Sexual pleasure doesn’t equal lust. You could argue, but the Church teaches that lusting after someone or something is immoral. Desiring our spouses…is not immoral, as long as the act is procreative and unitive in nature.
Thank you, manualman, I can see that in essence we agree.
I g-g-g-guess our perspectives are close enough here so that I can say we agree.
***I guess I can’t leave well enough alone. I’m MORE frequently shocked at how many catholics are completely ignorant of and apathetic about God’s revelation about the beauty of healthy married sexuality and the ugly abuses of it that are so universal in the culture we live in. I almost have to wonder where you live that your experience finds more repressed “sex is dirty” types than “I’m gonna get me some” types.
Father Larry Richard’s take on the topic (and this quote):
Of course, lust is distinct from erotic desire. Aquinas understood lust as a virtue contrary to chastity. Indeed, your advice to a husband to "slobber away" in its dismissal of reason forgets Aquinas' observation that "[t]he more necessary a thing is, the more it behooves one to observe the order of reason in its regard; wherefore the more sinful it becomes if the order of reason be forsaken."(1)It would seem that we are talking past each other. Augustine refers to a fleeting suggestion that occurs to the mind. I refer to a thought, which by its very nature, requires the consent of which Augustine said completes the sin. It would follow then that the mind must be trained to brutally suppress whatever mental imagery could metastasize into an illicit thought. Once that point has been passed, however, you are already just as guilty as though you had committed the act itself.Yes, it’s normal and natural for a man to get aroused that way. Do I think it’s okay for a man to go to the beach strictly to hide behind the changing room and pleasure himself as he peers around the corner at the beach beauties? Absolutely not!
PS–The only thing I disagree with you on TLM, maybe you could elaborate…is you imply in the beginning of this thread that if a man looks at a woman on the beach, and gets sexual thoughts, that is normal. It is biological to have ‘fleeting thoughts’ of a sexual nature, when we see people are might be attractive to us, who come into our view. BUT…it’s not Christian-like to seek out such things. For example, a man is innocently jogging down the beach, a beautiful woman comes into view…he has a fleeting sexual thought–this would be ‘normal.’ But, if that same man decides…I’m going to plant myself on a bench near the beach to purposely watch the babes stroll by, so I can purposely get aroused…that is not normal, that is lustful.
Do you agree?***
You don’t know me or my wife. You can take that pity and focus it into action and do something to help someone today. There are people in this world who are in real pain. There are victims of war, people who are starving, elderly who have nobody to take care of them, scared young girls who are considering abortion.I guess I pity your wife too. She’s in for a world of hurting once age and gravity start catching up with her. Since for you the focus changes from your wife as a total person to your wife as a nice body to enjoy during sex and only changes pack into a person afterwards, what will become of your sex life when her body doesn’t match up with what you see on the beach??
I suggest looking a bit deeper. In a healthy marriage, one’s wife’s body is an inseparable part of HER. Thus, stretch marks and a whole host of other things that time, age and experience bring don’t cause her to be LESS sexy, they are part of her story that you’ve been a part of and have been together through and a strange thing happens: She ends up hotter than those young, firm girls flaunting it on the beach.
That ain’t just physical, my friend and it ain’t lust either. It’s a whole lot better.
Ah, well that does better define things. So if I understand correctly, when you refer to thought, it’s more of a verb versus a noun as in thinking about the fleeting suggestion to the point of sin. Such thinking generates the “thought” which if one has gone that far they are past the point of no return in regards to that sin. I can appreciate that; however, I still struggle with the notion that one might as well commit the act. The sinful thought and the sinful act are two different things, though they are certainly related. One could have a venial sinful thought that turns into a mortally sinful act.
***Yes, thank you for clarifying. I agree, too. I think that it’s important to obsess over it also…obsessing over trying to stop behaviors can have a backfiring effect, at times. I think that one should pray fervently about such issues, and keep striving to become a better person in Christ. ***Yes, it’s normal and natural for a man to get aroused that way. Do I think it’s okay for a man to go to the beach strictly to hide behind the changing room and pleasure himself as he peers around the corner at the beach beauties? Absolutely not!
Is it perfectly okay for him to deliberately soak in those mental images, recall them later and pleasure himself in the privacy of his own home? No… it’s not perfectly okay, but it is extremely common male bahavior, especially among the young.
The most important thing is for us all to learn a little self control when it comes to things of a sexual nature. God has much bigger plans for our sexuality than mere pleasure.
Does this help?
TLM, my apologies. I don’t know you or your wife. My reaction to you was based on the above post. If you’ve been married for over 30 years, then you HAVE to be better in your heart than you sound in this post. By objective standards, no woman’s body looks as arousing at 55+ as she does at 25. But real love isn’t objective about the physical. It’s biased like crazy. And that makes it not lust anymore, but loving passion.During sexual arousal and the intercourse that often follows, men’s focus generally narrows to the physical. It is the female body (face, hair, smile, legs, curves, breasts, etc, etc) that turns men on, thus provoking the male reproductive system to orgasm (and thus introduction of the reproductive elements) For men, sex is really mostly a physical act with someone he deeply loves (his wife).
After sex, in a healthy marriage, the man’s focus once again broadens to encompass the entire person. There is nothing wrong with this and it is not “lust”.
Sigh, sigh, sigh. The problem with orbiting 15 tons of logic around a jargon-type word definition such as you extract from the Catechism is that you also manage, by that process, to stop talking to people.
Men’s bodies change too.
Unless you’re Jack Lalaine (sp?) He is what, over 90, and still looks like he’s 25! 
***