Hello brothers and sisters,
I have a question, one that has bothered me for a quite of few reasons… i love the church and its precepts and its truth… i would not give up catholicism for anything because of the eucharist…sometimes its hard to read anti-catholic comment… anyways. my question is as follows…
is intercourse only intended for chidl making (obviously the spouses would have had the sacrament of marriage)… or can a wedded catholic couple have intercourse outside of ti… it seems to me that it would be unfair for it only being for children… while that is the function of our bodies is to pro create… that i understand… i also know that you can do it on the menstrual cycle… as long as you intend to procreate…
i would just bleieve it to be unfair to not be able to enjoy the pleasure of intercourse with your spouse … one of the arguments on the protestant site was that in scripture it says that because the husbands body is subject to the wife and the wife to the husband it therefor means that our "desires’ must be fulfilled…
i fully acknowledge the rational thought of procreation and the not wanting to treat your spouse as a object of enjoyment i am trying to wrap my head around the only having sex for children (because if i only want 2… i think im goin tow ant to have intercourse more than that !)
It is necessary, to avoid sin, to accept children if they occur, but it is not necessary to be fertile or to be in the fertile period. It is necessary to use the proper natural act and deposit reproductive fluid.
From Address to Midwives, Pope Pius XII:The reason is that marriage obliges the partners to a state of life, which even as it confers certain rights so it also imposes the accomplishment of a positive work concerning the state itself. In such a case, the general principle may be applied that a positive action may be omitted if grave motives, independent of the good will of those who are obliged to perform it, show that its performance is inopportune, or prove that it may not be claimed with equal right by the petitioner—in this case, mankind.
The matrimonial contract, which confers on the married couple the right to satisfy the inclination of nature, constitutes them in a state of life, namely, the matrimonial state. Now, on married couples, who make use of the specific act of their state, nature and the Creator impose the function of providing for the preservation of mankind. This is the characteristic service which gives rise to the peculiar value of their state, the bonum prolis. The individual and society, the people and the State, the Church itself, depend for their existence, in the order established by God, on fruitful marriages. Therefore, to embrace the matrimonial state, to use continually the faculty proper to such a state and lawful only therein, and, at the same time, to avoid its primary duty without a grave reason, would be a sin against the very nature of married life.
Serious motives, such as those which not rarely arise from medical, eugenic, economic and social so-called “indications,” may exempt husband and wife from the obligatory, positive debt for a long period or even for the entire period of matrimonial life. From this it follows that the observance of the natural sterile periods may be lawful, from the moral viewpoint: and it is lawful in the conditions mentioned. If, however, according to a reasonable and equitable judgment, there are no such grave reasons either personal or deriving from exterior circumstances, the will to avoid the fecundity of their union, while continuing to satisfy to the full their sensuality, can only be the result of a false appreciation of life and of motives foreign to sound ethical principles.
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Address to Midwives, Given by His Holiness Pope Pius XII, 29 October 1951
So glad your wife is doing better now.