Can Catholic Spouses Try Different Sex Positions Other than Missionary?

Few questions about Catholic teaching on marriage are surrounded by as many jokes, rumors, and half-remembered medieval claims as the morality of sexual positions. Is missionary position uniquely “approved,” or can married couples licitly choose other forms of intercourse? This article provides an answer!

How many times have we heard in popular media and film that any sex position outside missionary will send you straight to Hell? Where did this trope come from? And is it true?

With most tropes, there is some grain of truth to be found somewhere in them. It is true for example that throughout the middle ages and early modern period, it was thought that different sex positions other than missionary were essentially contraceptive in nature and therefore gravely sinful. Some also thought the perceived obscenity of the positions in altering the dominant/submissive roles of men and women constituted a crime against nature. Yet for the most part, moral theologians, especially from the last century, do not take issue so much with the positions themselves (except insofar as they may fall short of signifying the fullness of conjugal love). Rather, they take issue with the perceived relationship these positions have with the statistical likelihood of conception. Take, for example, the words of moralist Hieronymous Noldin: 

“To choose a mode of intercourse with the intention of making conception more difficult, by which it is actually made more difficult, is a venial sin, if it is done without a just cause: for since the generation of children is the primary end of marriage, to act in this way without a just cause is against reason, but not gravely so, because conception is not impeded.” [1]

What this shows is that for Noldin, the property of the act that would make it venially sinful by nature is its perceived inherent tendency to make conception more difficult. This perception, of course, rests entirely on empirical science. It is therefore important to understand the role empirical facts and science can have in influencing moral theology. 

While it is certainly not true that empirical discoveries in science can change the moral principles of the natural law, empirical science can absolutely determine how those principles might be applied in certain situations. Take, for example, Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment. In his encyclical, he outlines a combination of moral principles and concrete applications of those principles. Yet those applications depend directly on the prevailing climate science of the day. Therefore a Catholic who reads the encyclical is only obliged to adhere to the moral principles and to obediently receive the applications more or less as if-then conditionals. In other words, if and only if, the climate is changing such and such amount due to such and such human factors in such a way that threatens grave harm to humanity and our common home, then such and such human behavior must cease on pain of sin. 

I would submit we apply this very same hermeneutic to the question of sexual positions within marriage. If and only if such and such sex position lessens the odds of conception, then it could only be performed with a proportionately serious reason to excuse it from venial sin. And yet we know scientifically that by and large sex positions do not alter the likelihood of conception to any statistically significant degree (quote WebMD article). Even positions where the woman is on top do not statistically decrease the odds of getting pregnant from a scientific point of view. The moralists we quoted above relied on scientific data that was simply not accurate, and it was the impact “unnatural” positions had on the likelihood of pregnancy that led to them requiring some just cause to offset this minor disorder. The “minor disorder” in question would in this case consist in the sex position’s inherent tendency to lessen the odds of conception. With the basis for non-missionary sex positions containing a minor disorder debunked by science, the only moral qualm that would remain would be the perceived “obscenity” present in this or that sex position. And yet, most moralists affirm that so long as a sexual gesture or behavior does not signify something evil by its very nature, there is no sexual act that cannot be made honorable by the sacrament of marriage, so long as the ends of marriage are respected. While it may be true that certain sex positions are more apt for conveying the sacramental signification of the one-flesh union and may tend toward greater perfection in the act, this fact alone is incapable of rendering other sex positions sinful. 

In light of all this, we can safely say that there is no sex position that is per se forbidden for married couples, so long as the husband can be reasonably assured that a completed act of intercourse and natural insemination will ensue. 

Footnotes:

Hieronymous Noldin, Summa Theologiae Moralis