Marital debt duty to have sex

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I find it disturbing that people are basing their advice on writings that are over several hundred years old…some well over a thousand years old.

We know how human sexuality works, now. Physcially and psychologically. This knowledge wansn’t available when some of these conclusions were developed. Does that bother anyone else?
 
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I wouldn’t say it bothers me more than it gives me context as to why people say what they do
 
tafan2 said:
is she being reasonable in her refusal
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This is no more enlightening than saying uncharitable conduct is not loving.

The issue is surely what conduct actually constitutes “unreasonable decline”. And even more important who decides this and then who decides when this is, further, personal sin.

You make it rather clear that in your marriage the declinee is the one to decide…and unilaterally so. As a Christian that seems repugnant to me.

Ok, you will, thankfully, not pursue your wife physically if she refuses a third time for what you decide are trivial reasons, but clearly you will resent the rebuff and consider her to have sinned for not wanting to try and warm to your irresistable charms.

That seeming self righteous, chauvenist attitude alone, for me, is itself reasonable grounds for decline.
I get it you will disagree.

But like I say, why do you think you alone get to decide what is or is not reasonable or personally sinful? That attitude is sinful … as Jesus indicated.
 
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In his defense, he has said that the refused spouse needs to assume the other is being reasonable,instead of going off thinking she has sinned.
 
I think what bothers me is not just what you mention, but also the historical context. Because of the rigid “marital debt” dogma, many cultures didn’t have any concept of marital rape. By virtue of getting married, a woman consented to any an all sex that could occur in her marriage. I believe this mentality still exists in some religious groups.
 
Man this thread is hilarious!

I am trying not to picture some people’s sex life but finding the mentioned scenarios almost comical. Having to guilt, plead or ask for a relevant reason for sexual refusal does not seem like a natural aphrodisiac. Nor does it allude to a particularly enjoyable time for either party.

This and other threads conjures up images of poor women putting up with a very little foreplay, guilt tripping with the added bonus of a potential pregnancy.

As someone who has been married for 16 years and practiced NFP for 12 it doesn’t have to be like this! Mutual respect, love and generosity can lead to a truly fulfilling love life. If I or my husband are not in the mood, so be it! Sometimes life gets in the way. We’ve had periods when kids/work is demanding and the frequency has become low. Other times when things are easier the count is much higher. If my husband called on his ‘debt’ during those times it would have seriously eroded my respect for him.
At the end of the day communication, love and understanding will get you much more loving than the alternative.
 
Lea101 said:
In his defense, he has said that the refused spouse needs to assume the other is being reasonable,instead of going off thinking she has sinned.
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Fair enough, but what if the wife simply said I am not in the mood and am not in the mood to be put in the mood or provided a similar clear but trivial reason?
I would accept that one off declines for trivial reasons are acceptable. I am not sure T2 agrees.

I agree that continual repeated medium term declines for trivial reasons indicates a serious issue.
Calling it personally sinful is out of line for a number of reasons. Not the least of which is it indicates demonising and again that chauvenistic attitude … that is the declined is self righteously unaware they too may also have disordered conduct that has led to this impasse. That conduct may have nothing to do with sex but plenty to do with other aspects of their relationship.
 
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Personally I hate the terms “obligation” and “debt” to refer to sex in a loving marriage.
I can’t imagine a quicker libido killer that those terms and it reduces love making/sex to an “act” or a chore.

I think what it is ultimately getting at is that marriage should not be sexless altogether.
Ie:if a wife or husband consistently doesn’t feel like sex then the right thing to do for the marriage is for the person to try to seek out treatment for whatever the cause is-hormonal/medical or psychological or overly tired etc…

That needs to be balanced though with the reality that some things may not be fixable such as a spinal cord issue or vulvodynia etc and if that’s the case I think the spouse should be compassionate and that be their cross.
This is just my view and I don’t know if it’s the Catholic Church view.

It’s important to keep in mind that a husband is meant to try to act Christlike and not selfish so a good man would never demand sex off his wife just for his pleasure and if it affected her psychologically.

I think this “sex obligation” teaching is meant to be for couples that just say no to sex because they aren’t in the mood that moment but change their mood once start kissing and not meant to be used by a selfish person to just demand sex whenever they want and to hold the teaching over someone’s head because this is like psychological/spiritual abuse.

Realistically,some couples have different libidos but if a person was like an unreasonable sex maniac then I think it’s their responsibility to seek treatment to bring that to healthy average man level and not expect his wife to just have sex whenever he feels like it.
 
Where can I find a man like this 😉?
These days both men and women are expected to work.
 
I made it clear that this thread is how I judge my own behavior. These thrrads are about how we should behave, I stated explicitly multiple times that I hope no one is using this to judge their spouses. So don’t accuse me of that judging my wife, I don’t.

And I have made it clear the spouse who gets to decide what’s reasonable is the one who is responding to the request. The spouse who requested should always assume declining is reasonable.

Please do not completely turn my arguments around.

There have been three very good thelogical references provided on this thread which explain the marraige debt. Those of you who disagree with them have provided zero sources to back up your claims. One can only assume they do not exist, so instead you are left with the option of misrepresenting others’ statements.
 
