I can't obey

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ALoveDivine

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I have really struggled with the church’s teachings on sexual issues, I really have. I get it and understand it all intellectually. One slight problem…

I have no sexual self-control. I have struggled with this for years, through tears and agony, repentance and prayer, everything. I just cannot stop. I have a girlfriend I am considering marriage with, and we are sexually active. Before I came back to the Catholic Church I always saw marriage as, among other things, the way out of my sexual immorality.

Then comes the teaching on contraception. Now it seems like no matter what, I will always be in sexual immorality until I’m too old to reproduce. I’m not having more than one or two kids, end of story. I’m not gonna abstain from relations with my wife half the month following a “nfp” system that might not work. I admit this is sin, but I also admit that I’m weak and can’t rise above it.

So with all that in mind, what’s left for me? I suppose I just pass on communion and confession till I’m too old to reproduce and become infertile?
 
You have used the word “can’t” when you should have used the word “won’t”.

Keep praying for grace and strength. Commit to walking the narrow road that leads to life.
 
Your sexual drive can become the doorway to your transformation. Until then it is the false God of pleasure and like any addiction will OWN you until you confront the simple fact that your life is not about you.
 
You cannot excuse yourself from the moral teachings of the Church even if they are difficult. God always gives us sufficient grace to overcome temptations. Sometimes, as it seems in your case, an addiction to the sin might mitigate your culpability, but that doesn’t mean you should stop trying. You cannot commit despair in which you have no hope of overcoming a sin because that is a mortal sin as well. You need to get a confessor to help you with this.

Also, Holy Matrimony’s purpose is to have children, mutual aid to spouses, and to remedy concupiscence. The word “Matrimony” is derived from “matris munus” which means office of a mother. You shouldn’t put a limit of just one or two children without grave reason.
 
Well, it might be too soon to be so definite. You haven’t even met those two kids yet. You might like them enough that you would like their brothers and sisters.
 
tskrobacz said:
Your sexual drive can become the doorway to your transformation. Until then it is the false God of pleasure and like any addiction will OWN you until you confront the simple fact that your life is not about you.
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Absolutely! We should never limit God- quite honestly we believe a lie Satan is all too willing to feed us. Our trust is in Him not ourselves- we are not God, nor are we capable of anything without Him- but with Him all things are possible.
My prayers for you,
Mlz
 
JimG said:
Well, it might be too soon to be so definite. You haven’t even met those two kids yet. You might like them enough that you would like their brothers and sisters.
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That would be super… to say yes to God’s little gifts…
 
Be open to life by keeping company with the lonely, the single, the unsuccessful, the people with “wrong” body language, as well as with other couples having from 0 to umpteen children. I mean it. Do these things NOW. Both of you. Find out from all of them SOMETHING about the CATHOLIC and Christian life. Don’t fail to intercede together. Talk about everything BUT sex. Maybe you have other areas in life that are unbalanced, which your peers can help you with meantime. Undoubtedly vice versa.

“It isn’t about what it’s about”. (Or may be, partly.)

Also resurrect your respective childhood hobbies and devote half a room each to them. To take a hypothetical example, if you were told to stop making models because your parents didn’t like a house full of bits (in fact a house can be kept tidy like that) and if the lady was told to stop oil painting because the canvasses invade the tea table, it reveals some interesting things about the state of your other relationships as well as the ways you think time has to be spent.

If you were both told to stop reading (non fictional) books because it showed up your parents’ educational problems, you need to resume developing your minds while you have the chance. Understand how God works through geography and words and share that understanding with the others. Some people should harness their skills in gardening or cooking or with animals. These things are a magnet to people as well.

If your teachers poured shame on you you might feel inhibition about learning. Repudiate it. There is no place in Scriptural Christian living for that kind of shame.

My grandmother had shame heaped on her because of racial reasons, learning difference, other disability, poverty, a split family and several changes of religion. She battled against it heroically and I have learned to battle against the continuing effects of it heroically.
 
ALoveDivine said:
I have really struggled with the church’s teachings on sexual issues, I really have. I get it and understand it all intellectually. One slight problem…

I have no sexual self-control. I have struggled with this for years, through tears and agony, repentance and prayer, everything. I just cannot stop. I have a girlfriend I am considering marriage with, and we are sexually active. Before I came back to the Catholic Church I always saw marriage as, among other things, the way out of my sexual immorality.

Then comes the teaching on contraception. Now it seems like no matter what, I will always be in sexual immorality until I’m too old to reproduce. I’m not having more than one or two kids, end of story. I’m not gonna abstain from relations with my wife half the month following a “nfp” system that might not work. I admit this is sin, but I also admit that I’m weak and can’t rise above it.

