Is it OK for their overhead luggage to touch a woman’s overhead luggage?
What I don’t understand is how it can be OK for a postmenopausal woman to have sex with her husband (or get married and then have sex with her new husband) in the context of a religion that only considers “potentially procreative” sex to be acceptable. She and her husband aren’t having potentially procreative sex.
Sure seems like now that application season is about over, with final decisions due in a few days, that many threads seem to be redirecting to sexual issues.
361: They address that at length in the voluminous writings on the subject. The basic idea is that it is symbolically procreative at that point.
(I’m not advocating this doctrine at all. I’m agnostic to atheist on the religiosity scale. But I grew up Catholic and I’m interested in Catholic doctrine and Canon law and especially the history and development of the doctrines. It just surprised me that a rabbi would so mischaracterize Christian doctrine (at least to the extent his quote was meant to refer to Catholic principles).)
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What I don’t understand is how it can be OK for a postmenopausal woman to have sex with her husband (or get married and then have sex with her new husband) in the context of a religion that only considers “potentially procreative” sex to be acceptable. She and her husband aren’t having potentially procreative sex.
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@marian I know it can be confusing, but there is no restriction because no one really knows when fertility would end. There could be a miracle. lol
Another way to look at it is this…it is totally ok for a pregnant woman to have sex with her H, even tho obviously, a pregnancy can’t take place.
Also…a women who has had a hysterectomy for medical reasons is not banned from having sex.
Actually there is something called superfetation where an already pregnant woman releases an egg and can get pregnant again. Carry on.
ok! Yes, I’ve heard of that and actually have a friend who that may have happened to. The first egg likely died at some point, and she got pregnant at some point as well. So when they induced delivery when they thought the baby was 3 weeks late, the baby was born and they realized that the baby was actually early! This was years ago and she hadn’t had an ultrasound to verify anything.
There was a series of novels by Dorothy Dunnett where the “double” pregnancy was a major plot point.
Reading the comments on this thread made me think about a conversation I had on the street downtown last wee with the proselytizers and their insistence they knew what the Bible truly says. (I enjoy these and they are standing there looking for conversation.) It was as humorous to me to hear concepts completely devoid of their Jewish foundations, indeed any sense they were actually written as part of Judaism, as it is to read how a Jewish writer in Tablet Magazine gets a reference to chastity versus celibacy wrong. It happens. It’s illuminating how much things are seen from one tradition only.
As an aside, one of the most interesting facets of Judaism is that there have been two lasting reformations moving from form to substance and that one is the most devout and the other arguably the least. I did a course on the history of the Jewish prayer book in the US and it’s fascinating to see how the tradition was reduced (in Cincinnati, btw) in an attempt to bring the substance of the religion to the New World. And then how the old form grew back until the current Reform (not Reformed because reform is continuing) prayerbook now has much more literal translation and much more Hebrew (though fewer can even read it).
A message in there about the resilience of tradition and the old phrase that as much as the Jews have kept the sabbath, sabbath has kept the Jews. The point in that is within the religion there’s a strong feeling, even among the less devout, that some groups must/should keep up the old ways and that they are, at minimum, not to be discouraged. The lines about behavior and belief have frayed greatly, here and in Israel, around gender - not only the absurdity of not sitting next to a woman but what non-devout women wear in public, etc. - and of course conversion, which the ultra orthodox never cared about before because they lived in their own world.
“The Talmud requires sex in marriage. It’s grounds for divorce if a husband doesn’t have regular sex with his wife.”
Are there any other penalties, besides merely divorce?
I was considering suggesting that we convert to Orthodox Judaism…
^^^
It’s grounds for an annulment in the Catholic Church as well. I had a friend in college who quietly confided in me that she had her H had been married for 3 years, yet they only had had sex once or twice…and the first time was weeks after they married…and she had to practically beg. Very odd. they did divorce and it was an easy annulment.
For anyone interested in a basic understanding of Catholic doctrine on marriage and family–from a primary source–I can recommend the encyclical by Pope Paul VI, Humanae vitae. It is clearly written and relatively short. In any event, Catholic doctrine explicitly recognizes the importance of sexual intimacy in marriage, apart from procreation, which makes post-menopausal sex a non-issue.
