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Objection: How can you say that the only motive that can excuse the marital act is the procreation of children? It is not against the Natural Law or the Law of the Church to excuse intercourse for the sake of pleasure, health, or love. You are wrong when you say that one must perform the marital act for the purpose or motive of begetting children, and that the procreation of children is the only primary purpose or motive that a couple can use to excuse the marital act. There are many primary purposes or motives of marriage that excuse the marital act from being sinful. One can perform the marital act for many primary reasons such as for the sole purpose or motive of health, satisfying the fleshly lust, quenching concupiscence, mutual help, paying the marital debt, as well as for cultivating mutual love and unitive purposes. Any one of these purposes or motives are enough to perform the marital act in a lawful way, and this proves that spouses can perform sexual acts that are not intended or able to procreate in themselves.

Not so, since the Church and Pope Pius XI, as we have seen, teaches that the primary end or motive of the marital sexual act is the procreation of children, while he describes the other ends or motives of the marital act (if spouses choose to perform the act for these reasons) as secondary ends or motives that are not necessary for the act to be lawful and that are dependent on and which must follow the primary motive of procreation in order for the sexual act to be lawful. The teaching of the Natural Law as well as that of the Church is clear that “the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children” (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii #54) and this is also why Pope Pius XI teaches that spouses are not forbidden to consider the secondary ends of marriage “such as mutual aid, the cultivating of mutual love [unitive purpose], and the quieting of concupiscence... so long as they are subordinated to the primary end [that is, procreation of children] and so long as the intrinsic nature of the act is preserved.” This proves that all other motives than the procreation of children are secondary ends or motives.

Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii (# 59), Dec. 31, 1930: “For in matrimony as well as in the use of the matrimonial right there are also secondary ends, such as mutual aid, the cultivating of mutual love, and the quieting of concupiscence which husband and wife are not forbidden to consider SO LONG AS THEY ARE SUBORDINATED TO THE PRIMARY END [that is, Procreation of children] and so long as the intrinsic nature of the act is preserved [that is, all sexual acts must be able to procreate in themselves, which means that no unnatural and non-procreative form of a sexual act can ever be performed without sin].”