Section — Noldin, Summa of Moral Theology
Section 1. Effects with Regard to the Spouses.
639. What They Are. 1. The first and chief effect is the conjugal bond (matrimony in facto esse, by its nature perpetual and exclusive),1 which is ordered to the generation of offspring. For this reason there is founded in it the right and office toward conjugal acts. This right consists on one side in the power of demanding the conjugal debt, to which on the other side corresponds the obligation of rendering the debt.
- The right to conjugal acts, which belongs to the spouses from the very beginning of matrimony, is equal on each side:2 let the husband render the debt to the wife, and likewise the wife to the husband.3
a. The old law, by which newly married persons in the first two months were not held to render the conjugal debt if either of them wished to deliberate about entering a religion of solemn vows, has been taken away.
b. Nevertheless the right of demanding the debt from the other party can be lost, just as also the obligation of rendering the debt to the other party can cease.
The right and office of generating offspring through conjugal acts demands an indivisible fellowship of life, or communion of dwelling, bed, and table, to which spouses are held by justice: A man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife.4
Although in conjugal life the rights and offices of the spouses are equal, in the rest of the fellowship of life the wife is subordinated to the husband: let women be subject to their husbands, since the man is the head of the woman.5 For to him belongs marital power over the wife, by which the man can require, not from her as from a slave but as from an associate, that she help him in caring for and governing the family. By force of this power the man must provide for the wife with suitable sustenance.
It belongs to the wife to help the husband in governing the family and to care for the family property. She on her part a. ordinarily becomes participant in the name, state, dignity, and privileges of the husband; b. acquires the domicile of the husband. Nevertheless she can obtain a quasi-domicile for herself if she is legitimately separated from the husband.6
The right and office of caring for the education of offspring, both religious and moral, so that they may be instructed in the doctrine of religion, and physical and civil, so that they may learn those arts by which childhood is usually formed to humanity; likewise the right and office of providing for their temporal good, so that parents procure for them necessary and suitable things (clothing, food).7
1 Cn. 1110.
2 Cn. 1111.
3 1 Cor. 7, 3.
4 Gen. 2, 24.
5 Eph. 5, 22.
6 Cn. 1112.
7 Cn. 1113.