I am never surprised by misunderstandings of the natural laws of sexuality and marriage.  When I first began to study natural law, some of them puzzled me too.

Here’s a question I get all the time.  We say that marriage has two natural purposes.  One of them is procreative:  Turning the wheel of the generations.  The other is unitive:  Bonding the two procreative partners.  Neither purpose may ever be dishonored.  Nonmarital intercourse destroys both goods.  Inside the marital bond, they are protected.

But does the procreative purpose imply that marital intercourse is wrong unless the husband and wife are at that moment trying to make babies?  Is it wrong for them simply to take pleasure in each other?

The answer is no, of course it isn’t.  But why?  My discussion follows Thomas Aquinas (what a surprise!), and if you want all the details, you can read them here.

The key point is that sexual intercourse is wrong if it is not rightly related to its procreative purpose, but there is a difference between saying that it must be rightly related to procreation, and saying that the motive must always be procreation.  How so?  We can understand the matter better by comparing temperance in sex with temperance in food.

We eat because food is necessary.  However, necessity can mean two different things.  In the first sense, food is necessary because we require it for life and health.  In this sense, food is necessary to all animals.  But, in the second sense, St. Thomas suggests, food is necessary because without it we cannot live becomingly.  The beasts know nothing of this, but we rational animals do.  The reason we eat and drink more on festive occasions than at other times is not simply to live and be healthy, but to live becomingly.  Obviously, God endorses this motive; after all, at the wedding feast in Cana, Jesus turned water into wine.

Even at feasts, eating and drinking must still be rightly ordered to life and health, but right order does not require that we eat and drink just for life and health.  Rather, it allows us to enjoy the blessings of food and drink “so long as they are not prejudicial” to life and health.  It would of course be prejudicial to life and health if we ate as much as we could and then purged so that we could eat still more, but it is not prejudicial to life and health to toast the married couple with wine, merely because the wine is not necessary to nutrition.

The distinction between the two senses of necessity applies to sexual intercourse too.  Remember that the husband and wife are joined in a procreative partnership.  In the first sense of necessity, then, sexual intercourse is necessary simply so that they may be fruitful.  In this sense, sexual intercourse is necessary to all animals.  But in the second sense, St. Thomas suggests, sexual intercourse is necessary so that the husband and wife may enjoy their procreative partnership becomingly, so that they may celebrate it.  They take “exuberant joy” in all aspects of their union, as only rational beings can.

Even celebratory intercourse must still be rightly ordered to procreation, but right order does not require that the spouses enjoy intercourse just for making babies.  Rather, it allows them to enjoy intercourse so long as they do nothing in intercourse to thwart the procreative possibility of their action.  For example, just as they may fast from food for a time, so they may fast from sexual intercourse for a time.  However, just as they may not insult the nutritive order of their bodies by deliberately purging during meals, so they may not violate the procreative order of their bodies by deliberately depriving coition of its fertility.

By clearing up the two senses of necessity, we clear up another point too.  What does St. Thomas mean using the Pauline language of requesting the “payment” of the “marriage debt”?  It means just this: That one spouse proposes sexual intercourse to the other, perhaps just for the enjoyment of their union.  Yes, they must always honor, and never thwart, the procreative possibility of the act, for after all, their union is a procreative partnership.  Yet, procreation need not be their motive at moment of joining.  It’s fun.

By the way, the payment of the marriage debt is not an aspect of the husband’s authority.  Indeed, St.  Thomas insists that in proposing sexual intercourse, the husband and wife are utterly equal; either may propose intercourse to the other.  Neither does proposing it mean disregarding the feelings or well-being of the other spouse; he always reminds husbands to be considerate to their wives.

Why on earth then does St. Thomas use the language of a “debt” at all?  For that matter, why does St. Paul?  If to us, this language seems to diminish the loving unity of marriage, reducing intercourse to a cold transaction, we are missing the point.  The point is to emphasize its loving unity and deny that it is a cold transaction.  For do we really believe that the husband and wife become one?  Do we really believe that in marriage, they give themselves to each other?  Then we must believe that they are not coldly separate, autonomous beings, who merely happen to have worked out an arrangement of convenience.  With respect to the joining of their bodies, they are one.  Just because they really are united, each spouse owes it to the other to act as though they are united.  This is a real duty, a real owing, a real debt.  To force oneself upon one’s spouse is wrong -- but so is withholding intercourse out of spite or indifference.

From this point of view, the mutual debt which the spouses owe to each other is like the duty of loving care which each person owes to himself, a point which St.  Paul also emphasizes when he says, “Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.  He who loves his wife loves himself.”  St.  Thomas comments on this verse, “Just as a man sins against nature in hating himself, so does he who hates his wife.”  They should be enjoying each other.

Actually, not only is marital intercourse fun, but it is more fun than nonmarital intercourse.  But that’s a topic for another day.

