2392 "Love is the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being" (FC 11).
2393 By creating the human being man and woman, God gives personal dignity equally to the one and the other. Each of them, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity.
2394 Christ is the model of chastity. Every baptized person is called to lead a chaste life, each according to his particular state of life.
2395 Chastity means the integration of sexuality within the person. It includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery.
2396 Among the sins gravely contrary to chastity are masturbation, fornication, pornography, and homosexual practices.
2397 The covenant which spouses have freely entered into entails faithful love. It imposes on them the obligation to keep their marriage indissoluble.
2398 Fecundity is a good, a gift and an end of marriage. By giving life, spouses participate in God's fatherhood.
2399 The regulation of births represents one of the aspects of responsible fatherhood and motherhood. Legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means (for example, direct sterilization or contraception).
2400 Adultery, divorce, polygamy, and free union are grave offenses against the dignity of marriage.
" “At the beginning of creation, God made them male and female; for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and the two shall become as one. They are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore, let no man separate what God has joined.”
Those first disciples of Jesus suffered some measured surprise when Jesus said these words. As the gospel reports: ‘Back in the house they began to question him on this … ‘if this is the case between husband and wife,’ they remarked, ‘it’s best not to even get married.’
They understood exactly what Jesus was saying. Nothing, not the womanizing by a king of the realm, not the pronouncement a divorce court, not the everybody’s doing it thing of the culture, not a civil right to a decree can break a true Christian marriage bond.
Jesus’ teaching here on the permanence of marriage must always remain the goal of all our marriages. The day we find the Gospel irrelevant to our lives is the day we have lost touch with God. After all, one thing is nobly clear from the tradition of our faith. Christ is bonded to us forever. It is this image we bring down to our weddings, understanding that from the altar the married are given a sacred calling to mimic Christ’s bond of fidelity with his Church. It’s what we mean by calling marriage a sacrament."
