Sex within marriage...?

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Theresalux

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I hope this is not inappropriate to ask this…but I don’t have many other places that would give me a straight answer that respects and follows church teaching. (Please don’t continue to read if discussions regarding sex would be a stumbling block for you! )

This is regarding sex WITHIN marriage…

Ok…what exactly, sexually speaking, is permissible within marriage? I understand that the husband must finish the act in his wife, male to female parts… “one flesh”…but what about before and after? Are there any acts of foreplay (assuming that the act will end naturally, like I mentioned) that are inherently sinful? Or, if the wife has not found her release, and the husband has already finished, is it permissible for the husband to bring her to completion in other ways, other than genital to genital?

I hope that wasn’t inappropriate to ask, I just hear so much contradictory information that I really would like to know what is and what is not kosher according to our teachings.
 
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The Church does not “micro-manage” our sex lives.
This is something that each couple must decide on themselves. Sex is a gift between a couple and should never be reduced to a set of acceptable acts.
 
CarmeliteKnight said:
Actually it does. Sodomy is inherently sinful and condemned in the Bible.
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You have mis read CilladeRoma’s post. He specifically says the Church teaches that sex should be ‘ordered towards procreation’. Therefore sodomy is out.
 
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Lou2U said:
Ask your Priest.
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Unfortunately I know a handful of priests that are extremely liberal and I’ve gotten things told to me that were straight up wrong. One priest told me that you could not mortally sin in thought…nope that’s wrong. I’m not asking what my local priest thinks of the matter, I want to know official church teaching.
 
Theresalux said:
Or, if the wife has not found her release, and the husband has already finished, is it permissible for the husband to bring her to completion in other ways, other than genital to genital?
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I remember someone citing JPII regarding this. Apparently it’s okay because it counts as one sexual encounter. You just cannot separate the act (eg doing only _____ that day).
 
OP, you are not going to get a consensus here. You are simply going to be confused by many posters giving their ideas of what the “official Church teaching” is.

I would recommend that you either read the book Holy Sex that someone already recommended above and then follow your conscience, or else seek out a traditionalist priest whom you trust, such as one from the FSSP, and follow his guidance.
 
It is not if it is used as foreplay and the act is finished in a pro-creative way.

Please people, sex is a beautiful gift from God for both UNITIVE and procreative purposes.
Follow your conscious and/or talk to a priest.
 
Yes, but he asked about acts within marriage. Marriage is a possible only between a man and a woman.
 
This question comes up nearly weekly. The answer is, the act must be completed in a procreative way, anything leading up to that is okay as as long as the act is completed in the procreative way. In JPII’s writing, the question of what is allowed after was discussed and it is okay to do things after in a manual way as long as at some point there was a procreative act.

The goal should be procreative, unity, and pleasure. All three of these should be reached and therefore, doing something after as you asked is okay.

Christopher West really dives into this and how the Theology of the Body discusses it in his book Good News About Sex And Marriage below. I own it, I highly recommend it.

 
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I’ve read that JPII even wrote that its borderline sinful if the husband releases and the wife does not as it should be unitive and pleasurable for both of them. Therefore, if she has not had a release, the husband should do what is necessary to have her achieve that. I believe West writes about this further in his book, there is a whole section on manual and oral stimulation for instance.
 
LittleFlower378 said:
Read Ron Conte’s book on the Marriage Bed. He backs up his work by citing encyclicals and saints writings. Masturbation is condemned in the CCC. Unnatural Sex acts are immoral.
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We’ve been over Ron Conte before on here. He is NOT a reliable source for Church teaching. He is basically giving his own opinion in many places and backing it up with his own interpretations.
 
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@Theresalux, please do not take this advice or even look up Mr. Conte’s teachings.
They are not in-line with Catholic teaching and rely very heavily on his own interpretation on things, none of which are healthy.
 
I don’t want to hijack thread but I have a question that is related to this topic.

I’m Catholic, wife is not (she’s Methodist) and she does not want to become Catholic (that’s another story). Anyway, I’m new Catholic. She does take the Pill because if she doesn’t she has a terrible time for about one week each month. Painful, mood swings, almost becomes unable to function at times. My question is, I am committing mortal sin because she uses the Pill? Thanks.
 
The One Rule has contradictions to the Magisterium in multiple places. It is not safe to use since it contradicts the Holy See in Denzinger 2715, 2758, 2795, and 3634.
  1. The “one rule” states that sex acts are ordered towards procreation by intending, planning, or anticipating insemination.
  2. A husband planning on performing Onan is not intending, planning, or anticipating insemination. Therefore, a husband’s sex act of sexual intercourse before his crime of Onan is not ordered towards procreation, because he plans on ending with spilling the seed. And, under the “one rule,” it would therefore be intrinsically evil on his part.
  3. If the sex act of sexual intercourse is intrinsically evil for the husband, then it is intrinsically evil for his wife to cooperate. This assumes the wife knows her husband’s act is intrinsically evil, that is, she knows he is planning on spilling the seed. The Holy See issued decrees in Denzinger 2715, 2758, 2795, and 3634 about a wife cooperating with onanism. These decrees assume the wife knows of her husband’s plans to commit the Crime of Onan, because in the decrees the husband is threatening his wife to be able to perform Onanism. Therefore, the wife obviously knows her husband’s plans to do Onan; he is giving her this knowledge though repeatedly insisting/ threatening her. Therefore, assuming the one rule were true, since the wife knows her husband’s plans, this is the most obvious example of formal cooperation in evil on her part. The sexual intercourse requires two people to perform the act, so if the husband’s act were intrinsically evil (read the above points), then the wife would automatically be formally cooperating in evil by giving her direct aid to allow him to be able to even perform the sex act in the first place.
Denzinger 2795 proves that if a husband is using condoms, then his wife cannot cooperate in the condomistic union, because the sex act requires her direct assistance for him to be able to perform it. In exactly the same way, and to reiterate, if intercourse before Onan was intrinsically evil for the husband, it must necessarily be intrinsically evil for the wife, just like cooperation with condomistic intercourse, or any other type of intercourse is intrinsically evil for BOTH participants: it requires another person to be able to perform sex acts.
  1. Therefore, since formal cooperation in evil, giving direct assistance to an intrinsically evil act, is always intrinsically evil, the wife would not be able to cooperate with her husband’s sexual intercourse before Onan if the “one rule” were true.
  2. Denzinger 2715, 2758, 2795, and 3634 repeatedly say the opposite, that the wife can cooperate with Onanism for grave reason. These decrees repeatedly come to the opposite conclusion that the Holy See would have come to if they were using the “one rule.”
Conclusion: The Holy See uses a theory, they don’t just flip coins (heads it is moral, tails it is immoral). And from above, the “theory” cannot have been the “one rule.” Can all of the Holy See’s decrees from the 1800s on Onanism really have ALL come to the wrong conclusion/ been in error? No!
 
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