Masturbation within pregnancy

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I was taught that sex had to be both unitive and procreative to be acceptable. Therefore, contraception, non-vaginal sex, and spousal masturbation are wrong because they violate the procreative part. Self-masturbation is especially wrong because it is neither unitive nor procreative. However, I am not sure if the Catechism defines sex as unitive and procreative; this could be wrong and those aforementoned sins would still be wrong for other reasons. I think the Church condones sex within pregnancy; correct me if I'm wrong. However, one cannot become pregnant while already pregnant, so it seems that it would violate the procreative aspect at first glance. However, there is absolutely no way to have procreative sex in this situation, so sex is still allowed as long as it is unitive. Here's the clincher: wouldn't oral sex and spousal masturbation also be allowed during pregnancy? I realize that they are not normally allowed because they make procreation impossible, but procreation would already be impossible while one is pregnant.

-- Sam Neilson (PleaseDoNot Require@AnEmailAddress.com), April 08, 2004

Answers

Manually or orally consummated sex are sinful no matter what. There are no hypotheticals that make them OK with the Church. If it was OK then a woman with a tubal ligation could engage in these activities or a post-menopausal woman for that matter.

-- David F (notanaddress@nowhere.com), April 08, 2004.

The problem here is that you have a basic misunderstanding of what the Church is saying. It is common belief that the Church thinks that every single act of intercourse must concieve a child or have a high probablity of doing so. This is not accurate.

The Church teaches that you must not intentionally sterilize an act of intercourse. This renders the act closed to procreativity. If a woman is pregnant, post-menapausal, or just not firtile on a particular day you can still have sex. You are not sterilizing the act of intercourse. You are in no way acting to close the act to life. It just happens to naturally be closed. If you cannot see the difference perhaps this analogy will help. (I am stealing this analogy from Christopher West).

When I got married, I had a wedding (surprise, surpise). I sent out invitations to the wedding. Now there came a point where I just could not invite everyone. What did I do? I simply did not send out an invitation to people who didn't make the cut. What I didn't do was send out a disinvitation. I didn't send a card saying 'don't come, you are not welcome, we don't want you here'. Have you ever received a disinvitation? How would you feel if you got one? That is like contraception. Now there were some people who we invited that we knew could not come. My uncle in Australia, my wifes friends in Japan. We knew they could not make it but sent them an invitaion anyway. Kind of saying, 'we know you can't come, but we are getting married, we are excited and we would love to share it with you, but we know you can't make it.' The person who receives this is glad to get it. That is taking advantage of the infertile period. Inviting someone who can't come is quite different than sending out a disinvitaion, both in act and intent.

Now for your example of masturbation. If a woman is pregnant it is the same as if she is not fertile. She cannot get pregnant, therefore it is the same as sending out an invitation to someone who cannot come. Masturbation in this sense is like sending out a disinvitation to someone who can't come. "I know you can't come, and that's good because I don't want you here."

Oral Sex, and spousal masturbation are acceptable as long as they occur within a completed act of intercourse. i.e.: as foreplay etc.

Here is the thing. When we use the words unitive and procreative we must not say that the Church teaches that sex MUST be unitive and procreative. The fact is that sex IS unitive and procreative by its very nature. The Church teaches that you must not VIOLATE that nature.

Anyway, if I am not clear I am sorry. Someone else will clean up my mess I'm sure. (perhaps Frank's wife . . . Hee hee, that's a joke from a different thread.)

Dano

-- Dan Garon (boethius61@yahoo.com), April 08, 2004.


"Oral Sex, and spousal masturbation are acceptable as long as they occur within a completed act of intercourse. i.e.: as foreplay etc."

This is precisely the kind of hairsplitting stuff that drives so many Catholics to neurosis or out the Church. I was back for a while recently . While practising again I confessed to a priest that my wife had masturbated me. Is this a sin, I asked. Yes, he said. In other words because i happened to ejaculate it became a mortal sin. If we had oral sex or masturbation, according to your last reply, but it did not result in orgasm, that would be ok so long as we then had vaginal intercourse as intended. So I then have to go into the hairsplitting stuff about whether I actually meant to ejacutate then or not.

Preposterous, this sort of mindbending rules governing people in our case about sixty years of age. And in an age of nuclear bombs and daily killings worldwide state and nonstate. Is there no such thing as a sense of proportion? Am I really to believe that I had committed a "grave moral disorder" and unconfessed would have gone to Hell on death for all eternity?

Tom Older

-- Tom Older (tom_older@hotmail.com), April 19, 2004.


Ah yes. Next time i will remember to take my wife's hand away quick enough for everlasting heaven to remain an option.

Our loveplay was an act of love. Something the narrow bookish, literalist mind will find hard to imagine, let alone condone.

And you wonder why churches are empty.

Tom Older

-- Tom Older (tom_older@hotmail.com), April 19, 2004.


Tom

1) If ejaculation accidentally occurs during foreplay of what was intended to be a completed act of intercourse then there is no sin there. (these things happen) This is quite a different thing than intentionally using mutual masturbation to sterilize an act of intercourse. ACcidentally killing someone in a car crash is a different thing then intentionally running down a pedestrian. That is not hairsplitting.

2) Of course loveplay is an act of love. Getting your kicks isn't. We need to be able to tell the difference. Our love lives should reflect the love of God, afterall, our sexuality is a call to love as God loves (don't go thinking God is sexual however). God loves freely, totally, faithfully, and fruitfully. If sex reflects these essences of God's love then it is truely a beautiful and HOLY thing. If it is missing even one of these things then it is not an act of love at all. I have no idea what is going on in your bedroom (and I really don't want to), but you do need to examine the moral nature of your sex life. God is in our bedrooms whether we like it or not.

