Pope Francis' Teachings on Sex in Marriage

As we mourn the death of Pope Francis and reflect on his gifts to the church during his papacy, this is a great moment to recall his (surprisingly traditional!) teachings on sex in marriage from Amoris Laetitia, The Joy of Love. 

In this post-synodol apostolic exhortation from 2015 that capped the Synod on the Family, Pope Francis makes four main points about married sex:

1. The church teaches that sex is meant to be a good! It is a gift from God enriching joy in marriage, not just a "necessary evil" to be tolerated because it is the means of procreation. 

2. But sex is often distorted and misused. (This ties into porn culture.)

3. Obligation sex is not church teaching.  (This relates to a mistaken idea of "marital debt.")

4.  Let's not be squeamish and disdainful of the body and sexuality. (This relates to purity culture.)

Read Amoris Laetitia for free on the Vatican website here.

Free Enhancing Marital Intimacy Guide for Catholic Women: 9 Skills for Body, Mind, and Spirit (for married and engaged women)

Transcript

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The joy of the family is the joy of the church. These are words that Pope Francis wrote in his, the Joy of Love, a Morris Laier, which he gave to the church. It was a post-natal exhortation after the synod on the family. Pope Francis gave this to the church in 2015, and I think it's really timely to reflect on this during the season of Easter and during this time when Pope Francis just went home to the father. And we're reflecting on his life giving thanks for the gifts of his papacy and preparing as a church in this interregnum period to see what the Holy Spirit has for us, with our next Pope. So here's something that was little known and very seldom reported about Pope Francis. Pope Francis upheld and even further developed traditional Catholic morality on sexuality. Did you know this? Not many people think of Pope Francis and traditional sexual morality in the same sentence, but he really taught in continuity with the church and with the popes before him, St. John Pauli St. Pope Paul the Six, and Pope Benedict the 16th. Upholding the church's affirmation on the goodness of sex and marriage on, the illicitness of artificial birth control. He, spoke about the child in the womb and the dignity of the unborn also spoke out against gender ideology in quite strong terms. And yes, while he opened arms in. Acknowledgement and compassion towards people who experience same sex attraction. He actually, he did uphold the church's morality on, the illicitness of, same sex acts. So just to prove my point here, I wanted to refer back to something that the media definitely did not pick up on about Pope Francis. This comes from the year 2015. He was in the Philippines and gave an address to families that were gathered there. And in this address, Pope Francis really praised St. Pope Paul the six and cyclical humane vitae, which. Reaffirm the church's continuous opposition to artificial birth control and affirmed the church's teaching on sexuality and human life. So in this address to families in the Philippines, in 2015, Pope Francis said, I think of. Paul the six. In a moment of that challenge of the growth of populations, he had the strength to defend openness to life. And he said he knew the difficulties that families experience and that's why in his ex encyclical, he expressed compassion for particular cases and he taught professors to be particularly compassionate with particular cases, but he went further. He looked to the people's beyond, he saw the lack and the problem that it could cause families in the future. if, artificial birth control were to be widely accepted and promoted as it is today, and he, foresaw the problem. So going back to Pope Francis' direct quote, Pope Francis said, Pope Paul the six was courageous. He was a good pastor and he warned his sheep about the wolves that we're approaching and from the heavens, he blesses us today. And I like to think of that maybe now from the heavens. Pope Francis is blessing us today, and I am going to share in this podcast with you about Pope Francis' teachings on sexuality, which are really beautiful. And again, like I said, just not something that the media really picked up on. I think that we just really don't, look at a lot in the church because we have St. John Pauli whose theology, the Body is so well known, but Pope Francis himself had some beautiful things to say about authentic sex in marriage. So that's what I'm gonna share in this podcast, and I hope this will be really helpful for women seeking to grow in their love lives with their husbands. You're listening to My Delight, the Sex and Marriage podcast for Catholic women who wanna learn how to enjoy sex in their marriage more. I'm a Catholic moral theologian. I'm your host Sarah Bartel, and I'm also a Catholic sex and marriage coach. The creator of the online course, my Delight, which has been transforming women's lives in this intimate area of the sanctuary of their marriage and sexuality. I myself have been happily married to my husband for almost 25 years, and I'm the mom of five kids. Like I said, in this episode, I'm gonna draw on quotes from Amor Laier. This, post synod, a apostolic exhortation that Pope Francis wrote after the Synod and Families