Q. We are a Catholic couple married for more than 10 years, practicing natural family planning for health reasons without using contraception. My husband’s frustration with our abstinence periods has led to marital tension and his occasional use of porn, and he has grown resentful of the “Catholic rules” about sexual pleasure and marital intercourse. Though he still agrees with avoiding contraception, he believes mutual manual stimulation during abstinence is legitimate if the purpose of the acts is to foster intimacy between us and make the whole home and family more harmonious. I struggle to find clear guidance in the Catechism on this issue and feel compelled to comply to preserve our marriage and reduce his temptation, despite concerns about its morality. — Anonymous Catholic Woman

A. I admire your faithfulness in following the Church’s teaching for the past 16 years. I also admire your solicitude in seeking advice on a very sensitive topic.

My wife and I, married now 30 years, practiced tight NFP on and off for more than two decades. The monthly cycles of abstinence (or pursuing children) became part of the rhythm of our married life. It brought order and salutary discipline to our sexual relationship and taught us both — especially me — the importance of self-mastery. Attention to natural fertility cycles is not a panacea for a happy marriage, but in our relationship, it has been a precondition for preserving the beauty and order of our conjugal life..

Yet it’s true that couples find the abstinence dimension of NFP burdensome, especially husbands. And wives especially can find it burdensome to need to “say No” during those periods. My wife and I, too, found the abstinence period at times very difficult. We had to pray for strength and courage to make continent choices, especially when the emotions of sexual desire became intense.

Before I continue, permit me gently to correct a common misconception. You referred to the Church’s teachings on sexual matters as “Catholic rules,” as if the Church brought them into existence and has the power to change them. This is not the case.

The moral norms protecting the marriage bed are not “rules” created by the Church, but truths that we discover by attending to the natural law, which is inscribed on our hearts and has God as its author. It is important to understand that the Church does not legislate morality. Rather, the Church guards it and faithfully hands it on so that men and women in every generation will be able to make choices that lead to authentic human freedom and fulfillment.

The Catholic Church has no more power to change or abrogate the truths of the natural moral law than it does to command the sun not to rise in the morning.

You ask whether it can be morally licit to stimulate one another to climax outside of the context of a complete marital act. I understand why you might think this is a legitimate way of showing affection, but what you’re asking is whether mutual masturbation is sometimes legitimate. The Church, in its constant tradition, has interpreted the fifth precept of the Ten Commandments as prohibiting every expression of nonmarital sexual behavior. This includes every choice to seek sexual climax outside of the marital act.

You might respond, “Well, you say that what’s wrong is nonmarital sexual behavior, but we are married.” You are certainly correct that marriage is necessary for upright sex, but being married does not ensure that all sexual acts within marriage are consistent with the good of marriage — that is, are properly marital. An act must be conducive to the purposes of marriage, which means that it has to be the kind of act that brings the couple together as a true one-flesh union. Permit me to explain.

Not just any sexual act enables a couple to become a one-flesh union. Only the kind of act that, as the Code of Canon Law (1061.1) puts it, is “apt in itself for the procreation of offspring.”

This expression might sound overly technical, but it is important to understand what the Church is trying to communicate here. The Church does not mean the act must be actually fertile, or even that a couple needs to be intending to conceive when they engage in it. After all, the Church endorses NFP for couples who wish to avail themselves of the good of bodily intimacy during infertile periods, when they have discerned that they should not seek to conceive new life.

The expression means that the act should be procreative in kind, that is, it must be the kind of act that couples would engage in if they were seeking to conceive a child, for no other kind of act can actualize their bodily complementarity. Since no other act can make the couple become a true one-flesh union, it follows that no other complete sexual act is truly marital. Thus, it is wrong to seek to replace an act of marital intercourse with some other kind of complete sexual act.

You say this moral requirement is not explicitly addressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, but the Catechism does in fact address it, defining masturbation as “the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure” — precisely, it would seem, the kind of action that you and your husband are contemplating. The Catechism teaches quite plainly:

“Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action” (2352).

When Catholic teaching calls an act intrinsically and gravely disordered, this means that if that act is chosen with sufficient knowledge and deliberate consent, the choice is mortally sinful, and one would need to confess the act before receiving Holy Communion.

The Catechism goes on to offer a deeper explanation of why masturbation is morally wrong:

“For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of ‘the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved’” (2352).

