ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PAUL VI
ON THE REGULATION OF BIRTH
Faithfulness to God's Design
13. It is in fact justly observed that a conjugal act imposed upon one's partner without regard for his or her condition and lawful desires is not a true act of love, and therefore denies an exigency of right moral order in the relationships between husband and wife. Likewise, if they consider the matter, they must admit that an act of mutual love, which is detrimental to the faculty of propagating life, which God the Creator of all, has implanted in it according to special laws, is in contradiction to both the divine plan, according to whose norm matrimony has been instituted, and the will of the Author of human life. To use this divine gift destroying, even if only partially, its meaning and its purpose is to contradict the nature both of man and of woman and of their most intimate relationship, and therefore it is to contradict also the plan of God and His will. On the other hand, to make use of the gift of conjugal love while respecting the laws of the generative process means to acknowledge oneself not to be the arbiter of the sources of human life, but rather the minister of the design established by the Creator. In fact, just as man does not have unlimited dominion over his body in general, so also, with particular reason, he has no such dominion over his generative faculties as such, because of their intrinsic ordination towards raising up life, of which God is the principle. "Human life is sacred," Pope John XXIII recalled; "from its very inception it reveals the creating hand of God."[13]______________________________________________________________
What is that first line saying? It means that forcing sex on one's marriage partner is a most serious breech of the most serious moral demands of love within the bonds of matrimony. Love is gift. Taking what is not freely offered is unloving on many levels and in many ways. It is relational. Love must be between two persons. It can be one sided love is one gives freely but the other takes selfishly. It can be one sided if one demands selfishly to give while the other receives freely,
One may not see the "likewise" connection right away, but when we think of love gift it becomes more clear. God offers the gift of conjugal love in marriage to man and woman. The gift package includes both aspects of the procreative and unitive. We deny the gift by denying any part and offend the Giver. If I offer my wife a gift of a dinner with me at a restaurant and she says she'll take the dinner but with someone else, then she has actually denied the gift. This is just one way of looking at the connection of procreative and unitive.
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