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ahs
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So, are we to take it that all of this [your lengthy explanations and swerving all over the sexual morality map] is about YOU?
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humbleseeker
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I’m sorry that you feel so severely tested right now. God loves you. I will pray for your continued faith.
please, quote the chapter, sub chapter, and paragraph.
don’t see that in the book.
thanks you
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ahs
Guest
This actually fits what I read of the Wednesday Audiences, which would later become known as “The Theology of the Body: Man and Woman He Created Them”. It’s been several years, so it would take some doing to find the exact quote, but I do recall this.
The ideal would be for a couple to climax together, but given that this takes practice for most couples (I have also read that 70% of women cannot achieve climax with vaginal intercourse alone, absent other stimulation), as long as the act remains “ordered per se toward procreation” (meaning, intravaginal ejaculation), and the wife is not stimulated to climax in an isolated act, absent a completed marital act with her husband, this is not objectively sinful.
This discussion is not new to CA Forums, so it may be easier to find the pertinent quote from JPII by searching through those. Here is one from 2012:
ETA: The Aggie Catholic wrote on this topic and quotes JPII directly:
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iwritebooks
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Ugh. You’re so lucky I obsessed over this topic enough to have thorough notes and underlines (not to mention I relatively remembered about how far into the book it was) to find it so quickly. I did extensive reading on the sexual teaching when I married 8 years ago because of my problems with sexual dysfunction.
I can’t find the section where he gives the permission to orgasm alternatively after intercourse if he wasn’t able to hold off on climaxing. If you can, quote it, but I remember very specifically no mention of it being okay in the overall context of the entire sexual act, especially before. It was more like this moral concession he gave.
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iwritebooks
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I have more experience with sexual dysfunction than you do. The advise I gave about the elderly couple struggling with their inability to have sex was rooted in knowing what advise is toxic and will make sexual problems worse.
And the notion that referring them to a priest is going to solve their problems with his pastoral advise…No I’m sorry. Not in this climate. I’ve been on the receiving end of it. My sister has been on the receiving end of it. I’ve listened to Catholic radio where an elderly woman called in a spiritual direction program. She admitted already talking to a number of priests and contacted some EWTN show. She was desperate for real direction that would help her in her plight, that was literally shaking her faith and making her husband reluctant to go to Mass.
This advise is extremely toxic. And frankly there’s a lot of ways to quote Church teaching and the bible to endorse toxic and even abusive relationships. We need to acknowledge we’re understanding the teaching wrong if it the advise actually hurts people. And this advise hurts people.
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ahs
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So far the only advice I have given is to not engage in oral sex to completion/not substitute masturbation for the Marital Act, because it would be a sin. So, my advice was to avoid sin. How does that hurt people? Or are you referring to something that was talked about by someone else responding to one of the side-tangents?
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ahs
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What do you mean by “morally perfect”? I never used those words, so please explain to me what you mean, and how my words apply to them.
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1ke
Guest
Go ahead and sin, because not sinning is difficult, that’s your advice?
Sexual dysfunction needs to be treated.
We aren’t taking about psychological dysfunction. The OP was about a post menopausal couple having physical issues.
Can they substitute masturbation to climax for intercourse? No.
And BTW, I am a woman in menopause with a husband six years older than me. We are experiencing these things ourselves, and we know not to sin. I don’t have any psychological issues, angst, or faith crisis because I know what we can and can’t do.
If sex becomes too painful (and after doing what we can to fix that problem), if he has ED (and we can’t fix that problem short of blue pills which we both agree we won’t pursue) then we won’t have sex.
It’s really not complicated.
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iwritebooks
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No! Speak for yourself on what sins you particularly find difficult to avoid. My concern is over paths that hinder sexual function. And I mean if you’re doing it and just confessing it because it gives you a guilt complex, that is completely different than having to face the reality that obeying the law seems to be contributing to your sexual dysfunction and then having to wrestle with that. Not saying a guilt complex won’t effect you, but what you think of as sin may be helping ward off how bad things could get functionally.
That’s the problem when treatment includes paths you consider sinful and can actually avoid and pay the consequences of avoiding them…
Sexual dysfunction isn’t either or. It’s a matter of what cause is most dominant. And how much of the psycho somatic element is present depends on how long and persistent the problem is. I mean when it doesn’t have a physical origin at all, we’re talking about fear alone causing the initial trauma that conditions the psycho somatic element. If you have a physical reason for the problem, we’re talking about something greater than fear causing the initial trauma that creates the psychological element that makes it worse.
