What does the Catholic Church mean by Unitive?

My friends and I were having our weekly catechism discussion and this past week concerned the 6th commandment against adultery. It was mentioned in our discussion that in order for a sexual act to be morally valid and licit, it would have to be three things:

• Procreative
• Unitive
• Marital

My friend would give examples of sexual expression and ask whether they met the three conditions listed above.

During this exercise, a question came up for me which was how does the Church define "unitive". I had assumed that unitive meant two married people uniting in the sacrament of marriage. Therefore, it would have to be open to life, non-contracepting, between a married couple.

It seems I was wrong.

I looked around and no one was really providing a good definition of what constituted "unitive". However, I eventually ran across an article written by theologian Ronald L. Conte Jr. In the article, he goes on to explain what constitutes unitive and basically answers objections to this line of reasoning.

I was surprised to find out that a sexual act can be unitive even if it involves contraception or even if it occurs outside of marriage. Of course, as mentioned, not one, but all three of the above conditions must be met in order for an act to be morally valid. However, just because some of the conditions are not met, does not automatically mean they aren't all met.

I guess logically this makes sense. If this were the case, there would not be three conditions, only one or two. In other words, unitive could just simply be an aspect of procreative if it was implied in the definition.

So what is the answer? Unitive simply means a sexual act involving a man and a woman. This could be between a married couple that is contracepting or between a man and a prostitute. To bolster this idea, Ronald L Conte Jr. quotes St. Paul in the Book of 1 Corinthians 6:15 when he says:

15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! 16 Do you not know that he who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two shall become one.”

St. Paul is saying that he who joins himself to a prostitute becomes on body with her, i.e. it is unitive. It doesn't make it right, but that one aspect is fulfilled.

In terms of married couples who contracept, this too would be considered unitive. To show how this is the case, Mr. Conte quotes from Humanae Vitae, which came after the Second Vatican Council, in 1968. I will also quote what Mr. Conte had to say about it:

The Vademecum for Confessors: “Special difficulties are presented by cases of cooperation in the sin of a spouse who voluntarily renders the unitive act infecund.” [n. 13]

Here the Holy See calls contracepted marital sex “the unitive act”. It could not be called by that term if contraception deprived sex of its unitive meaning.

Mr. Conte explains it well. It would be illogical to call an act unitive if it wasn't. It's quite simple. And the act they are referring to is a contracepted marital act. Therefore, the Church would consider such an act to remain unitive.

However, are all sexual acts unitive? Of course not. Unitive sexual acts must involve a man and a woman engaging in intercourse. Homosexual acts are not unitive, nor is self-pollution (masturbation). The latter is obvious since an act involving one person obviously cannot be unitive. The former is not unitive, however the exact reason why not I am not sure. It could simply be because the real definition of sex is sexual intercourse between a man and a woman. It's sufficient to say that homosexual acts fulfill none of the three criteria.

I hope this clarifies things for people. Please comment if you have any comments or questions.