I am pretty sure a man that cannot have an erection can ejaculate. Maybe I am being really stupid here, and actually believing all the trash I learned about sex, but I thought you can get pregnant when sperm is on or around a woman’s vagina. I am sorry if I am being too clinical here. I think it was the natural family planning folks that told me you can get pregnant without penetration.
Are you really asserting that penetration, or even stranger whether the man is “capable of penetration,” determines whether there can be a pregnancy?The man has to be capable of penetration.
No.Are you really asserting that penetration, or even stranger whether the man is “capable of penetration,” determines whether there can be a pregnancy?
I don’t believe you are the arbiter of what a post is about or not about. I did not interpret his post (or the one immdiately preceding the one I replied to) to be “solely” about pregnancy.If not, what in the world does this part of your response have to do with the language quoted before the response dealing solely with pregnancy possibilities?
You said it!Haven’t you ever hear of women getting pregnant through heavy petting? If a man cannot ejaculate then he is sterile. The Church has different rules concerning being sterile. Being sterile is not an impediment to marriage.
I am pretty sure a man that cannot have an erection can ejaculate. Maybe I am being really stupid here, and actually believing all the trash I learned about sex, but I thought you can get pregnant when sperm is on or around a woman’s vagina. I am sorry if I am being too clinical here. I think it was the natural family planning folks that told me you can get pregnant without penetration.
I applaud the Church for having rules. I really believe rules are very necessary. Much of the wrong in society today is from people breaking the rules.
To be perfectly legalistic about it, all the rules the Church has are guidelines to help us live a good life. If is possible to kill, or murder if you prefer that term, without committing a sin. We are not rejecting the Church by questioning a rule, or even by not following it.
To me, the picture of a couple with children that can no longer have sex avoiding anything that might cause them to want to be intimate is sinful. As I see it, a married couple always has the right to each other’s bodies. As long as the use of the spouses body is acceptable to the spouse, unitive or procreative, I believe that there is plenty of Church teachings that say it is permissible, even mandated.
As I am older, I have experienced times when ejaculation didn’t happen. Wasn’t anything I did to cause it, it just didn’t. Now, since the activities and intent was to ejaculate there is no sin, obviously. I think this is a general truth, if two married people decide to have sex and cannot “finish”, it is not sinful as long as they do everything reasonable to have a normal sexual experience.
As far as seeing a doctor to find out some medical fact, I do not believe the Church requires you to seek out the advice of a doctor to determine if you sin or not.
Remember, to sin there must be intent.
If I have been rude or argumentative, I apologize. But, I would appreciate it if you would review the posts that you and I have exchanged and see if you really think that is true after a new whole review of them.No.
I was referring both to the standard necessary to contract marriage in the Catholic Church (re: Larry’s post regarding the “definition” of impotence) and marital intercourse (re: his stipulation that “petting” was sufficient). It may be sufficient for pregnancy, but not to conform to moral law of the Church.
I don’t believe you are the arbiter of what a post is about or not about. I did not interpret his post (or the one immdiately preceding the one I replied to) to be “solely” about pregnancy.
Please stop posting to me. I will not longer respond to your posts, which on this thread have been rude and argumentative *solely *towards me.
In most of your posts you are saying many things which are heretical by rejecting Church teachings. They are not guidelines that you can choose to follow or not. They are doctrines and disciplines which you MUST accept. I really hope you are not receiving Communion.It is interested how things can get twisted when the perspective isn’t right.
First off, the church says it is ok to have sex when it is not possible to conceive. Doesn’t it? After all, with things like natural family planning it is possible to have sex only when your likelihood of conception is highest. To my knowledge, the Church does not teach that you are only to have sex when you are likely to conceive. It is also ok to have sex when you are too old to have a baby.
Now the Church does teach that you have to be open to having a baby anytime you have sex. What is being said here is that sex must be unitive AND procreative. As long as procreative means open to life, then I got no problem with that. Do you see the difference? If you assume the only time it is ok to have sex is when you are reasonably sure you will finish in your wife and have a good chance of having a baby then you have gone too far. You would be stating that you cannot have sex after menopause.
