Catholic teachers often summarize married love with four words: free, total, faithful and fruitful. The list is a helpful teaching tool rather than a single quotation. It draws on the wedding vows, in which the priest asks the couple whether they come freely, will be faithful, and will accept children, and on Humanae Vitae, where Saint Paul VI describes married love as “fully human,” “total,” “faithful and exclusive,” and “fecund” (Humanae Vitae 9). Saint John Paul II's Theology of the Body gives these marks their depth.
Free
Love is only love if it is chosen. The Church requires that consent to marriage be given freely, without coercion (CCC 1625, 1628). That freedom does not end on the wedding day. Each act of love in marriage, including the marital act, is meant to be a free gift, never something taken by pressure, manipulation or force. Freedom here does not mean doing whatever I feel like. It means possessing myself enough, through growth in virtue, to give myself away.
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Sources
- Humanae Vitae 9 Paul VI, Encyclical on the Regulation of Birth, the characteristics of conjugal love
- CCC 1625-1628 Catechism of the Catholic Church, Matrimonial consent
- CCC 1643-1654 Catechism of the Catholic Church, The goods and requirements of conjugal love
- CCC 2366 Catechism of the Catholic Church, Fecundity of marriage
- CCC 2379 Catechism of the Catholic Church, Infertility
- Tobit 8:5-8 The prayer of Tobias and Sarah