III. Circumstance: When

239. - 1. While the wife is pregnant, intercourse with her is by no means prohibited. Nor does the slight utility which abstinence can have for avoiding abortion of itself impede intercourse, or at least gravely prohibit it. For even if she knows that she is disposed to easy abortions, the wife is not bound under grave obligation to flee even slight causes of abortion. But if some circumstance, suppose the weight of the man, induces a special danger, it must be avoided with moderate diligence by choosing a prudent manner of intercourse.

2. She who gives the breasts (or nurses an infant) is by no means prohibited from intercourse of itself.

For the very detriment which at least the quantity of milk would receive from it is disputed. Nor, especially after some months, are means lacking to supply what may have been lacking in milk. Cf. Alberti, no. 24.

3. While the wife experiences the menstrual flow, the Mosaic law severely prohibited the use of marriage. But since that law has been suppressed, intercourse is now forbidden by no positive law.

Nor is harm to the wife, at least grave harm, to be feared. There remains a certain natural horror or aversion which, if it is contemned, betrays a man of insolent and insufficiently ordered concupiscence. Wherefore, mutual esteem and love by no means profit from this kind of intercourse. Yet it can happen that, to obtain the fertilization of a sterile wife, the time of menstruation may be indicated by a physician as more suitable; in which case, as is evident, use will now contain nothing unbecoming. Cf. Capellmann-Bergmans, Medicina pastoralis, 206.

Concerning a special and more prolonged flow, nothing peculiar occurs that must be said. It is a disease concerning which the counsel of a physician must be sought; and then, according to the general principles concerning the use of marriage which is permitted or prohibited to the sick, judgment will be rendered concerning intercourse then to be exercised.

4. Sufficiently near after childbirth, a sensible and somewhat humane man will request no intercourse from a wife who is fatigued and whose soul is then accustomed to shrink from carnal intercourse, unless she herself suffers from puerperal nymphomania. But this is not to be complied with. The husband will abstain from the use of marriage until the organs have been fully calmed and the uterus has been perfectly restored, that is, for about six weeks.

Provident care of this kind conduces to the very happiness of the marriage.

But in the first days after childbirth, intercourse is dangerous to the wife. Wherefore, a request made then would have to be judged deadly and cruel. And abstinence for one, indeed for two weeks, will have to be commanded more strictly.

5. When either spouse is sick, intercourse must be evaluated from the harm which it seems likely to bring either to the spouses or to offspring already conceived. The one requesting will be more guilty, while the one rendering is more easily excused. Cf. what we said above, nos. 224, 225, concerning harm to be avoided.

6. After a meal, after a bath, nothing, at least nothing serious, seems of itself to stand in the way of intercourse. In doubt, let a physician be consulted.

7. On the night before Holy Communion, spouses are prohibited by no positive law from using marriage. Nevertheless, the Apostle himself seems to exhort them sometimes to abstain by mutual consent, for example, on more solemn days of Holy Communion, out of reverence toward the Most Holy Eucharist, in these words: "Defraud not one another, except perhaps by consent, for a time, that you may give yourselves to prayer ¹," that is, at that time which you destine in a special manner to piety.

¹ 1 Corinthians 7:5.

These things, therefore, are to be guarded against: that a spouse not be withdrawn from a more frequent use of the Holy Eucharist because of the conjugal debt; that the other spouse not be rendered less content because of the piety of the other; yet that the propriety by which perfect purity of body and mind pertains to the worship and reverence of the angelic banquet also be observed, so that the pursuit and love of purity may be exercised and promoted by the honor rendered to the Most Holy Eucharist.

And indeed those spouses are to be praised who, imitating Tobias, wished voluntarily to dedicate the first fruits of their marriage to God by a three-day abstinence ². This will also profit the health of the body, which is already sufficiently fatigued by the affectionate commotions of those days and the beginning of a new life; and, through increased mutual esteem, this temperance can contribute not a little to the happiness of the marriage.

² Tobias 8:4.