I am not attacking you since you misinterpreted the quote. The OP asked what was permissible in the marital act and I offered a quote that supported that. Again sorry that you misread it.
I would like respectfully to point out that the marital act has two essential purposes: procreation and unity, and that pleasure is not one of them. God gave us sex and intercourse so that we would procreate and multiply, not so that we would experience pleasure. Similarly, He gave us marriage for union, and for unity, and for Sacrament, but not for the sake of pleasure. Whatever can be said about how a woman achieves pleasure doesn’t trump the teaching of the Church on what’s allowed and what’s not.
I would respectfully like to point out you are so far out in left field, it borders on ridiculousness.
)Awesome…Just to reiterate what others have said in response to drafdog:
From reading Love and Responsibility and reading books about JPII’s Theology of the Body, I believe that the female climax need not take place during penetration, so long as it takes place close enough chronologically in order to be considered a part of the same (procreative, unitive) marital act. When moral theologians say that the marital act must “end” with the sperm in the correct place, they don’t mean that it must immediately end as soon as the husband reaches a climax. They are just trying to stress that this step is necessary, otherwise the encounter would not be truly open to life.
I’d like to add that our late Holy Father John Paul II did stress the importance of pleasure during the marital act. He gave special attention to the subject of female orgasm, because in his time as a pastor he saw that the unitive aspect of sexuality between a married couple is thwarted when the wife’s desires go ignored.
I think the bottom line is that selfishness has no place in the marriage bed, because it is the antithesis of love.
(and Monty Python almost has it right, but not quite.
Actually, I don’t recommend this. It will break the fan.
Very well stated! :clapping:
I am going to have to agree with Jez here, I think that you did not interpret what chav said correctly. He is stating that according to the Church the two aspects of marital relations that must be present are the unitive and procreative aspects. Pleasure does not “have” to be there. Yes sex is pleasureable, but it is not required.
But - was it fun?
Sure! Until the fan broke.But - was it fun?
I understand, believe me. But this is what I have brought up before as others have, and maybe it all is just perspective or whatever - you cannot separate the pleasure aspect from sex either. All of these posts from whomever which keep pushing unity/procreation are correct - I agree - that is the purpose of the act. But the way they are stated make it seem as if some of us Catholics who do not *first *think, “Well, are we going to enjoy ph 3 because it is unitive or because it is pleasurable?”, then we’re violating Church teachings. It all comes across as we have to separate the choice and split second decisions - you can’t. I look forward to ph 3 because I get to be with my wife and I can guarantee that part of that is because it is pleasurable, and in giving myself to her, I’m going to do my best to make sure it is incredibly pleasurable for her. And it is unitive and procreative first, because we engage it the marital act with full knowledge we may be blessed with another child. And let’s get honest - if we were not pursuing pleasure as an inherent part of unity/procreation, we would all stop after the first orgasm - and not continue to other positions or acts which are loving and pleasurable, or pursue multiple orgasms via intercourse - would we not? Somebody married out there tell me this isn’t so…?
Please understand that I am not arguing against what you are saying. Too often sex is viewed as just for pleasure, taking out the procreative and unitive aspects of the equation. Again, I agree with you about the pleasure part of sex, it is a part of the act that you cannot take out. I agree that many Catholics (when discussing this issue) do take out the pleasure part of it. See we agree :dancing:
Yes. God told us to go and multiply and populate the Earth. He did not tell us to go and give pleasure to one another. If you take a look around at nature, you will notice that sex is not there for the pleasure primarily but for reproduction. You yourself have just agreed that pleasure is not the purpose of the act. That the purposes are unitive and procreative. The word “purpose” here has a real meaning. It is not something formal, a formality left there to satisfy some formal requirements so that some joy can be obtained. It’s there for a reason.
That is exactly why it’s pleasurable. It’s pleasurable so that it would be performed. Procreation is not something attached to an act ordered for pleasure. It’s the other way round: pleasure is attached to procreation and union (uniting).
