Biology and basic anatomy.
Of which the ECFs were largely ignorant. You can’t argue the ECFs didn’t mean what they said by presuming they knew what
we know today and were preaching according to
our knowledge.
Self mutilation for one. The other is a willful withholding of self. “Two become one” has many levels to it.
NFP involves just as much a “willful withholding of self” as ABC – moreso, even, because with NFP you’re withholding
all levels of unity, not just the one you are hoping to avoid (i.e., procreation). Instead of getting at least
some levels of unity, you and your spouse instead get nothing – and I would argue that this is perfectly fine if that’s what you both want to do, but there are many couples out there who don’t find “all or nothing” satisfactory.
What I have discerned is that you and I are using two different definitions of unity. You are using a secular one championed by those who seek to separate procreation from unity. I don’t think you mean to. I am using a definition that says it is impossible to separate the two.
Correct me if I’m wrong, then, but it seems that what you’re saying is that unity, just like pleasure, is a side effect of procreation. In other words, the unity comes from the attempt to effect procreation, which one would generally take to mean, “If you’re not trying to have a kid, you’re having sex with wrong intent” – which is
exactly what the ECFs taught (i.e., to have sex for any purpose other than procreation was venially sinful, though pardoned by the Sacrament of Marriage).
Your secondary definition here is what unity means. And no, the third reason wasn’t as a “gratification of lust.” The actual definition is “a cure for concupiscence,” meaning so that you do not sin with lust.
I misspoke. As originally written, my secondary purpose was actually the same as my tertiary purpose. I should have said, “The secondary purpose was to provide a cure for concupiscence (via relieving the buildup of sexual tension in one or both spouses). The tertiary purpose was the desire for sexual pleasure, which the ECFs considered venially sinful but pardoned under the Sacrament of Marriage.”
My husband would disagree that it requires lust to achieve an erection. He would say that it requires desire and arousal.
Bingo!!!
Desire is not lust, neither is arousal. Desire is desire. To rename it lust for your convenience doesn’t make it so.
To rename lust as desire or arousal doesn’t work, either, and that, from the perspective of the Fathers, is what you’re doing. Remember, they lacked the understanding of biology and basic anatomy to which you referred earlier. They didn’t know then what we know now. What you’re basically saying, then, is, “If they had known then what we know now, they wouldn’t have taught the way they did. They would have understood that there is a difference between legitimate sexual desire and lust.”
What’s a little wonky about that, though, is that one would think “legitimate sexual desire” includes a
spiritual component that makes it differ from lust, but biology and basic anatomy have no bearing on spirituality, so aren’t you really using science to combat the spiritual truth taught by the Fathers?
One can desire the marriage act and complete it without sin…I repeat, there is no sin in the marriage act. There is no “bad with the good” as you say.
That’s what you’d like to think, yes, but that’s not what the ECFs taught:
Therefore, having the hope of eternal life, we despise the things of this life, even to the pleasures of the soul, each of us reckoning her his wife whom he has married according to the laws laid down by us, and that only for the purpose of having children. For as the husbandman throwing the seed into the ground awaits the harvest, not sowing more upon it, so to us the procreation of children is the measure of our indulgence in appetite. – Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians 33
Marriage is itself “honourable in all” the goods which properly appertain to it; but even when it has its “bed undefiled” (not only by fornication and adultery, which are damnable disgraces, but also by any of those excesses of cohabitation such as do not arise from any prevailing desire of children, but from an overbearing lust of pleasure, which are venial sins in man and wife), yet, whenever it comes to the actual process of generation, the very embrace which is lawful and honourable cannot be effected without the ardour of lust, so as to be able to accomplish that which appertains to the use of reason and not of lust. – St. Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 1:27
You’re perfectly welcome to tell me the ECFs were
wrong not to distinguish between lust and “legitimate sexual desire,” but you can’t tell me they did in fact distinguish it, because they clearly didn’t. (And by all means, feel free to try to find me one that does.)
–Mike
