Trent Horn answers a caller who wonders whether a married couple who uses contraception has fully consummated their marriage, and whether the marriage might become invalid if they repeatedly use it.
Transcript:
Host: Robert in Redding, California, you are on with Trent Horn. What do you reject in Catholic morality?
Caller: Not so much reject–brilliant show, guys–and Trent, just a question kind of along the sexual morality and ethics: If a couple is using contraception that are inside the Church–which we know some parishes upwards of eighty percent or more–or outside the Catholic Church, before they get married, during the marriage prep, and after, are they actually consummating their marriage? Because we’re seeing a lot of controversy over Communion to divorced, and whether that’s pastorally being taken into account, but I guess the real question is: Is it consummated when the couple is is using contraception?
Trent: Yes. There may be a question about the validity of a marriage that perpetually uses contraception, and the couple, or at least one of the partners, is not open to life in any way, shape, or form, and is opposed to that from before the marriage on through it, so there may be a question about validity. But if the couple engages in the marital act, if that act takes place, even if there are things to try to contracept it or to prevent the procreative end of it; if the act is achieved, even once, then the marriage has been consummated. The two became one flesh. There may not have been–an important end may have been blocked in that, but the act itself still took place, if even if contraception were used.
So if the act took place, it would be consummated, but some perpetual uses of contraception could question the validity of marriage in certain cases. But I’m not saying someone who just used contraception, you know, who just habitually used it would necessarily be in an invalid marriage. I’m not saying that. What I am saying, though, is that if a couple used contraception on their wedding night, if they did that, it would still be a valid, consummated marriage, because they engaged in the marital act.