Marital debt, ABC, and material support

[twf]

This is a couple part question. I understand that it is not necessarily sinful for a Catholic spouse to engage in relations with his or her spouse while they are using artificial birth control as long as a) the Catholic spouse has expressed the Church’s teaching on the matter / his her personal opposition and b) does not directly engage in the birth control his or herself.
That being said, how does the marital debt enter in? Is a good Catholic spouse **obliged ** to have relations with a contracepting spouse?
Finally, what about material cooperation in terms of finances?
This isn’t completely hypothetical. My Protestant wife is pushing very hard for ABC and is not open to even discussing natural family planning at the moment. We welcomed our son into the world 8 weeks ago and I think she’s still a little traumatized by the trials of pregnancy, the emergency c-section, etc. The reality is we are in a bit of a stalemate and haven’t had relations since before our son was born. It hasn’t become a major issue as of yet as we are still adjusting to being new parents and things are otherwise good…but I know it will continue to grow. Earlier in our marriage she was on “the pill” for a number of months and while we did continue to have relations, and I brought it to the confessional and was assured there was no sin on my part, it definitely continued to be a mood killer for me…just the very thought of it. I was overjoyed when she went off it. Now, more than a year later, I feel we are back to square one.
In regards to my third question above, I’m the sole breadwinner at the moment, so in a sense I would be financing the birth control. When she was previously on the pill, she was working and her work covered it…
Thanks.

 

[pensmama87]

Is it possible your wife is suffering from PPD? Would she be open to counseling? Would you, to see how you could best help her?

 

[Blessedwithfive]

I’m pretty sure the pill is covered under all health insurance plans. For free, thanks to Obamacare.

No sin on your part and her sin might be lessened by her emotional state.

 

[ahollars]

Show her this:

10 Reasons I Stopped Birth Control Pills

Not all of the solutions she lists in the article are moral, but the point is that you don’t need a moral argument for why birth control is not a good idea.

 

[Xantippe]

Is it possible your wife is suffering from PPD? Would she be open to counseling? Would you, to see how you could best help her?

Right.

Your wife seems to be having an extremely panicky reaction to new motherhood. If I were you, I would work on the problem of restoring her mental equilibrium and back off on demanding stuff from her.

Women get CRAZY at certain fairly predictable times, and this is one of them.

Get serious about getting to the bottom of this and don’t get side-tracked by minutiae.

 

[1ke]

The answer to your questions is NO you are not sinning by having relations or because you are the sole breadwinner and she chooses to use some of your money buy contraception (and probably doesn’t actually buy it since it’s covered under insurance, which you have no control over).

As to obligation, yes, we do have a duty to the marital debt if you are talking bare minimum. Try to get over your emotional issues with her contraception. It’s not a rejection of you. It’s what she’s been taught her entire life.

Also, at only 8 weeks PP, I’m sure she’s having lots of adjustment and maybe even some depression. NOW isn’t the time to talk about it at all. If she didn’t already know NFP, now also isn’t the time to learn it.

 

[wild_thing]

8 weeks postpartum? I wouldn’t go there right now. :nope:

 

[UbiCaritas]

8 weeks postpartum? I wouldn’t go there right now. :nope:

Smart decision, that.

OP, when I had our DD, I had a pretty rough time afterwards. Crazy hormones plus what was, in retrospect, severe and untreated PPD. By the time DD was a month old, I was seriously considering either going on birth control and not telling my DH or getting sterilized, because I was sure I could never, ever go through that hell again. I was totally exhausted, badly depressed, and nothing ever seemed to go right.

Now I’m pregnant with #3 (we lost #2 in an early miscarriage).

I never did go on birth control, nor did I get sterilized. This was partly thanks to the ease of Marquette’s postpartum NFP method (you get a firm yes/no from a monitor every day, no interpretation by exhausted/hormonal mom needed), and partly because I just dragged myself through a day or a week at a time.

I mentioned to my husband once that I’d been thinking about birth control because I was so scared of ever getting pregnant again. I was terrified that he’d be angry at or disappointed in me, as we have agreed never to use it, but I just blurted it out in the middle of a crying jag. Smart man that he is, he just nodded understandingly and gave me a hug, and never, ever pressured me for sex when we didn’t know for sure that I was infertile. If he’d reacted negatively, it probably would have been the last straw that would have had me on birth control the next day.