that came out in 2015. And I'm gonna share what he has to say in there about sex and marriage. He shares about the goodness of desire and pleasure. In marriage for, between married couples and how God rejoices in the joy of his children. In it, he warns against porn culture and distortions and, the ways that sex is diminished and made less than it should be. He also talks about mutuality and against. An idea of obligation sex, which I think is very timely because I'm realizing more and more how many Catholics are under this mistaken impression that they are obliged to have sex with their spouse whenever he or she asks that is not actually Catholic teaching. And here we have the Pope reaffirming the importance of mutuality and respect and not imposing on each other. And then lastly. Pope Francis in his section in this writing, this exhortation of Morris Leticia, he writes against a squeamishness that would reject sex and desire, and I think that's really important and relevant for so many Catholic women who are affected by purity culture. I. So I'm gonna share just a little story from today before I get into this very good content as I sat down to record this podcast. It's a sunny evening in the octave of Easter. Our apple trees blossoming outside in our backyard. Lent is over, and one of my teen daughters baked a cake this afternoon all by herself. It came out beautifully. She was really happy about it. And we all had some of this cake after dinner and it's just a nice relaxing, sunny evening outside my window. I could see my kids playing out in our backyard. They're laughing and kicking the ball around and running around together. One of our daughters is home from college and so her younger siblings are all really happy to hang out with her, and she's just running around with them. And when I look at this scene. I can't tell you how much this just fills my heart with joy. I'm just so grateful. When I look outside and see them all playing with each other and happy and just the joy that they have in each other. There's a fullness to it. It just makes me rejoice. I'm so grateful, and it really makes me think of this opening wine in a Maur Latier that Pope Francis wrote. So it opens with this quote here. The joy of love experienced by families is also the joy of the church. I think that's so beautiful and so apt. As husbands and wives enjoying the goodness of sex and marriage, that this must fill God's heart with joy. He's happy about his sons and daughters who are married to each other, rejoicing in their sexual embrace in marriage. Okay, so let's just start with that, begin with the goodness, right? The original goodness here. So we're gonna look at. Paragraph 1 47 in the Joy of Love, that's the English title of. A Morris Letitia, and this whole section is labeled or titled God loves the Joy of His Children, and there's several paragraphs here which are saying basically arrows desire, this is not a bad thing, that it can be trained and focused towards the true good. Of course, obsession or lack of control with a single form of pleasure can end up weakening and tainting that very pleasure and damaging family life. So that's p from paragraph 1 48, and you can see how that applies to sexuality, right? If you're just obsessed with sex or just really have no self-control, no self-mastery, then you can really damage. Your expression of sexuality and you and your spouse's experience of it in marriage. But Pope Francis goes on to write, A person can certainly channel his passions in a beautiful and healthy way, increasingly pointing them towards altruism and an integrated self-fulfillment that can only enrich interpersonal relationships in the heart of the family. This does not mean renouncing moments of intense enjoyment, but rather integrating them with other moments of generous commitment. Patient hope, inevitable weariness and struggle to achieve an ideal family Life is all this and deserves, and it deserves to be lived to the fullness. That's the end of that quote. So you can see that our experience of sex and marriage, it is, it can be this intense source of desire and pleasure and joy and has a place in marriage among all the other acts of generosity, of weariness. Of, patience and caring for each other and working together to make your love more and more ideal and more and more perfected in all the ways husband and wife give themselves to each other and to their family and to their community, right? So it has a place. It's not like. The only thing, sex isn't everything And there's a truth to that, but it doesn't mean sex itself is bad. And Pope Francis takes some care to show there's a healthy appreciation of sexuality in our church's teaching. And in the context of family life as really something enriching and beautiful. In paragraph 1 49 here, married couples likewise respond to God's will when they take up the biblical injunction. And here he is quoting Ecclesiastes seven, verse 14. Be joyful in the day of prosperity. Pope Francis continues. What is important is to have the freedom to realize that pleasure can find different expressions at different times of life in accordance with the needs of mutual love. I think this is really wise too, as I work with women to help them develop an appreciation and an enjoyment in of sex and marriage and. People email me with their different