§ 13. The Question of the Consummation of Matrimony

77. The connection and importance of the argument urge us to join the question of the consummation of matrimony to the question of impotence and sterility.

We proceed from a formula received in the Catholic schools when we say: Matrimony is consummated from the time when both spouses have been made one flesh, according to Genesis 2:24, which is also inculcated in 1 Corinthians 6:16: "They shall be two in one flesh." Now already from antiquity, according to the received opinion, as the commentary on chapter 1 of Genesis long ascribed to St. Thomas proves, spouses can become one flesh both by reason of carnal commingling and by reason of offspring. Therefore:

78. - 1. When, after ordinary copulation, a spermatozoon has penetrated the female ovum, the marriage has been consummated most fully. For then the spouses have become one flesh not only in the conjugal act but also in the new flesh composed from them. There is, in the strictest sense, the commingling of seeds which the ancients seem to require ¹.

¹ Compare Bucceroni, Institutiones theologiae moralis, at the end of vol. 4.

Moreover, offspring conceived explains very well why a marriage thus consummated becomes perfectly indissoluble.

Nevertheless, no one simultaneously requires both of these things, copulation and conception, for consummation ². And that requirement would be excessive is shown by the consequences themselves. For then the marriage would be consummated not from the hour of copulation but from the uncertain hour of conception; one who married a pregnant woman could not consummate the marriage before she gave birth; sterile persons would never consummate a marriage.

² Nevertheless, this seems to be required in Ecclesiastical Review, 1919, pp. 246-247.

2. The latter two consequences also show that it is not sufficient to temper the severity of this requirement by a presumption according to which copulation rightly performed is presumed fecund. For the presumption can have force neither with a wife who is married while pregnant, nor among sterile persons.

79. But at the same time we are taught that the absolute indissolubility of a consummated marriage must be formally derived from somewhere other than offspring. Whence, then? From the complete handing over of bodies through the conjugal act, almost as formerly, in Roman law, transfer of ownership was perfected not by agreement alone but by true or symbolic delivery. After the conjugal act, the matter is no longer intact: the husband has used the body of his wife, and has not only deposited something of his own in her but has communicated with her by that mysterious communication by which a certain physical assimilation of the wife to the husband is procured through conjugal relations ³.

³ Compare, in the work L'Honnêteté conjugale, the dissertation of Dr. Desplats, placed between the pastoral epistle of His Eminence Cardinal Mercier and our essay, La peur de l'enfant dans les classes dirigeantes. The work appeared in Italian at Turin under the title Matrimonio e Maltusianismo. Saggio religioso-medico-morale, the sole translation by the attorney Federico Marconsini.

80. On what is, as it were, the opposite side, Sanchez ⁴ sets forth as undoubted that it is required and sufficient for the consummation of matrimony "if the male semen, by whatever art, or with the female womb drawing it, should enter into the female vessel." According to this opinion, no copulation is required: an artificial, prodigious, or miraculous introduction of the husband's semen into the wife's vessel consummates the marriage. Sanchez cites very many authors in favor of this opinion, which pleases us because it is simple and coheres with the rationale just given for firmer indissolubility. For the reception of the male semen implies that use of the wife's body, that communication of the husband's substance with his wife.

⁴ De matrimonio, book 7, disp. 64, no. 15.

Today, however, I do not know whether it has no patrons.

81. - 4. The consummation which, in the age of Sanchez, they placed in the reception of the male semen, Lehmkuhl ⁵ places in conception, at least partially, insofar as "if conception has taken place, however much something may be said to have been lacking in the very act of the conjunction of man and woman," he holds the marriage to be consummated, "for they have truly been made one flesh, since offspring is conceived from the flesh of the man and of the woman." Nevertheless, he likewise admits the other mode of consummation, through copulation.

⁵ Theologia moralis, vol. 2, no. 998. The same is also proved by Wernz, vol. 4, no. 432, note 51.

82. - 5. Turning to copulation, as many as judge a woman without ovaries incapable of matrimony require, in order that a marriage may be consummated, copulation performed in such a manner that the concurrence of the male semen with the ovum can occur, the constitution of each person having been considered. Thus these authors, although they require copulation, formally attend to offspring, not indeed actually conceived but possible. "Spouses, by marital copulation, become one flesh not actually in offspring, but potentially in relation to offspring" ⁶.

⁶ Bucceroni, Institutiones theologiae moralis, vol. 4, p. 496.