Rozellelily said:
What do you mean by “injured spouse” please?
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I mean injured in the legal sense. If someone does not give us what we are owed, then we are injured. So if a woman is owed sex and her husband refuses without a good reason, then she is injured. Obviously, if there was a good reason then she wouldn’t be owed sex and then she wouldn’t be injured.
 
tafan2 said:
Paul wrote his Epistles in the 12th century?

St Augustine also taught the marriage debt.

Rabbinnic Judaism also taught the marriage debt, albeit I have been told it only applied to the husband (he could not refuse his wife).

It certainly originated a long, long time before your claim.
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I quoted my source. You did not. Augustine’s concept of the “debt” in marriage is not identical to the later concept of the marriage debt. Rabbinic Judaism also does not have the identical concept as you’ve got the whole man and woman being universally called to marriage. And historically the man being called to not refuse his wife was not solely a Jewish thing. Women were first thought of as whores with stronger sex drives than men before they were thought of as prudes. It isn’t until you get into demonizing everything about sexual expression that men start believing women just don’t like sex. Add in some extra emphasis of moralizing refusal and suddenly he thinks it’s woman’s nature not to be sexual, not that he is turning her into a masturbation tool.

St. Paul admits his teaching is not a command but a concession, much like how Moses allowance of divorce was a moral concession. The marriage debt falls short of what charity demands of us.

In the context, St. Paul sees marriage as an occassion of sin. Married couples abuse each other and commit all sorts of sins against each other. He wants people to avoid that and thus avoid marriage to avoid that sort of strife. At the same time, he recognizes that some who avoid marriage end up doing worse sexual sins. Sexual immorality is spoken about generally and does not specifically address masturbation. He references hiring a prostitute at one point. It takes a few centuries for humanity to even develop names for specific sexual sins outside of words like adultery, fornication, prostitution.

But suffice it to say, St. Paul’s advice doesn’t go far enough into authentic Christian charity. He doesn’t know how to give such advice. Instead, he simply focuses on avoiding one type of sin in marriage and his advice falls short of actual charity.
 
The marital debt is how spouses should ideally respond to each other, not something one partner is supposed to call in as a coercion tactic and certainly not something to be taken by force.
 
tafan2 said:
I made it clear that this thread is how I judge my own behavior. These thrrads are about how we should behave, I stated explicitly multiple times that I hope no one is using this to judge their spouses. So don’t accuse me of that judging my wife, I don’t.
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Your posts do seem internally dissonant. Regardless of whether or not you personally judge your wife as venially sinning or not you do still seem to judge certain abstract behaviours as objectively sinful which I believe finds no actual Catholic support.
I happen to think, for many reasons sex is extremely important. So I am utterly surprised that people are arguing its okay for them to refuse sex with their spouse for no other reason than they want to watch a football game or read a book.
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This is perfectly acceptable and in no way grave nor venial matter. That you would compare this to not feeding your hungry children for a day is abhorrent.
Yes sex is extremely important in marriage…but only in the longer term. Food is different.
 
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Wesrock said:
The marital debt is how spouses should ideally respond to each other, not something one partner is supposed to call in as a coercion tactic and certainly not something to be taken by force.
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Has anyone suggested it be used as a coercive tactic?
 
Wesrock said:
The marital debt is how spouses should ideally respond to each other, not something one partner is supposed to call in as a coercion tactic and certainly not something to be taken by force.
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The marriage debt is an older term the Church has done away with. And it did involve morally coercing a partner into sex. Moreover, I don’t think there’s any concept of it that shows complete generosity and love. We are called to responsible parenthood. By Humanae Vitae, large families should only spring out of prudent generocity. It acknowledges that with our awareness of how fertility works, we are sometimes called to abstinence. Indeed, sex can be sinful in marriage if it is gravely imprudent.

I said this to my Dad ages ago when I learned about his vasectomy to save my mom’s life. She’s had four high risk pregnancies in 3 years. They sucked at NFP because my mom considered it a sin to refuse him. Generally they just said that NFP didn’t work. Had she not gone through the high risk pregnancies, they would have just said “We’re called to have a large family.” That was their mental work around. But her nearly dying challenged them into believing they had a moral exception to the rule.

I lacked a bit of sympathy because I was young, but I pretty much just yelled at him “If NFP doesn’t work well enough, then total abstinence. Sex isn’t loving if its going to kill your spouse. You are a murderer in that case. You shouldn’t let your lust control you to that level.”

Now that I’m older and appreciate that people have higher libidos than me and that my difficulties with chastity are more on the anorexic end of the moral spectrum, I recognize that he did his best. It would have been far worse had he chosen to ignore the health of my mother entirely. It just wasn’t a morally perfect step. He wasn’t ready to make it yet.

We ultimately have to understand where we all are on our journey and recognize how lust effects each and every one of us. For me, I have trouble with engaging in sex at all. I’d love to be more generous to my husband, but the ways in which I’ve tried to control it have only made things worse. So I know that if I am to grow in chastity I must be willing to be humble enough to express my love as fully as I am able to in the moment, gradually learning self mastery rather than letting my pride eat me away because I could have avoided XY and Z sin easily…just not in a way that wouldn’t have harmed our overall ability to engage in sex at all.

And from that experience, I know that telling anyone, even an elderly couple, that they should lessen their expression of love if it can’t be expressed perfectly is not what Catholicism is trying to preach at all.
 
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