Most of us have encountered two very different attitudes toward sex in Catholic circles. On one side, there's the culture's message that sex is basically recreation. On the other, there's a hyper-restrictive view that treats almost everything beyond the bare minimum as suspect.

In this discussion, I'll share why I think both of these miss the mark, and that the Catholic tradition actually calls us to a virtue of sexuality, a grounded, joyful mean between extremes.

I'll walk through what the Catechism actually says about pleasure and joy in marriage (it might surprise you), talk about why an overly rigid moral framework feeds scrupulosity and can actually work against the natural law, and share a few of the key moral principles that really do matter.

I'll also get into what I think is the most important shift we can make as husbands: approaching our wives from a posture of other-centered love rather than self-interest. That's the heart of the sacrament, and it transforms everything, including the bedroom.

If you've ever wondered where the line is between moral clarity and unnecessary fear, this one's for you. Grab a cup of coffee and let's talk about it.

📄 The What's Allowed List — Sarah's practical guide to navigating moral questions around sex in Catholic marriage

📖 Humanae Vitae — Pope Paul VI's encyclical on the regulation of birth

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Today I want to talk about something that I've been thinking about for quite a while, and I would love to get your perspective, your thoughts on this topic.

And it is simply this, that living our sex lives with our wives, our sexual union, we're called to do it virtuously, right?

Living well in any part of our lives is living virtuously.

And there is a mean between extremes here.

So this conversation is going to get a little bit theoretical, a little bit, you know, we're going to dive into some principles.

But I think you'll see that the practical side of this and the practical implications of how we think about this come through really, really quickly.

So this discussion will definitely have a practical piece to it.

We'll get there.

But first, what is a virtue?

A virtue is a disposition that is a mean between extremes.

We can fail in an area of our life either by doing something too much or too little.

Take a couple quick examples.

These are like classic from Aristotle and Aquinas.

Let's take generosity, right?

We should be giving to the poor.

As I record these words, it's Lent.

Almsgiving is something that we're called to by Jesus, right?

And our faith.

But we can obviously give too little.

We can be selfish, we can be stingy.

That's too little.

We can also, especially as lay people, as husbands, as providers of our family, we can give too much.

We can be imprudent.

We can give away everything that we have and not be able to get groceries for our children, right?

We have people depending on us.

And if we are imprudent with the resources that we have and we give too much and we fail to provide for those who are dependent upon us, that is also a failure.

Let's take courage.

That's another classic example.

You can obviously be a coward, right?

Or you can have too much.

You can fail in the excess, and you can be like, rash and run into danger in an unnecessary way.

Courage as a virtue is an acceptance of danger when necessary, when prudent, when you are required to do so.

But it's not safe seeking danger or putting yourself into danger when it's unnecessary.

That's actually a failure of virtue.

That's failing to, you know, have an appropriate regard for your own safety.

So all virtues work like this.

There's a deficiency or an excess.

Well, let's take a look through this framework at sexuality specifically.

Obviously, we're talking about sex and marriage.

And I think that there is likewise an extreme on both sides.

And let me.

Let me break this down and how I'm thinking about this.

On one end we've got complete permissiveness.

And this is basically what the culture generally proposes to us.

And it's all about the pursuit of physical pleasure.

Right?

This is the.

The vision of sex that we get from Hollywood, certainly from pornography, where it's all just about pleasure.

The general cultural attitude seems to be that sex is little more than a form of recreation.

As long as two consenting adults agree to recreate in this way together.

That's all you need.

It's really devoid of any meaning or.

Yeah, it's really devoid of any meaning beyond a simple pursuit of pleasure.

And we can clearly see that this is know, radically deficient for a Christian, for a Catholic understanding of the reality of sexuality in marriage.

And that's easy to reject.

But on the other hand, there is an excess as well.

On the other hand, we've got a highly rigorous view where sex is basically only allowed because it happens to be the natural way to conceive children.

And anything beyond the absolute bare physical necessity required for conception is considered sinful or at least viewed with an extreme amount of skepticism.

This feels to me like a harsh reaction against the culture.

But it's like.

Like that pendulum metaphor, right?

The pendulum swings too far in the opposite direction.

We oscillate between these extremes, but the virtue is actually in the middle.

So in.

In this extreme side, we've got prohibitions against any type of foreplay.

No touching, right?

Like there are people who counsel that morally you can't touch each other's genitals with your hands.

