Chapter — Konings, Theologia Moralis
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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1640. - Hear St. Alphonsus, approaching this question:1 "It grieves me to have a longer discourse on this matter, which carries before itself such foulness that it disturbs chaste minds by its very name alone. But would that this matter were not frequent in receiving 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 here at length, and descend to particular cases which exhibit a more deformed turpitude." ...
The conjugal debt is called that common action of the spouses which is necessary for generation, and which has been ordained by the supreme Provider of all things for propagating human society. But this action is situated in carnal copula, by which a man and a woman are made, as it were, one body and one flesh.
An act of this kind is called a debt by the Apostle; for it is that which spouses owe mutually to themselves.
It must be treated: 1° concerning the liceity of the conjugal act; 2° concerning its obligation; 3° concerning the sins of spouses.
Notes to n. 1640. (1) L. VI. 900. Notes to nn. 1640-1644 - note sequence 1. (1) L. VI. 930. (2) Ib. (3) Ib. 917. Notes to nn. 1640-1644 - note sequence 2. (1) L. VI. 917.