Sexual ethics question

[Cyril_Of_Canada]

I’ve been pondering on catholicism when it comes to sexuality and moral acts.
I think it would be a good idea to discuss the following questions on ethics from a catholic persective:

(1)If a married couple already has two or three children and cannot afford any more children, how would this affect their sex life since as I have read the Roman Catholic Church teaches sexual acts must have procreation in mind or follow the NFP to delay it.

(2)What if a couple has four kids and CANNOT afford any more, lest they fail to be able to properly house more children. Obviously depriving themselves of sexuality as a married couple would open them up to temptations. How should they approach this situation in not wanting any more children due to fiancial burdens or lack of room in their home while wanting to continue having a sexual relationship with one another.

 

[Cyril_Of_Canada]

In addition:

(3)where does this leave a married couple when it comes to sexual relations if they have triplets as their first children?

(4) Where does this leave catholics in a country such as China where there is a one-child or two-child policy. Does the man have to abstain after one or two kids, thus depriving he and his wife of sex possibly for the remainder of their lives?

 

[Jelrak_TB]

It leaves them with NFP of course…

 

[pensmama87]

Periodic abstinence (NFP) or continuous abstinence.

One benefit of NFP is that it’s an ongoing discussion/decision. A couple may temporarily feel they cannot accept another baby and decide to wait until circumstances change (which they very often do). Or they might find they could handle it better than they thought.

Generally speaking, the more imperative it is to avoid conception, the easier it is for couples to practice abstinence.

 

[TomFromMD]

Generally speaking, the more imperative it is to avoid conception, the easier it is for couples to practice abstinence.

We’ve been very successful with the avoiding intercourse during possible fertile times side of the equation (and the timing intercourse for pregnancy side too). Consistently remaining totally celibate during possible fertile times has been another matter. Going past 5 or so days is pretty freaking hard for some of us. Especially when a wonky cycle comes around.

If I lived in a place where they were likely to forcibly abort my second child, I think I’d probably prayerfully rethink a pure NFP.

 

[pensmama87]

We’ve been very successful with the avoiding intercourse during possible fertile times side of the equation (and the timing intercourse for pregnancy side too). Consistently remaining totally celibate during possible fertile times has been another matter. Going past 5 or so days is pretty freaking hard for some of us. Especially when a wonky cycle comes around.

If I lived in a place where they were likely to forcibly abort my second child, I think I’d probably prayerfully rethink a pure NFP.

Of course, I don’t know the particulars of your situation or why you are choosing to abstain at this time. I’m just going from my experience and the experiences of people I know who have discussed this (here and in real life.) Those conversations have generally demonstrated that higher risks (say, very complicated medical problems) make abstinence easier. Not easy, necessarily, but easier than reasons that might not be so dire.

 

[Ajay_Dsouza_1]

I don’t feel abstinence is the answer for this. Marriage love I feel includes even this relationship and so somewhat abstinence I am not convinced as answer, unless for spiritual progress or any other reason life is lived so by mutual agreement.

Neither do I think medically restricting possible procreation is right answer. Even this degrades the marriage love in this relationship.

Natural family planning was also discovered 19th century itself as I remember. Somewhat not convinced using it to long term.

To the question I don’t have a proper answer. But I would think what could be answer if same situation was for a couple 200years back when neither medical nor natural family planning was known. To their poverty or inability to bring up more children for any reason like health etc… how would a couple take informed decision!!!

I feel the answer without considering medical advancement in this matter as any option… will be more proper.

 

[oldrover]

What if a couple has four kids and CANNOT afford any more, lest they fail to be able to properly house more children. Obviously depriving themselves of sexuality as a married couple would open them up to temptations. How should they approach this situation in not wanting any more children due to financial burdens or lack of room in their home while wanting to continue having a sexual relationship with one another.

What does 'properly house" mean? A shared bedroom/bathroom? Didn’t the Brady Bunch have 3 kids in each bedroom, with a shared bathroom for the SIX of them?

Perhaps the couple should pray to the Lord to increase their faith.

 

[Marcus1978]

I think the OP’s two questions are really just one: what should a Catholic couple do if they don’t want further children?

Some Catholics turn a blind eye to the Church’s teaching and use contraception. Many others use NFP (Natural Family Planning), which most Catholics consider OK. Others abstain, either because it’s not 100% reliable or because they don’t believe in it.

My wife and I choose this last option. We believe that God is interested in what’s in our hearts, our intentions. If a man has sex with his wife believing that the act is not open to conception because her chart suggests that this is not the case, he is committing a sin, even if they’re mistaken and she gets pregnant.

 

[pensmama87]

I think the OP’s two questions are really just one: what should a Catholic couple do if they don’t want further children?

Some Catholics turn a blind eye to the Church’s teaching and use contraception. Many others use NFP (Natural Family Planning), which most Catholics consider OK. Others abstain, either because it’s not 100% reliable or because they don’t believe in it.