I think that's insane, quite honestly.

There's no kissing anywhere but in the lips.

There's rejection or restrictions on positions or on times of day.

There's requirements to keep under the covers or keep the lights off.

You know, all these types of things where there's huge amounts of restrictions put on the expression of physical union.

And those restrictions seem ultimately to come from a place of fear.

There's a fear of lust, there's a fear of, you know, sexual desire.

But our church actually teaches that sexual desire is.

Is not bad.

Let me read to you a quote from the Catechism itself.

And it says sexuality is a source of joy and pleasure.

Let me just read that again.

I'm going to go on.

But sexuality is a source of joy and pleasure.

The Creator himself established that, that in the genitive function spouses should experience pleasure and enjoyment of body and spirit.

Therefore the spouses do nothing evil in seeking this pleasure and enjoyment.

This is from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

There is nothing wrong with the enjoyment, the pleasure, the joy of sex in marriage.

It is a gift from God.

God made us this way, and it is one of the blessings and graces and joys of marriage.

And there's nothing wrong in a married couple in, like, partaking of that joy that God provided for this sacrament.

It would be kind of like Jesus turning the water into wine at the wedding feast and being like, oh, but don't drink it.

Like, that was the gift.

That was the gift that Jesus gave to.

To the wedding, you know, the gift, one of the gifts.

Not, of course not.

The only gift, one of the gifts of marriage is the joy of sex, the joy of sexuality.

God made it that way.

So, of course, it should be common sense that partaking of that joy is permissible, is allowable, is licit.

Part of the problem with a highly restrictive conception of the morality around sexuality is that it feeds scrupulosity.

And scrupulosity is just a deep, paralyzing fear of basically of, you know, ultimately of going to hell, of losing salvation.

And we should be afraid of that.

Don't get me wrong.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't fear hell.

It's right there in the act of contrition, right?

I fear the pains of hell, but the act of contrition goes on, right?

Fear the pains of hell, but most of all, I regret my sins because they have offended thee, whom I should love above all things.

That's a key, right?

So, yes, we should fear for the loss of our salvation, but most of all, we should fear rupturing the relationship of the God who loves us, which really amounts to the same thing.

But it's looking at it from the other perspective.

So scrupulosity really becomes this paralyzing fear.

And God is not calling us to fear.

How many times does Jesus say, be not afraid.

I am with you.

We are not called to be men of fear and are sexual relationship certainly should not be a source of fear and anxiety.

It should be a source, as the catechism tells us, of joy and pleasure, refreshment of body and spirit.

It should be a source of deepening unity between us as husbands and our wives.

It should be all good and positive, not a source of fear.

So that's the first, I guess, reason why I would say these, you know, highly, highly restrictive view of the morality of sexuality within Catholic marriage is just at its core to the entire Catholic ethos of bringing us from darkness to light, from slavery to freedom.

Right?

We are not built to be slaves to fear and scrupulosity.

Here's the other thing.

I'm going to talk about the natural law here a little bit.

So as anyone who has listened to me or followed my own work or the work of my wife Sarah, who has a ministry to Catholic wives, you will know that women, on average, take much, much longer in order to experience pleasure and arousal and ultimately to experience climax within sex than men do.

Men can go through that entire process relatively quickly in a matter of minutes.

For many of us, women often require, you know, many times longer.

Half an hour, minimum, 45 minutes, even an hour.

That's not abnormal.

It's not that women are taking quote, too long.

She's not broken.

That's just the way women are designed.

That's the way their bodies work.

Why did God design us this way?

That is a great question.

I can't tell you the thoughts of God.

I don't know why God designed us this way.

But I can tell you some of the implications of this.

One of the implications of men and women being so different.

Of course, there's some frustrations that come with men and women being different, right?

We're all men, we're all married to women, and we all know that there are various frustrations.

But it is a call to charity, it is a call to other centeredness, it is a call to empathy, and it is a call to serve more than be served.

As men, we need to serve more than be served.

And this difference in the sexual arousal between men and women is a call for us men as husbands to be aware of our wives, to be sensitive to them, and to give them what will help them to experience the same joy and pleasure and refreshment of body and spirit that comes honestly, a little more easily to most men.

The catechism didn't say that the joy and pleasure was only for men.

It's for both.

And we can see that the way women are made, they require more time, they require more foreplay.