That is what I am saying.
Yes, God did not want pleasure to be separated from the marital act. Pleasure cannot be autonomous.
Nonetheless, unity and procreation take precedence over pleasure. Pleasure does not trump anything which relates to unity or procreation.
Do not take my words so far until you have expounded them into something totally disagreeable but something which I did not say. You are extrapolating it so far that it doesn’t hold any basis in anything I actually did say.
All is true but there is one more thing: respect him or her. And put God in the first place because when God is in the first place everything is in its own. When God is not in the first place, nothing is in its own. Pleasure trumps nothing which is related to God or God’s law. Pleasure does not give us any rights versus God or His commandments. Or His Church.
No, I have not. How does this invalidate the teaching of the Church on that unity and procreation are the purposes of the marital act and that pleasure is not so? Are you next going to say that whatever a priest says about sex is also wrong because the priest has never been married (most past 11th century have not been)?
Yes. Spousal neglect does not contribute to unity. However, whatever John Paul II said doesn’t give any new special rights - it’s not like he allowed to happen something which had been forbidden before. He stressed the importance of the man satisfying the wife, which was good, but he did not say that this need cast new light on the prohibitions against certain acts (e.g. semen release outside the vagina) which were forbidden. In short: John Paul II brought about no revolution. He did not add or take any commandment or set up new duties. He only reminded men to take good care of their wives.
Absolutely!
Why do you think there are so many rules about sex? Something that feels this great can’t go unregulated… that would be inherently wrong with the world…something this good MUST be controlled!
Oh, goodness no! Of course not. I must have been unclear, since I did not intend to imply this at all.
It’s not so much about what one thinks when engaging in the act (I don’t think one’s in the disposition to ponder philosophical or theological questions with a clear mind) as about one’s general attitude when it comes to talking about it. It is how the act is regarded, I think, so it’s not enough to pay the price. At the same time, it doesn’t make much sense to pretend it’s exclusively a duty or something like that. What I keep stressing over and over is that the pursuit of pleasure must never take precedence over unity or procreation and that the idea that pleasure is intrinsically tied with the aspects of procreation and unity doesn’t make it right to focus on the pleasure as a pleasurable sensual sensation and forget about the spreading of life or about the necessary unitive aspect and purpose. Part of the fact that sex is not a chore is that procreation and unity are not chores. If the pleasure is understood in the context of procreation and unity, then the understanding of that pleasure is correct. When the pleasure is regarded autonomously, then happens something which you oppose: separating the pleasure from the act. In this case, it’s not depriving the act of pleasure but rather pulling the pleasure out of the act (and therefore the right context) and making it a separate concern, which it is not.
Of course not! The spouses may well lack the intellectual capacity even to grasp the philosophical part of it without a tremendous headache and still better understand it with their actual lives than many an educated philosopher. I would say that they need to have the spirit of self-donation. The spirit of union and, yes, the spirit of procreation. They don’t need to know who Aquinas was for that. But when they are focused on pleasure alone and when they think of it primarily so that everything else gets trumped, the attitude becomes self-serving and not self-donation. Excessive focus on one’s own rights or expectations from the act is not healthy, I think. Especially if the pleasure is regarded in a more physical way. We need to be masters of our “urges” and drives, not slaves of them. We need to serve God first, spouse next, not self foremost. “Serve” cannot be understood as “service” merely. Additionally, our attitude should never imply that pleasure is the purpose of the act rather than, or in addition to, union and procreation - we cannot live in a state in which our theology says one thing but our behaviour says another. It’s fine when we want to experience the union and make ourselves open to life - which brings joy and pleasure - but it’s not fine when the joy is reduced to a sensual pleasure coming from a sequence of movements which makes our hormones happy, while things like children or marital union are relegated to the realm of abstract philosophy that shouldn’t come in the way of our enjoying ourselves and has no bearing on real life. See my point? I suppose this is something everyone will agree with, but yet I feel it’s something which is somehow lost in this thread.
Perfect.