Children
“Sons are indeed a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a
reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons of one’s
youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them. He shall not
be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate” (Ps. 127
[126]:3-5).
The Church has always taught that the principal purpose of marriage is the
transmission of life:
Indeed the Creator of the human race Himself, who in His goodness
wished to use men as His helpers in the propagation of life, taught
this when, instituting marriage in Paradise, He said to our first
parents, and through them to all future spouses: ‘Increase and
multiply, and fill the earth’ (Gen. 1:28). St. Augustine admirably
deduces this same truth through the words of the holy Apostle Saint
Paul to Timothy (1 Timothy 5:14) when he says: “The Apostle
himself is therefore a witness that marriage is for the sake of
generation. ‘I wish,’ he says, ‘young girls to marry.’ And, as if
someone said to him, ‘Why?,’ he immediately adds: ‘To bear
children, to be mothers of families.’’’¹
As the marriage union is willed by God to perpetuate the human race
through the birth and education of children, nature ordains the continued
union of the parents after the child’s birth and the unity of the parents and
children in one closely-knit society:
“in marriage provision has been made in the best possible way for
the education of children that is so necessary, for, since the parents
are bound together by an indissoluble bond, the care and mutual help
of each is always at hand.”²
Within this society there are imposed upon both parents and children
mutual rights and obligations. On the part of parents they include to love,
1
Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, 1930.
2
Ibid.
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