Skip to main content

Libido Redux: Sex or Marital Act?

Whenever I refer to sexual intercourse in teaching my classes, I refer to it as “the marital act,” largely because sex is unitive and marriageis about union. Truth about human sexuality sees that its unitive nature completes husband and wife as persons, as couples and as a people. Likewise, to live it incompletely renders us incomplete and divided.

My review of  Humanae Vitae centered on the reality that sexual intercourse between husband and wife is both unitive and procreative. In my experience what Catholics and others fail to understand is that in recognizing the unitive nature of sex as different from its procreative nature, Humanae Vitae did not separate the two. The Holy Father wrote that the traditional doctrine taught within it “… is based on the inseparable connection … between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act”. As outlined in TheSmoke of Satan, dissenters from Humanae, lay and clerical separated the two, claiming the unitive nature of sex remains genuine when distanced from the procreative. Quite simply, the Pope’s point was that sex that is not open to procreation, sex that is shut off from its very nature, cannot be unitive. Just look about our overexcited sexualized world and see—there is no intrinsic unitive value in sex divorced from its natural end. Humanae Vitae posits truth in connecting the unitive nature of sex to its procreative nature. A marriage that accepts in every marital act the possibility of a child with its own needs, changes the nature of a relationship into something more than the husband and wife. In considering the yet to be conceived child, a man and wife subordinate their lives to another. Their love for each other is no longer solely about themselves but a gift to their child not yet conceived. It is this love, rooted in the creative nature of the sexual act, that makes it unitive.


Untying the procreative nature of our sexuality from its unitive nature, as we have done, extinguishes the very thing that makes it unitive. Contraception fundamentally changes the marital act, changing it into something completely different. Sex open to new life and deliberately sterile sex are wholly different acts. Using “sex” to refer to both of these is deceptive, for intercourse open to life changes the lives of husband and wife beyond themselves.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are You Headed to Heaven or Hell?

While I think I would need some Purgation if I died today, here is an important question as boomers get up there in age: How can spiritual direction help you on the road to heaven? To answer this question, be sure to register for  our webinar  “ Understanding Spiritual Direction: Finding a Director and Thriving in the Relationship ,” scheduled for September 14, 2015. Read more:  http://www.spiritualdirection.com/2015/09/07/are-you-headed-to-heaven-or-hell#ixzz3l3ujESca Spiritualdirection.com | Catholic Spiritual Direction | Are You Headed to Heaven or Hell? - SpiritualDirection.com Catholic Spiritual Direction : 'via Blog this'

This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News

DANCING WITH MR. D:   This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News : 'via Blog this'

Why the Devil is Pope Francis Talking about the Devil?

Because he is a Jesuit! As one who has written on spiritual warfare in the history of the Catholic Church, it is refreshing to have as Pope one so attuned to preset day realities!

Dancing With Mr. D: Grooming the Little Children

A former pro-transgender activist said she regretted her previous work in pro-transgender activism, adding she felt she was "indoctrinated" on gender ideology in an interview with  Fox News Digital.  "I started to realize that what I had been doing at my job at the LGBT Center, it was grooming," Kay Yang, a former employee of a location in New York, said. Grooming in this context means "to get into readiness for a specific objective." Kay works as a 'deprogrammer' to help parents and children who have been 'indoctrinated' by the 'cult-like' transgender agenda. Yang herself previously went by they/them and worked as a 'trans educator' in schools for years.  Listen to her testimony.    

Nuns' Story, or Call the Sisters

(Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham / Fr James Bradley) I have been watching the PBS series, Call the Midwives , which f ollows the nurses, midwives and nuns from Nonnatus House, who visit the expectant mothers of Poplar, providing the poorest women with the best possible care. As I observe the way these Anglican nuns are portrayed, it strikes me that they are more like Catholic nuns than many Catholic nuns after Vatican II (see chapter 5 of my book). Thus, the story featured in this post does not surprise me, especially after Pope Benedict's  launching of the United States’ ordinariate for disaffected Anglicans seeking communion with the Catholic Church.  From  the Apostolic Constitution  Anglicanorum Coetibus , given in Rome, at St. Peter’s, on Nov. 4, 2009: “In recent times the Holy Spirit has moved groups of Anglicans to petition repeatedly and insistently to be received into full Catholic communion individually as well as corporately.”

Et Lux in tenebris lucet et tenebrae eam non comprehenderunt

What Is the Source of This Darkness of Our Times? |Blogs | NCRegister.com : What prompted me to write a book about the current spiritual war ongoing in the world in which we live?  Stumbling upon this quote by the Pope of the  council,  Pope Paul VI : We have the impression that through some cracks in the wall the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God: it is doubt, uncertainty, questioning, dissatisfaction, confrontation. And how did this come about? We will confide to you the thought that may be, we ourselves admit in free discussion, that may be unfounded, and that is that there has been a power, an adversary power. Let us call him by his name: the devil. We thought that after the Council a day of sunshine would have dawned for the history of the Church. What dawned instead was a day of clouds and storms, of darkness, of searching and uncertainties .  I am an avid reader of Msgr. Charles Pope, who has written recently on this our adversary in the NCR link above.
George Weigel has just published a proposed blueprint for  the “New Evangelization,” entitled Evangelical Catholicism which, to the extent that it is read will greatly amplify the New Evangelization, i.e., t he Church’s duty   everywhere and at all times  to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was Pope Paul VI   who in Evangelii Nuntiandi observed that the work of evangelization was so necessary because of the de- Christianization of the twilight year of the 20 th century. Pope Montini noted the multitudes of baptized Catholics living lives that did not distinguish them all that much from those ignorant of the Gospel; also those who, while ignorant of the full gospel, nevertheless had faith and lived according to the natural moral law, and Catholics who desired a more heartfelt relationship with Jesus Christ not given emphasis in the catechesis they received as children. His successor Pope John Paul II said that his predecessor’s use of “New Evangelization” in Evangelii Nu

Divide et Impera

Mr. Patrick Boyden has penned a reflection   worth noting. In 2013 I wrote: Lest we forget, there were indeed reform-minded Council Fathers who responded to Pope John’s vision of the Church growing in spiritual riches as a fruit of the Council under the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the hope that the faithful might through grace be aided in turning hearts and minds toward heavenly things.  Given what has been said thus far, it should not surprise the reader that many “liberal Catholics” view the pontificate of John Paul II as too “conservative,” and out of touch with the modern world, while the traditionalists view the writings and teachings of the Holy Father as modernist! Thus the schema of “liberal” (progressive, left) vs. conservative (traditional, right) which followed upon the close of Vatican II is wholly inadequate for explaining the present-day crisis of faith within the Church of Jesus Christ, though it is most unfortunate that usage of these terms persist among ma

Dancin' With Mr. D: The brave new age of gender-neutral kids - The Globe and Mail

M The brave new age of gender-neutral kids - The Globe and Mail : 'via Blog this'