Separation of unitive and procreative in marriage

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Alli0913

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So I am about to be married in December and I am trying to understand better the Church’s teaching on sex within marriage. I understand the claim that the husband is only supposed to release his seed inside of the woman and to do anything other than that is a grave sin. Is the reason for this to preserve the procreative aspect of sex? But if that’s the case and sex always has to include pro creative and unitive then how can it be allowed to have sex on days of infertility? Because on days of infertility if we have intercourse the act is not procreative, right?
 
Sexual intercourse is allowed on days where the woman is not fertile because the ordering of the act hasn’t changed. There hasn’t been a barrier, either physical or chemical, placed between the couple that would prevent the act from being potentially fruitful. It’s not the probability of conception resulting that renders the act rightly ordered, it’s that nothing has been done to the act to make it impossible.

Think of sexual intercourse as an expression. If it is done in the rightly ordered manner, the expression still has its meaning of marital love, which is necessarily fruitful and exclusive in its intention. If it is expressed wrongly, i.e. something about the wording of what is expressed is changed, then that love is not communicated.

-Fr ACEGC
 
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Alli0913 said:
But if that’s the case and sex always has to include pro creative and unitive then how can it be allowed to have sex on days of infertility? Because on days of infertility if we have intercourse the act is not procreative, right?
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It is ordered to procreation if it is a completed act of intercourse.
 
There is also no commandment from God that married couples cannot have sex during the woman’s days of infertility nor an express commandment of having sex only on the days of fertility.
 
Alli,
There are a lot of people on this earth that were conceived in the supposedly the “infertile” period. 🤔
Congratulations on your upcoming marriage. Bishop Barren said something recently that you come to the church to get married to live a sacramental marriage. Which means there is grace given when you love your wife. Living sacramentally, you will find joy not just happiness.
May God bless you both. God’s way is always the best may. 🤟
 
Alli0913 said:
Because on days of infertility if we have intercourse the act is not procreative, right?
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For countless millions , every day is a day of infertility as they are past the age when pregnancy is possible. Yet, old age does not mean a prohibition against sexual intercourse.
 
The use of contraception is also an issue for the unitive aspects of sex. One is, quite literally, placing barriers (physical or hormonal) between oneself and one’s spouse, and this is involves both an intellectual and emotional reservation or holding back, in addition to a physical holding back. To be unitive, the act should be open, insofar as what the couple intend for each other.
 
I appreciate this (name removed by moderator)ut. It is helpful, thank you 😊 Do you know, historically,where the teaching came from that the husband is no allowed to climax outside of the wife?
 
Yes; as The LittleLady said, it is from origin. (see Onan’s history), and leviticus and impurity that come of seed that stained the sheets for eg.
Christianity have always fonctionned with this “teachning”…

I will add, that the knowledge of fertile and infertile period have not know properly in every historical times, and geographic areas; including in most Christian history. It is a very recent knowledge.

And thoses people don’t sin because of this lack of knowledege. Even now to have intercourse without know your fertility ins’t a sin. It is a completely normal and ok option!
 
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