Joining the inimitable Mrs. Fulwiler for a quick run-down of key terms for a Catholic sex life
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Birth Control
AKA NFP
NFP has already been covered, but it is something you need to know should you want or need to delay having children by a means other than total abstinence.
NFP is birth control - that is, a method of controlling births. It is NOT contraception. Therefore, you can truthfully say "I am a faithful Catholic and I use birth control."
-2-
The Incarnation
The Incarnation refers to Jesus (God) becoming man.
This has a huge affect for our sex lives. If God became man and had a body, then it means that what we do with our bodies is pretty important - because the body has been redeemed! It means we have to reject dualism, the idea that the body and the soul are separate entities that do not affect one another. What we do with our bodies affects our souls.
-3-
Donative.
This gets tossed around a lot in official Catholic texts. It is usually used to describe a lovemaking that is about the spouses giving of themselves to one another, as opposed to mutual use. Think like, donate - to give, to gift. It also can be used to discuss the life-giving aspect of sex, that a married couple's mutual donation can result in the gift of new life.
-4-
Conjugal.
This word is used in EVERY United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) document on married love ever. It's annoying - like they don't have a thesaurus! It is used to refer both to married sex and to married love in general. I think they use it so much because no one wants 'sexual intercourse' to appear in the bulletin.
-5-
Fruitful.
Used to mean baby-making or baby producing. Thus if you see the sentence "conjugal love should be total, faithful, and fruitful" it means your sex life should be a giving of your complete self, not having sex with anyone else, and oriented towards baby-making (even if using NFP to avoid).
-6-
Just/Serious/Grave
This term is used to describe what kind of reasons you should have to use NFP to avoid. And it is a whole CAN OF WORMS. There are the people who say basically, any reason will do - because only you know what's really hard for your family and who are we to judge, so yes wanting each child to have their own bedroom is a perfectly good reason. These people tend to be imprudent in most of their opinions on matters of sexuality, in my opinion. Then there are those who say you should be dying or living in a (preferably wet, broken) cardboard box before you should ever have sex where you aren't certain to get pregnant. These people tend to be scrupulous.
The bottom line is the Church leaves this to you, while always encouraging generosity and to openness to life. The Church is not comfortable making broad distinctions for everyone - individual circumstances will vary far too greatly. She is hopeful that you will REALLY pray, seek good counsel (hopefully not from any of those heretical priests floating around that everyone refuses to discipline), and be generous.
-7-
Magisterium
This refers to the teaching authority of the Church. So if I ever say "The Magisterium is silent..." it means the Church has not released an official teaching on this within her teaching authority. This doesn't mean that individual priests or bishops or even the USCCB don't have an opinion or don't teach certain things; they very well may. But they are not, individually, the Magisterium. The Magisterium refers mostly to Rome, to official documents from either the Pope, when he is speaking ex cathedra ('from the Chair,' i.e., on matters of faith and morals as the Vicar of Christ), or the Bishops in union with the Pope, defining doctrine at a General Council...those sorts of things. It can get complicated, as there are several categories.
But the bottom line is this: I will always try to clarify for you when a statement is "official Church teaching," i.e. the Magisterium has spoken about something very clearly, and when it is merely me, trying to "thing from the heart of the Church," that is, going on official Church teaching and then reasoning from there what might be an authentic Catholic approach to a topic.
As always, when it is merely me, it could be wrong and I am always open to (charitable, reasonable) criticism.
