e called agopic love. Agopic love is a kind of intangible love that can only be gained by being with another person for a good amount of time and truly getting to know everything about them while maintaining your love for them. What is meant by truly knowing the other person is that both individuals within a relationship know and understand the great, the good, the fair, and the faulty things about each other to the point that no personality traits of each other go unrevealed. This kind of mutual love can bring a couple so close to each other that an unbreakable bond is created. The strength of agopic love is such that a couple would never consider separating, and herein lies the reason why agopic love is so important for carrying out the second task of marriage.It is the Catholic view that before a couple decides to have children they need to come to a mutual understanding that they will do everything in their power to raise their children the best they can in accordance with Church teaching. This includes life long unconditional love of children and each other, because, "without love the family cannot live, grow, and perfect itself as a community of persons" (FC 32). Pope John Paul II puts it best in Familiaris Consortio when he says, "the family has the mission to guard, reveal and communicate love, and this is a living reflection of and a real sharing in God's love for humanity and the love of Christ the Lord for the Church His bride" (FC 31). Agopic love is the only type of love comparable to God's divine love of all human beings, and it is a prerequisite for the proper accomplishment of service to life through procreation and education.The Catholic understanding of sexuality is another important factor that a married couple must be fully aware of before attempting to carry out the second task of marriage. The importance of sexuality relates mostly to the act of procreation. The act of sex, or conjugal love is regarded in ...
