Sexuality question!

[twoangels]

The problem as I see it is that you are reading into Wojtyla’s text something that just isn’t there. He only says climax should occur for both husband and wife and should attempt to be achieved simultaneously. He does not say what to do if female orgasm is not achieved. Into this silence, it seems you have inserted an exception to the Church’s teaching on masturbation. This, it must be said, directly contradicts the Church’s vision for human sexuality. If you believe the late pope articulated an exception, show me that explicitly. If all you have to go on is your weak inference based on something Wojtyla didn’t actually say, then forgive me, I’ll throw my lot in with the Church’s crystal clear prohibition on masturbation.

2352 By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. “Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action.” “The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose.” For here **sexual pleasure is sought outside of “the sexual relationship **which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved.”

Firstly, masturbation is typically condemned as behavior you do alone. Certainly, though, it is possible for acts to become masturbatory. That is to say that if your spouse is used as a sexual object, rather than treated with the dignity of a person, than any act: manual stimulation to full out intercourse, is masturbatory. Its not what you’re doing, its whether or not you’re using the person.

What we can thus say is that the ideal is for couples to engage in perfect sex and to climax simultaneously. We should not make the act hedonistic where its one person’s turn to enjoy and then the next persons turn, nor should both people be emotionally closed off to each other where the husband merely views his woman’s body as he would pornography. In addition to this, the procreative aspect must not be thwarted.

Now I do think JP II states more than what I’m saying, but I’m reading it more right now and am trying to come to a clearer understanding of it. Right now some of it sounds indeed legalistic. I find it especially bothersome because it seems to put performance pressure on couples and can make overcoming treatable sexual dysfunctions (with psychological causes rather than physical) impossible. it can even make them worse. I think though that his understanding of sexology is either out of date or incomplete. The book was published in 1960, afterall.