OP, as others have suggested, please help your wife get help. She might need you to call her OB and make that appointment, and/or stay home from work for a half day in order to help with the baby when she goes to that appointment. Do it. Insofar as how she’s adjusting to new motherhood: are you helping? Can you get up with your son at night? Even if she’s breastfeeding, you could get up, change junior, hand him to your wife to nurse, and then, once she’s done, have her go back to sleep while you put him down. I can tell you that that would have made a MAJOR difference for me; I was BFing at first, so DH never had to do anything at night (mind you, I never asked…), and as a result I was angry and resentful and felt like I was doing all the hard parts of parenting on my own while he’d come home, tickle her toes for a few minutes and be the superstar parent…who routinely got 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep plus regular meals, neither of which I had. Not a good dynamic.

One last point: while you needn’t discuss this here, of course, she might not even be ready for sex yet. Even though she had a C-section (I did, too), intercourse the first few times post-baby can be very painful and not especially pleasant for the woman. Dealing with that aspect (sex used to be fun, now it just hurts even if I want it, which I might not thanks to sleep deprivation and hormones) on top of everything else can be really rough.

 

[Xantippe]

:

One last point: while you needn’t discuss this here, of course, she might not even be ready for sex yet. Even though she had a C-section (I did, too), intercourse the first few times post-baby can be very painful and not especially pleasant for the woman. Dealing with that aspect (sex used to be fun, now it just hurts even if I want it, which I might not thanks to sleep deprivation and hormones) on top of everything else can be really rough.

Yes. One of the issues in play is, “Oh, goody, I could get pregnant at 3 months postpartum from having sex that I didn’t want and don’t even enjoy!”

Don’t be raising any heavy issues until she’s regularly sleeping six hours at a time.

 

[SWolf]

As to obligation, yes, we do have a duty to the marital debt if you are talking bare minimum. Try to get over your emotional issues with her contraception.

Actually, there is no marital debt when the other in contracepting. Having marital relations in this situation depends on three criteria.

"13) Special difficulties are presented by cases of cooperation in the sin of a spouse who voluntarily renders the unitive act infecund… This cooperation can be licit when the three following conditions are jointly met: 1) when the action of the cooperating spouse is not already illicit in itself; 2) when proportionally grave reasons exist for cooperating in the sin of the other spouse; 3) when one is seeking to help the other spouse to desist from such conduct (patiently, with prayer, charity, and dialog; although not necessarily in that moment, nor on every single occasion).

It’s not a rejection of you. It’s what she’s been taught her entire life.

Unfortunately, this is not true. It is a rejection of his fertility.

It’s only going to get harder when you start raising the kids Catholic. Good leadership is going to be of paramount importance. Good luck.

 

[Tigre]

Bring this to your spiritual director. If you don’t have one, make an pastoral appointment with your regular confessor.

I was in your same shoes. I now have a four month old. In my experience, the best possible thing I did was to bring this to my spiritual director (who is also my priest) and to TRUST his guidance.

Also, In my experience, the worst thing I did was waste several months before I brought it to my spiritual director, constantly fretting and second-guessing my own moral judgments while continually running to reconciliation “just in case.”

This is a terribly complicated issue. I found peace when I brought it openly and honestly to His priest with a firm decision to trust the result. Will pray for you.

 

[1ke]

Actually, there is no marital debt when the other in contracepting. Having marital relations in this situation depends on three criteria.

He already stated he is aware of and in conformity with the three criteria.

The Church doesn’t teach “there is no marital debt” if one spouse is acting in an immoral manner. The whole reason the Vademecum discusses this is to avoid spouses REFUSING the marriage debt unnecessarily.

Unfortunately, this is not true. It is a rejection of his fertility.

I disagree.

 

[jmjZelie]

Actually, there is no marital debt when the other in contracepting.

Thank for mentioning this, SWolf. I have seen the assertion made, that the marital debt still applies even when one spouse is contracepting, several times on this forum. It is not true.

It may be prudent to consent to relations with a contracepting spouse, but it is not obligatory. The marriage debt only applies to natural conjugal relations, not to any other form of sexual satisfaction.

