We have on this site already addressed the dangers of sexual hedonism within marriage and have made it clear that the Church has taught and now teaches (primarily through the personalism of John Paul II) that it is beneath the ideal dignity of marriage to pursue the marital act only and solely for mere pleasure, for in so doing, the spouse is instrumentalized as nothing more than an object of pleasure. This being the case, however, an abstraction like this inevitably raises all sorts of concrete and practical questions about how to put this into practice without becoming scrupulous. After all, as those of us who are married can attest to, spontaneity and acting on an impassioned desire for your spouse play central roles in happy marital relations. And when we do act on this spontaneity, it would be a comical absurdity to suggest that in each case or even in most cases we are being primarily motivated by a conscious desire to realize the abstract ends of marriage.
Now this is not to say that these abstract ends of marriage are not desired in the background of sexual arousal, but oftentimes, it is the pleasure of the conjugal embrace itself which is directly intended when spouses spontaneously pursue relations with each other. Is the Church saying, then, that in each one of these cases, the spouses are sinning simply because they may not be consciously thinking of these abstract ends? Certain traditionalists would say yes, citing the Church’s previous condemnations. But just because the pleasure of the conjugal embrace may be the primary drive behind the motivation, this does not mean that conjugal relations are sought after for pleasure alone. So long as pleasure is subordinated to the honorable ends of marriage and are inextricably linked to the exclusive and irreplaceable desire you have for your spouse, then this is clear evidence that your intentions are properly aligned with right reason. We should follow the advice of esteemed moralists Fr. John C Ford and Fr. Gerald Kelly on this point:
“To choose to act because of the pleasure is by no means to act ob solam voluptatem (for pleasure alone), or to subordinate the act to the pleasure. When one responds as God intended to an inducement which by a ‘pleasure conspiracy of nature’ serves the purposes of marriage and the good of the species, one is not inverting the order of nature; one is observing it. To us this remark seems to confirm the position that those who consciously act for the pleasure of sexual intercourse, apprehended as something permissible, need no further explicit legitimating motive to escape the imputation of acting ob solam voluptatem (for pleasure alone).”1
Before closing this article, I would like to anticipate the objection that current Church teaching does not fully reflect the theological consensus on this matter in some centuries past. There is truth to this objection, but it is not the whole truth. It is, of course, important for Catholics of all states of life to come to terms with the fact that there has indeed been a legitimate development of doctrine over time on this matter. Whereas St. Augustine clearly taught that seeking after the marriage act for any conscious motive other than the propagation of the human race was at the very least a venial sin, and even St. Thomas Aquinas only allowed for venial sin to be evaded if you were at the very least rendering the marriage debt, the consensus of theologians throughout the early modern period and into the 17th century began to move decidedly away from this opinion in favor of greater liberty for married couples. For example, the esteemed seventeenth century Jesuit Thomas Sanchez taught that even if pleasure is intended consciously, so long as, in this case the husband, seeks out the marriage act with his wife “insofar as she is his wife” (“copulandi uxori tanquam uxori”)
2, then this would be evidence that sexual pleasure is not sought in isolation from the true ends of marriage. Even after the Holy Office under Innocent XI condemned as scandalous the proposition that “[t]he marriage act performed for pleasure alone is free of every least fault and venial defect”, this did not significantly roll back the theological trend in favor of regarding more highly the legitimate role of pleasure in chaste marital relations. That this development is a legitimate one has been affirmed by the Magisterium, for Pius XII teaches explicitly that “spouses do nothing evil in seeking this pleasure and enjoyment”
3. This teaching of Pius XII was elevated even further by its inclusion into the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Therefore, because the Magisterium itself has intervened on this question on the side of the later theological consensus, we must subordinate prior theological opinion to the binding teaching of the universal Church. While it would certainly be true that it is more conducive to Christian perfection to pursue conjugal relations for conscious motives other than pleasure, that does not make it sinful for the pleasure to be directly and principally sought after in one’s intent to initiate those conjugal relations.
- John C. Ford and Gerald Kelly, Contemporary Moral Theology, Volume II: Marriage Questions (The Newman Press, 1964).
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John C. Ford and Gerald Kelly, Contemporary Moral Theology, Volume II: Marriage Questions (The Newman Press, 1964).
- Pius XII. (1951, October 29). Address to midwives on the nature of their profession. Papal Encyclicals Online. https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius12/p12midwives.htm