My wife and I choose this last option. We believe that God is interested in what’s in our hearts, our intentions. If a man has sex with his wife believing that the act is not open to conception because her chart suggests that this is not the case, he is committing a sin, even if they’re mistaken and she gets pregnant.

No, he isn’t, and neither is she.

The Church wouldn’t permit it if it were sinful.

(And NFP to avoid typically involves abstinence. Lots and lots of it.)

 

[nodito]

My wife and I choose this last option. We believe that God is interested in what’s in our hearts, our intentions. If a man has sex with his wife believing that the act is not open to conception because her chart suggests that this is not the case, he is committing a sin, even if they’re mistaken and she gets pregnant.

Certainly you are free to abstain if you wish, but the Church permits couples with just reason to use NFP. The Church cannot permit sin. Ergo, NFP in itself to avoid pregnancy is not sinful.
Humanae Vitae:

If therefore there are well-grounded reasons for spacing births, arising from the physical or psychological condition of husband or wife, or from external circumstances, the Church teaches that married people may then take advantage of the natural cycles immanent in the reproductive system and engage in marital intercourse only during those times that are infertile, thus controlling birth in a way which does not in the least offend the moral principles which We have just explained. (20)

Neither the Church nor her doctrine is inconsistent when she considers it lawful for married people to take advantage of the infertile period but condemns as always unlawful the use of means which directly prevent conception, even when the reasons given for the later practice may appear to be upright and serious. In reality, these two cases are completely different. In the former the married couple rightly use a faculty provided them by nature. In the later they obstruct the natural development of the generative process. It cannot be denied that in each case the married couple, for acceptable reasons, are both perfectly clear in their intention to avoid children and wish to make sure that none will result. But it is equally true that it is exclusively in the former case that husband and wife are ready to abstain from intercourse during the fertile period as often as for reasonable motives the birth of another child is not desirable. And when the infertile period recurs, they use their married intimacy to express their mutual love and safeguard their fidelity toward one another. In doing this they certainly give proof of a true and authentic love.

 

[nodito]

I’ve been pondering on catholicism when it comes to sexuality and moral acts.
I think it would be a good idea to discuss the following questions on ethics from a catholic persective:

(1)If a married couple already has two or three children and cannot afford any more children, how would this affect their sex life since as I have read the Roman Catholic Church teaches sexual acts must have procreation in mind or follow the NFP to delay it.

(2)What if a couple has four kids and CANNOT afford any more, lest they fail to be able to properly house more children. Obviously depriving themselves of sexuality as a married couple would open them up to temptations. How should they approach this situation in not wanting any more children due to fiancial burdens or lack of room in their home while wanting to continue having a sexual relationship with one another.

OP, the answer to both scenarios is that the couple may choose complete abstinence or to practice natural family planning.

 

[Rau]

I think the OP’s two questions are really just one: what should a Catholic couple do if they don’t want further children?

Some Catholics turn a blind eye to the Church’s teaching and use contraception. Many others use NFP (Natural Family Planning), which most Catholics consider OK. Others abstain, either because it’s not 100% reliable or because they don’t believe in it.

My wife and I choose this last option. We believe that God is interested in what’s in our hearts, our intentions. If a man has sex with his wife believing that the act is not open to conception because her chart suggests that this is not the case, he is committing a sin, even if they’re mistaken and she gets pregnant.

This is your personal conviction only. The Church teaches something quite different. The female cycle naturally provides gaps where pregnancy can’t happen. There is no law of nature that the timing of sexual intercourse, viz a viz the fertile period must be either aligned, or random. The only law of nature and of God in this regard is that the sexual act itself is not to be damaged to separate its aspects. The procreative aspect of a natural sexual act is present at all points in the cycle, during pregnancy and during menopause. It is removed by contraception, including onanism, condoms, the Pill, vasectomies, and so forth.

 

[Boatswain2PA]

…If a married couple already has two or three children and cannot afford any more children…What if a couple has four kids and CANNOT afford any more, lest they fail to be able to properly house more children…

You can change your definition of “afford”, and you can change your definition of “provide for.”

You may not be able to afford the new car. You may not be able to afford the 3 year old car.

You may not be able to “keep up with the Jones’s”.

You will go without the new (name your item here) so your kid(s) can have school clothes.

One parent stays home…corrrection…WORKS from home to make every penny the other parent makes stretch further.

The working parent works extra shifts, extra jobs, extra anything.

It is doable, and it makes for incredibly strong families. My wife was oldest of TEN kids. Her dad worked as a salesman at a hardware store. Mom was an RN, but stayed home after 3rd kid was born. Dad worked his BUTT off, and so did Mom at home. She clipped coupons, grew an enormous garden and canned an incredible amount of vegetables. They had a THREE BEDROOM, 1.5 ba house. Yep, 5 boys in one room, 5 girls in the other, and mom & dad had the master.