So with all that in mind, what’s left for me? I suppose I just pass on communion and confession till I’m too old to reproduce and become infertile?
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Catholic sexual ethics are harsh, but still less harsh than any other system of sexual ethics in existence, including (and perhaps especially) complete and totally permissiveness, which is the harshest on human dignity and happiness of all of them.

I think you already know the answer to the question. You won’t be able to receive Jesus in the Eucharist (or, if you have no intention of honoring yourself or your spouse, encountering Him in Confession) until you’ve decided to give over your life to God. He will remain absent from you, and this will hold true even if you were to decide to receive communion anyway.

I would pray and meditate on this daily. If you don’t trust in yourself - which you shouldn’t - then you should at least trust in God. Do you believe that God is benevolent? Do you think he would command something that is evil or opposed to the joy of his creation? So many people have said what you have said, and yet in the end they chose & received a holy life. I hope you’ll do the same. You have so much to look forward to, if you permit it.
 
We are living what you are afraid of going through. We obey. It’s extremely difficult, but it’s not impossible with God’s grace.
 
I thank you all for your kind and understanding responses. It was refreshing to read your charitable words, and not to have to face outright hostile condemnation.

I will sit out from the sacraments for a while, as I have been doing lately anyway. Hopefully God can do some kind of work in me to encourage me to be obedient.

I think its the contraceptive issue above all others that makes me loose all hope in ever being obedient. I could even see myself passing on the sex until the wedding day, if it wasn’t for that black cloud of contraceptive sin hanging over my head…its to the point where I’ve considered getting married, “doing it” unprotected until our first child is born, and then getting a vasectomy followed by praying for a contrite heart and going to confession. I know this is not exactly a God-honoring approach, but I don’t honestly see myself ever being able to be any kind of “abstinent”. I’m also not in any kind of financial shape to be able to afford more than one child so…yeah.

Maybe sterilization followed by contrition and confession, and some kind of penance, is really the only course I can take given who I am, sinful though it may be in the big picture. I don’t know. Pray for me. Maybe by some miracle God can do a work in my heart and change my mind on this.

For now I’m in sin. I may very well go to Hell, but I hope not. I will entrust my self to the mercies of God regardless, and if I end up damned, well, I guess it is what it is.
 
Do you agree with the teaching and think it is correct, or not?
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I agree with most of it. I am convinced premarital sex is wrong, even though I partake in it. I will never excuse that sin or rationalize it. I accept that sex belongs only within the bonds of marriage.

There is one thing I take issue with; the notion that every sexual act must be open to life. A marriage must certainly be open to life. Married sexuality must obviously be open to life. But each individual sexual act? That to me seems intellectually and morally indefensible. As much as I want to submit my mind and will to the teachings of the church, my reason tells me this notion is absurd. I’m not one to very easily forsake my own reason.

I can think of probably at least a hundred scenarios where it is seemingly self-evident that non-abortifascient contraception would be morally justifiable. Such as, another pregnancy could kill the woman, another child would not be able to be financially supported, etc. Basically the reasons the church recognizes to use NFP, I find just as much valid reasons to use barrier methods.

On that point, I also can’t for the life of me figure out why the Church considers NFP morally different than barrier methods. NFP is a practice of engaging in sex with the intent of preventing the conception of a child. It is self-evidently a form of contraception. How this differs morally from withdrawl or barrier methods is elusive to me.

Despite all of this, I recognize that the Church is the teacher here and I am not going to use my own views as an excuse for participating in sacraments while lacking full communion with the church though disobedience to some teachings. Though I do earnestly hope and the pray the church will wise up and change its perspective on non-abortive contraceptive practices.

By the way, I know many Catholics will say, in response to those serious reasons I elucidated, that we must be abstinent. I simply can’t live that out, i’m sorry. If, in my very marriage, its Hell or abstinence, I guess I’m going to Hell.
 
Praying for you. Keep trying to God’s will. Many blessings and much peace will come to you.
 
ALoveDivine said:
On that point, I also can’t for the life of me figure out why the Church considers NFP morally different than barrier methods. NFP is a practice of engaging in sex with the intent of preventing the conception of a child. It is self-evidently a form of contraception. How this differs morally from withdrawl or barrier methods is elusive to me.
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what’s the difference between abortion and a miscarriage? What’s the difference between euthanasia and natural death? What’s the difference between contraception and NFP?

We are made up of a soul and a body, and spouses are called to cooperate in God’s creative powers, so there are three people in a marriage, You, your spouse, and God. For this reason, sex is very good when shared between a husband and a wife, but that is the key word, “shared”.

