Marital debt duty to have sex

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The issue is not primarily one of who is the more reasonable…though it is of course significant.
Try pushing the decide by reason line and you will likely find yourself divorced. Is that the reasonable outcome you are looking for 🤔🤔🤔
 
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BoomBoomMancini said:
It’s not. Maybe sometimes one spouse decides to go for it even if they’re not exactly raring to go without ever declining, so their spouse doesn’t know. That’s fine and all. But they still have the right to just say “not tonight” and anyone who thinks you can insist in the face of that and have a healthy marriage is either incredibly naive or a psychopath.
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Here’s how I see it:

It’s okay to say every now and then, “No, not tonight because I have a headache/am tired/don’t feel well/etc. but if this happens every single day for an extended period that’s not okay.

In other words, sex isn’t exactly optional in a marriage. Yes, there may be times and reasons when it is necessary to abstain completely, but if all is well, it’s not something like, “If I feel like it, I’ll do it, if I don’t feel like it, that’s okay too.” The two become one — that’s part of marriage.
 
Yup, I agree completely. Prolonged refusals without medical reasons aren’t good, and if one partner finds they have zero libido over the long term they have an obligation to try to address that. Maybe there’s a hormonal problem.
 
I do find it novel that fornication is now so normative in the US that even Christians married since the 1970s do not always seem to understand that the vows actually mean they are freely gifting bodily rights (including their genitals strangely enough) to their partner only and to death.

Now that doesnt mean rape is ok nor that sex cannot be declined for periods of time. But if over the long term a partner does not provide access to a loving act without good reason then essentially that is a form of divorce, a withdrawal of the original gift.
But hey, I am a geriatric, marriage even amongst Christians seems to be defined differently these days!
 
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The days are gone when rape was not possible in marriage my friend…even for Catholics.
You are mistaken.
 
QwertyGirl said:
I can’t imagine a situation where a mentally healthy person would want to have sex with their spouse if the spouse didn’t want to, for whatever reason. How would that be enjoyable for either party?
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As you later say, if a partner refuses a loving approach for no good reason months or years on end then something is seriously wrong with the marriage.
Simply advising the partner its wrong to so decline (which it is for Christians because we gift each other our bodies in marriage) is not going to resolve this serious issue.
One needs to discover why the partner is not desiring to follow through on the generic gift originally vowed.

If one of the partners did not realise the nature of the gifting in the first place then it is likely there is not a marriage bond before God. They must then decide to separate or ratify accordingly. I suppose it could be legitimate to continue cohabiting in an unhappy brother sister pretend marriage for the sake of the children.
Personally, if I discovered my partner didnt realise sex in marriage was part of the original gifting and was perpetually declining for reasons not compatible with a Christian understanding of marriage (and I was not a monster but with a reasonable sex drive)…I would likely sadly separate, seek an annullment and remarry.

Others might rightly decide differently of course.
 
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Yes. If there is a problem, the couple should try to fix it. I just don’t see how it gets fixed by considering sexual relations to be a “debt”. It just doesn’t work for me that way.
 
BoomBoomMancini said:
Does the wife have the right to go “too bad, I insist”
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Does anyone here actually say anything like this seriously?
I couldnt have sex with my partner if I knew he/she wasnt into it. Too deflating both upstairs and down to say the least.
However I dont criticise some younger couples who might start out with one partner climbing the wall and the other, not at all into it, passively granting a quickie. Yes it seems a somewhat dehumanising scenario, yet perhaps not if the parties would be respectful of a no. I believe well intended young couples do grow beyond such scenarios with time. That is the wife (usually) growing to expect more discipline and good timing from her man and the husband respecting his wife as more than an emergency fire extinguisher.
Please excuse the images above, what it lacks in subtelty it gains in clarity and brevity from my android.
 
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Agreed.
Perhaps recall how this old dry academic Latin legalistic expression arose and then got turned into, now, less than appropriate english.

Marriage, legally, is the free gifting of ones body to our only other. The “debt” is surely no more than the gift we ourselves freely gave for all time on our wedding day.

