Judging What is Morally Acceptable

Dear Cynthia:

I thank you and your husband for your desire and conscientiousness to love one another according to God’s will. This is indeed the starting point and foundation for all married love. Understanding the plan of the Author of love, marriage and sexuality is the first foundation for being able to live the beauty of your vocation. It is by loving Him first of all that you are best able to love each other. Love is to desire the true and eternal well-being of the one loved. The intimacy of married love is certainly meant to be a means for spouses to help each other grow in grace, sanctify one other and ultimately reach Heaven.

The answer to your first question, phrased so clearly and precisely, is certainly “Yes.”

Marital stimulation that is mutually agreeable, done with an attitude of loving self-giving, is open to life, and has the intended purpose of attaining natural intercourse is morally acceptable, and in fact noble and honorable.

While in a personal counseling situation I would be happy to give you and your husband a more detailed answer to your second question, regarding a clear statement of appropriate foreplay techniques, I am hesitant to give a generic answer on an internet posting. There are several reasons for this hesitancy. Despite the lack of modesty permeating our world, I believe that we must do our small part to uphold and restore this virtue to our society, particularly for the protection of children, who so easily access the internet. The principle stated in the above paragraph should be clear enough for most purposes. A more detailed description can be found, for example, in Good News about Sex and Marriage by Christopher West. The general context and foundation for all of this can be found authoritatively in articles 2360-79 of The Catechism of the Catholic Church, whereas lust is defined in article 2351.

Most importantly, although clear moral principles are very important, I somehow doubt that the concern and anxiety you express are to be resolved simply by having a list of approved techniques. This is because marital intimacy is so much more than physiology. It involves your entire persons and relationship. Here again personal direction would be useful. Anxiety from a scrupulous conscience, for example, requires a particular type of guidance. If on the other hand the anxiety comes from the fact that one of you is uncomfortable with even a morally permissible practice in which the other wishes to engage, she or he should not be pressured into it. Such pressure would indicate a desire for self-gratification, rather than for loving unity. The line between love and lust, between self-giving and self-seeking is easily crossed. It is a line you lovingly help each other discover during your entire married lives. You do so by prayer together, by sensitive dialogue with each other, and by the repeated decision to seek the deepest union of your persons. Your sexual union is never to be in isolation from your love for each other. It is instead the language that expresses that love. The more that love grows, the less worry there should be about physical techniques, since these will be the natural result of your care for each other.

In the chaste and self-giving love of Christ,

Fr. Larry Toschi, O.S.J.
Madera, California