problems and challenges. I see more and more how we, there are these different seasons, right? There are seasons that are more challenging, like postpartum, or when you're just in that really busy season of family life, caring for lots of young kids in the home. Libidos usually gonna take a hit during that time, right? Because you're exhausted. And and you're expressing your love generously and the care for your kids. And yes, you wanna make time to connect with each other emotionally, spiritually, and sexually, but it's a different season in life from. When you have less demands on you. And then yeah, I could, boy, I could do a whole episode just on enumerating the different seasons of married life and how these impact our sexuality. But what I was thinking of, especially when I was reading this, were the women reaching out to me more and more whose husbands are having later in life having. Challenges with their male functioning. Maybe they've got erectile dysfunction or or things along those lines that are, or they themselves, the wives with in the postmenopausal time or with hormonal issues, are finding sex really challenging? That does not mean the end of your love in marriage, that you can express your love for each other. In different ways. And sexual intimacy is not the only form of intimacy. It's meant to teach us how to give ourselves to each other in love, how to be other centered. But we can also do this in our acts of service and care and attention and attunement to each other in different ways. So those are just some of my thoughts as I read a Morris Latier and reflect on doing this work here, but. Continuing on to paragraph one 50 here. Pope Francis writes about the erotic dimension of love. He says, all this brings us to the sexual dimension of marriage. God himself created sexuality, which is a marvelous gift to his creatures. If this gift needs to be cultivated and directed, it is to prevent the impoverishment of an authentic value. And he goes on now to quote St. John Pauli saying, St. John Pauli rejected the claim that the church's teaching is a negation of the value of human sexuality, or that the church simply tolerates it because it is necessary for procreation. I. Now, Pope Francis, in his own words says Sexual desire is not something to be looked down upon. And there can be no attempt whatsoever to call into question its necessity. And those last words were a quote from John Paul Two's Theology, the Body, his catechesis on Genesis from the early eighties. And all throughout this section, it's so interesting to see Pope Francis quotes heavily from John Paul Two's Theology The Body over and over again. I just as I hold the book, the printed version of a Morris Latei in my hands here I see on this section paragraphs 1 51 51, 1 52. Every single footnote here, there are eight of them are from John Paulus's Theology The Body. This is really special because it shows that he is incorporating John Paulus's theology in the body into a. Into this official apostolic exhortation. Just reaffirming it and promoting it further and flushing it out with his own reflections, putting it into the context of the point he wants to make here, which is that. Sex is good. This is a gift of the father, the joy and the delight of sex. This is a gift from God for married couples. The church doesn't put up with sex just'cause. At least it leads to procreation. That is not it at all. This is a gift from God to enrich married couples to help them express their love. And so here in paragraph 1 51. He says this more, more clearly. I'm gonna quote again from Pope Francis' own words here. He says, sexuality is not a means of gratification or entertainment. It is an interpersonal language wherein the other is taken seriously in his or her sacred and inviable dignity. As such, the human heart comes to participate, so to speak, in another kind of spontaneity. In this context, the erotic appears as a specifically human manifestation of sexuality. It enables us to discover the nuptial meaning of the body and the authentic dignity of the gift. Okay, so those words from nuptial, meaning up to gift, those were quotes again from Theology of the Body, from St. John Pauli. And here he's next. He just names the source here in his catechesis on the theology of the Body, St. John Pauli taught that sexual differentiation. So this means being made male and female is not only a source of fruitfulness and procreation, but also possesses the capacity of expressing love, that love, precisely in which the human person becomes a gift. And of Pope Francis quoting. Pope John Pauli. And now here's Pope Francis' own words. A healthy sexual desire, albeit closely joined to a pursuit of pleasure always involves a sense of wonder, and for that very reason, can humanize the impulses. I think this is so beautiful. Pope Francis is quoting John Paul Two's the Theology of the Body. He's reaffirming the church's teaching that sex is meant to express love between husband and wife. That it's more than just our physical, biological, anatomical bodies that work here, but there is something spiritual and emotional about it. So it involves the whole person, body, mind, and soul, and. I really love his note here on the sense of wonder when I open my course as we. We begin to kick off our weekly group coaching calls. I ask all the