See here:
The Way of the Lord Jesus
twotlj.org/G-2-9-E.html

From the theological work, written by Germaine Grisez, a Catholic theologian:

“Paul’s formulation makes it clear that the obligation is mutual; in this matter, husband and wife are entirely equal. The reason is that in marrying, the two become one so truly that neither may regard his or her body as exclusively his or her own.174
Like all other affirmative obligations, this one has limits, and it must be understood correctly. Nobody can have an obligation to do what is wrong, and so there is no obligation to cooperate in intercourse if the couple morally ought to abstain, whether to avoid pregnancy or for some other reason. Again, the obligation is to engage in marital intercourse, and so there is no obligation to cooperate if contraception is used, or if one’s spouse cannot engage in a human act, for example, due to alcohol or other substance abuse. Furthermore, as will be explained (in H.2.a), an adulterous spouse loses his or her right to marital intimacy.”

 

[jmjZelie]

He already stated he is aware of and in conformity with the three criteria.

The Church doesn’t teach “there is no marital debt” if one spouse is acting in an immoral manner. The whole reason the Vademecum discusses this is to avoid spouses REFUSING the marriage debt unnecessarily.

I disagree.

1ke,
please see my post above, where I link to Germaine Grisez’s explanation of this moral dilemma. The marriage debt applies only to marital acts. The Church does not call contracepted relations marital acts. Hence, the marriage debt cannot be invoked for contracepted relations. However, the spouse does have the option to comply, if it seems prudent to preserve the marriage. But there is no obligation. There is a difference between the Church giving a freedom to an innocent spouse, and placing an obligation on the innocent spouse.

 

[Xantippe]

Unfortunately, this is not true. It is a rejection of his fertility.

It’s only going to get harder when you start raising the kids Catholic. Good leadership is going to be of paramount importance. Good luck.

It may be (on some level) a rejection of his fertility, but you might equally say that she is rejecting her own fertility. In fact, if she is planning on altering her own body chemistry so as not to ovulate, that’s a more natural way to look at it. Now, if she were hounding him to get a vasectomy, that would be different.

In any case, I don’t think it’s very helpful to the OP to phrase it that his wife is rejecting his fertility, because it focuses the attention on the offence to him, rather than on his wife’s likely psychological condition. She’s almost certainly in a hormonally altered state where fear and paranoia have taken over her mind. (We had a recent CAF new mom poster who was afraid to bathe her baby in a baby tub or use commercial baby wipes–PPD does crazy things to otherwise normal and sensible women.)

Get her out of the fear, and it will be possible to have a normal conversation with her. But as long as she is paralyzed by fear, there’s no point in arguing.

 

[Xantippe]

Also, for anybody who believes the OP should “get tough” with his wife–bear in mind that you can’t scare people out of being scared.

 

[SWolf]

Thank for mentioning this, SWolf. I have seen the assertion made, that the marital debt still applies even when one spouse is contracepting, several times on this forum. It is not true.

It may be prudent to consent to relations with a contracepting spouse, but it is not obligatory. The marriage debt only applies to natural conjugal relations, not to any other form of sexual satisfaction.

See here:
The Way of the Lord Jesus
twotlj.org/G-2-9-E.html

From the theological work, written by Germaine Grisez, a Catholic theologian:

Looks like I have a book for my reading list.

 

[UbiCaritas]

Also, for anybody who believes the OP should “get tough” with his wife–bear in mind that you can’t scare people out of being scared.

Speaking of being scared, there’s another aspect to this. OP, you mentioned that your wife had an emergency C-section. I don’t know why, nor do I need to. However, I will say this: I had a CS as well, and even my very pro-VBAC (and pro-life, large family, etc!) OB made it eminently clear that I absolutely must not get pregnant again for 10-12 months after that, because doing so significantly increases the risk of uterine rupture along the CS scar and corresponding maternal hemorrhage/likely (if the rupture occurs outside of a hospital) fetal death/possible emergency hysterectomy in order to stop the bleeding. This is probably on your wife’s mind, too.

I was scared of a lot of things postpartum: ever having to deal with the pain and exhaustion again, trying to handle two kids at once, etc, but dying or getting a hysterectomy in my mid-twenties if I messed up NFP or if it failed in some way was pretty high on my list of things I was scared of, and not at all without reason. Between the health risks, the PPD, the pain/stress/exhaustion, I was, frankly, more like a wounded animal than a human being, mental-health wise. I generally couldn’t think rationally. The smallest thing, like the baby waking up early from a nap, seemed like it would, in my head, lead to a total catastrophic series of events. In my head, “baby slept for 20 minutes rather than 90=I don’t rest=I make a stupid mistake, like not mixing the formula properly, which could kill the baby, or fall asleep driving, or misread the (extremely simple) monitor display and have sex on a day I could get pregnant and die nine months later.” I thought about suicide daily, sometimes hourly, for the first 9 months of DD’s life.

