Topic: How do we make faithful decisions about sexual morality, especially before marriage?

Source of this posting:  Moderator response

Date originally posted: February 12, 2002

Moderator who originally posted this source: P.Leach

Question:  The question I ask is in regards to the morality of one’s actions before marriage. My boyfriend and I have decided to abstain from sexual intercourse before marriage. My boyfriend, who is practicing Episcopalian, believes that the commandments are negative demands, which require us to only abstain from the actual act of sexual intercourse in all its forms. I am a practicing Catholic, and have come to understand that the commandment regarding adultery is a positive commandment that calls one not merely to abstain from sexual intercourse outside of the appropriate stage of life, but to maintain purity of lifestyle. The issue arose recently when we were kissing and cuddling and, caught up in the heat of the moment, through a series of very satisfying movements, brought each other to orgasm without removing our clothing. It’s true that our action was not the act of sexual intercourse, and that we are decided that we will not partake in such activity before marriage. On the other hand, achieving orgasm was presuming a state which is reserved for those who are married. What does the Catholic Church have to say about the morality of that sort of behavior? Moreover, what is the appropriate moral state in which young couples may exist before marriage? What is appropriate, and what is not?
Thank you,
Katherine

Answer: 

 You ask some really important questions that are central to trying to live out our Christian faith in mature ways.  Thank you for thinking about these issues in the context of your faith, and thank you for inviting us to think with you. 

A couple of ‘preparatory’ comments before I try to make some “answer type” responses to your questions: First, relationships, especially those which include sexual expression, are extremely complex and delicate realities which must never be approached in apodictic, either-or ways.  Like a magnificent flower, a relationship has to be nurtured.  Surely rules exist which help a good and wise gardener to nurture flowers of a certain type, but each plant has to be carefully tended to in a way that is appropriate just to that particular plant.  So it is with a relationship.  Some rules for nurturing are almost always universally applicable; that having been said, each relationship has to be carefully tended according to the particular needs of that relationship.   

Second, the importance, as well as the intimacy of the questions you raise, suggest to me that you owe it to yourself to talk personally with a priest, a nun, a campus minister, a spiritual director, and/or a therapist whom you trust and who will respect your religious values.  No written answer, via the internet, can fully convey the beauty of what the Church teaches.  Nor can the net provide fully the dialogical dimension which theologico-moral questions, particularly those dealing with a relationship between two concrete, specific human beings, really deserve.  So, I urge you to seek out a well-trained, trustworthy ‘counselor’ with whom you can discuss these issues. 

Catholicism has long taught that chastity is the appropriate state of life for all human beings.  For example, authentic chastity for a priest or a vowed Religious is celibacy which means, basically, no genital expression of one’s sexuality.  Authentic chastity for a married couple certainly may include sexual intercourse.  The point being that ‘chastity’ is the over-arching state to which God is constantly calling all people while the particular circumstances of a person’s life will mean that ‘chastity’ may be lived out differently depending on the vocation to which God has called him or her.   

The Church has, especially in the years since the Second Vatican Council, been calling Catholics to be mature in their faith – that is, more or less in this order, to listen carefully to what the Church teaches, what the Bible says, what the various sciences have discovered (e.g., psychology), what one’s own experience in life is – all under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.   

One of the consequences of this movement toward maturity in faith is that ‘simplistic’ answers are not what the Church wants to offer us.  A ‘simple’ answer is good, but a ‘simplistic’ answer is not so good.  ‘Simple’ reflects the simple majesty and truth of God; whereas, ‘simplistic’ is something which takes a complex reality and attempts to reduce that complex reality to easy answers which do not adequately respond to the full reality.   

One of the major problems with ‘simplistic’ answers to complex, difficult and demanding questions is that they tend to impede the maturation process to which the Church is calling us.  ‘Simplistic’ answers can keep us dependent rather than encouraging the maturity – not of autonomy – but of discerning for one’s self the call of God within the context of the Church’s teaching and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  

All of that is to suggest that the Church calls on us to be extraordinarily faithful as each of us discerns what constitutes ‘chastity’ in the course of a growing, dynamic relationship. 

Clearly, the Church teaches that intercourse is the consummation of that relationship to which God calls a man and a woman in life-long fidelity for mutual support and, if God chooses to grace the couple with children, the growth of the community of believers.  We transgress that understanding of intercourse as appropriate for marriage at our own peril.  

My personal experience of helping people grow in relationships of fidelity and love reminds me again and again that when people make decisions which contravene this consistent position, namely that intercourse is best reserved for marriage, that those good folks so often cause themselves and their relationship to suffer.   