We cannot approve this opinion, both because the general possibility of conception effects nothing toward the present consummation, and because it brings forward no rationale why a marriage should thereby become more indissoluble, and because its patrons ought logically to deny that a marriage is consummated through copulations which are foreseen to be necessarily sterile. We confess with His Eminence Cardinal Gasparri ⁷ that we do not see what the nature or perpetuity of the obstacle contributes.

⁷ De matrimonio, no. 777.

83. - 6. Therefore, very many others today declare perfect copulation, that is, copulation performed with the effusion of true semen in the natural vessel of the woman, to be necessary and sufficient. They require copulation because it is the act to which matrimony is ordered; they are content with this copulation because "the commingling of seeds or blood among the ancient writers is matrimonial copulation" ⁸.

⁸ Cardinal Gasparri, ibid., no. 570.

For the commingling of seeds required by the ancients supposed in the woman only that pseudo-semen which, since it is not necessary for generation and is in no way communicated with the man, in truth has little bearing upon the cause: several of the ancients already did not require this emission of the woman except insofar as it might be essential. Moreover, from St. Thomas ⁹, we clearly have that spouses become one flesh through carnal commingling alone, without regard to offspring. "They shall be two, namely the man and the woman, in one flesh, that is, through carnal commingling they are made one flesh, and thus the members of one become the members of the other. From two there is made one in the act of generation." Compare no. 13.

⁹ In I ad Cor., chapter 6, verse 16.

84. Almost all deny that eunuchs have true semen, and therefore they deny that a marriage is consummated through copulation performed by eunuchs. We too deny this (at least when it concerns those eunuchs who have not been recently mutilated, since adults recently mutilated are not incapable of fecund copulation), but for a somewhat different reason: because those deprived of the testicles are also deprived of the internal secretion by which the energy of copulating with effusion is nourished, so that they are first deprived of satiating copulation and then of the very faculty of copulation.

Wherefore, although we render the honor due to the common opinion, we doubt the conclusion by which adults who have undergone vasectomy are held actually impotent. For they, since they preserve internal secretion (unless, which is not yet established, it must perish latently), fully preserve their virile powers. They do indeed emit semen without spermatozoa. But are spermatozoa essential to consummation as they are to fecundation? This can be doubted. The rationale given above for the greater firmness of a consummated marriage is independent of every consideration of offspring or fecundation. Furthermore, several authors admit that a marriage is consummated by those who indeed have testicles but emit dead, and therefore useless, spermatozoa, or who emit aspermatic fluid (to which, therefore, the testicles contribute almost nothing); indeed, they commonly hold (Dr. Antonelli himself) ¹⁰ that those who have an obstructed vas deferens, so that communication with the urethra is suppressed, are only sterile and therefore capable of consummation. How do these differ from those who have a vas interrupted by section ¹¹? We submit these things to the judgment of wise men who may wish to examine the cause objectively.

¹⁰ Medicina pastoralis, vol. 2, no. 650.

¹¹ This is confirmed by the authority of an excellent surgeon, a professor at Louvain, who, after kindly writing for us a dissertation on vasectomy, concluded of his own accord that this section, which did not impede internal secretion, induced sterility but not impotence.

85. Come now: since, in addition to true semen, they also require copulation, they say "without hesitation... that artificial fecundation properly so called (that is, without any copulation) does not consummate a marriage, even if offspring should follow from it" ¹².

¹² Cardinal Gasparri, op. cit., II, 1302.

86. There is greater doubt concerning semen which the husband places only at the opening of the vagina and which is received inward in such a manner that offspring could, or even did, arise. His Eminence Cardinal Gasparri denies consummation. But if, no other manner being available, intercourse of this kind is permitted to spouses, the rationale of copulation seems to us to be sufficiently preserved that, speaking according to this opinion, we would admit the consummation of the marriage.

87. After the opinions have been proposed and weighed to some extent, if what we ourselves think must be added, we incline strongly toward the position which Sanchez defended with most authors of his age, so that we call a marriage consummated whenever the true semen of the husband has been received inwardly by the wife. This opinion is plain; it fits perfectly with the rationale why a consummated marriage is altogether indissoluble. But we do not perceive that the very introduction of the virile member, separated from effusion, contributes anything to the greater firmness of matrimony; and hence we are content, for the present effect, with effusion without copulation ¹³.

¹³ But where copulation has been absent, the reception of semen inwardly will have to be proved, not presumed.