women in my course, what do you delight in? This is a great icebreaker for how to get to know each other and how to start build community. And then I offer some reflections on delight, and I ask the women what are some of the elements of delight? And this is a very important element. This element of wonder. Wonder takes us beyond utility use wonder, opens us up to something bigger beyond us, and that is possible. And in fact is supposed to be part of. Our experience of sex in marriage, that we're part of something beautiful. And there's an inkling here that wow there, like you can be in awe with just the goodness of your husband and your wife as you're in that embrace and the delight of the pleasure that's successful there. But it opens you up spiritually to the sense of the goodness of God and of creation and the beauty of creation. I think that's really important. There's this, there's a sense of contemplation in wonder and a sense of being a creature before the creator that I think is really an important part of it. Okay, so then in paragraph 1 52 of a Morris Latier, Pope Francis reiterates that again. He says, we can't consider that erotic dimension of love is simply a permissible evil or a burden to be tolerated for the good of the family. Rather it must be seen as a gift from God that enriches the relationship of the spouses. As a passion sublimated by a love respectful of the dignity of the other, it becomes a pure, unadulterated affirmation revealing the marvels of which the human heart is capable. In this way, even momentarily, we can feel that life has turned out to be good and happy. And that last quote there, he actually quoted from German philosopher Joseph Peeper from his book Ber Deba. And that's really cool because as I was thinking just now about wonder and that it wonders beyond just use and utility. I was actually in my mind also thinking about Joseph Pee's. Other really famous book, leisure, the Basis of Culture in which this philosopher talks about how really all the good things in culture, including worship, art, learning, koola, school, all these are rooted in leisure and. Wow. I think there's a connection there with sex as well, especially as I work with wives in learning to enjoy, love making a marriage because a lot of us women, we are so busy, we're getting things done, it is easy for a woman to lose a sense of wonder. And lose her leisure, not value it to just go nonstop my life's so busy, and not realizing that she can choose to stop, even if it's just for a moment and contemplate and wonder. The beauty and goodness of the life she's in. Even if you're, like, you've got spit up on your shoulder from your new baby and you know the toddler dumped the Cheerios in the kitchen and you're washing the dishes and there's baby food splattered all over the highchair tray and you're at the kitchen sink. You know what you can do as you're washing the dishes in the kitchen sink. Look at the soap bubbles. Sometimes, like a soap bubble will just float up and get caught in the light, like the sunlight streaming through your kitchen window. And you can take a moment. 30 or 60 seconds and just contemplate and wonder the perfection of that soap bubble floating above the kitchen sink, right? And realize oh, life is good. Life is beautiful. And if we can cultivate that spirit and that attitude more and realize a key, sometimes life does seem to go nonstop, but sometimes we make it go nonstop and we don't stop and we don't take time for rest and leisure. And that's where libido hangs out. Libido. Our libido hangs out in our. Parasympathetic nervous system, and that's rest and digest. And when we are in nonstop sympathetic nervous system mode where it's just constant fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, we're just doing all the things, checking all the things off our list. It is really hard to access our libido and find joy and pleasure and delight. So I encourage you to cultivate the habit of appreciating the goodness of life, of finding rest, getting help so that you can get rest. Asking people to help you, choosing to do less things, choosing to do them less well if it's okay. Like reducing your standards for things that aren't essential so that you can have time for rest and leisure. Anyway, my 2 cents there, little digression based on these words of Joseph Peeper and now having covered. What Pope Francis says here in a Morris Lei La Morris Lei about sex being good and holy, and God delighting in the pleasure of husband and wife and their delight in sex. I am going to turn to these next few paragraphs. Paragraphs 1 53, 1 54, 1 55. One 50. These are about violence and manipulation. That's the title of the section here. And I really see and hear some wise words cautioning against something. Super prevalent in today's culture regarding how society views sexuality, and that's just seen in terms of use so in paragraph 1 53 here. Pope Francis writes on the basis, so he there, here's this transition from sex is good. God loves sex, he says on the to, okay, but also sex can be misused. So here's this transition. On the basis of this positive vision of sexuality, we can approach the entire subject with a healthy realism. It is after all a fact that sex often becomes depersonalized and unhealthy as a result. It quote. Becomes the occasion, an instrument for