Quaestio Disputata What Male–Female Complementarity Makes Possible: Marriage as a Two-In-One-Flesh Union

The authors, replying to criticisms of the Catholic Church's teaching on homosexual acts presented by Todd Salzman and Michael Lawler in an article in this journal, argue that marriage is a multi-leveled personal union, essentially including the bodily as well as the emotional and volitional levels of the human self. Only sexual acts between a man and a woman who have consented to the kind of union that would be fulfilled by conceiving, bearing, and raising children together (that is, marriage) can consummate or actualize marital communion.