Yes I agree its pretty cras when our significant other forces us 5 years later to pay up on our promise here and now.

But then its equally sad when the giver decides they dont have to bother gifting any more nor work at overcoming whatever unusual obstacles have caused that ongoing reneg.

Obviously a demand to “pay the gift” may well indicate the sort of problematic attitude in the other that causes this reneg in the first place.
 
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That sounds less than honest to me. I would rather we be completely honest with each other. There is always tomorrow.
 
That’s a non-sequitur. Refusal by one spouse to perform the marital duties does not imply that the remedy is for the other spouse to use force. The Law of Love demands that marital relations be given freely, not by force or threat of force.
 
I think you are repling to the wrong person or have your wires crossed somewhere? Quotes are always helpful.
 
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I agree with your post, but do not like your choice of words. Having relations with one’s spouse should not be viewed as a sacrifice.
 
I wish I could Nasser your question, but the vocation of marriage is linked to the church as a sacred vocation. The purpose is to procreate and for the family to live, act, think, work accordingly as a member of the body of Christ. The aim is to love your husband and your wife in holiness, not in self pleasure, for the sake of adulterous passions even within the marriage. Married couples I do know have the obligation to abstain from sex during lent, holy Friday, on vigils of religiously observed holy days. You have a right not to cave in to sex for his own selfish purpose if outside of love and respect for God, the spouse and the family.
 
I love this statement from GK Chesterton
The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types – the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins.
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I think it’s important to recognize that it’s easy to fall into extremes. The Church’s message has had periods of falling into one extreme or the other. The balance comes from a reflection on loving your neighbor as yourself.

I would agree with you that behaving as if sexual consent is only given on the wedding day and that a spouse afterward is never raping their spouse if their coerce, threaten, or physically force sex isn’t wrong is pretty disturbing. That is rape.

Moreover, Humanae Vitae affirms that abstinence is not sinful in marriage. It gives us principles of responsible parenthood in which to make prudent decisions regarding our sexual activity in marriage. The Catechism also calls ALL to chastity, not just those who aren’t sexually active.

Traditionalism is heavily influenced by a very strict thomaistic philosophy, where marriage is reduced to a legitimate way for men to deal with their sexual concupiscence.

I listened to an interview with Christopher West recently where he talked about the backlash against an interview he did. He said one theologian had warned him that promoting JP II’s work would result in persecution by those on the conservative front. The idea of Christ dying for the redemption of our bodies, that chastity entails a self control that is not merely about isolating yourself from temptation and giving yourself the legitimate outlet of marriage. Indeed, the reality is that an unchaste spouse who does not cultivate chastity but rather isolates, rushes into marriage, and expects their spouse to help stop them from sexual sin isn’t failing to sin if they rape their spouse. And it’s stuff like this that does make Aquinas’ words that masturbation is worse than rape disturbing. Because that’s what we’re talking about here…fulfill the marriage debt to stop a sin. I’m sorry, I don’t buy that either. Lust has no place in marriage. Lust is not the sexual urge or arousal either.
 
Was this the Christopher West and Matt Fradd nearly 3 hour interview/talk show? West talked about that situation there. Was a great interview, loved it!
 
MillenialCatholic said:
Married couples I do know have the obligation to abstain from sex during lent, holy Friday, on vigils of religiously observed holy days
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This is nonsense. The Church imposes no such obligations. As Paul counsels it is good to abstain for prayer but only for short periods. It is not a command. We do not follow Jewish priestly purity rituals.
 
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The issue is not purity in marriage.
The issue is your statement about ritual obligations not to have sex. I believe its nonsense, the Church has no such discipline.

In this area there may be counsels, there are not the obligations you enumerated.

Provide me a Magisterial quote if you wish to double down on this one please?

I strongly suggest you stay away from Lifesite News and 1Peter5 as they are well known extreme and less than balanced “Catholic” sites which seem to be unhelpfully reinforcing your tendancies in these areas.
 
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As you are unable to provide an authoritative source for your somewhat extreme and pious view on specific disciplinary obligations to refrain from sex it seems it is no more than that.
If you do find one please come back.
 
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