3) Actually, it is the utter failure of rejecting the Church's sexual ethic that is refilling our pews.

For a better understanding of the true meaning of sex within God's plans I recommend "The Good News about Sex and Marriage" by Christopher West. You can order it from Cahtolic Answers at www.catholic.com. Before you ridicule the Church's teaching please make an attempt to understand it.

Dano

-- Dan Garon (boethius61@yahoo.com), April 19, 2004.



Dan

There was no "sterilisation:" of an act of lovemaking between two people one aged 64, the other 59. There was no possiblity of procreation - there was nothing to "sterilise".

Why is sexual behaviour between two consenting adults in marriage always reverently described as "something beautiful and holy". Is fun, invention, laughter even, not allowed?

I myself have reason to hate particularly all this po-faced, sex=sin attitude to the body and sexuality that seems to me deeply and unhealthily repressive. I had the full whack of all these teachings from a religious teacher before i was even pubertal, in the 1950's. All sexual acts and thoughts outside of marriage sinful, "impurity" the great wide path to hell for so many Catholics etc. No detail about what "impurity" actually was. Oh no, presumably it would have been "Sinful" to even speak of these things in detail.

Then, aged twelve or perhaps just thirteen, I was lured to a field far from my home by a pedophile and raped having been overcome physically then threatened with violence if I did not do what I was told. I had no knowledge of sex, no knowledge of the basics of my own anatomy let alone a woman's. I did not know if he was going to kill me afterwards. He told me afterwards, in what I now reckon was calculating pseudo-repentance,that he was a Catholic, that he would go to jail if I told the police.

My life at that point may have depended on my answer as to whether or not I would tell the police. I did not know the names for what he had done, very painful and terrifying though it had been: but I knew it must be a sin, and from what he was telling me he did it to other boys too. I told him I would not tell the police if he promised to go to confession that night and communion the next morning. This got me out of the isolated field with him: whether i was bargaining for my life or being simply honest, I don't know.

I told the priest in the confessional that night, it was a Saturday, what had happened, insofar as I understood it. He pulled back the curtain to look at my face, and said not a word at that point. He gave me as a penance a bigger penance than I had ever received before. That, the evening, a Saturday, that I had been raped. I have no reason to feel grateful to the church that day.

I was very damaged in my teens both by the rape (though I did not realise its full damage until many years later) intermingled with what I see as a very repressive upbringing in relation to sexuality and the body, by the Catholic church. I was in my twenties before I found the courage to try to date women, and in time met and married my wife. We have now been married more than thirty years, and have two grown up children of whom we are very proud.

No-one has the right to tell my wife and I that if we give pleasure to each other at our stage in our lives, we risk burning for all eternity if it precludes vaginal penetration in orgasm. Well, they have the right, but I just don't believe it. The whole attitude to masturbation and sexuality by some in the church I find quite offensive. As I know from having been a member of a male rape and abuse survivors group, and having read a lot of the literature, masturbation and other sexual addictive behaviour is quite common in survivors of abuse. When I hear these people fingerwagged about going to Hell for privately masturbating or having other forms of nonstraight sex, I just shake my head. I don't believe it, and i never will. I know that the Defender of the Faith council or whatever it is had a slight addendum about people being immature or pathologically whatever: it read like a sop, no more, a vague sop that left the status quo as per. People like Ratzinger will never understand what I am talking about. Oh, they will "explain" why I am wrong no doubt and why they are eternally and infallibly right. Were I more certain of my words, i would say God forgive them.

Tom Older

Tom Older

-- Tom Older (Tom_Older@hotmail.com), April 19, 2004.


Tom,

Obviously the issue here has nothing to do with the nature of masturbation and intercourse and all those other things. What is important here is the terrible crime you endured. This has plainly left you with deep pain and scars. Forget all the previous talk, what I want to say to you now is that my heart goes out to you, even all these years later. Such horrible action against you is a vile and despicable thing. May God bring you healing. And may he bring justice too!

I will pray for you. Dano

-- Dan Garon (boethius61@yahoo.com), April 19, 2004.


Dan

That is kind of you. Thanks.

Tom

-- Tom_Older (Tom_Older@Hotmail.com), April 20, 2004.


Dano,

Don't you have any common sense???

Leave other posters wives out of a stupid masterbation thread! Why is this stupid thread not deleted?

Moderator please delete this garbage thread that has Nothing to offer this forum. Why do I have to ask?

-- - (David@excite.com), April 21, 2004.


I can think of a lot of words to describe this thread: thought- provoking, touching, charitable, considerate, informative, etc. but stupid is not one of them. I have particularly enjoyed Tom's and Dan's posts. I also appreciate Sam's original question. I know this problem plagues many marriages, particularly the older ones.

-- Ed (catholic4444@yahoo.ca), April 21, 2004.


Ed,

I'm not suprised you would find this thread "touching, charitable, considerate......."

Arn't you the guy that thinks a nun wearing a habit is intimidating?

Look I know you have written essays on "masterbation" in forum before. Maybe you guys could take this to private e-mail Ed.

Hasn't this been covered many many many times before in this forum? Would you want your wife brought into this "charitable considerable" thread? One time in this forum Sean even bragged about a"special technique" he uses to ...?

This thread offers NOTHING to this forum except it gives you a chance to show you are the Moderator. You didn't even have the "guts" to admit that you misqoated Canon law a few weeks ago. If you qoate someone WRONG then be a man and admit you were wrong! You ran and ignored me after I refuted you when you were guiding a soul in the wrong direction because of your pride.

Keep praying! David

-- - (David@excite.com), April 24, 2004.


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