If You Want a Happy Marriage, Take the Marital Debt Seriously – Crisis Magazine

Few subjects raise such ire and disgust as the marital debt, but it is the teaching of the universal Church, and it does matter.

In a recent essay here at Crisis musing on “the marital debt,” Adam Lucas suggests that the topic is in the category of “fun-to-consider-but-ultimately-irrelevant theological questions.” On the contrary, the question of the marital debt is practical and immediately applicable for married Catholics—or anyone seeking a fulfilling and lifelong marriage, for that matter.

The conjugal or marital debt, a concept in moral theology, refers to the obligation of spouses to offer their bodies to the other to avoid illicit outlets for concupiscence. Few subjects raise such ire and disgust as the marital debt, but it is the teaching of the universal Church. Pace Mr. Lucas, the truth or falsity of this moral teaching does, indeed, matter. Moral questions become more difficult to discern as we move to the particular, but that does not render the moral teaching irrelevant. A reexamination is in order.

You will likely be told at this point that if you do not have four years of advanced study in philosophy, if you are not reading St. Thomas Aquinas in Latin, if you have not recently brushed up on your Greek, you are unfit to address this lofty question. It is true; only those qualified should weigh in.

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If You Want a Happy Marriage, Take the Marital Debt Seriously – Crisis Magazine