Chapter — Gury-Ballerini, Compendium of Moral Theology (8th ed., 1884)
Chapter VIII. On the Conjugal Debt
Before you read this chapter
This chapter sets out plainly what the moral law permits and forbids to husband and wife. The authors wrote these pages for two readers only: for priests and those preparing for the confessional; and for those engaged to be married, or married, who have true need to understand the nature and obligations of marital relations. It is not reading for anyone else, and it is not reading for curiosity — the authors say so themselves, gravely and with one voice.
St. Alphonsus begged even his own students not to read this matter except for its one lawful end, “casting away every curiosity whatsoever”, and to commend themselves to God while they read, lest in learning to help other souls they harm their own (Wouters, Admonition). If you have no true need of these pages, the safe and virtuous course is to go back: what is written here is for a state of life, not for wondering about.
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- Hear St. Ligorius as he approaches this question, On Matrimony, no. 900: It irks me to have a longer discourse on this matter, which bears such great foulness before it that it disturbs chaste minds by its very name alone. But would that this matter were not frequent in the hearing of confessions, so that it would not be altogether necessary for the Confessor to be instructed by a full treatment, but it would suffice for him to be instructed by a compendium! Let the chaste reader therefore pardon me if I speak of it at length here and descend to particular cases which exhibit a more repulsive baseness....
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The conjugal debt is said to be that common action of spouses which is necessary for generation and which has been ordained by the supreme Provider of all things for the propagation of human society. This action consists in carnal intercourse, by which a man and a woman are made as though one body and one flesh.
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An act of this kind is called a debt by the Apostle; for it is that which the spouses mutually owe to one another.
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We must treat: 1. of the liceity of the conjugal act; 2. of the obligation of the same; 3. of the sins of spouses.
Within this chapter
- Article II. On the Obligation of the Conjugal Actnn. 915–916
Article III. On the Sins of Spousesnn. 917–931
- § I. On the Sins of Spouses by Excessnn. 918–920
- § II. On Onanism in Particularnn. 921–931