self-assertion and the selfish satisfaction of personal desires and instincts. And that is a quote from John Paul, twos encyclical, Evangelian vitae from 1995, his pro-life and cyclical. Pope Francis goes on to continue in our own day. Sexuality risks being poisoned by the mentality of use and discard. The body of the other is viewed as an object to be used as long as it offers satisfaction and rejected once it is no longer appealing. What a perfect description of porn culture where the actors in the porn videos, images they are just, they're, they are literally paid. To be used for the pleasure of those consuming the porn. And the value of a woman is based on whether she gives men that male gaze, that pleasure. And once she is old or deemed not attractive anymore, not sexually attractive anymore, then she has no more value and she has discarded. And I think that's why we have such a fierce pursuit of, oh of trying to make middle-aged women. Older women look like young women because it's like this desperate seeking for value, right? Like only young women who are, sexually attractive by this certain standard are valuable. That's, I think a sad aspect of today's culture because I think as I'm speaking as a middle aged woman myself, looking ahead. Hopefully God willing to be an older woman, but I just, I see a lot of beauty in women at every age. There's a beauty to women who grow in their confidence, even with the silver hair, gray hairs more lines and wrinkles, different shape to her body. But, but like more of a fullness of herself. She knows herself better, she's lived more, she has more wisdom. She's loved longer. And there is such a beauty to that. And it is a beauty that can be very sexually attractive also to her husband who knows her, who has known her and continues to discover, know her more and more. And I, but I think that can give us so much hope as women that our value does not depend on whether or not we're sexually appealing by the current culture's arbitrary and ever shifting standards. Anyway. What I wanted to point to in this section also is something really important that I've been meaning to address in this podcast. I've been trying to figure out how to enter into this topic. Because it's a big one, and I'll probably do more episodes on it, but this is the question of marital debt or obligation sex. So come to find out, I did not realize this as I was studying sexual ethics in grad school at the Catholic University of America, because it's not in any of the official church documents that I was studying. These documents are starting with. Human Vita and Gaia sp from the 1960s church's, the church's official teachings on sexuality that then were further developed. Pope Paul the six. And John Pauli and Pope Benedict, wrote further about sex and Aeros and we have we have other documents too, from Vatican Dicastries and such on the dignity of the human person and, which interventions in reproduction are elicit or illicit based on our principles of sexual ethics. Okay. Nowhere in any of that did I ever come across. Any mention of marital debt or this idea that a wife always needs to say yes to a husband's initiation of sex? That was just, it's not a thing. It's not in the documents. The church does not use that language. It's not the church's teaching. But as I got into this work of helping women enjoy sex and marriage, lo and behold, to my dismay, I heard women telling me, oh yeah, this or that priest on his podcast or our, in our marriage prep, or, I don't know, just they picked it up in the Catholic circles around them. This idea that. A wife always needs to be sexually available to her husband. I even had a wife tell me that they heard on a podcast this traditional priest say that a wife needs to have. Grave reason to say no to her husband. Otherwise she's sinning by declining his initiation. And so I know this is deeply rooted in a lot of people's minds and connected with the Catholic church, but I just wanna reaffirm this is not the church's official teaching I've gone back to my wonderful dissertation director and advisor and moral theology mentor from the Catholic University of America, Dr. John Grabowski, who's a theology the Body expert, and he was appointed by Pope Benedict the 16th along with his wife to the Pontifical counsel on the family. He's a great authority. And sexual ethics. And he reaffirmed for me, what I thought I knew, women are not, and I think likewise men too, if their wife were to. Request, they're not obligated to always say yes. What the church does emphasize in her documents is mutuality and being mutual self-gift, but really the sense of freedom and respect, respecting the dignity of each other. And so here is Pope Francis in this document. And Morris Lee, TCA reaffirming this as well. So here in paragraph 1 54. Pope Francis says, we also know that within marriage itself, sex can become a source of suffering and manipulation. Hence, it must be clearly reaffirmed that. And here he begins quoting a conjugal act imposed on one spouse without regard to his or her condition or personal and reasonable wishes in the matter is no true act of love and therefore offends the moral order. In its particular application to the intimate relationship of husband and wife. End quote. That quote is from St. Pope Paul, the six in cyclical letter Humane