About the Author

Author: Saint Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225 – 1274), a.k.a. The Angelic Doctor, is perhaps the greatest theological mind in the history of the Church. We can get an inkling of his mind from a chance comment he made: in all his reading, Aquinas had never experienced what it was like not to understand something and need to reread it. G. K. Chesterton, in his book on Saint Thomas, imagined his mind as a model of the universe, “In the world of that mind there was a wheel of angels, and a wheel of planets, and a wheel of plants or of animals; but there was also a just and intelligible order of all earthly things, a sane authority and a self-respecting liberty, and a hundred answers to a hundred questions in the complexity of ethics or economics.” So it is no surprise that Saint Thomas addresses many questions about marriage. Here is one such question:  Among his other works, Aquinas wrote the Summa Theologiae, which he intended as a sort of introduction to theology. The Summa answers almost any question you might have about theology or the philosophy of religion. Here is such a question: “Which is more important to marriage, its function as a sacrament or its function in procreation?” Saint Thomas does not disappoint, making a careful distinction between something being important to a thing’s quality and something being important to that thing’s very existence.

Saint Thomas Aquinas mulls over Marriage

This or that may be more important to a thing in two ways, either because it is more essential or because it is more excellent. If the reason is because it is more excellent, then “sacrament” is in every way the most important of the three marriage goods, since it belongs to marriage considered as a sacrament of grace; while the other two belong to it as an office of nature; and a perfection of grace is more excellent than a perfection of nature. If, however, it is said to be more important because it is more essential, we must draw a distinction; for “faith” and “offspring” can be considered in two ways. First, in themselves, and thus they regard the use of matrimony in begetting children and observing the marriage compact; while inseparability, which is denoted by “sacrament,” regards the very sacrament considered in itself, since from the very fact that by the marriage compact man and wife give to one another power the one over the other in perpetuity, it follows that they cannot be put asunder. Hence there is no matrimony without inseparability, whereas there is matrimony without “faith” and “offspring,” because the existence of a thing does not depend on its use; and in this sense “sacrament” is more essential to matrimony than “faith” and “offspring.” Secondly, “faith” and “offspring” may be considered as in their principles, so that “offspring” denote the intention of having children, and “faith” the duty of remaining faithful, and there can be no matrimony without these also, since they are caused in matrimony by the marriage compact itself, so that if anything contrary to these were expressed in the consent which makes a marriage, the marriage would be invalid. Taking “faith” and “offspring” in this sense, it is clear that “offspring” is the most essential thing in marriage, secondly “faith,” and thirdly “sacrament”; even as to man it is more essential to be in nature than to be in grace, although it is more excellent to be in grace.

Summa Theologiae, Supplement, Q. 49, Art. 3, Respondeo. Dominican Fathers Translation, 1920