L
L.C.Clench
Guest
Despite being in a long Catholic marriage, I have come to doubt whether even the legitimate, non-contraceptive performance of the Marital Act may be licitly enjoyed. I am not questioning that the actual performance of the Act is licit; my doubts concern whether it is moral and licit to take pleasure in the performance of the Act. As is well known, St. Augustine wrote that spousal performance of the Act was always sinful.
When I first read in #2362 that the Catechism calls for “a chaste union of the spouses,” I questioned what marital chastity meant; it seemed to me a contradiction. The first explanation I got was that chastity in marriage meant the right-ordered use of the sexual faculty and the non-objectification of the spouses. This response did not satisfy me for 2 reasons: 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.” In a separate article, the Catholic Encyclopedia then defines continence as “abstinence from even the licit gratifications of marriage.” These definitions seem to mean that pleasure, as opposed to the Act itself, is to be at least restrained if not totally denied, even within marriage.
I am aware that Vatican II states that the ends of marriage are both procreative and unitive. I do not question this. However, the accidents of biology (not artifically interfered with) determine whether a given Act is procreative; the physics of the Marital Act render it unitive. In neither of these is pleasure a necessary component, not have I found any Church document that explicitly states that it is moral and good for a couple to take pleasure in the Act. That the Act may be pleasurable at a biological level does not mean that such pleasure shouldn’t be prayerfully resisted, nor does such pleasure seem intrinsically a part of the procreative and unitive ends.
I am old enough to remember “pre-Cana conferences” and the many warnings about “unbridled passion” and the modesty expected within marriage promoted then (darkness, remaining clothed at all times). Perhaps as I have aged, the Manichean elements of my 1950’s pariochial New England upbringing are coming out. My conscience has always been troubled by this, but never more than now.
When I first read in #2362 that the Catechism calls for “a chaste union of the spouses,” I questioned what marital chastity meant; it seemed to me a contradiction. The first explanation I got was that chastity in marriage meant the right-ordered use of the sexual faculty and the non-objectification of the spouses. This response did not satisfy me for 2 reasons: 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.” In a separate article, the Catholic Encyclopedia then defines continence as “abstinence from even the licit gratifications of marriage.” These definitions seem to mean that pleasure, as opposed to the Act itself, is to be at least restrained if not totally denied, even within marriage.
I am aware that Vatican II states that the ends of marriage are both procreative and unitive. I do not question this. However, the accidents of biology (not artifically interfered with) determine whether a given Act is procreative; the physics of the Marital Act render it unitive. In neither of these is pleasure a necessary component, not have I found any Church document that explicitly states that it is moral and good for a couple to take pleasure in the Act. That the Act may be pleasurable at a biological level does not mean that such pleasure shouldn’t be prayerfully resisted, nor does such pleasure seem intrinsically a part of the procreative and unitive ends.
I am old enough to remember “pre-Cana conferences” and the many warnings about “unbridled passion” and the modesty expected within marriage promoted then (darkness, remaining clothed at all times). Perhaps as I have aged, the Manichean elements of my 1950’s pariochial New England upbringing are coming out. My conscience has always been troubled by this, but never more than now.
