Author Topic: Marital Act During Pregnancy (Read 19518 times)

Ladislaus · « **Reply #15 on:** July 19, 2016, 01:28:08 PM »

Quote from: Geremia

Quote from: Ladislaus
There's a difference between it being permitted and whether or not either party can call in the debt (i.e. whether it could be obligatory).
The husband and wife "are equal in paying and demanding the debt," as St. Thomas Aquinas says.

You're still not getting the difference. Yes they are equal to one another.

Here are the two scenarios.

1) Both husband and wife want to have relations during pregnancy. Permitted. No issues.

2) Husband wants to have relations but wife does not during pregnancy. Can the wife refuse without sin?

These are the two questions. I frankly do not know the answer to the latter (#2). I know that #1 is perfectly OK.

Geremia · « **Reply #16 on:** July 19, 2016, 01:38:28 PM »

Quote from: Ladislaus

Quote from: Geremia
Quote from: Ladislaus
There's a difference between it being permitted and whether or not either party can call in the debt (i.e. whether it could be obligatory).
The husband and wife "are equal in paying and demanding the debt," as St. Thomas Aquinas says.

You're still not getting the difference.

Are you saying a husband or wife cannot demand the debt in all cases when one can licitly pay the debt? Why would that be?

Quote from: Ladislaus

Yes they are equal to one another.

Here are the two scenarios.

1) Both husband and wife want to have relations during pregnancy. Permitted. No issues.

2) Husband wants to have relations but wife does not during pregnancy. Can the wife refuse without sin?

She can refuse if there is risk of it causing abortion. This is what St. Alphonsus discussed in what I posted above.

Geremia · « **Reply #17 on:** July 19, 2016, 01:44:14 PM »

Quote from: Ladislaus

for instance, you often find the "pious" type who becomes reluctant to render the debt in the interests of a higher purity and spiritual pursuits. But this leaves the other party feeling put out,

Are you describing

Quote from: 1 Cor. 7:5

Defraud not one another, except perhaps by consent for a time, that you may give yourself to prayer: and return again together, lest Satan tempt you for your incontinency.

?

Quote from: Ladislaus

based on one or another of the secondary ends that they feel the need to have satisfied.

What do you mean by this?

Geremia · « **Reply #18 on:** July 19, 2016, 01:51:48 PM »

Quote from: Ladislaus

Yeah, some Church Fathers considered it a venial sin, but that was before there had been a clear theological elaboration regarding the different ends of marriage. I agree with St. Alphonsus that it's inherently not even a venial sin so long as it's done with a view towards the secondary ends of marriage (vs. sheer lust).

Yes, and it's certainly a mortal sin if pleasure is the primary end, with no regard to the marriage goods (Whether it is a mortal sin for a man to have knowledge of his wife, with the intention not of a marriage good but merely of pleasure?).

Pax Vobis · « **Reply #19 on:** July 19, 2016, 01:55:28 PM »

Ladislaus is trying to make multiple points, but one of them is that 'things of the body' are not evil. The devil tempts some souls to excessive piety, which can cause a detestation of the physical world. We are physical AND spiritual beings. We are not angels. The body should be subordinate to the spiritual but not replaced by the spiritual. The balance is to use the body in the service of God, which entails both natural and spiritual duties.