Vita, the 1968 birth control document reaffirming the church's opposition to birth control, right? So there is a pope who is a saint who said in this authoritative document that. Spouses are not to impose conjugal acts on each other without regard for the other's condition or wishes. That's not an act of love that offends the moral order in the sexual relationship. Because sex is meant to express a free gift of love. It's not an obligation, and I'm so grateful as I read this again today to see that Pope Francis really goes on to elaborate this and explain and expand this further. He looks at what some of what St. Paul said in in the New Testament letters St. Paul insists and Pope Francis is quoting this in paragraph 1 54, St. Paul insists let no one transgress and wrong his brother or sister in this matter. We're talking about sexuality here. And Pope Francis writes, even though Paul was writing in the context of a patriarchal culture in which women were considered completely subordinate to men, he nonetheless taught that sex must involve communication between the spouses. Because, and Pope Francis points to one Corinthians seven. Verse five, that it must be by mutual agreement that spouses would postpone sexual relationships. So he's saying, look here, like even though women didn't really matter much and their voice didn't matter in the patriarchal culture of the Middle East in the first century it must be by mutual agreement that spouses would make a decision about their sexuality in light of their faith and. There. Women's voices do matter. Okay, so now next paragraph 1 55, Pope Francis goes on to draw St. Paul, John Paul two into this. St. John Paul, two very subtly warned that a couple can be threatened by insatiability. In other words, while called to an increasingly profound union, they can risk. Effacing their differences and the rightful distance between the two. When reciprocal belonging turns into domination, the structure of communion and interpersonal relations is essentially change. So that's a quote from John Paul Twos theology, the Body, his catechesis and Genesis from the early 1980s. So John Pauli, there was in a philosophical way with his philosophical language warning against. S one spouse in marriage being super obsessed with sex and wanting it all the time. And then instead of sex being about communion then we get this different dimension of domination that comes into play. And Pope Francis ends this paragraph saying when we have this dynamic of domination is that actually the person who's dominating they lose their dignity and they take away the deepest meaning of the body and of sexuality. Pope Francis writes, they end up using sex as a form of escapism and renouncing the beauty of conjugal union. Okay, so what I am. Reading in this, is that using sex as a form of domination of, just imposing it on the other against their preferences that this destroys the beauty of conjugal union and Absolutely, that is exactly what I see happening with women who are coming to me. In my course and seeking help because they feel like sex is a chore. They are exhausted from it. When they have sex with their husbands. They just want'em to get it done over with as quickly as possible because they're not enjoying it. The wife's not enjoying sex. She's doing it out of a sense of obligation because she's been affected by this obligation sex. Mentality that she, these false messages that she picked up and she's thinking, okay, this is what I have to do to be a good wife, or he just wants sex so much. Or in sad cases, like if I don't have sex with him every two days, then he starts getting really cranky and he is likely to yell at the kids that, I just wanna let you know that is a form of abuse. If you feel like you have to have sex with your husband or else. He's gonna get angry and hurt people in your home, yourself or your kids. That's sexual abuse. That is not okay. And you need to get help. You need to go get yourself a counselor, someone to talk to through it, and then maybe an advocate and and see how you can get yourself out of that cycle, out of that situation. But that's not anything that the church wants you to be in. Okay, so just to make sure for the people in the back that this message really hit home. The next paragraph 1, 6 56 here says, Pope Francis writes every form of sexual submission must be clearly rejected. This includes all improper interpretations of the passage in the letter to the Ephesians where Paul tells women to be subject to your husband's, Ephesians 5 22. This passage mirrors the cultural categories of the time, but our concern is not with its cultural matrix, but with the revealed message that it conveys as St. John Pauli wisely observed. Love excludes every kind of subject subjection whereby the wife might become a servant or slave of the husband. The community or unity in which they should establish through marriage is constituted by a reciprocal donation of self, which is also a mutual sub subjection. And so that's another quote from John Paul Two's Theology the Body. But I will tell you that John Paul two also teaches this in his 1988 letter on the Dignity and Vocation of Women in which he says we need to interpret. St. Paul's discussion in Ephesians five of wives, be submissive to your husband. In light of the very next verse, be submissive