And this is the problem. I agree with you and disaree wholeheatedly with church teachings on sex, that all sex must end in intercourse, no matter what. The problem is also that those teachings cannot and do not address situations like yours. If the church made exceptions for one thing or another, the impression is it would have to make exceptions for everything - gay sex, animals, children, multiple wives. I don’t believe that to be the case, but it is where we are. However, church teachings are what they are, and do not allow for the husband to climax outside his wife. They do not allow for us as couples to decide or even really deal with sexual issues as you seem to be dealing with, or to decide that sexual activities other than intercourse can be bonding and unitive without being procreative, when intercourse and more children are not an option.
See, this is where I think everyone is wrong. The Church only specifies a very limited number of actions as sinful. It does not give an exhaustive list. If you went strictly by the Catechism, the only violations against chastity would be lust, masturbation, fornication, prostitution, rape, homosexual acts, adultery and contraception. The rest of the Catechism gives moral principals to make specific moral judgments with. These tend to be difficult to interpret which is why we end up having a million and one questions about “Is it ok to kiss your girlfriend? Is is a sin to sleep in the same bed with her? Is daydreaming about sex a sin? What if I’m falling asleep or just waking up?”
The Church wisely does not actually address these areas directly. She gives moral principals. Not all of those moral principles for evaluating whether or not an act is chaste is included in the section of regarding chastity. You also have to consider the sections on concupiscence, the formation of conscience, the nature of vice, a person’s culpability, etc., etc, etc.
And yet how many times do we have posters asking “It his a mortal sin?” The truth is that there are only two people who know that answer: You and God. The Church can tell you if it is a grave offense, it can help form your conscience. It can help you to discern between the temptation to deny that something is sinful in order to indulge yourself and that of being overscruplous.
The problem is that we’re the ones demanding a simple rule book. Why do we want that rule book? Because we want to practice our religion by paying our dues and then living our life the way we want to live it. Moreover I think we’re also afraid of being wrong. We don’t trust ourselves to make the right moral judgment. Perhaps part of this is because we don’t always understand the logic of the Church and whenever we disagree we’re encouraged to ignore our disagreement and to blindly follow other people’s consciences. Sometimes I think that is necessary to a degree, but overall our attitude must be theological; faith seeking understanding.
This is why I was not asking if what my husband and I are doing is immoral. This is my husband’s and I’s situation to evaulate. What I was asking about was the intrepretation of the meaning of the word “unity” because how that word is interpreted sort of repositions all the other facts to make a moral judgment with. Its like if I was told to look for all the red cubes and someone kept turning to me and insisting “That is not red. That’s purple.” Well then I need to figure out why that person thinks what I think is red is actually purple. If I just say “Oh my gosh, you insist it is purple.” without evaluating whether or not that person is right, I could very well be going down the wrong path.
I have no problem with the Church insisting that every sexual act be open to procreation and that we cannot thwart sex’s nature. What I disagree with is how sexual responses and behaviors work in people. That’s not a moral disagreement.
The moral disagreement is about the term unity. If it is the emotional bonding, than one has to work at both protecting that emotional bond that is forming as well as protecting the procreative end of sex. However if it merely means intercourse, than the bonding is irrelevant and sex is really truthfully only for making babies, because sexual pleasure is actually really a corrupting evil force that can only be morally rationalized by having sexual intercourse. Because even though sex is supposed to be full of joy and pleasure, I guess some people are just unlucky because sex is painful, frustrating, difficult, etc. The list can go on. I mean, when you get to a point where you realize that the one rule is leading you to teach your husband to treat you as a blow up doll, you know something is faulty.
Anyway, it seems this discussion just led to what I suspected. No one has a good argument for their interpretation of the word unity. Thank you for clarifying that. It makes me feel more secure about my husband and I’s moral judgment.
He is not a fan of Church teaching on this matter and is just trying to stir dissent. I have argued with him enough in the past to know where he stands on the issue haha. He is right though in this matter regardless of the sarcasm that the Church teaches that every act should be non-contraceptive and you can’t just say in general the whole of my marriage is non-contraceptive. Would you ever be content with saying you loved your spouse in general most of the time? You go forward with the intent to try and succeed every time, because Jesus told us it was possible with his help. To settle for less is to doubt God.