Article — Marc, Institutiones Morales
Article I: 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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- The conjugal act is customarily named by theologians the conjugal debt, both because spouses mutually owe this act to themselves, and especially because the Apostle thus called it, saying (1 Cor. 7:3): Let the husband render the debt to the wife: and likewise the wife to the husband.
This having been noted beforehand, so that all things which pertain to this matter may be weighed, we shall treat: 1. of the liceity of the conjugal act; 2. of the obligation of the conjugal act; 3. of various delicts in the conjugal act, or of the sins of spouses.
N.B. Before we approach the unpleasant matter, it helps to remit the reader to those things which were said in n. 762, where ST. ALPHONSUS warns students not to read these things except with due cautions, and then only when the proximate necessity of hearing confessions has persuaded the reading.