You may have seen the news stories about the two Florida nurses who wished harm on patients with whom they had political disagreements.  Both nurses were afterward disciplined.

I would like to make a simple point about those cases, not about “political violence,” but about medical violence.  First a quick review.

Registered nurse Erik Martindale posted on Facebook, “I will not perform anesthesia for any surgeries or procedures for MAGA [Trump supporters].  It is my right, it is my ethical oath, and I stand behind my education.  I own all of my businesses and I can refuse anyone!”  The post was later taken down – Martindale claims he was hacked – but he has been disciplined.

Labor and delivery nurse Lexie Lawyer put up a video on social media saying that she hoped White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who is pregnant, would suffer a fourth-degree tear during the birth of her baby:  “"I hope you f*cking rip from bow to stern and never sh*t normally again, you c*nt."

My point is simple:  What should we have expected when, beginning in the 1970s, we authorized doctors and nurses to kill instead of heal and succor?  Medical schools even rewrote the Hippocratic oath, eliminating any divine sanction and replacing the prohibition of abortion and poisoning with weaselly language about how “my power to take a life ... must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty.”

Once we say that it is all right to take innocent human life, it becomes very difficult to say “But only these reasons, not those reasons.”

What kind of world did we think we were making?  A people tends to get exactly what it wants.  It may not like it.

Wokeness is often thought to be a form of virtue signalling.  This is subtly wrong, for it is more often a kind of status signalling.  The wokist wants to be seen as belonging to “the right kind of people.”  He drapes himself with wokeness the same way that in another day and age people paraded their memberships in prestigious clubs, or that today they flaunt the brands and styles of shoes and clothing that they wear.  If ethics comes into the matter at all, it comes in not via the thought “I would never do that,” but via the thought “I’m not the kind of person who would do that.”  You know, the deplorables.

I am not suggesting that such a person is aware of his cravimg for status.  Very few people are fully aware of their own motives.  In a society which professes to believe in equality, and pretends to despise snobbery, it is hard for a snob who knows he is a snob to think well of himself; therefore he has to convince himself that he isn’t a snob.  With its faux concern for The People (most of whom have no interest whatsoever in the cause of woke), wokeness is a convenient way to do that.  My very expensive jeans must have holes in them.

MORE new stuff!  Last Monday I posted links to some new articles of mine and interviews about my new book Pandemic of Lunacy: How to Think Clearly When Everyone Around You Seems Crazy.  I promised more items this week, and you’ll find them below.

But first some more news:  As of Tuesday the 17th, the book was Amazon’s #1 New Release in Philosophy of Good and Evil.  Wednesday morning, the 18th, that flag had been replaced by #1 Best Seller in LGBTQ+ Political Issues (that was a surprise).  Later on Wednesday, the flag was replaced with #1 New Release in Philosophy of Ethics & Morality.  Apparently, when there is more than one flag, the flags rotate.

New Articles:

“Why Scientists, Scholars, and Experts Are Not – and Cannot Be – Neutral Authorities” (Real Clear Books)

“Open Our Eyes: A Vaccine for the Pandemic of Lunacy” (Touchstone, cover story)

“There Is Only One Human Nature” (National Catholic Register)

“No, Virginia, Each Person Does Not Have His Own Reality” (American Spectator)

New Interview:

The Voice of Reason Podcast with Andy Hooser.  Interview begins at 19:48.

And ...

The Table of Contents and Introduction to the book are right here.

You can get a 15% discount from the publisher’s website through the end of April by using the discount code PANDEMIC15.

This discount code doesn’t work with Amazon, but you can get the Audiobook free from Amazon if you sign up for a free trial.

If you read and like the book, I hope you will consider giving it a 5-star review on Amazon.

My wonderful readers will want to know that my new book Pandemic of Lunacy: How to Think Clearly When Everyone Around You Seems Crazy is still climbing in the ratings.  I posted on February 6th that it was Amazon’s #1 New Release in its subject area in the audiobook category --  and it’s now the #1 New Release in Philosophy of Good and Evil, and #3 in Philosophy of Ethics and Morality, in the hardcover and kindle categories as well.  The Philosophy of Good and Evil rating is shown in the image above, and you can see the #3 rating in Philosophy of Ethics and Morality by going to this Amazon page.

I suspect that the rating of new releases is based largely on customer reviews, so if you read the book and like it, I hope you will consider giving it a 5-star rating on Amazon.  Six are up already.

And if you want to get a 15% discount, you can go to the publisher’s website and use the discount code PANDEMIC15.  This is good through the end of April.

God bless you all.  We all need to avoid being infected with the virus of lunatic thinking, and I’m so glad that so many of you are enjoying the book.  For your reading and listening pleasure, I’ll have a set of new articles and interviews related to the book in this coming Monday’s post.