The Second Task of Marriage The following essay will attempt to explain in detail what exactly the second task of marriage entails. Procreation as a task of marriage seems to be a fairly simple and straight forward one at first, but to fully understand it, one must have a deep understanding of the Catholic notion of love, sexuality, embodiment, and other moral norms relevant to various aspects of this task of marriage. With regard to love, a married couple with the desire to have children of their own must have a certain type of unconditional love for each other before they are truly ready to have children. When talking about sexuality, a couple must have an understanding of Catholic beliefs about sexuality which deal with the meaning of sexuality and the practices of sexuality considered acceptable and unacceptable by the Church. The topic of embodiment is a very broad one, and it is relevant to almost every aspect of marriage because it has to do with the idea that all humans are embodied in the image of God. The following essay will cover, in more detail, each of these ideas in order to show how important each is to the Catholic belief about the second task of marriage.It has already been stated that the second task of marriage is "service to life" through the action of procreation and education. Love plays a very important role in accomplishing this task both in the way that it is needed for procreation and the proper upbringing of children. Within marriage, a certain kind of love must exist for the second task of procreation to be carried out properly. First of all, there is romantic love that can come in the form of lust, infatuation, and sentimental love. Romantic love is an important component to the relationship of a married couple, but romantic love alone is an insufficient base on which to build a strong marriage. The kind of love that is needed to create a strong, stable marriage is responsible, unconditional lov...
