PARENTAL WARNING: This post is going to involve a discussion of marital relations in their moral aspect. I intend to keep the discussion delicate, but parents should be aware of the particular nature of this post.
I figured that I’d need to do a follow-up post or two after yesterday’s NFP vs. contraception post, but I had no idea that so many ideas would be surfaced in the comments box. Let’s see what we can do to clarify matters:
1) Repentance following an act of sterilization.
There is no sin in having marital congress when one is infertile. Infertility is not the issue.
Period.
This is a settled point of Catholic moral theology. It does not matter what the source of the infertility is, whether it is due to age, accident, disease, surgery, or chemicals. Neither does it matter whether it is temporary or permanent.
If somebody sneaks up on you (e.g., when you are sick in a hospital) and sterilizes you against your will, the fact that you are now infertile does not mean that you can never again engage in marital congress.
The act of sterilizing you was a sin, and if you consented to the act then that was a sin, but having marital relations in a condition of sterility is not a sin. Therefore, once one repents of having solicited a sterilization one is morally in the same condition as one who is infertile through some other means. One has corrected the misuse of will that was sinful. The remaining infertility is a biological defect but not a moral one. Its historical origin is rooted in a moral defect, but the infertility itself is not a continuing sin. Neither is having marital congress in this state.
To suppose that there is continuing sin in having marital relations after being sterilized and then repenting involves committing the genetic fallacy (no pun intended).
Under no circumstances is it permissible to tell couples that are infertile due to sterilization that they cannot have marital relations. The Church has never made this requirement of them, and it would be regarded as gravely pastorally damaging.
2) Non-obligation to reverse sterilization.
The Church has not required couples that have been sterilized to have the procedure reversed. Reversal often is not possible, it entails risks, it frequently (especially in the case of men) can cause permanent side-effects (e.g., pain), and it involves expense that may exceed what a couple can prudentially afford.
That being said, it can be praiseworthy to reverse sterilization if it is possible and responsible for a couple to do so, but the Church has not required this of those who are penitent any more than it has required reparatory surgeries of those who have culpably mutiliated their bodies in other ways. At the present state of medical knowledge, it the risks and expenses involved in reparatory surgery often exceed what is reasonable for a person or a couple to undertake.
Suggestions, such as Kippley’s, that couples employ NFP or otherwise refrain from having intercourse for a certain period each month might be voluntarily undertaken by couples by mutual consent but also are non-obligatory.
Further, I could not recommend that such penances are undertaken without the continuing counsel of a competent spiritual director, as it is not pastorally prudent for individuals to engage in any long-term or weighty penances without such direction. The risk of a penitent being spiritually harmed by keeping his own counsel on such matters is too great. Everybody needs a spiritually mature outsider to keep tabs on their situation and make sure that such penances are helping rather than harming one.
3) "Non-coital" relations.
This one is particularly difficult to answer in a delicate manner, but I want to keep the blog (particularly its main page entries) discreet. I will therefore have to rely on the reader to understand what I am talking about here.
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as marital relations that are completely independent of coitus. While other, related activities may be associated with coitus, they cannot be pursued independently of it and without reference to it. If a couple is engaging in relations that in no way involve coitus then they are doing something immoral. One can do things to prepare for, assist, and augment coitus, but one cannot replace it with something else. To do so involves replacing God’s design for marital relations with a fundamentally alien construction. Every genuine exercise of marital relations must, therefore, involve coitus (barring, for example, cases where the marital relations are interrupted apart from the couple’s will).
If you need more specificity on this, e-mail me privately.
4) When NFP is illicit.
The Church has not given a detailed treatment of this topic and a range of opinion is permitted. However, those who convey the impression that NFP can be used only in the most extreme circumstances are putting a greater burden on couples than the Church does. The Catechism speaks of NFP being licit for "just reasons" (CCC 2368) rather than the "grave reasons" some have urged as necessary. "Just reasons" and "grave reasons" are two different orders of magnitude in ecclesiastical language, and as a matter of professional ethics I seek to ensure that the language I use matches the language the Church uses in its current documents on the subject. In the future the Church may clarify this subject further, but for now it speaks of a "just reasons" test for the use of NFP, and thus so do I.
5) Condoms.
Contrary to what one commenter was told by a priests, condoms are not okay "if one is open to life at all times." Condoms represent a deliberate closing of the sexual act to life and thus are not okay. What the priest told the commenter was clearly erroneous and would be regarded as such by every faithful Catholic moral theologian.
6) Homosexuality & Infertility.
The reason that homosexuality is wrong is not that it involves infertile relations. The fact that infertile relations are not intrinsicaly sinful is something I have been trying to drive home in this discussion. A married but infertile couple is not sinning by having relations.
God designed human sexuality (and, indeed, all sexuality) to be oriented to procreation. In the case of humans (as opposed to sea angels) this means a man and a woman having coitus. Any time you have a man and a woman having coitus and not doing anything to impede the act, you have an act oriented to procreation. For a variety of causes, the act may not produce offspring. Indeed, it may be impossible in a given case for the act to produce offspring (e.g., because the man and the woman are too old), but the act nevertheless retains the orientation that God gave it.
It therefore thwarts God’s design for human sexuality if you have (a) two men or (b) two women or (c) a man and a woman doing something other than coitus or (d) a man and a woman having coitus but in some manner seeking to block its procreative potential. Cases (a)-(d) destroy the orientation to procreation that the act has and that even an infertile act has. The fact that cases (a)-(d) are all infertile (or intended to be infertile) is not the issue. God designed us so that many acts of coitus are by nature infertile. His design includes room for infertile acts; it is the deliberate rejection of his design (one man, one woman, having coitus, without deliberately blocking its procreative potential) that is what is wrong.
7) Intent.
A point that is often the source of confusion in this discussion and that came up in the comments box was the question of a couple’s intent. Consider the following two intents:
a) "I intend to have marital relations and yet not have a baby."
b) "I intend to have marital relations and do something to myself or to the act itself in order to destroy its procreative potential."
The first intention is not sinful. Couples have this intention all the time. Indeed, sooner or later, every married couple (that stays together and keeps having marital relations) eventually reaches a point in life where the partners have intention (a). This intention is compatible with God’s design for human sexuality since it is not God’s will that we have a baby each time we have marital relations. A person who merely has intention (a) is not doing anything to thwart God’s plan.
Intention (b) is sinful. Unlike intention (a), intention (b) deliberately intereferes with God’s design for human sexuality and so is sinful.
The intent of having marital relations yet not having a baby thus is not intrinsically sinful. The intent of interfering with a marital act so that it won’t produce a baby is.
8) "Artificial Contraception."
Everybody, please avoid using the term "artificial contraception." This term is intrinsically misleading as it suggests that there is such a thing as "natural contraception." There ain’t. No such critter. All contraception is artificial. It is thus dangerously misleading to tell people that the Church opposes "artificial contraception" as it suggests to them that there may be forms of "natural contraception" that are okay (e.g., coitus interruptus). This is not the case. The Church opposes contraception. Please use this language.
(Incidentally, I should have caught that the initial questioner used this language and clarified at that point, but I didn’t. My bad.)
Hoooooooooo-kay! Y’all got all that now?
Good. Now run along and play outside. I gots work ta do.