A sound, truly traditional approach to moral questions about marital relations

Don't be led astray by legalists of any stripe

This post is long. My aim is to offer all I have, which is common sense, on a difficult topic. First we have a super long introduction of my own, followed by links to and excerpts from three related articles I hope you will find helpful to forming a general approach for peaceful resolution. At the end I will add a reflection on how to seek advice in a prudent manner (spoiler: not on social media).

I will restrict the comments to paid subscribers to guard against, well, you can imagine. (If you are a paid subscriber to The School for Housewives, my other Substack, let me know and I will comp you for this one.)

(There will be no indiscretions here, but this post is not for teens.)

The marriage of a man and a woman is an Edenic union that foreshadows God’s love for His holy Church. To quote the nuptial blessing from the ancient Roman rite:

O God, thou hast sanctified marriage by a mystery so excellent that in the marriage union thou didst foreshadow the union of Christ and the Church. O God, thou dost join woman to man, and thou dost endow that fellowship with a blessing which was not taken away in punishment for original sin nor by the sentence of the flood.

Worth meditating on.

People ask: what is permitted in the marital embrace?

The answers in our time are fraught with legalistic, paralyzing confusion, both from the more permissive sources and the less. That confusion springs from a misunderstanding that posits marriage as fundamentally a power struggle or relationship based on conflict between the spouses as well as with God Himself. It’s compounded by the relentless culture of pornography surrounding us.

If someone were to do a search online as to what the actual teaching is, he would be met with unhelpful and untraditional directions from all sides — some permitting base actions, some restricting freedom un-authoritatively.

Instead, let’s approach things on the more rational and traditional plane, keeping in mind the state implied in the blessing, treating it with the respect and delicacy it deserves.

It’s worth noting that up until our profligate yet also strangely puritanical age, the Catholic Church said very little on the matter, other than to remind husband and wife of their one-flesh union and its purpose, the procreation of children. The intimacies were left under a veil, as it were, as the boundaries of decency were simply understood.

The Church, far from being rigid or repressive, left matters to the couple, on the principle that “what the good man does is always right” — emphasis on good, emphasis on man’s nature as a moral actor, not a robotic instruction follower. (NB: “man” is a generic term.)

Unlike in other matters, the grace of this union, a “fellowship not under punishment” to quote the blessing, tends to purity, provided the subjects remain committed to its roots in complementarity and the good of the other.

Naturally, man being what he is, a fallen creature, issues arise.

So yes, it does happen that something has to be said. Traditionally, the clergy were assumed to be the last resort for the perplexed, after the old wives and wise grandfathers had had their say in awkward yet comforting conversations out chopping wood or drying dishes. The priest was instructed according to the general terms of sound theology of St. Thomas Aquinas and the particular moral theology of St. Alphonsus Liguori, both Doctors of the Church.

As a friend of mine never tires of pointing out, these resources for the clergy were in Latin. Why? Because as St. Thomas warns us, speaking of chastity can lead to unchastity very quickly. One reason to go first to that aunt with eleven children is to protect the celibacy of the priest!

The main point is this: the organizing principle of the subject is fittingness. People seem to be under the impression that this quality is not lofty or precise enough, not realizing it undergirds all of Thomistic thought and accurately represents the order of goodness.

Thus, recovering fittingness, dignity, the ends of things, is a vital and difficult project, not least in marriage. I say it’s difficult because the aim of our age is to flatten everything in a self-destructive attack on order. Convincing people of the need for seemliness is quite the task.

We simply must avoid delving into specifics of marital relations on social media or in any public setting. There is no way to account for individuals and circumstances and backgrounds in such a highly charged topic. What we don’t need is “experts” bandying about directives, the only effect of which is to drive people further into indiscretion (for all to know! in the comments!) and even sin.

The articles below offer a better approach. They are in ascending order of length and complexity. I link and discuss them separately, but they are also nestled in the much longer final one, by Robert Moynihan, writing in Inside the Vatican. Moynihan presents them the context of Christopher West’s controversial (and wrong-headed) work. They are the commentary of proponents of an older, appropriate theology: David Schindler, Fr. Maurizio Faggioni, OFM, and Alice von Hildebrand, who synthesizes the thought of her late husband, Dietrich.

Moynihan provides the background some might not be aware of. Today we make reference to, for instance, the “Theology of the Body (TOB)” without quite remembering the associations the reader has and what the possibilities for misunderstanding are.

For me and for some others, this term, Theology of the Body, means the writings of Pope John Paul II: a collection of his philosophical, theological, and biblical Wednesday Angelus audiences, the topic of which was the original unity of man and woman and the nuptial meaning of the body.

For many others, though, the term means the work of Christopher West and his departure from the work of the pope, remaking it into his own idea; his innovation has now permeated contemporary Church materials and conversation.

Christopher West was joined in a sort of movement to popularize TOB by Gregory Popcak, whose books are very popular. Suffice it to say that in their zeal to make this theology known, they used no discretion whatsoever and often fell into error and weird recommendations. Even some theologians today who somewhat distance themselves from West’s and Popcak’s work are tainted with their worldly perspective. Working from the person’s desires, they end up trying to rationalize unfitting actions, forcing them into a putatively Catholic framework.

