Husband getting vasectomy

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HomeschoolDad said:
if there is anything that would be more attractive to human nature uninformed by Divine grace, I’d like to know what it is.
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I was trying for a witty response to this. Failed. 🙂
Dominus vobiscum
 
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Ah HA! @Rau Thank you so much. I’m typing from an Ipad Pro. IT added that period. You are a great person!
Dominus vobiscum, again
 
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. . . I pray that God will untangle these knots for them.
 
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I would also feel more suspicious since it appears “She found out” as opposed to “He told me.” Shows efforts to conceal the fact. Wow.
I am sorry this is a messed up situation.
Dominus vobiscum
 
OP – can I recommend a book? It’s called “First kill all the marriage counselors”, or a later edition is called “The empowered wife”.
I think it’s kind of a reset button for the “relationship” part of your brain.
 
You need to have a sit down with him. He is not open to life and God’s plan. It’s like your marriage is dead. You need help. Find out if he wants this to work. He needs to learn how important this is to you. It seems like there is more at play here, because I don’t know how much has been said and done between you two.

If I were you, I would ask around for a good priest for spiritual advice. Ask him about this, perhaps he is willing to meet with your husband. See what he offers, there might be alternatives for you regarding this marriage.
 
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I’ll politely disagree. 🙂 Her recommendation to hand over all control of finances to the husband is a bad idea, muy malo. (Just ask any widow or any wife who’s been dumped).
I’m also mildly amused that a “life coach” presumes to know more than trained and licensed therapists, but I’ll leave that side tangent alone for now.
 
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To answer the questions, yes, we were married in the Catholic Church, had premarital counseling by our priest and yes, we discussed everything, including my beliefs against contraception which he was initially fine with. Our plan was to have a large family, practice NFP and raise the kids Catholic. After we were married, he either changed his mind about the first two things or he lied to me before marriage. I asked him about it but he wouldn’t talk to me about it
 
I’m really sorry for you. I think the pain you’ve gone through has been enough to free 1,000 souls from purgatory.

I’ll tell you how I’m seeing things right now, with the caveat that this is a pessimistic view, and I sincerely hope I’m wrong:
  1. Your children are all adults now, so they’re out of the house now or at least should be able to make their own way without their parents.
  2. He’s getting a vasectomy, meaning he will eliminate the possibility of future kids.
When I put those two things together, I see a very strong possibility that he is going to divorce you.

Again, I really hope I’m wrong, and I think others have posted some good advice that you should consider, and you should fight for your marriage.
 
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Jen95 said:
Are you familiar with the concept of the “marital debt”? I know everyone pretends like it’s not a thing anymore but I think it’s why it’s a sin to withhold the “marital embrace” right?
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I don’t “pretend like it’s not a thing anymore”. It is Church teaching and therefore I accept it. However, as someone else pointed out in another thread, the term “marital debt” sounds absolutely horrible in English. It just doesn’t translate right from Latin. I would go so far as to say the same thing about “Sunday obligation”. It comes across (especially to non-Catholic ears) as saying “you little guttersnipes wouldn’t go to Mass but once in a blue moon if we, the Church, didn’t make you go under pain of losing your soul”.
Gingersnaps4 said:
He isn’t catholic and isn’t bound by catholic law, as far as I know. If his denomination says it isn’t a sin then I don’t think he would be fully culpable sin-wise, and you certainly wouldn’t be.
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It is not “Catholic law”, it is Catholic moral doctrine that applies to all mankind. What “his denomination” has to say about it is beside the point. Bluntly put, we’re right and they’re wrong. This, of course, does not touch his subjective culpability — Protestants don’t “get” that contraception is wrong, any more than Catholics “get” the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ teaching that blood transfusion is wrong (just using this to make the argument, not implying that they are right).
Agnus-Dei said:
omy.
We are ultimately responsible for our own decisions. Hi
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Agnus-Dei said:
He had a vasectomy as well, but didn’t tell the wife. It was for the purpose of extra-marital affairs without possibility of pregnancy. If he were given the gift of chastity, he would not feel a need for the vasectomy.
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One or the other spouse making themselves permanently and totally sterile absolutely enables them to engage in extra-marital sexual relations without the other partner being any the wiser, especially if is the wife who is sterilized. I say this because while the man could hide his involvement (until the courts catch up with him to seek paternity testing and child support), it would be pretty hard for a woman to hide the fact that she is pregnant. This is the point where a man offers to pay for his paramour’s abortion, or where the wife secretly gets an abortion (not sure how she would hide this from her husband, the need for self-treatment and a period of abstinence after the fact would be kind of hard to explain away).
 