With NFP, you are, hopefully both becoming more aware of the human body to use it naturally to avoid conception, and becoming more aware of God’s presence within your marriage. With contraception, you are manipulating the nature of your body, and telling God that you do not trust him or his plan for your life.

I know it’s hard, we all run from God sometimes, but strive for God’s plan for you.
 
Do penance for your sins. Give up small things and train yourself, starting with baby steps. Tell God that you mean business, that you’ll begin training in self discipline. This will help you in your life, when you hold your tongue when someone upsets you, when you do something nice for someone who is hard to like. Begin in small steps and progress forward in the virtues. Also choose a devotion and decide to do it for 9 days like a novena. Can you do a Divine Mercy chaplet? Offer it for others struggling today. When you get up in the morning, can you unite yourself with our Blessed Mother, and say today I will honor Jesus in the first Joyful Mystery. The next day, the second Joyful Mystery, and so on. Getting closer to the Blessed Mother is a very smart thing to do.

When you look to the future and say “I can’t do it”, you are sabotaging yourself. Of course you can’t do it. The grace you need for today, cooperate with that. You don’t know how many days you will have or what cross might come your way. All you can do is work on today and gain confidence in God’s willingness to be there and strengthen you.
 
ALoveDivine;13337180 said:
There are times in marriage whenyou may have to practice abstinence. What if your future wife is ill? What is she is pregnant and on bed rest or has a complicated pregnancy? What about after delivery when she is healing?
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There are times in marriage whenyou may have to practice abstinence. What if your future wife is ill? What is she is pregnant and on bed rest or has a complicated pregnancy? What about after delivery when she is healing?
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Of course in such instance I would be more than happy to lovingly abstain. The abstinence I’m referring to is that required of NFP, meaning abstaining most of the month and especially when a woman most strongly wants sex, for decades until we’re infertile. That’s a cross I don’t think either of us can bear. Quite frankly I think such a life would be utterly dreadful and would do horrific harm to a relationship. It would also seem to contradict the call to love my wife and to give of myself sexually to her (1 Corinthians 7). If doing the later would lead to her serious harm, such as a pregnancy leading to an extremely high risk of maternal mortality, how would it be loving of me to not use an effective method of non-abortive contraception? Should I just use the very poor method of NFP and risk her death, or should I go totally contrary to 1 Corinthians 7 and just abstain? How is either of those options an example of loving my wife?

To be quite honest, I cannot accept as true, nor in any way submit, to this teaching. So I have a follow up question. Can I faithfully dissent on grounds of conscience and reason, or should I just leave the church entirely? The one thing I will not do is be a hypocrite. If my evident reason and conscience are not permitted to exist within the church, I will leave I guess, even though it saddens me greatly. I’ll be jumping over to the Orthodox Church if I can’t stay.
 
@ALoveDivine:

Frustration and doubts - reasonable doubts - are not obstacles to sainthood but can be, if we allow them to be, the exact tools that are used to catapult us to Heaven, and not just the Heaven beyond death, but to Heaven right now: living a holy life, in love, with a mind that is at peace. Those frustrations and questions refine us and sharpen us.

Contraception is among the hardest teachings to accept because so many modern people approach it from a loaded perspective. They review over and over in their mind all of the things that are “lost” in submitting to Church teaching, but presume that nothing is gained in following it, even if life demonstrates all to the contrary. Mainstream society accepts contraception, and yet sexual dissatisfaction is epidemic among them, along with broken marriages or separated / arguing spouses that rarely have sex. They think separating the unitive and procreative bond doesn’t affect their mind & heart in anyway, when it does. They just don’t know it because mainstream society doesn’t know any different. It would be like a medieval serf never questioning to himself about how life could be better if he had certain rights: he grew up in a society where his state of life is just accepted, and so he never asks those questions in the first place. Orthodox Catholic couples are vulnerable to each other, and that is something that is really quite incredible. It is a lost knowledge, only retained by a remnant.

“Why Humanae Vitae Was Right” is a collection of articles compiled Janet E. Smith. Reading alone isn’t going to convert you on this issue, but it’s a good start. It’s a very large book but I would recommend reading it just a little chunk at a time, and reflecting/praying over it.

It is possible to continue to receive communion in the Catholic Church even if you don’t understand a particular Church teaching; just as long as you live your life according to it.

Since both you and your fiance are at the moment cold to this particular teaching, it’s going to take a miracle to lunge you out of it (which isn’t so bad: God does it all the time). The two of you will reinforce each other as an intense form of peer pressure / persuasion. It’s part of the reason why this teaching intuitively feels so ‘impossible’ to you right now. You’re regularly having sex with her, which literally makes you chemically addicted to her, and her to you.
 
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