Refusing Sex Always A Grave Sin?

[Dave]

I recently heard that it's a grave sin for a person to refuse sex from their spouse, as, according to the priest saying this, it's a sin against justice. So would one of the partners commit a mortal sin if he/she wasn't in the mood due to illness or being tired, or if the couple had a fight earlier and one partner needed a little more time to cool off than the other?

[Thy Geekdom Come]

Justice is the virtue by which we give due respect (or what we owe aside from respect itself) to others. Justice is due primarily to God, then to those with whom we have relationships by covenant (family), and then to others.

In a marriage, justice between spouses means fulfilling the marriage covenant with regard to one's spouse. That includes sexual relations. One of the aspects of marriage is that it is a "remedy of concupiscence." This has been misinterpreted by many to mean that a purpose of marriage is to gratify sexual desires and keep them from growing out of control and to contain them, as if they were a necessary evil needing to be "contained," among a man and wife. Rather, remedy means that marriage is a cure for concupiscence, i.e. that it heals concupiscence. In this sense, the remedy goes much farther than sex. As you know, St. Paul tells married couples to abstain from time to time for prayer and other opportunities for spiritual growth, but this is only for a short time (so as not to tempt the spouses) and by mutual agreement. In other words, there is great benefit to taking times of abstinence, allowing for greater prayer as well as for greater personal relationship development between spouses (the thought being that, with the possibility of sex out of the way for a certain length of time, the couple will be able to focus on other aspects of their relationship more freely), and this is something Karol Wojtyla said in his Love and Responsibility. At the same time, however, it is to be done only by mutual agreement, which implies that a part of the justice between spouses is that they "owe" one another the gift of self, so that if one person wanted to abstain, the other spouse could disagree validly.

However, for valid reasons (illness, childcare, exhaustion, etc.) a spouse is excused from any obligation. Sex is an expression of love. If a woman is ill and her husband insists on sexual relations, then he is not being loving; it is loving for a man to care for the well-being of his wife. A spouse has no more obligation to submit to a spouse's unjust demands (unjust because he is not giving her due regard, ignoring her illness for selfish desires) than a citizen has to submit to a government's unjust laws. Can a spouse submit? Yes, as a sacrifice, but I would say that it is in fact not loving for an ill wife to make love with a demanding husband, 1) because she is ill and should recover for the health of the family, and 2) because her husband, acting on selfishness rather than concern for her, is acting out of concupiscence, and the loving thing to do would be to abstain, so as to remedy his concupiscence, which is a higher purpose.

I hope this helps.

God bless,

Micah