Sex - Unity and Procreation

[kjack2222]

Why does the Church teach that intercourse always needs to be both unitative and procreative at the same time and not simply one or the other? Given my understanding of biology, that basically limits your window to roughly the 5-8 days every cycle that a woman is fertile. And saying that the act is still open to life/procreation even outside of that window (well outside, we don’t need to split hairs over the few days before/after and the possibility for human error or late release etc) seems a bit off to me because biologically as God created us, it’s not…?

Also, a common counter argument I hear is that using no contraception means God can act during this time and this is what makes the act open to life. In that scenario it would mean God’s changing/altering a woman’s fertility or the longevity of sperm beyond what naturally happens (which of course he could do if it’s his will), or some such biological scenario. So what’s the difference between this and say God busting a hole in the condom someone is using? A physical/material scenario. I hope what I’m getting at there makes sense.

Just trying to get a better understanding of where the Church is coming from on this. Thoughts, positivity, and courteous discourse appreciated!

 

[Mtatum1958]

And saying that the act is still open to life/procreation even outside of that window (well outside, we don’t need to split hairs over the few days before/after and the possibility for human error or late release etc) seems a bit off to me because biologically as God created us, it’s not…?

Being open to life means that the couple is not putting any barrier (no pun intended) to the conception of a child. It isn’t strictly whether this time or that is biologically suitable for procreation.

 

[Benadam]

So what’s the difference between this and say God busting a hole in the condom someone is using? A physical/material scenario. I hope what I’m getting at there makes sense.

God doesn’t violate our freedom to choose. By using the condom a couple is making a definitive choice to deny fertility it’s place in the conjugal act.

Why does the Church teach that intercourse always needs to be both unitative and procreative at the same time and not simply one or the other?

The marital bond forms in the environment natural to it. Matrimony= Mater(mother) mony(state)
That is the environment that the marital bond forms. That’s why a marriage must be consummated. The marital bond forms when a man and woman commit to the maternal environment

The marital bond is also exclusive and that must be nourished for the bond to provide a foundation for family life to flourish… To create an environment that is structured by the spiritual quality inherent to human nature vows of permanence are necessary.

That is the environment that the marital bond can form. The essentials of the state of Matrimony.

 

[Ron_Conte]

It is not the attainment of the moral object that makes an act intrinsically evil or intrinsically good, but rather the ordering of the chosen act toward that object. So if you choose an act ordered to deprive sex of its procreative finality, you sin, regardless of whether the woman was at her most or least fertile. Choosing a disordered act is always a sin, even if the act fails to attain the evil toward which it is ordered. If you contracept, and the contraception fails, so that you conceive a child, you still sinned by choosing a disordered act. If you attempt murder and fail, you still sinned by choosing that disordered act, even thought its evil end was not attained.

Depriving sex of the unitive or procreative or marital ends is a disordered act.

 

[TheLittleLady]

The Church teaches that each act must be ordered toward procreation, not “procreative”.

Also, a common counter argument I hear is that using no contraception means God can act during this time and this is what makes the act open to life.

Those using this argument are arguing from something they heard someone else say, not from the Teaching of the Church. Maybe these ideas come from some Calvinistic pre-destination mixed with a little prosperity Gospel thrown in?

If this were true, no one would become pregnant from fornication or adultery or for that matter from rape or incest. God created the female to have fertile times and infertile times.

In official documents, the phrase “open to life” is not used. That is a colloquial term that has crept into being cited as doctrine.

Ordered to procreation.

I’d suggest reading the encyclicals of the Church.

Start with HV, the footnotes will direct you to other documents.

http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-v...ments/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae.html

 

[Ron_Conte]

In official documents, the phrase “open to life” is not used. That is a colloquial term that has crept into being cited as doctrine.

The CCC quotes Familiaris Consortio using the phrase “open to life”.
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a6.htm
Pope Benedict 16 uses the phrase in explaining HV, in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate
http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedi...ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate.html
The CDF uses the phrase in the Instruction Dignitas Personae
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/c...cfaith_doc_20081208_dignitas-personae_en.html

 

[Anicette]

@TheLittleLady,

I have just look at my cathechism, and to help you, see n° 2370 : there is a quote of Familiaris Consortio, with Openness to Life is mentionnes.

 

[TheLittleLady]

The phrase is used when describing contraception. Yes.

The phrase “each marital act must be open to life” is not used. I should have been far more granular, sorry:

2370 Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality. These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, “every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible” is intrinsically evil:

Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality. . . . The difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle . . . involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality.

 

[Ron_Conte]

The phrase “each marital act must be open to life” is not used.

“In this document [HV], Paul VI argues for the unitive and procreative ends of marriage: each marital act must be open to life if it is to truly bring the couple together (art. 12). Contraception frustrates this act because the couple is withholding fertility from each other.”
https://madisondiocese.org/moral-teachings-of-the-church

There’s nothing wrong with that phrasing. A phrasing does not need to be found in a Church document, in order to be a correct description of doctrine.

 

[DisorientingSneeze]

People have already given you many well-expressed right answers, so I’ll only add this.

