I. On the Separate Complete Act

278. - Neither spouse can seek or admit complete pleasure separately. One who has done so will have committed a thing intrinsically and gravely evil. All have affirmed and do affirm this concerning the man. Concerning the wife, there was one who doubted ¹, since she emits nothing essential to generation in the heat of intercourse itself or in solitary pollution.

¹ Ballerini, in a note to Gury, I, 429, doubts whether complete pleasure sought in a woman would have the proper malice of pollution. But if this were so (although Ballerini affirms grave sin), since separate imperfect acts in marriage are excused from grave guilt, grave malice would consequently have to be excluded from acts by which the wife seeks perfect pleasure separately. Cf. Van Roey, Quaestio specialis, p. 6.

This doubt coheres with the defective argumentation by which several endeavor to derive the proper malice of pollution from the pouring out of semen. But since the true rationale of malice, to be handed down below, is common to either sex, we establish the certain conclusion thus briefly.

Complete pleasure sought or admitted separately by a spouse, in either sex, adds to the malice of pollution a grave malice against justice or against the sacrament.

Therefore, much more than the pollution of an unmarried person, because of this twofold cause, it contains a grave sin in itself.

To the antecedent. That the malice of pollution is contracted is manifest of itself, unless this malice is placed in the pouring out of semen necessary for generation: for then, since the woman pours out nothing essential, she would have to be said incapable of true (moral) pollution. But we shall refute this opinion below.

Moreover, since from the mutual handing over of bodies in marriage one spouse possesses the body of the other as regards complete venereal use, the spouse who seeks or admits pollution sins by the sin of imperfect adultery if it is done against the will of the other; but if the other spouse assents, it is nevertheless not to be doubted that the sanctity of marriage is violated, in which God wishes this faculty to be reserved for the common use of both.

But the opinion which excuses the wife from grave guilt, must today be judged devoid of solid probability, even extrinsic probability. Suggested by a few in the nineteenth century, it has no approved doctor as a true patron.