If they are inclined to regard each other as lovers… even chaste lovers, which naturally calls for a degree of commitment and exclusivity… rather than disinterested friends, who while walking alongside each other, have no ‘couple’ ties… then they are indulging their disordered inclination in an inappropriate way. Yes.
They don’t use romantically-coded words to talk about their relationship. I don’t know if they’re “disinterested” friends, because I still don’t know what that means, but they think of each other as very close friends, and that friendship is their most important human relationship.
You would be the rare individual if puberty did not bring on a new and markedly different appreciate of the opposite sex as a result of beginning to appreciate oneself as a sexual being and being quite different in that respect.
I fully acknowledge that my experience is rare and pretty weird.
That standard would fail. It is the same one heretics use to reject church reasoning on the matter. For example sex as a conjugal meeting of complementary genital parts requires male and female body parts. But they would say, that is no reason that OTHER conjugal acts could not be done! They would say that there are other purposes such as pleasure and while creating a child requires male and female body parts, pleasure does not and nothing should stop them from pursuing that pleasure just because a baby doesn’t result from it! So using this as a principle is unworkable: erotic acts do not “require” male and female, only fruitful (making babies) does. One must rely on other principles to determine why ONLY fruitful sex can be performed. Why potential children must ALWAYS be a part of it and not just one of the goals.
Because unity and procreation are the natural purpose of sex.
Does cuddling have a “natural purpose”? What is it?
You also do not need to combine maleness and femaleness to achieve erotic desire yet erotic desire is only licit in marriage.
Desire is not an action. I don’t think. It’s properly part of the larger marital act, which is complementary.
It’s not so much about whether you can do something with only one gender, in some sense, but whether you lose an essential aspect of it.
good ends generically are not in any case necessarily the moral qualifier if they are not the properly ordered end. Practically every human endeavor sinful or moral has some good end driving it.
There is simply no way of saying that what is the standard human way is irrelevant to questions of what is not standard or abnormal. About disordered, the natural purpose determines that.
But I don’t see any reason to believe that some of these actions
have a natural purpose, or that the natural purpose requires a marital relationship. Again, what is the natural purpose of cuddling? Of going on a “date”?
I you look at “standard” or common American behavior, we might conclude that premarital sex was the natural way of things, and that orthodox Catholics are “abnormal” if they remain chaste. I think reasoning about what is disordered has to be based on something other than the majority opinion of fallen world.
Such as? Its always easy to dismiss any argument with reference to intangible "could be"s if we don’t ground them to reality. What would be the natural purpose of such exclusive emotional partnering? Do we have such examples in nature besides mating?
I thought we weren’t supposed to compare animals to humans to explain why something might be “natural”. That’s what people always say when non-Catholics bring up homosexuality in animals.
Anyway, possible reasons might include increased economic and emotional stability, constant support from someone who will always look out for you, the chance to be a serve someone on a daily and consistent basis, less worry and stress, and not having to tackle the various difficulties of life alone.
Indeed they can exist on their own. As can erotic pleasure or non-procreative sex. But what would nature have in mind to draw two people to exclusive partnering. Shared faith, trust, respect are all aspects of friendship and communal living. they are not tied to the exclusive partnering. something else must be the more essential or the main “point” of this partnership besides these.
Yes, but trust and respect are
good on their own. Neither is the main “point” of marriage- that would be helping each other grow in holiness (something friends can do, too), and creating families (something friends cannot do).
What I’m asking is, how do we know that exclusive partnership is something friends cannot do, something that rightly takes place only in marriage?
I edited it to say pleasure (not desire).