FMEO: physical disability and sexuality

[InJesusItrust]

As a physical disabled person, I view lack of ability to marry as another cross to bear. Even if I am healed at this point I don’t think I am psychologically able to be a husband or father because of my broken heart and previous failures to be loved by the opposite sex.

At the end of it, God and the kingdom are most important. Some are born eunuchs, some made eunuchs by men, and some become eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom.

 

[Rico_S]

If there is impotence, it is impossible for that to happen, because God can make no intervention in the woman’s womb if there is no semen there.

Well not to be obtuse, but I can think of one instance where he did!

But that is not my point. What I am saying is the (name removed by moderator)'s explanation as to why it is as such doesn’t make sense…and in fact, I think he is explaining it incorrectly. He is maintaining that sterility is not an impediment to marriage b/c God can intervene in the womb to make “procreation” possible. His line of reasoning of why sterile couples can still uphold the essential “procreative” dimension of marriage is that if they can have sex and are open to life, God’s intervention can still make children a possibility. It is the possibility of God’s intervention that makes the fullfilment of the procreative aspect of marriage possible.

If this is the case, why cannot God intervene outside of the womb to make the sex act possible for those who are impotent; and therefore allow for fulfillment of that aspect of marriage. Why is Gods intervention only limited to inside the womb…seems a bit presumptive imo.

 

[Offdoodykcrn]

I am very sorry for your loss, and am glad that the memory of his love helps you keep going.

To answer your original question, my husband and I live as brother and sister. He was injured before our marriage, but when we married I wasn’t Catholic and he was lapsed. So we got married, and adopted two kids.
For awhile we practiced “disabled sex” I guess you’d call it, but then I became a Catholic.
When I finally came to realize that sex without consummation wasn’t okay, I told my husband. He wasn’t happy with it, but we get along okay with kisses, hugs, etc.
I have considered divorce for other reasons, because the road has been rocky at times, but don’t want to deprive my children of a decent father, even if he’s not perfect. I guess I could get a divorce and try finding a perfect husband, but think the odds are slim.
So maybe it is rigid and harsh to not allow us to practice whatever we like, but its the cross that God has given us – mostly me, because like your husband, mine is insensate. Life is so short, and heaven so precious, that if I’m stupid for following the church’s rules, I’ll be stupid for Christ’s sake.
A marriage is valid unless someone challenges it, so while our marriage is not technically valid, I doubt anybody’s going to jump up and challenge it. And I believe God isn’t bound by rules – I believe it’s His will that we ended up married, and have our children.

I feel really sorry for you and your husband. When you married, you knew of his disability, accepted it, and I’m guessing your marriage vows included the traditional promises to stick together for richer or poorer, sickness and health, etc.

I think it is terribly sad that your decision to join the Church became a divisive force in your marriage, rather than unifying. My husband and I mutually enjoyed a healthy romantic relationship with each other. Just because the type of sex wasn’t the only kind of sex the church deems ‘proper’, doesn’t mean it was any less fulfilling for either one of us. This idea that sex between a husband and wife should only ever be in the pursuit of making children is just not true. It is unifying, it is something we promised that we would only share with each other. If that wasn’t important to both of us, there would have been no point in getting married at all.

Some may say that is why the church wouldn’t have blessed our marriage, but that one of the things I struggle with the Church, and trying to decide if I have a place in it. I believe Christ came to bring us all closer to God. He saw that the leaders and teachers in the Jewish faith had become so entrenched in the minutiae of the laws in the church - deciding who was virtuous or who was a sinner, they forgot what the whole point of religion and faith in God is all about. Love God and love your neighbor - that is what Christ said is important. When people were arguing about what was kosher to eat, he said what came out of a person’s mouth was more important than what went into it. Do you remember what he said when people criticized him for curing the sick on the sabbath? Thinking along those lines, what do you think Jesus would have said about sex? Love is what is important, not ‘what caress is sinful, and which is pure’.

Human sexuality is part of each of us. It has become increasingly evident that the more shame, secrecy and sin is brought into the equation, the more destructive and divisive this aspect of life becomes. Why would God give human beings this gift if it is only an obstacle we have to overcome - and if it is, why connect it to reproduction? It would be like making wonderful tasting fruit poisonous and our only source of nutrition something like embalming fluid.

 

[dshix]

Well not to be obtuse, but I can think of one instance where he did!

Mary doesn’t count!! She said “yes” verbally to the Angel Gabriel.

So there. Hah.