Can Catholic Spouses Practice “Karezza” Method of Sexual Intercourse?

Introduction

Is amplexus reservatus (the “karezza method”) moral for Catholic couples? This article explores Catholic theology, magisterial teaching, and moralist debates on whether deliberately stopping short of orgasm in the marital act is a sin or permissible form of intimacy.

While rarely discussed outside of either academic moral theology or sexology, amplexus reservatus (or the “karezza method’), which is the deliberate suspension of the marital act just short of orgasm in either the husband or the wife, poses a real question for Catholic couples in that it falls perilously close to the line between permitted expressions of intimacy and serious sin. For that reason, in this article I want to provide an overview of where the theologians and the magisterium have been on this issue and to provide moral clarity on the subject from my own perspective. 

Some theologians of a more laxist bent have seen nothing either intrinsically sinful about the practice nor have they even seen it as circumstantially problematic except inasmuch as it could constitute a proximate and immediate danger of either the husband or the wife being brought to climax outside the conjugal act. This perspective is easy to dismiss right off the bat, as it has been regarded by the vast majority of moral theologians as too lax and dangerous to morals and was condemned formally by the Holy Office under Pius XII.

The more common perspective among moralists holds that while there is nothing intrinsically disordered about the act itself, it is more often than not sinful by the circumstances which naturally accompany the act. For one, it often indicates an excessive preoccupation with pleasure, since in this case the spouses are not satisfied with typical incomplete acts but instead wish to simulate the conjugal act just shy of completing it, up to the very outer limit of an incomplete sexual act. Moreover, because of how proximate this act is to the conjugal act, it seems highly improbable that this could be done without necessarily falling into a proximate and immediate danger of orgasm outside the conjugal act. This perspective seems to have been shared by the Holy Office which condemned any author who would “presume to speak as though no objection were to be made against the amplexus reservatus from the viewpoint of the Christian law.” -1

Finally, a smaller school of theologians regard the practice as sinful as to its intrinsic object precisely inasmuch as it is an incomplete act of sexual intercourse, regardless of the circumstances in which it takes place. This perspective, while noble in its intention, would logically entail a dangerous conflation of incomplete and complete sexual acts and would therefore amount to a total condemnation of all incomplete sexual acts between spouses, which is a perspective repudiated even by St. Alphonsus. 

In weighing these opinions, the second opinion appears closest to the truth. Precisely because amplexus reservatus does not necessarily involve orgasm outside the marital act, from an ontological standpoint it wouldn’t categorically differ from other incomplete sexual acts between spouses which are per se morally legitimate. That being said, given its close proximity to orgasm (most men, for example, last between 4 and 5 minutes), I do not see how such an act could be done without invariably causing a proximate danger of committing the sin of Onan. Therefore, in my view, the practice should simply be avoided across the board. 

References

1. Monitum of the  Holy Office, June 30th, 1952