In this way, these self-proclaimed experts vitiated the good analysis presented by Pope John Paul II.

Unfortunately, we have, on the other side, the reaction to all that chaos.

The self-appointed opposition, styling itself “traditional” — very online, detached from the hierarchy, priests and laypeople both — seizes an equally legalistic view and thrashes the unsuspecting with it. Their claim is to have perennial teaching on every particular relating to the marital embrace, departing from prudent restriction of what is forbidden to insist on positive law for what can be done. If one questions their serene confidence in the face of the normal Catholic reticence about such proclamations, they respond with accusations of perversion. The make no distinctions, they have no insight into human nature. They throw people, especially well intentioned women, many of whom have been traumatized by porn culture, into a spiral of scrupulosity and doubt. No, I won’t link to them or mention their names; they don’t write books the way West and Popcak did, that I’m aware of. Where those imprudent men trampled on decency, their intemperate critics are abusers of conscience. When you encounter them, simply turn away without disturbing your peace — they are not helpful.

For those with a visceral reaction against the whole idea of “Theology of the Body,” I would say: What John Paul II taught (not what his popularizers peddle!) — that long, involved, painfully intellectualized catechesis — can easily be summarized by reading again the traditional nuptial blessing, linked above. That ancient benediction contains within its simple words the message of the whole series of addresses on the original unity of man and woman and Our Lord’s affirmation of its preservation in the sacrament of matrimony; the rest of his exegeses are anticipated by Fulton Sheen’s redoubtable Three to Get Married. (affiliate link)

There is nothing really new in them; the excitement was about his different way of expressing the truth. And then, of course, its subsequent deformation certainly made the news. It makes sense, doesn’t it, that the greatest passion man possesses is subject to the greatest distortion?

Finally, the resources to help us find peace:

Sorry this took forever!

Start with this article by Fr. Maurizio Faggioni, OFM :Renowned moral theologian weighs-in on Theology of the Body debate. (It’s the whole article and does not continue, contrary to the note at the end.)

Here are some important points Fr. Faggioni raises, with admirable clarity, to counter both the extreme positions of the West faction and their overly puritanical critics:

“Sexuality,” Fr. Faggioni said, launching into his analysis of West's presentation of the Theology of the Body, “is the language of love and this language is authentic only when it is respectful of the meaning of human love… the traditional moral theology certainly does not prohibit intimacy among spouses, but it never regards them as a substitute for the marital embrace and accepts intimacy only as a path toward a complete sexual union.”

Moreover, Fr. Faggioni said that “it is simply not true that the traditional Catholic moral supports the use of acts that Thomas Aquinas call contra naturam -against nature- (such as anal sex) as something ordinary.”

“Catholic moral theology calls us to be very discrete [sic, should be discreet] in discussing these issues, and encourages being particularly respectful to the sensibilities of persons and couples,” the Italian Franciscan explained.

Here Fr. Faggioni makes the paramount point:

“Regarding this type of intercourse or others, no one can pretend to accept from another person something that offends that person’s sensibility on sexual issues or that does not respect the structure and natural complementarity of the bodies of man and woman.”

My emphases — clearly he references oral sex (“or others”) and in toto defends the concept of “fittingness” vs. repugnance, which he affirms as a valid response to degrading actions.

The moral theologian warned that “today’s youth, in a special manner, have to be protected from unnecessary exposure to sexual-genital issues that can lead to a morbid curiosity.”

“This is not prudishness, but the wisdom of the Church that has time and again demonstrated the importance of discretion and prudence when it comes to sexual issues,” he added.

“When we make these types of assertions in an indiscriminate manner, we are actually getting into the beds of married couples, and that is something the moral teaching of the Church does not encourage at all [my emphasis]

So here you have a moral theologian, a student, as it were, of the Doctor of the Church St. Alphonsus Liguori, advising those giving marital advice not to “get into the beds of married couples.” He is speaking not from the “liberal” or unrestrained “TOB”, Christopher West side of things but on the contrary, from the sober, old-school moral theology side.

His overall message is for commentators to set common-sense boundaries (as St. Thomas does) but to respect the mystery of what happens between husband and wife.

I am reminded of the words of a wise married man, coming from the different perspective of ancient literature, in this post, John Cuddeback revisits The Odyssey and The Secret of the Marriage Bed.

Some things a husband and wife share between themselves alone. The greatest of these is the very reality of their belonging to each other. This mutual gift has an utterly unique sign, one that literally embodies that gift. The mutual gift of spouses should be publicly known, and it has public signs such as the wedding band. But the reality of that gift also has a deeper sign, the one that embodies the gift itself. And that is their secret alone.

This deeper sign is at times a mystery, and can also be a challenge. It is a gift spouses must learn to receive, and to give.

When a spouse goes forth from the home—whether it be for twenty years, or the length of a work day—he takes with him a secret, the secret of the marriage bed. The power of that secret is the reality of what has been said, enacted, given. To betray that secret is to betray one’s very self, the truth of who I am and have become.

To honor and live that secret is the shared, daily labor of a husband and wife.

