Sexual question

[Gilly_flower]

I think the bedroom antics of the original poster should have been kept between him and his wife behind closed doors, and the prurient showninterest by other posters as to who did exactly what to whom is also inappropriate.
Enough already.

 

[thistle]

I think the bedroom antics of the original poster should have been kept between him and his wife behind closed doors, and the prurient showninterest by other posters as to who did exactly what to whom is also inappropriate.
Enough already.

This is a moral theology discussion forum. The OP started the thread and gave comments. We are entitled to debate the issues and everyone should know what is and is not allowed.

The Church teaching is clear. No sex outside marriage and any sexual activity between husband and wife must end with the husband climaxing inside his wife.
Why is that inappropriate?

 

[brendenseth]

I think the bedroom antics of the original poster should have been kept between him and his wife behind closed doors, and the prurient showninterest by other posters as to who did exactly what to whom is also inappropriate.
Enough already.

I really don’t care what you think, I asked because I wasn’t sure.

 

[CaptSam]

The Church teaching is clear. No sex outside marriage and any sexual activity between husband and wife must end with the husband climaxing inside his wife.

I think that from the amount of writing both on these forums and in books that this issue is not clear to many people. There are many people who want laws that are clear and decisive along the lines of “thou shall not murder”. Those people, like myself, are often left wanting in these situations because there is no CCC reference that is a list of prohibited and allowed sexual acts.

Yes, people like us are “Letter of the Law” type people. Yes, we often don’t understand “Spirit of the Law” mentality. To us if it was intended as part of the spirit it would be written clearly as part of the law. I really think that this mentality difference is what causes much of the “debate” on this forum.

In the OPs case, he asked if he sinned. The sin in this case, if it existed, would have been Lust, the separation of sexual pleasure from both procreative and unitive aspects of the marital act. My personal educated opinion is that he and his wife clearly DID NOT sin. The act was unitive, up until the interruption. There was genital to genital contact, which no one on this thread has bothered to post actual research on so I will. Please be aware that this page is graphic: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-ejaculate. This Wiki page makes it clear that many of the studies that found no sperm or no motile sperm were small groups and not done with the best of the scientific controls. It also seems very clear to me from a bit of research that men vary wildly in sperm counts which also effects their pre-ejaculate sperm counts. With that said I think it is safe to say that the evidence is mixed and we can not say beyond a reasonable doubt that withdrawing before climax can ensure no pregnancy. Therefore while the procreative aspect was severely diminished, it may still have existed. Doing so normally would, I believe, be disordered however there are additional issues in a case such as this.

Finally, we need to remember that free will is required for a sin to be mortal, and while we would all like to to be free of all sin I suspect our OP is concerned with a Mortal Sin in this case. There are three impediments to free will here. The first is a bottle of wine which may have impaired the couple just enough to allow things to get started, the second is that it was clearly a peak time which means a large spike in hormone and pheromone levels that each spouse is exposed to, finally it seems very clear to me that the OP engaged in intercourse not because he wanted to, but because he felt he was required to in order to avoid a sin.

Having been in the same position as the OP in the past, I can tell you that while I love my wife, the pressure to avoid impropriety is strong and there is little of the true feeling of love left. What is left is a desire to climax and feeling that I must climax to make this legitimate. To me this occurrence now separates the unitive aspect of the marital act from the procreative in the opposite way that we normal think of. We put the pressure on ourselves to uphold the procreative aspect of the marital act so much that it now dominates the Unitive and Pleasurable aspects of it.

Unfortunately, this is something I struggle with to this day. How do I deny my love for my wife and our desire to experience the highest unitive act we can while maintaining the procreative aspect when we can not risk another pregnancy (for medical and financial reasons).

 

[mgoforth]

The act was unitive, up until the interruption. There was genital to genital contact, which no one on this thread has bothered to post actual research on so I will. Please be aware that this page is graphic: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-ejaculate. This Wiki page makes it clear that many of the studies that found no sperm or no motile sperm were small groups and not done with the best of the scientific controls. It also seems very clear to me from a bit of research that men vary wildly in sperm counts which also effects their pre-ejaculate sperm counts. With that said I think it is safe to say that the evidence is mixed and we can not say beyond a reasonable doubt that withdrawing before climax can ensure no pregnancy. Therefore while the procreative aspect was severely diminished, it may still have existed. Doing so normally would, I believe, be disordered however there are additional issues in a case such as this.

This is incorrect. You’re suggesting that a man who withdraws before climax has fulfilled the unitive and procreative requirements of the Church. That’s false. As I said in an earlier post, the intent in such a situation would be to avoid the consequences, which is where the sin originates.

And I’m not specifically talking about the OP…I know he didn’t climax so no need to respond with all-caps.

Finally, we need to remember that free will is required for a sin to be mortal, and while we would all like to to be free of all sin I suspect our OP is concerned with a Mortal Sin in this case. There are three impediments to free will here. The first is a bottle of wine which may have impaired the couple just enough to allow things to get started, the second is that it was clearly a peak time which means a large spike in hormone and pheromone levels that each spouse is exposed to, finally it seems very clear to me that the OP engaged in intercourse not because he wanted to, but because he felt he was required to in order to avoid a sin.