And so if we have this view of sex, this moral view of sex that restricts foreplay, that looks at foreplay activities with a extreme skepticism, if not downright condemnation, that they are sinful, then I would actually argue that that is against the natural law of how women are made.

So it's possible to have too strict a restriction of sexuality within a Catholic context.

And it's also obviously possible to have too permissive a view of sexuality within a Catholic context.

Again, the virtue lies in the middle.

There's a lot more to say here, and please understand, I am not suggesting that anything goes in the bedroom.

It does not.

Let me.

While we're talking about the morality, the virtue of sexuality, let me lay out a few of the principles from the Church herself that must be kept in mind in the context of marital intimacy, physical intimacy, that every time a man and woman engage in sex, it must conform to the type of action that can conceive, that can produce life.

And the reason I say it that way is that we can't do anything to inhibit the transmission of life, to actively inhibit that.

In other words, artificial contraception is off the table.

If you want all the details, go read Humana Vitae.

It is a fabulous encyclical, and it's also actually really short, so you can read it very quickly.

One of the other principles that we really must keep in mind in any area of Catholic morality is the dignity of the human person.

The dignity of the human person.

So man and woman, husbands, wives, we all have equal dignity before God, and anything that contravenes that dignity should be avoided, right?

So, for example, any conception of Catholic marriage that holds that the husband has basically an unlimited right to his wife's body in terms of having sex with her and that it is a sin for.

For her to say no or to decline his advances, I would say that that is actually contravening the dignity of the woman, of the wife.

There are many, many, many reasons why a woman or a man might not prefer to make love on any given day.

Some of those reasons might be better than others.

But the fundamental choice of whether or not to unite physically with your husband or wife with your spouse, that really should remain with you and should not be overridden.

Now, you can.

Of your own choosing, you know, if you don't necessarily feel like it, or you're not in the mood, or your wife doesn't feel like it, or she's not in the mood, and she willingly and of her own volition and, you know, her own choice, makes that gesture towards you.

That's great.

That's beautiful.

But that's her choice.

It can't be compelled.

And this really, you know, contravenes the meaning of sexuality as gift.

St. John Paul II especially gave us this beautiful language of understanding sex as mutual giving and receiving, as a gift of oneself to the beloved.

And, you know, this is very biblical.

This.

This language really is shot through with.

In the Song of Songs, for example.

There's no compulsion.

There's no coercion.

That is Antithetical to the meaning of marriage and the meaning of sex.

You know, you can't get married to each other if one of you is coerced.

It's literally grounds for annulment.

And the questions before consent ask, have you come here freely?

And if someone answers no to that, marriage is off.

Can't happen.

You cannot coerce someone in the Catholic Church to get married.

Well, sex is the language of the wedding vows.

So the same logic ought to apply.

Another principle that is commonly cited, is not explicitly articulated, to my knowledge, by magisterial documents of the Church, but is a pretty logical consequence of the principles that are articulated specifically in Humana Vitae that we just talked about, and that is this, that every sexual encounter between husband and wife must include the husband's ejaculation inside his wife's vagina.

So I say that very clearly and directly because we need clarity and directness in this area.

That is the procreative power right there.

So without that happening, the sexual encounter cannot maintain its procreative function.

Right.

The principle articulated in Humanae Vitae, that every act of sexual encounter must be the kind of action that is capable of producing new life or capable of conception.

That is the very practical implication of that principle that the husband must ejaculate inside his wife's vagina.

If that doesn't happen, conception can't happen.

Right?

So if you have heard that moral admonition from various sources, including from myself or from Sarah, that's where it comes from.

Now, does the wife need to climax with her husband inside her?

No, she doesn't.

Because a woman's climax is not connected with her procreative power.

Okay, so we've gone through some of the principles here, and there's, of course, a lot more to say.

And my wife Sarah actually, actually holds a PhD in moral theology from the Catholic University of America.

She created a pamphlet called the what's Allowed List.

And it goes through a bunch of very specific practical questions and applies the principles of Catholic moral teaching and the tradition of Catholic moral teaching to those questions that are very contemporary questions and provides clarity, moral clarity from a virtuous, grounded perspective on Catholic marriage.

So I will link that in the show notes, if you are interested in grabbing a copy.

What I want to end with is actually a completely different conception of morality.

A lot of times we think about what is allowed.

Indeed, Sarah's list is called the what's Allowed List.

Right.

And it's.

It's a fun title, but morality isn't really about a list of Rules to follow.

