Object of the Consent in Marriage

The consent that makes a marriage is, implicitly, theconsent to the use of marital rights.

The essential end of marriage is the begetting andrearing ofchildren, and the control of fleshly tendencies.The parties may have many other accidental or nonessential ends inview, good or bad. Thus a person may marry for wealth, or forsocial position, or to prevent another from getting the personespoused, or to reform the person married, or for a variety ofother reasons. But the essential end of marriage is in marriageitself, and those who assume the marital state assume what thatstate is, no matter what their individual purposes andintentions may be. The accidental ends (the personal or individualpurposes and intentions of the spouses) cannot prevent theirmarriage from being a true one. Thus a woman who marries for socialposition is a married woman, despite her unworthy purpose inmarrying. A man who marries for wealth is a married man,notwithstanding his personal objective in taking a wife.