The observation of psychiatrist Thomas Szasz are apt here:

“Traditionally, sex has been a very private, secretive activity. Herein perhaps lies its powerful force for uniting people in a strong bond. As we make sex less secretive, we may rob it of its power to hold men and women together.”

This is a strong rebuke of everyone seeking undue meddling in marital questions.

The second resource is the response of Alice von Hildebrand to Christopher West: Dietrich von Hildebrand, Catholic Philosopher, and Christopher West, Modern Enthusiast

Her essay is lengthy; one can feel Alice’s reluctance to speak of such matters because of what she calls “pudeur, ‘holy bashfulness’” — not prudery or the thought that sex is wrong. But she makes this vital point:

It is simply false to claim that the Church has, until recently, been blind to the deep meaning and beauty of sex as God intended it: we need only turn to St. Francis de Sales to see how profoundly he understood the meaning that God gave to this sphere. He writes: “It is honorable to all, in all, and in everything, that is, in all its parts" (Introduction to the Devout Life, Part III, Chapter 38). It is simply not true to claim that, until recently, the beauty and meaning of this sphere had been totally obscured by Puritanism and Manichaeism. Many from my generation can testify — against those who misrepresent it today — that the education we received did not, on the whole (there are always exceptions) present sex as "dirty".

What was communicated, with delicacy, was a sense of "mystery" for something great, that had to be approached with deep reverence, and which, when abused, led to very serious offenses against God.

She goes on to say:

My general criticism of Christopher West [but applies to almost every contemporary source!] is that he does not seem to grasp the delicacy, reverence, privacy, and sacredness of the sexual sphere. He also underestimates the effects of Original Sin on the human condition.

The third resource is the “Letter” of Robert Moynihan from Inside the Vatican. As I mentioned, this article includes the above two works, putting them into the context of the rather explosive events concerning West and his particular way of characterizing the TOB — a way I would say, without being guilty of overstatement, that is overtly pornographic, making a positive connection between the teaching of John Paul II and the figure of Hugh Hefner.

West’s intemperance, his exuberance, in spreading the “good news” of TOB creates serious contradictions in the minds of the faithful, especially as he had the endorsement of some bishops (including then-Bishop Chaput, considered quite conservative). His enthusiasm for Hefner can’t help but cast a shadow on the Song of Songs, another work he admires, but why must the follower be subjected to such a juxtaposition?

(It should be mentioned here that after the many criticisms he received, West did undergo a period of self-imposed silence.)

So here is my advice, as promised, about seeking guidance.

What not to do:

Do not go on social media and post your questions and worries there. Comments on Facebook posts are visible to friends and relatives. People’s random takes are not going to be helpful. Wives, don’t emasculate your husband by posting your difficulty where your friends can see it. Husbands, don’t expose your wife’s problems to the world — you are meant to protect her.

Do not seek advice from someone who is overly permissive or overly interested in peering into your intimate matters with specific directives. Both of these extremes will lead you astray, causing you to sin or to have scruples, respectively. Spouses are meant to enjoy each other in a legitimate fashion!

What to do:

Speak to your spouse. Take to heart those words of Fr. Faggioni that bear repeating: “… no one can pretend to accept from another person something that offends that person’s sensibility on sexual issues or that does not respect the structure and natural complementarity of the bodies of man and woman.” He means here that we cannot take from theologians any sort of assurance that something offensive is really fine, for instance, “as long as it ends in the marital act.” Don’t let theologians or random priests or celebrity figures influence you beyond your conscience, beyond your spouse who loves you, beyond what the Church really teaches (which, again, is circumscribed, delicate, and reticent).

Be open and seek the good of each other. One question to ask each other might be, “How can we detox from porn?” That is the first step these days to marital purity and enjoyment for many, because porn has degraded everything. If it wouldn’t seem good in the garden of Eden, it’s not good. I hope you can see how much freedom this image offers.

If you need help with a serious question or moral difficulty:

An older, happily married person with children, a comfortable attitude, and a sense of humor can help you more than internet sites (stay away from those). A clergyman whose own life is balanced, who conducts himself modestly, and who shows signs of learning (having studied moral theology from trusted sources) is someone to consult and of course go to confession to, but be discreet, respecting his celibate state.

I recommend this book for its chapter on the marital act (not necessarily for its advice on nursing the baby or losing weight): A Marriage Manual for Catholics, written by Catholic doctor and married man, William Lynch. (affiliate link) Sometimes it’s a matter of just knowing what is needed.

I recommend not trying to wrestle out of someone the answer to the question of whether something is licit or not. If you can’t find peace until someone tells you exactly what to do or not to do, it might be a sign of an emotional, rather than moral, problem. That’s understandable — I’m not dismissing it — but it’s not something anyone has authority to solve. It has to be worked out with your spouse and perhaps a counselor or, again, an understanding friend or relative.

We know what is forbidden. Fr. Faggioni, transmitting reliable teaching, is clear on that, and as he says, the Church (i.e. the moral authority) has never sought to make its way into the intimacy of the two, united in matrimony.

Thanks for reading along with me! I welcome your comments!