The alcohol isn’t actually an impediment to free will, because it was freely consumed. When we drink enough to impair judgment, then we are responsible for whatever bad decisions are made in that state because we chose to put ourselves in that state.

 

[brendenseth]

I think that from the amount of writing both on these forums and in books that this issue is not clear to many people. There are many people who want laws that are clear and decisive along the lines of “thou shall not murder”. Those people, like myself, are often left wanting in these situations because there is no CCC reference that is a list of prohibited and allowed sexual acts.

Yes, people like us are “Letter of the Law” type people. Yes, we often don’t understand “Spirit of the Law” mentality. To us if it was intended as part of the spirit it would be written clearly as part of the law. I really think that this mentality difference is what causes much of the “debate” on this forum.

In the OPs case, he asked if he sinned. The sin in this case, if it existed, would have been Lust, the separation of sexual pleasure from both procreative and unitive aspects of the marital act. My personal educated opinion is that he and his wife clearly DID NOT sin. The act was unitive, up until the interruption. There was genital to genital contact, which no one on this thread has bothered to post actual research on so I will. Please be aware that this page is graphic: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-ejaculate. This Wiki page makes it clear that many of the studies that found no sperm or no motile sperm were small groups and not done with the best of the scientific controls. It also seems very clear to me from a bit of research that men vary wildly in sperm counts which also effects their pre-ejaculate sperm counts. With that said I think it is safe to say that the evidence is mixed and we can not say beyond a reasonable doubt that withdrawing before climax can ensure no pregnancy. Therefore while the procreative aspect was severely diminished, it may still have existed. Doing so normally would, I believe, be disordered however there are additional issues in a case such as this.

Finally, we need to remember that free will is required for a sin to be mortal, and while we would all like to to be free of all sin I suspect our OP is concerned with a Mortal Sin in this case. There are three impediments to free will here. The first is a bottle of wine which may have impaired the couple just enough to allow things to get started, the second is that it was clearly a peak time which means a large spike in hormone and pheromone levels that each spouse is exposed to, finally it seems very clear to me that the OP engaged in intercourse not because he wanted to, but because he felt he was required to in order to avoid a sin.

Having been in the same position as the OP in the past, I can tell you that while I love my wife, the pressure to avoid impropriety is strong and there is little of the true feeling of love left. What is left is a desire to climax and feeling that I must climax to make this legitimate. To me this occurrence now separates the unitive aspect of the marital act from the procreative in the opposite way that we normal think of. We put the pressure on ourselves to uphold the procreative aspect of the marital act so much that it now dominates the Unitive and Pleasurable aspects of it.

Unfortunately, this is something I struggle with to this day. How do I deny my love for my wife and our desire to experience the highest unitive act we can while maintaining the procreative aspect when we can not risk another pregnancy (for medical and financial reasons).

Thank you for this very well thought out response.

 

[clem456]

If you deliberately did not climax inside your wife then that is a sin of grave matter whether you withdrew or not.

You are not able to make that determination with any authority. It may have been sinful, may not have been. The usual factors need to be taken into account by the couple. Gravely as in mortal? How so with any certitude?
Fear is a mitigating factor in determining gravity of sin. Our woman here did not expel the man because she enjoys a partially completed act of coitus for it’s own sake and her own pleasure. There was fear involved as the OP said.

The claim that any conjugal act between a married couple that does not end in vaginal ejaculation “breaks the intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life” is not supported. That seems to be an overreach of Human Vitae. Anyone who has been married for a time knows that optimal sexual practices can be elusive, despite best intentions. Intimacy can require some patience, work, practice. Striving for the biological end result each and every time can be a bit like trying to squeeze a camel through the eye of a needle. Sometimes less is more, and “less” can lay the intentional foundation for the “more” of the procreative act. But the full conjugal act can’t be demanded or expected every time. It just doesn’t work that way. We do our best.

Isn’t intention an important consideration? Asking a spouse for stimulation to orgasm because you lust after that particular act for it’s own sake would be sinful. It has no intention to involve the spouse fully in a conjugal act, it is oriented to self pleasure like masturbation. It turns the spouse into an object. However I fail to see how “intimacy builders” (without orgasm) that are intended to build towards the fully completed act can be sinful, even if the fully completed act does not occur right there. If the practice builds the intimacy and helps a couple to complete the act next time, it would seem to me the act is oriented towards procreation.

Can’t we suppose that a topic so thoroughly discussed over the last millennia might have a definitive pronouncement from the Church? Why does it not then? It is not a matter of science outside the realm of the Church’s competence, like the physical explanation of the origin of the universe for example. The biology is pretty straightforward. It seems the Church would make a definitive statement, which she has not made. That silence about what biologically constitutes an “intrinsic relationship to procreation” should speak to us along with the statements the Church does make.