I was recently in chat and I spoke to a woman who used to be Catholic but later fell away from the Church. She told me that the Church used to teach that spouses had a duty to conjugal relations and that the Church opposed marital rape laws. She said that this was one of the reasons she left the Church and I didn’t know what to say to her aside from telling her that I’ve read documents stating that conjugal relations are sinful if there isn’t consent on the part of both spouses. I also told her that non-consensual sex could not be unitive and was therefore immoral.
You stated the church’s position very well. It sounds like your friend may have some other issues and is using this as an excuse.
I drives me crazy when some people take “ONE” issue, (not having anything to do with the Deposit of Faith) and say that is the reason why they left the church. Sounds like a “Red Flag” to me.
catholicexchange.com yesterday (Jan 25) had an article on "Contract to Covenant-the evolution of the Church’s understanding of consent in marriage, by Jacqueline Repp. If you go there, right under Today at the top, click on todays article, the sidebar at the left will list all past articles. I don’t know how to copy a link but will try if somebody guides me.
I’ve never noticed that you don’t post links. Okay, I’ll give it a go. Surf to the page you are interested in. Then look at the top of your browser window for the white bar with the address of the page in it. Use your mouse to click once on that white bar. When you do, the computer will highlight the address. Now hold down the control key (it is usually labeled Ctrl) and while holding it press the letter “c” key. Release both keys. Now supposedly the address is in your computer memory.
Surf back to Catholic Answers and into the new reply area where you type in your posts. The easiest thing to do is put the cursor where you want the address to go and then hold the control key down again, but this time press the letter “v” key. The address should just appear. Now if you do the post preview button, you should see your address as a link in your post preview.
If you want you can use the little button CA gives you when you are making a new post. It looks like a little earth with a chain link at the bottom. But that is slightly harder. You have to highlight a word, like the word “here”, and then hit that button and then, without messing with anything, do the control “v” thing and then hit enter. This produces a link like this one here. This link just goes to some other thread, as illustration only.
DISCLAIMER: Catholic Answers has turned over the archive to Catholic-Questions.org and no longer owns, manages, or moderates the forums. For additional apologetics resources please visit www.catholic.com.
