Having preached about the difference between Natural Family Planning and Contraception last week, we now turn to a consideration of what chastity means for married couples.
From the encyclical letter, Humanae Vitae, of Pope Paul VI, paragraph 11:
"The sexual activity, in which husband and wife are intimately
and chastely united with one another, through which human life is transmitted,
is, as the recent Council recalled, "noble and worthy.'' It does not,
moreover, cease to be legitimate even when, for reasons independent of their
will, it is foreseen to be infertile. For its natural adaptation to the
expression and strengthening of the union of husband and wife is not thereby
suppressed. The fact is, as experience shows, that new life is not the result
of each and every act of sexual intercourse. God has wisely ordered laws of
nature and the incidence of fertility in such a way that successive births are
already naturally spaced through the inherent operation of these laws. The
Church, nevertheless, in urging men to the observance of the precepts of the
natural law, which it interprets by its constant doctrine, teaches that each
and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to
the procreation of human life."
We consider what is permitted from married people in terms of intimacy at various stages and in various circumstances of life.
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