How does a Roman Catholic reconcile a preference for purely procreative sex with the Song of Solomon?
score:11
According to the Catholic Church, the marital act has two effects: procreative and unitive.
Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes.
That Catechism reference is in relation to the sin of Lust, which Jesus equates with adultery.
It's lust that is the problem, and the Church does not teach that man and women are somehow freed from an inclination to lust by virtue of their marriage. Nor is it even logical, St. Paul says that marriage is better for those who whose inclination to fornicate burns within them he doesn't say that the passion will be put out by marriage.
I've heard that The Song of Solomon is the most commented on book in the entire Bible by Christians throughout the history of the Church and what St. Jerome makes of it is very interesting.
In the Song of Songs the precept is given as a hard one: "Regulate your love towards me." And so we plead that, if we err, we do so not from ignorance but from feeling.
I'm not sure what verse he translated to be "Regulate your love towards me" but if it's the overall feeling he had in the translation it ought to have some effect. It's true that other commentaries use the Song of Songs to describe God's love for His church or just the whole Trinitarian dynamic of love. But that's just the necessary and fruitful anagogical understanding of the book. The literal interpretation is just that, make love to your beloved.
We even use scripture from the Song of Songs in scriptural rosaries to meditate on the 5th Glorious mystery, the Coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven and Earth. It doesn't mean we believe she was not a virgin, even though in some metaphor we see her as the woman in the song who everyone said, "Who is she?"
Love and Responsibility is the best and most dense way to gain a full understanding of the purpose of sex and marriage as put forth by the Catholic Church.
Upvote:1
Impeding the procreative nature of the marital act is precisely what most commonly deprives it of its unitive nature.
In other words, what you sense is being celebrated as good in the Song of Solomon is precisely unreserved mutual self-giving, which is not possible in a marital context when fertility is artificially prevented.
Even the agnostic George Orwell realized this.
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/04/orwell-and-contraception
Upvote:2
For a Catholic, it doesn't matter what those verses you quote seem but how the Church and the Fathers of the Church have authentically interpreted them. The Song of Songs is the sublimest of the Wisdom literature, where the relationship of the soul (personified as a bride) with Christ (the bridegroom) is understood in analogy to the relationship between a wife and husband (cf. Eph. 5:32: "This [i.e., marriage] is a great sacrament [in Greek: mysterion or "mystery"]; but I speak in Christ and in the church.").
St. Gregory of Nyssa, in his Commentary on the Song of Songs, uses the word ἔρως (eros, from where we get the word "erotic") to refer to ἀγάπη (agapē or self-sacrificial love) in its more acute form (cf. ibid.'s translator's fn. 19, p. 403). Ibid.'s Homily 11 (pp. 333-359) contains his exegesis of the verses you quote, and St. Gregory's preface (ibid. pp. 3-14) is worth reading to understand how King Solomon uses some of the most mysterious realities of the natural order to understand those of the supernatural order.
Upvote:6
Please consider this quote:
"The abandonment of the reproductive function is the common feature of all perversions. We actually describe a sexual activity as perverse if it has given up the aim of reproduction and pursues the attainment of pleasure as an aim independent of it. So, as you will see, the breach and turning point in the development of sexual life lies in becoming subordinate to the purpose of reproduction. Everything that happens before this turn of events and equally everything that disregards it and that aims solely at obtaining pleasure is given the uncomplimentary name of 'perverse' and as such is proscribed."
This gem of a quote isn't even from a Catholic: it's from (the atheist) Sigmund Freud!
The key consideration is separating the physical act from the possibility of procreation. I've heard it stated in Catholic teaching that "the marital acts are those acts which are, of themselves, suitable for the generation of children." Catholic teaching doesn't require that such acts much be dispassionate, stoic exercises; to the contrary, there ought to be love and passion in the act as the marriage bond is more than just physical, it's emotional, intellectual, and spiritual and the act of love-making can be all of the above as well as open to the generation of children.
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