to one another out of reverence for Christ. And St. John Pauli says we cannot see in. This passage in St. Paul, any sort of legitimation of male headship that really, this is husband and wife being mutually subject to one another here. And mutual submission. I just don't want any Catholic wives who hear my words to continue in the era of thinking that being a good Catholic wife means that you have to have sex with your husband whenever he wants, because you have to be submissive. That's not it. That is not what our church teaches. So Pope Francis continues in paragraph 1 56 by talking about yes, be subject to one another. Ephesians 5 21. In marriage, this reciprocal submission takes on a special meaning and is seen as a freely chosen mutual belonging, marked by fidelity, respect and care sexuality is inseparably at the service of this conjugal friendship. For it is meant to aid the fulfillment of the other, right? So we think about being friendly about sex, aiding our conjugal friendship, right? It's not a friendly kind sort of thing to demand that your wife have sex with you when she is exhausted and you know her body aches and she just really needs to sleep. Or likewise wives with your husband. Sometimes when we are ovulating, that desire can be so strong that, if our husband is indisposed to making love with us in that time and falls asleep, or maybe he's sick or for whatever reason you can't have sex with him, but your hormones are just screaming, let's have sex today because you're ovulating, right? You need to show respect and care and. Out of kindness, not demand that of your husband, but just figure out how to care for yourself by, take a walk, do some deep breathing, figure out what else you can do to just give your body rest and distraction or, just not treat your husband as a means to your end of relief from that, that sensation, but really respect the person. That you were married to. So this just, it really goes both ways here. Okay. So much for marital debt and obligation, sex and mutuality. Really important topic again, I think I will be coming back to this in later episodes. But I wanna conclude these points by reflecting on this next paragraph, which I think is a really great. Antidote to purity culture. A lot of times I have wives who come to me for help and they have just been brought up with such a strong purity culture influence, just thinking sex. The main message they heard about sex growing up was that it is sinful. Before marriage, don't do it. And then other sorts of messages as well, like just only bad women like sex. That sex is dirty, right? That sort of thing can make it. It's imbalanced, and then it makes it so hard to flip the switch once that wife, that woman gets married and now sex is licit and you have to have it but you've just developed all these associations with sex being dirty, and so many women are like, Ooh. It's just gross. I, I feel guilty if I feel sexual pleasure or desire. And and they really, almost some of them almost have this disdain that their husband has desire and or just disdain this area of their marriage. And so against that sort of attitude, let's hear these words of Pope Francis in paragraph 1 57 of a Morris Latia. All the same. He says, the rejection of distortions of sexuality and eroticism should never lead us to a disparagement or neglect of sexuality and aeros in themselves. The ideal of marriage cannot be seen purely as generous donation and self-sacrifice, where each spouse renounces all personal needs and seeks only the other's good without concern for personal satisfaction. I am gonna pause here and say, wives don't think the whole point of sex is just to give your husband pleasure. God wants you to enjoy it also, and in order for that to happen, you need to be aware of yourself. You need to pay attention to yourself and what you like and what feels nice, and be able to hold these two awarenesses at the same time. Being in touch with yourself, with your own body. How do I feel? Where do I feel good? Where do I feel not so good? Where do I need to relax? Where do I need, I don't know, a massage. And you know what would be nice for how my husband could touch me or caress me or massage me for a long time? You know what sorts of touches feel good and also attend to, what can I do to stimulate him and bring him pleasure as well, right? The both, there's that mutuality there. So I'm gonna get back to Pope Francis' words here. He says, we need to remember that authentic love also needs to be able to receive the other, to accept one's own vulnerability and needs, and to welcome with sincere and joyful gratitude, the physical expressions of love found in a caress, and embrace a kiss and sexual union. Kind of spicy, right? Go Pope Francis. He's saying, don't disdain sex. Don't think that you know that it's not okay for you to receive the delight of and embrace a kiss and sexual union. This God made this for you in marriage and he gave us these human bodies and there is a goodness there. Matter matters. The matter of our body matters. Okay. So I think that's just a really good antidote to some purity, culture distortions and messages. He continues by quoting Benedict the 16th. He says, Benedict the 16th stated this very clearly. Begin quote, should man aspire to be pure spirit and to reject the flesh as pertaining to