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There are different schools of thought on this, depending on feasibility (financial, etc.). The obligation to reverse the vasectomy, or lack of obligation, would vary from penitent to penitent and would be best discussed with one’s confessor. In some cases, some priests prescribe a certain degree of abstinence (e.g., abstaining from relations during what would otherwise be the fertile time, to mimic the hardship required by using NFP). Others do not.
Jen95 said:
OP – can I recommend a book? It’s called “First kill all the marriage counselors”,
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This title is a hoot!

Might be a good thing to inject a little humor to break the tension of a very serious discussion.
 
Ah yes, I did misread that, so I corrected my post. Thank you.

Unfortunately I think everything else I said still stands.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
t is not “Catholic law”, it is Catholic moral doctrine that applies to all mankind. What “his denomination” has to say about it is beside the point. Bluntly put, we’re right and they’re wrong. This, of course, does not touch his subjective culpability — Protestants don’t “get” that contraception is wrong, any more than Catholics “get” the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ teaching that blood transfusion is wrong (just using this to make the argument, not implying that they are right).
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That’s exactly what I meant. He isn’t part of the Catholic Church and so he wouldn’t be culpable for not believing in our moral doctrine (if he honestly doesn’t) even if it is the Truth.
 
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Seriously, jumping to affairs, encouraging divorce and Tribunal review is a bit much!

@Puppy, make an appointment with your Pastor and speak to him. He will explain that you are not responsible for your husbands choice to sterilize himself, that it is not a sin for you to have relations with him after sterilization or if he uses contraception.

Jumping to conclusions is imprudent.

Maybe schedule a Retrouvaille retreat soon!
 
Puppy said:
Our plan was to have a large family, practice NFP and raise the kids Catholic. After we were married, he either changed his mind about the first two things or he lied to me before marriage. I asked him about it but he wouldn’t talk to me about it
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I am so sorry that happened to you, and I can see how that would build resentment and mistrust. Even though that has likely been a bitter pill to swallow all these years, please reconsider withholding marital relations. The Church doesn’t require it, if you are not the one actively engaging in contraception.

Do you think he would go to a Retrouvaille weekend with you to work on your marriage and communication?
 
HomeschoolDad said:
t is not “Catholic law”, it is Catholic moral doctrine that applies to all mankind. What “his denomination” has to say about it is beside the point. Bluntly put, we’re right and they’re wrong. This, of course, does not touch his subjective culpability — Protestants don’t “get” that contraception is wrong, any more than Catholics “get” the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ teaching that blood transfusion is wrong (just using this to make the argument, not implying that they are right).
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Whether he has even an inkling that there might, just might, be something sinful about contraception, is a question only he could answer. His degree of culpability is a question that, ultimately, only Almighty God could answer.

I have to think there is the odd non-Catholic, here or there, who has a vague feeling that there is something just a little bogus about deliberately preventing the function that is written into nature itself for the propagation of the human race.

There is the temptation to “go soft” on contraception, implicitly to think “it couldn’t be so bad, after all, pretty much everyone except orthodox Roman Catholics thinks it’s okay, including Protestants”. If you will stop and think about it, efficient and highly reliable methods of artificial birth control, coupled with sterilization where it seems to be the best option (“we’re all done having kids, we’ve been blessed, God’s been good to us” — as though it’s our call when we quit accepting God’s blessings!), makes the modern world and its economy “work”. Women entering the workplace en masse, compact little families with children who come only when they’re wanted, in the numbers they’re desired, population growth, and thus economic growth, ensured by picking the immigrants you let in and being able to screen for quality (this isn’t working out so well along the southern border…) — what’s not to like?
1ke said:
Do you think he would go to a Retrouvaille weekend with you to work on your marriage and communication?
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As long as orthodox Catholic magisterial teaching is upheld and not compromised, Retrouvaille sounds like a great idea.
Gingersnaps4 said:
He isn’t catholic and isn’t bound by catholic law, as far as I know.
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Amen to that!
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My understanding is that if he goes against you and the Holy Catholic Church and gets the vasectomy he would be sinning gravely, atleast objectively. We don’t know his soul so we can’t say if it’s a mortal sin and will send him to hell or not. But either way it’s not good. If he gets the vasectomy, you can have relations with him. It would not be the same if he were to use condoms or for you to use and IUD, then you would be sinning. You still must tell him of his fault throughout the marriage of the vasectomy using prudence and charity until he see his error. That doesn’t mean knock him over the head every second but when God grace allows, tell him the Churchs teaching on proper conjugal relations open to life.
 
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