Can Catholic spouses engage in penetration without ejaculation, or deliberately seek a second orgasm outside the conjugal act? This article answers two reader questions by applying traditional Catholic moral theology to male orgasm outside intercourse and to amplexus reservatus, or incomplete intercourse without ejaculation.
A reader asks,
1. If, after consummated sex, the husband is brought to a second orgasm through fellatio, can this be allowed as part of a continuation of sex?
2. During days of abstinence when we cannot have sex and risk pregnancy due to economic and/or psychological reasons, can penetration still take place without reaching ejaculation? If so, is the wife allowed to orgasm?
Answer:
For Catholic moral theology, the sinfulness of pollution for the male (i.e., semination outside the vagina) consists essentially in the act itself, inasmuch as it is contrary to nature of and by itself regardless of intention or circumstance. Therefore, there is no circumstance in which this could be licit if deliberately intended and chosen. The fact that semination had already occurred naturally remains a morally good act, but the subsequent orgasm on part of the husband is its own act that has to be governed by the same rules of nature. As Pius XII teaches, “What has been said up to this point concerning the intrinsic evil of any full use of the generative power outside the natural conjugal act applies in the same way when the acts are of married persons or of unmarried persons, whether the full exercise of the genital organs is done by the man or the woman, or by both parties acting together; whether it is done by manual touches or by the interruption of the conjugal act; for this is always an act contrary to nature and intrinsically evil." [Address to the Second World Congress on Fertility and Sterility, 19 May 1956]
In order to determine the morality of this kind of action, a few preliminary principles should be spelled out. For one, if this act, referred to as amplexus reservatus, is sinful, it is not sinful by virtue of the act of penetration without orgasm. Moral theologians would still classify this as an incomplete sexual act and would therefore by governed by the same moral principles as other incomplete sexual acts that do not involve such penetration. However, unlike other kinds of incomplete acts of sexual stimulation, this one in particular presents such an intuitively obvious danger of male orgasm that if there is an intention for the man to withdraw at some point, it is difficult to discern how this could be done without intentionally putting oneself into a proximate occasion or danger of pollution. Nevertheless, since it is per se conceivable that some couples due to experience and self-knowledge may very well be able to engage in this with some regularity without such proximate danger, then most moralists say it could be considered licit under such a subjectively unique set of circumstances.