A relationship is a dynamic reality – it is growing, changing, developing.  Before and after (hopefully!) marriage relationships change and grow.  One result of the dynamic nature of all human relationships is that the partners in the relationship should never become complacent about how God is calling them to live out their relationship.  That is to say, God can call a couple to exercise their faithful relationship in one way at a particular point and in another way when the relationship has grown and changed.  For that reason, Christian couples should constantly talk with each other and should constantly pray for God’s direction and guidance.   

The sexual dimension of a relationship, from the Church’s point of view, has two primary reasons for being.  First, sexual intercourse between a married woman and man has procreation as one of its ‘ends.’   Second, sexual activity in the context of marriage is also ‘unitive,’ that is to enrich and support the couple in their married life.  Both aspects of ‘conjugal love’ are sacred and good.   

As a relationship develops, that is, as a couple hear more and more clearly God’s call to marriage, the level of commitment increases.  This ‘level of commitment’ has a number of attributes.  Most fundamentally, a Christian couple must grow in their level of commitment to the God Who is calling them into relationship.  The couple must, of course, also grow in their level of commitment to each other as partners before God.  The couple has additional commitments which must grow as well, for example, to the Church, to their families-of-origin, to the poor etc. 

As the level of commitment grows in a relationship, so too do the means by which that commitment is lived out.   

For instance, it would be completely inappropriate for a person to wear an engagement ring after one or two dates – that level of public commitment is not wise at that stage of a relationship.  Or again, giving somebody a charge card with your name on it after three or four dates would not be wise at all – the relationship clearly would not have developed to a stage where such a level of commitment would be prudent. 

Yet, an engagement ring would very likely be appropriate at some point in many relationships.  When that moment has come is different for each couple.  The Church encourages engagement, but the Church doesn’t try to make a rule that says, “After such-and-such months of dating, you should be engaged.”  Rather, the Church gives you some very fine guidelines, says pray hard and listen to God, talk with people in whom you have confidence, and trust that God is going to lead you.  A ‘simplistic’ formula, one-size-fits-all is not wise with regard to when a couple should get engaged. 

Similarly, a relationship might possibly develop to a point before marriage in which the couple could have a joint checking account or a common credit card.  During Marriage Preparation in most Dioceses, the Church encourages couples to talk about these kinds of issues and to make reasoned, thoughtful decisions about whether, if, and/or when such a move might be appropriate for a couple.  Again, though, the Church does not try to prescribe a particular time or way for couples who are preparing for marriage to work the details of finance in their relationship.  As a Church community, we give guidance, we make suggestions, we set limits, and we are absolutely confident that God will lead you wisely and well if you will listen to God! 

So, what sex?  And what, particularly, about orgasm, as you asked in your question?   

Well, I don’t really have enough information to answer your question specifically.  For example, I don’t know how old you are, how long you have been dating, whether you might be dating other people, if you’ve had other relationships, whether you’ve talked about marriage, or if you have committed to each other about a specific date to become engaged.

All of those issues, and other related ones, would have some impact on how I would respond to your question. 

I’m not trying to dodge your question at all.  In fact, I’ve tried to give you some good information and principles which you can take to your prayer and to your conversations with your boyfriend.  I pray that what the Church teaches on these issues, as I’ve outlined them briefly, will be helpful.   

At the same time, I am NOT saying that you can just decide for yourself and do whatever feels good!  The issues involved are far too important to say that it’s just a matter of feeling good. 

While I certainly believe that God does, in fact, want us to feel good, the way really to feel good is to do what God is calling us to do.  THAT is the only way truly to be content!

 But to complicate things just a bit more:  You and your boyfriend are right in the ways that you understand the commandment about adultery.  It is, as your boyfriend says, negative and prohibitive.  The commandments do demand that we abstain from certain behaviors as contradictory to God’s will.   

At the same time, though, you are right in understanding the sixth commandment to be positive in its application.  This aspect of the commandment is far more nuanced and difficult, in all honesty.  Growing in the grace of chastity that is appropriate to a particular state of life, level of commitment, psychological development, and spirituality requires knowing the ‘rules’ and abiding by them, to be sure.  But growing in the grace of chastity as a positive virtue, rather than simply as a proscriptive one, also calls us to be constantly attuned to the gentle, chaste, compassionate, and loving movement of the Holy Spirit Who “blows where he will,” as the Scripture says.   

The remarkable grace of God which ‘incarnates’ itself in the lives of particular human persons must not be reduced to a simplistic set of rules to govern all situations.  Rather, the ineffable grace of our God Who is a Trinity of divine love – Lover, Beloved, and Love which binds them together – calls us into dynamic relationships which grow and develop. 

God bless you as you struggle to hear the Lord’s call to you and to your boyfriend!