And it's not really about what's allowed and what's not allowed.

Those are extremely helpful guidelines and guardrails to keep us on the path, right?

So that we know if we have crossed a specific line, it's an objective line, and we can tell, like, oh, we're on the wrong side of this line, better get back on the right side of it.

Those are very, very helpful, don't get me wrong.

But ultimately, the whole point of the moral life is to increase charity in us.

It is to transform ourselves.

God says he has written his law on our hearts.

It's so that our hearts are transformed, so that we actually, we live out in our lives a deeper and more profound charity towards God and towards our neighbors every single day.

And that's absolutely true in our marriage, and it's absolutely true in our sex life within marriage.

Here's what I propose is the way that we as husbands, should approach sexuality with our wives, should approach intimacy with our wives.

And that is from a posture of other centered love.

How can I serve my wife?

How can I show her love?

Not what can she do for me, but what can I do for her?

One of the dynamics of marriage that Sarah and I talk about a lot when we work with engaged couples is in the sacrament of marriage.

Every sacrament has a physical sign, right, that transmits the sacramental grace within that sacrament.

So baptism, for example, is obviously the water.

The water is the sacramental sign.

With confirmation, it's the oil and the blessing of the bishop, right?

So every sacrament has this physical sign.

Well, in marriage, the physical sign is the couple themselves.

What it calls us to do as husbands and as wives, but what it calls us to do as husbands is to take that identity deeply into my own understanding of my call, my role, my identity as husband.

Let me flesh this out.

When Sarah looks at me as her husband, she has the right to see Christ gazing back at her.

Do I look at Sarah, at my wife with the eyes of Christ?

Do I speak to my wife with the words of Christ?

Do I show her the mercy, the forgiveness, the love, the tenderness that Christ should show her, will show her?

Am I being that model for her?

Are my hands the hands of Christ?

Do my hands serve her the way Christ should serve her?

Right?

This is the perspective, this is the posture that we should have as husbands who love their wives.

And you can see clearly, I think it's pretty clear how this can translate even into our sex lives, right?

My experience of making love to my wife should be exactly that.

Making Love, loving her, not getting something from her.

It's not about my desire.

It's about fulfilling her desire.

It's about loving her.

Do I have a reasonable expectation that this should be reciprocal and she should do the same for me?

Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely.

This requires mutual growth.

It requires a lot of communication.

It requires a lot of tenderness.

Many of these things we dive into in a deep way.

In my class, Holy Desires, which opens in the spring and the fall.

And there's way too much to discuss in this entire dynamic for this short conversation.

So I'm actually going to leave you with this thought right here.

And it's so beautiful and profound.

And yes, it is difficult to live out in real life.

And do I live it out perfectly?

Far from it.

Far from it, my friends.

But I do strive for it.

And being aware that this is even a calling, a posture, a perspective, an identity that I can take on for myself, that I personally can be a channel of grace to my wife, and that not only can I be, I'm actually called to be.

That can make a huge difference.

One last final thought.

Don't wait for your wife to change before you change.

I've seen so many marriages and, you know, full confession time.

Sarah and I have been in this dynamic more than once, more often than I'd care to admit, where each of us, we're basically too proud.

It all comes down to pride.

We're too proud to make the first move.

We're too proud to be the one to, you know, open up and be other centered.

We're too proud to be the one to ask for forgiveness first.

We're too proud to make the move towards other centered love that God calls us to.

Don't let pride get in the way.

Be the first one to make the move.

Can you imagine Joseph and Mary being stuck in pride with each other?

Of course not.

Of course not.

They would be the first.

They would race each other to be the first ones to apologize.

Not that Mary had anything to apologize for, you know, but you get my point.

Um, so, yeah, there can be a lot of history.

There can be a lot in the rear view mirror, and I understand that.

And a lot of that may need a lot of time, a lot of care, a lot of healing.

And if that's the case in your marriage, invest in that healing.

Right?

It is so worth it.

Find a good spiritual director.

Find a competent, faithful therapist or counselor to walk with you to help you or your wife or both of you together.

Find the healing that you need.

God wants so much for you.

In your marriage and for your sexual union to be a joyful, pleasurable reflection of that deep, beautiful marriage.

So that is my prayer for each and every one of you.

That is my hope for each and every one of you.

I will be praying for all of you.

Please pray for me and check out the show notes for some of the resources that I mentioned in this discussion.

God bless.