Is It Licit To ENJOY the Marital Act?

[marcadam]

A lot of folks have posted their own thoughts, but no one has engaged your central error, which seems to be selective research.

L.C.Clench:

As is well known, St. Augustine wrote that spousal performance of the Act was always sinful.

A reference for this would be helpful. He may have said that passion was to be avoided (some chruch fathers even taught against laughing out loud) but I can’t imagine he taught that sexual pleasure of any kind was illicit. Even if he did speculate on that point, his opinion on the matter isn’t binding for catholics. Some context is required.

Your big error is here:

First, the fact that in all other Church uses of the word "chaste,’ it meant NO sex (the vows of “poverty, chastity, and obedience;” references to “St. Joseph her most chaste spouse,” etc.) Second, in checking the Catholic Encyclopedia, I found the following:

“…by chastity the procreative appetite is duly restricted. Understood as interdicting all carnal pleasure, chastity is taken generally to be the same as continency.”

First, it doesn’t pass the basic logic test: if this form of chastity were required in marriage, then not only would enjoying sex be illicit, but all sex would be illicit, since by your reasoning chastity = continence = abstinence.

Second, you make a highly selective and misleading quote of the pertinent CathEn article. Placing your extract in context, we have:
Catholic Encyclopaedia:

Chastity is the virtue which excludes or moderates the indulgence of the sexual appetite. It is a form of the virtue of temperance, which controls according to right reason the desire for and use of those things which afford the greatest sensual pleasures. The sources of such delectation are food and drink, by means of which the life of the individual is conserved, and the union of the sexes, by means of which the permanence of the species is secured. Chastity, therefore, is allied to abstinence and sobriety; for, as by these latter the pleasures of the nutritive functions are rightly regulated, so by chastity the procreative appetite is duly restricted. Understood as interdicting all carnal pleasures, chastity is taken generally to be the same as continency, though between these two, Aristotle, as pointed out in the article on CONTINENCY, drew a marked distinction.

I think it is quite clear that you misunderstood this article.

I have tried to show that your opinion has some other source than actual catholic teaching, in which it has no basis whatsoever. From whence your attitudes derive (Victorian New England upbringing and a wacky pre-Cana instruction, you seem to imply) they do not derive from anything in the teaching authority of the church.

Others have given very good positive reasons why you in fact should make an effort to find pleasure with your wife in every licit way possible; I won’t belabor those points.

 

[Agricola]

So, if I understand OP correctly, human sexuality is a sick joke God is playing on all mankind? :ehh:

God bless,

Agricola

 

[Rebecca_New]

Sure!!But best keep those things to yourself I think I hear the moderator now-bye keep in touch.

 

[JimG]

As I sit here listening to 1950’s rock music while reading the CA forums, it occurs to me that I must have missed out on the Manichean elements of my upbringing. Or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention.

 

[Arrowood]

marcadam:

A lot of folks have posted their own thoughts, but no one has engaged your central error, which seems to be selective research.

Whoa! Way to go marcadam! He really did pull the Catholic Encyclopedia quotations out of context! I don’t know why the claxons didn’t go off in my head louder than they did. I guess we were just trying to be helpful, so we missed the imortance of checking the quotes! Great job pulling us back into reality!

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Agricola:

So, if I understand OP correctly, human sexuality is a sick joke God is playing on all mankind? :ehh:

God bless,

Agricola

That’s the alternative, if one denies that pleasure can be alloweable within marriage.​

Besides, sin is voluntary - not something one stumbles into blind-fold. Why would Matrimony be a sacrament, if the activity that is at the heart of it is a loathsome abomination ? What kind of God would do a foul thing like arranging matters in that way? ##

 

[cynic]

Arrowood:

Secondly, what I mean by “enjoy” is not the emotional reaction toward a good. By “enjoy” I mean “endulge in.” In other words, acting in order to gain the pleasures of the physical world.

For example, if you are eating a steak and you have intense emotions of enjoyment, this is not a sin - and it was not what I meant by “enjoy.” However, if you order five or six steaks, or eat steak every day even though you know it is not good for you, you are engaging in sin because you are “enjoying” steak too much.

Applying this to the question at hand, it would be sinful to see marital sex as evil and to act accordingly. In this case, avoiding the marital embrace would be the sin of insensibility because the act of avoiding sex is a denial of the goodness God placed in it. On the other hand, to treat sex as the only purpose of marriage, or to treat one’s spouse as a means to sexual pleasure rather than as a person to be loved would be to fall to the sin of intemperence.

‘pleasure’ as you seem to define it is a physical sensation. It is not as black and white as that Pleasure is gotten from giving, from acknowedging the entire person, does that mean it is a sin to have relations for these reasons?

 

[spiritblows]

Does anyone, other than me, wonder where the original poster of this thread went?

 

[Al_Masetti]

Ever read the Song of Solomon? [Hint: it’s in the bible]

Ever wonder why God made us with so many nerve endings in the lips and the genital areas?

 

[Arrowood]

‘pleasure’ as you seem to define it is a physical sensation. It is not as black and white as that Pleasure is gotten from giving, from acknowedging the entire person, does that mean it is a sin to have relations for these reasons?

I apologize if I’m being rude, but aren’t you just quibbling? I used the word pleasure to mean the enjoyment of physical goods. If you redefine the term, it changes the argument. If you want to actually argue the issue that’s one thing, but it’s not constructive to nit-pick the use of a word that may be define differently by different people or in different contexts.

Anyway, pleasure is not automatically sinful defined either way. The sin comes from treating another person as a means toward an end rather than an end in itself.

 

[gardenswithkids]

spiritblows:

Does anyone, other than me, wonder where the original poster of this thread went?

What? :bigyikes: Do you mean to imply he’s not a senior member and active participant at CA forums just because he posted one post and ran? Hmm, maybe he was afraid of how we’d answer his question.

 

[spiritblows]

gardenswithkids:

What? :bigyikes: Do you mean to imply he’s not a senior member and active participant at CA forums just because he posted one post and ran? Hmm, maybe he was afraid of how we’d answer his question.

Dear Garden,
Well, my personal theory is that a lot of people have computers, and some of them might like to assume a new personality on an internet posting site, then post one post of a sexual nature in order to see what sort of response they can get, by pretending they are an innocent and faithful inquirerer.

I’m just an interested observer of human nature, and I like to form theories about other posters based on intuitive common sense insights…