I’m not saying that if you can have coitus, but substitute other things it’s not wrong. But we disagree on why it’s wrong. You think the act is just unnatural and out of God’s design. I see it as sort of like the moral ideal finishing together with the context of the act. If you have the freedom to do it that way (which most people and situations don’t) than there’s something disordered if you thwart it for a lesser good. But if you hold that moral ideal so high that you get extreme to saying that that is the only moral way to do it, than the pressure you put on yourself to do something you lack the freedom to do act all robs you of more than that which you are avoiding out of a scrupulous sense of sin.
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iwritebooks
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I’m confused. I said nothing about permission in reference to Love and Responsibility. He says the woman can finish afterward out of a sense of justice. I mean he addresses female climaxes outside of the simultaneous ideal that’s pretty much humanly impossible in most situations for most couples. I mean, from the section I refound, the woman climaxing before or after would be sinful. I know it says after somewhere. What I addressed is that the before as indicated by modern apologists like West is a newer addition.
Unless you’re arguing that within the context of coitus being the only time. I’ve never even heard people interpret the meaning that strictly. Usually they mean in the context that your entire sexual encounter includes the man finishing in the right location, with the sin being she orgasms but then he doesn’t. I’ve heard people argue about making out one night, her climaxing, they go to sleep and in the morning they finish. People argue that her climax , because it is separated by sleep isn’t in the full context.
But frankly in my experience, it’s hard to know what you’ll be able to achieve at all at any point of the sexual encounter and putting these restrictions causes a whole to of anxiety centered around feeling the entire experience is sinful until it is justified by the man finishing in the correct area. And thinking of it in that manner is reductionistic and demeaning.
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jeannetherese
Guest
Are you trying to make an argument that you are above the law? Or that, you ought to be able to be considered above the law because the law is making your uncomfortable?
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iwritebooks
Guest
What do you mean?
I’m saying that this isn’t the law at all because the law doesn’t cause sexual dysfunction or make it worse. Holiness involves healing and becoming more complete. Whole and healed. If an explanation or understanding of the law hurts you, that is the devil perverting the law.
If you’re issue is really that you can’t fathom how it would not be immoral for people struggling with sexual dysfunction to express their sexual love as fully as they are able, because you think that’s unfair because then why can’t you do that to avoid pregnancy in you’re fertile time, than your jealousy reveals you don’t truly see the evil. You’re sticking to mere obedience because you’re conscience isn’t helping you.
Why would you envy a person who can’t experience the fullness and beauty of coitus? Why would you want to replace a greater good for a lesser good? That’s what’s disordered, not the mere manner in how it happens, but that you would choose the lesser good would you are capable of more. It’s no different than choosing the greater evil over the lesser evil and I think people do do that when they fail to see the beauty of sacrificing sex out of authentic care and concern for the higher needs of your family and spouse. There is a beautiful love in someone giving up sexual pleasure because they know expressing themselves sexually to you now would hurt you. So yeah that is more demeaning to substitute other acts. Why are you so in love with sexual pleasure?
But that is different from appreciating the gift of sexual pleasure your spouse gives you, even if it’s lesser than what others can express.
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jeannetherese
Guest
Holiness should involve being close to God. God has given us His Church to instruct and guide us. His Church has told us that sex must be both unitive and procreative.
In going against His Church, I wonder if you might not mistakenly prioritize the self?
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Ryan1
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I don’t see how any of this has to do with loss of faith. Could you explain?
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Ryan1
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Acts of sodomy directly intended, such as oral sex or mutual masturbation, aren’t acts of love.
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ahs
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Okay, let’s make sure we are all on the same page. Keep in mind, there are a couple questions I asked of you, that you didn’t answer, so I am doing my best to piece all of your statements together and understand you.
So, are you saying that if my understanding of a teaching of the Church makes my personal sexual dysfunction worse, then it’s only because I misunderstood the teaching (or I correctly understand it, but the teaching is wrong); on the basis of “truth cannot hurt us or increase the burdens [our crosses] we carry” and that “if my understanding of the law causes me to suffer, then it is really just the devil perverting the law”?
Or to look at it another way: if a prohibition against mutual masturbation would make me have increased sexual dysfunction, then such a prohibition is only from the devil. Is that a reflection of what you just wrote? (It’s an accurate summary of the actual words you typed…I’m just making sure I understand whether you actually believe this.)
Or to expand that out into other situations: if sacrificing myself for the good of another causes me too much pain, then it’s really not for the good of another because it’s just the devil perverting the reality. (Again, a logical step in what you wrote; I’m just making sure you actually intended this meaning.)
(Another thing that has me scratching my head: are you under the impression that, if a man brings his wife to climax during foreplay/amidst the commencement of sexual intercourse, before he, himself, completes his part of the Marital Act [intravaginal ejaculation], that the couple has engaged in masturbation?)
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KevinK
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Mutual masturbation could surely be acts of love depending on the intention of the people. How can you determine the motivation behind someone else’s action?
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