It makes more sense when you’re living it. You as a couple have to decide based on all that information you are collecting whether to abstain. It’s not easy or foolproof as many statistics suggest. Maybe I just feel that way because my cycles are crazy and the crazyness of life doesn’t make for very good data collection on my part. NFP just makes us feel a little more aware of what is going on.

 

[kjack2222]

Thanks @DisorientingSneeze. Can I ask you to go into that a little more? It has occurred to me that this may be something I only fully understand once I’m married and living this out. I realize this could get personal, so please don’t feel you have to answer. What has shown you, in your experience, that it’s best to have each sexual act open to life? It’s easy for me to see the benefit of being able to abstain when needed (learning self-sacrifice, putting another’s needs before your own, self-discipline, etc.) - but what’s difficult is for me to understand why this teaching seems to say that some sexual intimacy that doesn’t end in a procreative act isn’t unitive and healthy and ultimately good for the marriage if it is done as giving the gifts of self and pleasure (in other words, if it is done chastely, selflessly, lovingly) to your spouse. How have you grown in your understanding of this aspect of the Church’s teaching in your relationship?

Also - any good resources for using NFP with crazy cycles? I’ve had difficulty finding many good ones.

 

[kjack2222]

FOLLOW UP QUESTION: Why does the church teach that sexual acts have to be ordered to procreation? Can you help me trace this and understand where we started (scripture? commandment? etc?) and how we got to how it’s taught today?

 

[DisorientingSneeze]

What has shown you, in your experience, that it’s best to have each sexual act open to life?

I think I must have intuitively felt that way without knowing. I was not a very well catechised teen and I remember thinking the church teaching sounded a little unfair. You wait until marriage to have sex and then all these other restrictions are your reward once you get there.

Being married I felt completely opposite. I felt that I had found my person God meant for me to be with in this life. I wanted to be as united to him as possible, not feel like I was doing something that was somehow less than what God had meant for us. Putting barriers between us, or simply using eachother as objects.

I recommend reading “The Good News about Sex and Marriage” by Christopher West if you are looking for it to be simply spelled out in a way that makes sense. It also would answer some of the slightly more graphic questions that may be lingering in your mind but would be too explicit to discuss here.

If you discern a vocation to marriage, you and your spouse to be will hopefully have some good marriage prep materials that make you so excited for your life of sacramental marriage together that you also have no problem following and believing the church’s teaching.

 

[DisorientingSneeze]

Also - any good resources for using NFP with crazy cycles? I’ve had difficulty finding many good ones

Yes. Taking a class at your parish or a nearby parish with qualified instructors. Whichever method it is, both of you should take the class. Having both of you understand it is key. But a class is much better than trying to learn it online or from a book. The instructors are good at intetpretting crazy cycles.

 

[TheLittleLady]

Sex is more than just a bodily function, it is where spouses literally become pro-creators with the Almighty God of the Universe. It is imperative that we follow the manufacturers instructions.

 

[Elizabeth3]

It’s easy for me to see the benefit of being able to abstain when needed (learning self-sacrifice, putting another’s needs before your own, self-discipline, etc.) - but what’s difficult is for me to understand why this teaching seems to say that some sexual intimacy that doesn’t end in a procreative act isn’t unitive and healthy and ultimately good for the marriage if it is done as giving the gifts of self and pleasure (in other words, if it is done chastely, selflessly, lovingly) to your spouse.

The bolded part is the key. You aren’t giving your whole self if you are deliberately holding back your natural fertility from the other spouse at the same time you are engaging in intercourse. Contraception means you or your spouse are holding back a part of your self in this self-giving act. Certain acts that aren’t ordered to procreation but achieve the release of the man’s fertility outside of intercourse is also not giving your whole self. To give the self is to give your whole self as God meant it to be given.

You also aren’t respecting the natural fertility of the other person if you refuse to self-sacrificially abstain when it’s been determined that there are serious reasons to not conceive in any given month. That self-sacrificial abstinence is another but different way of giving your self to your spouse by respecting them as they are in their entirety which includes their natural fertility and ordering the desire for sexual union and pleasure under the use of reason which may have determined that for serious reasons conception should be avoided at that time.

 

[DisorientingSneeze]

So when a condom does break, and a child is conceived, God has nothing to do with that?

The couple’s intentention in that scenario may not have changed the outcome but it doesn’t make their intentions matter less.

 

[kjack2222]

Thank you!

 

[Ron_Conte]

USCCB Catechism: “Each and every sexual act in a marriage needs to be open to the possibility of conceiving a child.” [USCCB Catechism, p. 409.]

Pastoral Letter of the U.S. Bishops: “A marriage is only as open to procreation as each act of intercourse is, because the whole meaning of marriage is present and signified in each marital act. Each marital act signifies, embodies, and renews the original and enduring marital covenant between husband and wife.” [Pastoral letter of the U.S. Bishops, “Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan”]

 

[Le_Cracquere]

You aren’t giving your whole self if you are deliberately holding back your natural fertility from the other spouse at the same time you are engaging in intercourse. Contraception means you or your spouse are holding back a part of your self in this self-giving act.

Well … yes. I don’t want to defy or wave away the Church or her teaching, but to my uninstructed ears that sounds a lot like “you aren’t giving your whole self if you avoid kissing your wife while you have a cold.” Now, I suppose that’s “holding back a part of your self” … but very defensibly so in the situational context!