@Lady Lorna:
Well, then I’m confused. I thought (and I’m not Catholic nor have I ever had any formal Catholic education) that “sex apart from procreation” was frowned upon. Hence, birth control is not permitted. Can you clarify this for me? Thanks.
Not really that odd. While not necessarily true in this case, this oftentimes happens when the man is deep in the closet.
@VeryHappy, the encyclical “Humanae vitae” by Pope Paul VI refers to the “unitive significance and procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.” He also states that in married love “husband and wife become in a way one heart and one soul, and together attain their human fulfillment.” And again, “Whoever really loves his partner loves not only for what he receives, but loves that partner for the partner’s own sake, content to be able to enrich the other with the gift of himself.”
Of course, according to Catholic doctrine, married love is by nature procreative and “not confined wholly to the loving interchange of husband and wife; it also contrives to go beyond this to bring new life into being.” Children are considered the “supreme gift” of marriage, but Catholic doctrine also acknowledges that a husband and wife may “for serious reasons and with due respect to moral precepts, decide not to have additional children for either a certain or indefinite period of time.” Those reasons may be physical, economic, psychological, or social and may arise from a mutual understanding of the couple’s “duties toward God, themselves, their families and human society.” In such cases, Catholic doctrine allows the husband and wife to take advantage of natural periods of infertility to engage in the “unitive” nature of married love; however, it does not allow for the use of other impediments to contraception, because these divorce the two aspects of married love (unitive and procreative, of which the husband and wife should always be mindful), and because they do so in a way which is considered unnatural.
As for married love for the infertile, or by my own extension the post-menopausal, the encyclical states that it “does not moreover, cease to be legitimate,” but becomes a “natural adaptation to the expression and strengthening of the union of husband and wife.”
I hope what I’ve written has helped to clarify matters for you. I also hope I haven’t given you more than you asked for.
I think the subtext in there is that there may always be one of those miracles that brings about a child in the most inconvenient, cough, unlikely, times.
@Lady Lorna, thank you! That was very complete and not overwhelming. I didn’t know any of that.
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that "sex apart from procreation" was frowned upon [by the Catholic Church].
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Sex that has been artificially closed to procreation with the intent to thwart conception is frowned upon. There is a difference.
The experts are great at explaining the how/why certain things are ok (such as a medically needed hysterectomy, which obviously renders the woman infertile), and why secondary effects or “unintended consequences” are not “wrong”.
Certainly a woman who has gone thru menopause (either naturally or the result of cancer treatments) was not intending to render herself infertile.
And as gross as it may seem, if a very young woman marries but hasn’t yet started menstruation, she’s not doing anything to prevent pregnancy. (I guess this isn’t too gross in some cultures. Some don’t start periods till 17, and in some cultures it’s been ok age to marry at 14).
here are some little brain twisters…
Say a Catholic woman has an ectopic pregnancy. It is not okay to simply open up the tube and remove the fetus…because that is a direct kill. It is ok to cut and remove that portion of the tube (that part of the tube has become unhealthy/diseased) and the secondary effect is that the fetus dies. A direct kill is not permitted.
the same when a woman is pregnant and she learns that she has terminal tumor in her uterus. The entire uterus can be removed (baby dies as an indirect result), or (if possible) surgery can be performed at the diseased area and if the baby lives super, if it dies, then that was a secondary effect…not a direct kill.
The same when a woman is pregnant and she must take meds that may or likely will kill the baby. If the baby dies, it dies…not a direct kill. If it lives, it lives.
the point of the above isn’t to start a debate about abortion. It’s just a clarification for those who might wonder how/why a Catholic woman can be treated when faced with those situations.
From a superficial standpoint, some things can appear to contradict, but once you “dig a little deeper,” you’ll see absolute consistency.
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she had to practically beg. Very odd.
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Not really that odd. While not necessarily true in this case, this oftentimes happens when the man is deep in the closet.
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Ok, I understand that. That said, the gay men that I’ve known who have married women to “hide” things still managed somehow to have sex and procreate. It’s possible that this guy couldn’t do that, but then why marry? He was young (they were in college), so there shouldn’t have been pressure “to marry” when he did.
That story reminds me of Effie Gray and John Ruskin. She eventually annulled their marriage due to non-consummation (or impotence as the movie shows?) but historians don’t think that Ruskin was gay.
She went on to marry a year later and have 8 children! No begging needed.