Christmas = you get a stocking and a gift. The stocking was filled with things you needed anyway.

The family still did a family vacation every year because that was their priorities.

Only one child of the 10 still at home now, but hunting season to this day means getting a call from mom saying “We’re butchering deer tonight”…so you show up, Mom makes dinner, then we start butchering all the deer that anyone has shot over the past couple of days. It’s an amazing site to see a dozen people around the dining room table cleaning deer, while brothers (& bro in laws) are running the grinder in the kitchen, then wrap the ground meat into packages and into the freezer(s).

There are 10 kids, I think 26 grandkids, and now 3 great grand-kids from the marriage of that hardware store salesman and the stay-at-home mom. Nobody EVER needed something they didn’t provide for.

If God gives you “more kids than you can provide for”, then work harder.

 

[Kelfa28]

You can change your definition of “afford”, and you can change your definition of “provide for.”

You may not be able to afford the new car. You may not be able to afford the 3 year old car.

You may not be able to “keep up with the Jones’s”.

You will go without the new (name your item here) so your kid(s) can have school clothes.

One parent stays home…corrrection…WORKS from home to make every penny the other parent makes stretch further.

The working parent works extra shifts, extra jobs, extra anything.

It is doable, and it makes for incredibly strong families. My wife was oldest of TEN kids. Her dad worked as a salesman at a hardware store. Mom was an RN, but stayed home after 3rd kid was born. Dad worked his BUTT off, and so did Mom at home. She clipped coupons, grew an enormous garden and canned an incredible amount of vegetables. They had a THREE BEDROOM, 1.5 ba house. Yep, 5 boys in one room, 5 girls in the other, and mom & dad had the master.

Christmas = you get a stocking and a gift. The stocking was filled with things you needed anyway.

The family still did a family vacation every year because that was their priorities.

Only one child of the 10 still at home now, but hunting season to this day means getting a call from mom saying “We’re butchering deer tonight”…so you show up, Mom makes dinner, then we start butchering all the deer that anyone has shot over the past couple of days. It’s an amazing site to see a dozen people around the dining room table cleaning deer, while brothers (& bro in laws) are running the grinder in the kitchen, then wrap the ground meat into packages and into the freezer(s).

There are 10 kids, I think 26 grandkids, and now 3 great grand-kids from the marriage of that hardware store salesman and the stay-at-home mom. Nobody EVER needed something they didn’t provide for.

If God gives you “more kids than you can provide for”, then work harder.

Just because one family can make it happen, certainly does not mean every family will become strong for it.

This situation would completely break my husband and I.

There is such a thing as limits.

I tried to be a stay at home mom and I was, and still am, broken because of it. It was a poor decision for us and we have realized having a large family with one working parent is not only impossible but mentally, spiritually and physically debilitating.

We choose not to live this way.

Assuming families who adopt this lifestyle and become strong for it is highly arrogant and presumptuous to assume.

You don’t need to be a family of 12 to be strong and holy. You don’t need to be a stay at home parent to be strong and holy.

Not everyone is capable of this and has every right to say…no way.

 

[Rau]

…Not everyone is capable of this and has every right to say…no way.

Fair enough. One modern trend, however, which I think is regrettable, is the often expressed “expectation” that mothers should actually be predisposed / oriented towards going to work and **not **staying home to bring up children. [This is quite different to you wish to have the option.]

And it seems that our economic system has brought us to a place where it is unrealistic for a great many families to have only one bread-winner.

That reducing optionality to be a stay at home mum is I think regrettable.

 

[Boatswain2PA]

Just because one family can make it happen, certainly does not mean every family will become strong for it.

This situation would completely break my husband and I.

There is such a thing as limits.

I tried to be a stay at home mom and I was, and still am, broken because of it. It was a poor decision for us and we have realized having a large family with one working parent is not only impossible but mentally, spiritually and physically debilitating.

We choose not to live this way.

Assuming families who adopt this lifestyle and become strong for it is highly arrogant and presumptuous to assume.

You don’t need to be a family of 12 to be strong and holy. You don’t need to be a stay at home parent to be strong and holy.

Not everyone is capable of this and has every right to say…no way.

I never suggested that anyone HAS to do this, or even SHOULD do it this way, and certainly never suggested that this is the only way to be “strong and holy.”

I simply stated that IF God gives you a big family, then work harder, because it CAN BE DONE. God gave this amazing couple 10 kids, and it took an incredible about of work, but they are the most successful people that I know.

You can certainly choose not to live this way. That’s your choice. Just like it’s your choice to be Catholic, or be a Catholic-lite, or be protestant, or be an atheist, or whatever.

I was just pointing out that, with a lot of hard work by both spouses, it CAN BE DONE, and it can be done VERY WELL.