mother and father, which can sometimes "derail" a person's career.

Similarly, a person who has rather loose sexual mores is more likely to be infected with an STI, even if he correctly uses a condom every time. And there is no shortage of sexual predators--even seemingly benign ones--who prowl the bars and dance clubs looking for their next "kill." A lifetime of one-night-stands and short-term if highly physical relationships--serial monogamy with full access, as a friend once called it--will leave a person dead to intimacy.

It is therefore prudent to wait until marriage to have a sexual relationship. However, for Christians and especially for Catholics, this prudence is not the primary reason to abstain until then. Morality is always based on more than mere prudence, though one often finds that the moral choice is also the prudent one.

Sex is bound together with marriage for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that marriage provides the basis for a family. This family is in turn the best way in which to raise children to become well-adjusted adults, citizens of both the heavenly and the earthly cities. And when those children grow up and leave the house to begin families of their own, the marriage of their parents must remain intact to provide grandparents, who can advise the new parents, can help to raise the grandchildren. Marriage is not effectively ended when the children leave, though it is a sad reality that many marriages which break up in divorce do so after the last of the children have left home.

I have so far talked only about marriage as the vehicle of procreation. I briefly have made the argument as to why marriage ought to be a lifelong institution--and why one ought to abstain from intercourse until marriage--based upon its first purpose. But what about infertile couples, couple who will never be able to bear children? If a person is known to be infertile, is it then morally licit for him to enter a sexual relationship prior to marriage?

If procreation was the sole end of sexual intercourse, then it might be licit--in not necessarily prudent--for an infertile person to eschew marriage and simply to have sex free of commitment. This would also imply that a fertile person could morally--if still not prudently--do so, provided that his partner was infertile. Or would it? I answer that it would not, because if the sole purpose of sexual relationship is procreation, then the moral corollary would be that infertile person ought to abstain from sexual activity always. Rather than granting license to engage in "free love," infertility would imply morally that a person was not morally free to engage in any sexual activity whatsoever. Any sexual intercourse for this person would be amoral if not immoral.

This is the reasoning often used by more "prudish" thinkers. For such people, sexual activity is always bad, but is redeemed only within marriage and only by the act of trying to conceive, to bear children, and to raise them. That is, sexual activity is at best amoral, and immoral only if it involves procreation. Intercourse between infertile people would thus always be immoral, even if few people have said this explicitly.

Fortunately, this is not the teaching of the Faith. The Church teaches that there are two purposes for sexual intercourse: the first is indeed procreation, and the second is intimacy. Although infertile persons cannot procreate, they can share in intimacy. But what does this second purpose of sex have to do with marriage, let alone with the permanence of marriage? Can not an infertile person experience the full intimacy of sex without committing to his spouse until death do they part?

Again, I answer no. If anything, the function of intimacy makes an even greater demand on sex and marriage than the function of procreation. Consider that statement. Children demand much from marriage, but intimacy's demands are greater still. Children require a loving mother and father (ideally), hours of devotion; they are totally dependent upon their parents to have their needs met for the first several years of their lives, and still very dependent until much later. I think most parents of even college-aged students will admit that their children are still dependent upon them, if only financially and for advice. Yet, intimacy is more demanding still.

The intimate act of sexual intercourse is to unite with the other person physically (biologically, as in procreation), mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. There ought to be no impedance to this union--hence the Church's teachings against contraception go beyond arguments of procreation. This union is perhaps the most profound state of ecstasy to be found on this earth, for it is a participation in divine love itself. It is a momentary glimpse of the internal life of the Trinity, a foreshadowing of the union to be experienced with God in heaven, a taste of the love between Father, Son, and Spirit.

Paragraph 234 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that
The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God Himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them.
The intimacy of sex is one way in which we approach that mystery. But what else do we know about the Trinity? The trinity is God in Three Persons, and as such has always existed and always will exist.
Jesus revealed that God is Father in an unheard-of sense: he is Father not only in being Creator; he is eternally Father in relation to his only Son, who is eternally Son only in relation to his Father (Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 240)
and
The eternal origin of the Holy Spirit is revealed in his mission in time. The Spirit is sent to the apostles and to the Church both by the Father in the name of the Son, and by the Son in person, once he had returned to the Father. The sending of the person of the Spirit after Jesus' glorification reveals in its fullness the mystery of the Holy Trinity (CCC 244).

But sex is meant to be a sign which points us towards the internal life of the Trinity. This is also what is meant when we call marriage a sacrament--it is a visible, experiential sign which points to an invisible and divine mystery. The life and relationship of the Trinity is eternal, which means that sex can only realize its purpose in a relationship which is as close to eternal as we can make it: that is, a lifelong relationship. A temporary relationship, and especially a deliberately temporary one, cannot truly point to the life of an eternal Trinity.

For this reason, a man requires a woman, and vice-versa, to complete the image, for each of the two sexes contains different information about God. The image may be thought of as a puzzle, man and woman as two pieces of the puzzle. Two men or two women give roughly the same information as one man or one woman, but a man and a woman fit together--compliment each other--as two adjacent pieces in a puzzle. That they do no complete the puzzle entirely is not reason to discard one piece a duplicate the other, but rather is reason to search for the other pieces. The other sacraments are a good place to start, and will even hold the puzzle together better than will marriage alone.

Now, of course, the sacrament of marriage exists in a world which is darkened by sin. It is a foreshadowing, but not necessarily the fullness of the thing. It is an image, and icon, but one which is imperfect. There will always be marital difficulties; there will always be fights, abuse, and a great many other manifestations of sin. This does not make the thing soluble; that it is an imperfect image does not mean that it is a bad image. Nor does it mean that we can make it into a less-perfect image by denying its permanence once we've made a commitment to it. Marriage may be thought of as a lens through which to view God; the solution to a defective--say, a stigmatic--lens is not to shatter the lens, but to seek its compliment.

This we find through the Church, both in the community which she provides and through the other sacraments, which give us the grace to improve our marriages and our lives. This is especially true of the two sacraments which every good Catholic ought to frequent, Communion and Reconciliation. In communion, we find the mystical union with God and His Church--Christ and His Bride--to which we may look as a model for our marriage:
Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ....As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So (also) husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. (Ephesians 5:21, 24-29).
As I said before, no earthly marriage is perfect. We will always have bad days and weak moments in which we hurt each other spiritually, mentally, emotionally, or even physically. I pray that this is a rare occurrence, and never long-lived. But when it happens, we have the sacrament of Reconciliation to which we may turn for healing. In Reconciliation, we find a chance to begin anew after damaging our marriages, our relationships. We are made right with each other, with the whole Church, and with God.

In marriage, we are called to find that healthy intimacy with our spouse which gives us a taste of what God has in store for us in heaven. We are able to participate in God's act of creation through our act of procreation, and we may experience a foreshadowing of the mystical union with God which awaits us in the afterlife. It is little wonder, then, that the Church teaches, as she has always taught, that marriage is a lifelong sacrament.