his animal nature alone, then spirit and body would both lose their dignity. End quote. So this is just an encouragement to wives to think about how you can cultivate that receptivity and that appreciation for your body and the way that God did design you to be able to receive love in the form of sexual pleasure from your husband. If you can, learn about your body, what does your body need? Usually it probably needs some rest. That's very important, right? And some help relaxing before your, before pleasure comes relaxation and rest. These are like the bridge to pleasure and emotional connection. That's very important also. But then also don't disdain the body. God created us women. You women listening with an organ just for sexual pleasure, the clitoris. I think that tells us God wants us to receive sexual pleasure. It is important for him that you are able to do that and he gave you 8,000 nerve endings in that organ, right where when we compare to the hu, the male organ that has 4,000 nerve endings for pleasure alone. So God's really underscoring here, like his treasuring of this for you. So don't disdain. What God created there. And then Pope Francis winds this up, and this kind of concludes this whole section on sex and marriage by saying, still, we must never forget that our human equilibrium is fragile. There is a part of us that resists real human growth. And at any moment it can unleash the most primitive and selfish tendencies. And absolutely we do need a guard against that in sex. Yeah we do have these selfish tendencies, but that doesn't mean that sexual pleasure is bad. But I really, I think this is so great because Pope Francis is really looking at sex in a balanced, healthy way. I think this is a great contribution in continuity with the church's. Sexual ethics and I appreciate that he points out the distortions, on both sides, both porn culture and purity culture distortions that he writes about the importance of mutuality against this idea of marital debt or, being sexually submissive and really started this whole section reflecting on the goodness of sex and that. This is God's gift for husband, wife to delight in. Yes, it does bring about babies and is good for that, but also is just good for the marital friendship. So I think this is just a great opportunity for all of us to go back and reread a Morris Latier there. There is a lot of good material there. A lot of good inspiration. Yes, there's the footnote heard around the world. That was controversial, but I think the media and commentators do did us a big disservice when this encyclical came out by focusing obsessively on that footnote and disregarding. The vast amounts of goodness and inspiration in here. He just, if you read the beginning, there are such beautiful reflections on scripture and marriage and family life on the family and marriage that is based on being centered on God and Christ centered, that's the family and the marriage that's built on rock. And if you don't put God at the center. That is like basing your marriage on shifting sands. So good. And, no one else has done that before. Applying those parables to reflections on marriage and family life. Thank goodness for, Pope Francis, he's a he is different, right? He is. He's not your basic pope. Not that any of the popes are basic, but like he just brought his own special Pope Francis ness. And there are some really great like concrete images just like Jesus used in the parables. That, that illuminate more the the goodness of marriage and family life. We had a lot of intellectual reflections more abstract before with Pope John Pauli and Pope Benedict the 16th, who were brilliant and so smart, and. So insightful and gave such amazing contributions. I'm really thankful for them also, and I'm just a huge John Pauli fan. I'm a John Pauli generation girl here. I was a teenager and a young adult going to the World Youth Days with him and just being lit on fire with inspiration by John Paul Two's. Appeal to the youth to open wide the doors of your heart to Christ. I was like, yes, that is what I want. And so I'm just a huge, super fan of John Pauli, but I do recognize he, he is usually pretty abstract in his writings. And Pope Benedict also very intellectual and abstract and Pope Francis brought us a down to earth ness. That is a nice balance and rounding out, and I'm excited to see what the Holy Spirit is going to choose for us in the next Pope. So anyway, let's go back and read a Morris Letitia. You can find it free on the Vatican website. You can order a copy, and then if you are a Catholic wife listening to this podcast and you would like. Some tips on how to cultivate more delight and joy in your own love life with your husband. Help yourself to my free guide, enhancing Marital Intimacy, nine Skills From Mind, body, and Spirit. You can find it@canafeast.com or in the show notes to this episode, and you'll find quotes from the catechism in there and reflections on, the church's teaching on sex, as well as some really practical tips that can help you. Learn how to cultivate more delight in your love life with your husband. So in closing, I just wanna encourage you all to honor Pope Francis and give thanks to God for the gifts of his pat Passy by living out the joy of love today in your life. However, God is calling you to do that. God bless you.