It is sadly interesting how so many of today's debates are ultimately related. Many same-sex marriage advocates assert that having children is not essential to being married and, so, a couple of the same sex should be just as free to marry as a man or woman who is infertile. In fact, fertility has never been a requirement to being married, but being open to procreation has. Thus, infertility was not grounds for an annulment, but failure to consummate the marriage was -- and still is in Roman Catholic canon law.
Further, that openness to procreation was essential to marriage is revealed in the very origins of the word "matrimony". "Matrimony" derives from the Latin word "matrimonium", which, in turn, derives from the word "mater" (Latin for mother) and the suffix "monium" (action, state or condition). Matrimony, then, is the action intended to make a woman a mother.
And now we have the nation of India paying couples to not have a baby for at least the first two years of their marriage. Is it any wonder that there exists so much confusion about marriage when for the last several decades we have increasingly sought to tear asunder what God joined together, marriage and procreation?
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It is sadly interesting how so many of today's debates are ultimately related. Many same-sex marriage advocates assert that having children is not essential to being married and, so, a couple of the same sex should be just as free to marry as a man or woman who is infertile. In fact, fertility has never been a requirement to being married, but being open to procreation has. Thus, infertility was not grounds for an annulment, but failure to consummate the marriage was -- and still is in Roman Catholic canon law.
Further, that openness to procreation was essential to marriage is revealed in the very origins of the word "matrimony". "Matrimony" derives from the Latin word "matrimonium", which, in turn, derives from the word "mater" (Latin for mother) and the suffix "monium" (action, state or condition). Matrimony, then, is the action intended to make a woman a mother.
And now we have the nation of India paying couples to not have a baby for at least the first two years of their marriage. Is it any wonder that there exists so much confusion about marriage when for the last several decades we have increasingly sought to tear asunder what God joined together, marriage and procreation?
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