This means masturbation is contrary to the kind of self-giving that marital love requires. Far from facilitating the unitive love of the spouses, the act is contrary to it.

Although the acts your husband expects you to engage in do not involve contraception in the strict sense (since you do not envisage acts that might result in conception), you would be engaging in the acts precisely in order to enjoy complete sexual pleasure without risking conception. If such acts were legitimate, it would be hard to see why it would be wrong for you to engage in contraceptive acts. Since you realize contraception is wrong, you might try to help your husband see that the acts he proposes must also be wrong.

You say that the “purpose of the acts” would be to “foster intimacy between us” and make “the whole home and family more harmonious.” Those acts might seem to accomplish those purposes, because your willingness to engage in them apparently placates your husband.

But the explanation above makes it clear that those actions are opposed to marital love. So they will not foster genuine intimacy and certainly not bring authentic harmony to your family. Since they distort the meaning of marital intimacy, they will put a wedge between you and your husband, and may even scandalize your children.

So what should you do?

First, you should resolve to be faithful to the Lord no matter what the cost. This will require you to communicate with charity and gentleness your concerns about your husband’s illicit proposals, and ultimately to communicate your unwillingness to participate in those proposals.

When you communicate your concerns, speak to your husband — again, lovingly and gently — of the spiritual and moral harm to your marriage and family that masturbation will cause. Remind him especially of the harm to children that disunity over such a foundational issue causes.

When parents are at odds with each other in matters such as this, children frequently develop a mistrust and antipathy for the Church. And unless they have their own Christian conversions, they frequently go on to imitate or even exceed their parents’ sins.

Such communication must never be used to strike back at one’s spouse out of frustration. Any hint of retaliation for pain that has been suffered must be avoided. The goal is to communicate God’s love so one’s spouse may come to see what’s good for the marriage and so respond rightly. One ought also to examine oneself to see whether any fault of one’s own may be contributing to the problem.

It is especially unjust for one spouse to give the other an ultimatum either to engage in sinful behavior or be subject to his alienating behavior. If your husband is unconvinced of the wrongness of the acts despite your explanations, it would be important for you to communicate that for you to engage in those acts would be a violation of your conscience. Even if he is unable to see that the acts themselves would be wrong, he can at least acknowledge that it would be wrong to require you to violate your conscience.

Speak to him about how this makes you feel and urge him to cooperate with you in seeking good options. Obviously, turning to other sinful options, such as pornography, is not the answer, for that too will alienate the two of you, and alienate him from God and the children.

There are things you can do that might elicit your husband’s cooperation. You have practiced NFP for many years, so you know all about other means of showing affection: date nights, back rubs, hugs, flowers, candlelight dinners, beer and burgers, mutual encouragement, or perhaps — if he likes them — a gift of a cigar and bottle of single malt scotch.

Try to rekindle the fire that you had early in your marriage for practicing NFP and following Church teaching. If necessary, recommit yourself to carefully charting your fertility cycle so your husband does not need to abstain longer than is necessary.

Be patient with your husband’s faith crisis. You might encourage him to meet with a trusted priest or other spiritual guide, with faithful male Catholic friends, and perhaps even with a Christian therapist. Speak about the help that he can get from the sacraments, particularly confession and Holy Communion.

Encourage him to pray for guidance, serenity, self-control and the virtue of courage, and pray together whenever possible. And you, pray for your husband that he may see the harm that sin will cause your marriage and family. Indeed, like the blind man in the Gospel, we all need to pray, “Lord, that I may see” (Luke 18:41).

In the end, you cannot be sure that your husband is going to respond in the right way. But if he is willing to cooperate, you can be sure that with the help of God’s grace, the two of you will be able to deal properly with the challenges you face practicing NFP. But even if he is not willing, you can be confident that the Lord will always supply you with the strength you need to remain faithful.

And yet, if you do fall, you can take consolation in the truth that God will always forgive us if we ask for forgiveness and enable us to remain faithful to our resolution to sin no more.

Finally, turn to Our Lady in your need. She is the guardian of marriage and the protectress of purity. Pray to her for an upright resolution to this crisis.

I leave you with a passage from St. Paul from 2 Corinthians (4:16-18) that I find consoling when sufferings become intense:

“So we do not lose heart. … For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”