I agree wholeheartedly that a Catholic couple should have the intent of finishing any sexual encounter with intercourse. I can think of so many things that can happen where a sexual encounter does not end in intercourse that to say that it is sinful is just silly. Consider this, man and wife are being affectionate. Woman gets aroused, wants sex. Man says no, not now. Later. Do you think there is a sin there? Stuff like that happens every day, it is a normal part of life. But, the woman did want sex, there was mutual sexual arousal and it did not finish, at least at that time, with intercourse. Would you call that masturbation and do you think it is sinful? I am pretty sure the Church does not.
And yep, I think that if husband and wife become affectionate with no intent of intercourse, ever, that is a sin. I think they can become affectionate with no intention of having intercourse as much as they want and it isn’t sinful as long as they feel they are meeting their obligation to have intercourse.
I am all for seeing doctors. What I was trying to point out was this.
Suppose you go to a doctor and he tells you you are impotent. You are not required to base your future moral decisions on what he said. I think the Church realizes that doctors simply aren’t that smart. It is the idea that the doctor told me I was impotent, but it turns out I am not. We all know that happens sometimes. As Catholics, at some point we must allow God to have a say. Maybe it is His choice that you not be impotent anymore.
Just because he’s impotent doesn’t mean he can’t produce sperm or ejaculate. An attempt at penetration that results in ejaculation can result in pregnancy.If the impotence was not known prior to the marriage then the marriage could not be annulled but dissolved.
As for consummation of the marriage that is done only through sexual intercourse, i.e. man has to climax inside his wife. Nothing else consummates the marriage.
I’m intrigued to know how a couple could have biological children if the man has permanent untreatable impotence. Please explain.
In the middle ages, they were basically using a “physiologically sterile” definition, to the best of medieval medical knowledge. Sometime in the 1900’s, the Catholic Church modified the canonical definition of impotence slightly, so that now it is halfway between the modern medical definitions of sterility and impotence.You may want to consider that the meaning of words changes as a function of time and location. When the Church wrote an impotent man cannot marry were they using the sterile definition or the erectile definition?
Do you have a citation for that 1900’s canonical definition?In the middle ages, they were basically using a “physiologically sterile” definition, to the best of medieval medical knowledge. Sometime in the 1900’s, the Catholic Church modified the canonical definition of impotence slightly, so that now it is halfway between the modern medical definitions of sterility and impotence.
You are wholly incorrect in your above statements:There are sects in the Catholic Church that live in the past, in a time when the Church was very much into law and authority. Now things are different. What was a mortal sin, not going to Mass on Sunday for example, is no longer something that keeps you from going to Communion the next time you go to Mass. Now I know several of you are just shocked that I should type this, but it is true. And to be specific, you can receive Communion without going to Confession.
That’s irrelevant. Impotence means no erection. No erection means no penetration. No penetration means no consummation.Just because he’s impotent doesn’t mean he can’t produce sperm or ejaculate. An attempt at penetration that results in ejaculation can result in pregnancy.
I was strictly responding to ‘how can a pregnancy occur if the man is permanently impotent?’That’s irrelevant. Impotence means no erection. No erection means no penetration. No penetration means no consummation.
Sorry. I thought you were implying that if somehow the wife can get pregnant even if no penetration takes place the marriage would be consummated.I was strictly responding to ‘how can a pregnancy occur if the man is permanently impotent?’
Acta Aposiolicae Sedis, LXIX, 7 (31 July 1977). p. 426.Do you have a citation for that 1900’s canonical definition?
The link I gave above said the following:There is also this document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith:
Decreto circa l’impotenza che rende nullo il matrimonio (Decretum circa impotentiam quae matrimonium dirimit), May 13, 1977.
Unfortunately I don’t have an English translation and I don’t speak Latin.
Can anyone help on this one?
Thanks.The link I gave above said the following:
The Congregation issued the decree in the form of two questions and two answers: 1) Whether impotence, which renders matrimony invalid, consists in the incapacity, antecedent and perpetual, whether absolute or relative, of performing conjugal copula." Answer: “Affirmative”. “2) In view of the above affirmative, whether ejaculation of semen that has been elaborated in the testicles is necessarily required for conjugal copula.” Answer: “Negative” (3).
Thanks