Had someone’s reaction to me been “you horrible person, how could you even consider birth control under those circumstances, you disgust me” (OP, I am not saying this is your perspective; I’m just trying to give the perspective of someone with bad PPD), it probably would have put me over the edge. Birth control is wrong, period, but when you have that constant, frantic, wounded-animal mindset, you aren’t thinking clearly about anything except trying to survive, literally survive, the next ten minutes. A person like that doesn’t need condemnation; she needs help to get to the point that she can think rationally again.

 

[Sen]

I was your wife 7 months ago OP. I was recovering from a very hard pregnancy, recovering from a c-section, and honestly parenting a newborn was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I was exhausted, depressed, the whole thing was like a slow moving nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from. And I wanted to go on birth control to keep it from happening again.

I knew it was wrong, I knew why it was wrong, I knew the church teachings and at one time had even agreed with them, I knew all this and I didn’t care. I didn’t even care that it hurt my husband. I was frantic, I felt like birth control was the only way I could protect myself, I had no faith in NFP.

My husband promised me we could abstain until we got it figured out. But first, before any discussion of NFP/birth control could happen I needed to be treated for postpartum depression. It was at the root of a lot of the problems I was having.

We ended up abstaining for the 6 months that my doctor told me it would be dangerous for me to get pregnant again in. Once the ppd was treated and I was able to think straight again I agreed to research different methods of NFP and we now use Marquette very conservatively. The monitor has been a life saver, it takes all the guess work out of it. It is very expensive though.

I would really encourage you to be gentle with your wife right now OP. I know if my husband had gotten tough with me or pressured me or tried to forbid me to go on BC during that period, with the state of mind I was in, I don’t know what I would have done but it wouldn’t have been good. I probably would have gone on birth control in secret, with an IUD or something like that. Might have done something more drastic. I was in a very bad place emotionally and mentally.

 

[Xantippe]

Speaking of being scared, there’s another aspect to this. OP, you mentioned that your wife had an emergency C-section. I don’t know why, nor do I need to. However, I will say this: I had a CS as well, and even my very pro-VBAC (and pro-life, large family, etc!) OB made it eminently clear that I absolutely must not get pregnant again for 10-12 months after that, because doing so significantly increases the risk of uterine rupture along the CS scar and corresponding maternal hemorrhage/likely (if the rupture occurs outside of a hospital) fetal death/possible emergency hysterectomy in order to stop the bleeding. This is probably on your wife’s mind, too.

I was scared of a lot of things postpartum: ever having to deal with the pain and exhaustion again, trying to handle two kids at once, etc, but dying or getting a hysterectomy in my mid-twenties if I messed up NFP or if it failed in some way was pretty high on my list of things I was scared of, and not at all without reason. Between the health risks, the PPD, the pain/stress/exhaustion, I was, frankly, more like a wounded animal than a human being, mental-health wise. I generally couldn’t think rationally. The smallest thing, like the baby waking up early from a nap, seemed like it would, in my head, lead to a total catastrophic series of events. In my head, “baby slept for 20 minutes rather than 90=I don’t rest=I make a stupid mistake, like not mixing the formula properly, which could kill the baby, or fall asleep driving, or misread the (extremely simple) monitor display and have sex on a day I could get pregnant and die nine months later.” I thought about suicide daily, sometimes hourly, for the first 9 months of DD’s life.

Had someone’s reaction to me been “you horrible person, how could you even consider birth control under those circumstances, you disgust me” (OP, I am not saying this is your perspective; I’m just trying to give the perspective of someone with bad PPD), it probably would have put me over the edge. Birth control is wrong, period, but when you have that constant, frantic, wounded-animal mindset, you aren’t thinking clearly about anything except trying to survive, literally survive, the next ten minutes. A person like that doesn’t need condemnation; she needs help to get to the point that she can think rationally again.

Wow! I’m really glad you’re feeling better.

But yes, OP, that is the sort of stuff that could be going on in your wife’s head right now. She’s not necessarily sharing even a fraction of it with you–I bet UbiCaritas wasn’t with her husband.

idph.state.il.us/about/womenshealth/factsheets/pdpress.htm