So in other words the nakedness in care giving would not matter? The fact that the healthy spouse is going to touch private parts of the body would not matter?
Better still what about other factors? A healthy couple dating and becoming very close in love with each other suddenly face a catastrophic illness. Marriage for that matter had already been discussed as a likely-hood within a year. What do you do? You love the person for who they are. I'm not talking Gay here I'm talking about heterosexuals. What could be implications if one of the persons said the church would not recognize our marriage so we can't marry? I don't want to get too much into technicalities but what if the woman is the one injured but can not feel anything from the neck down but can still get pregnant?
I think marriage is 80% - 90% spiritual commitment before GOD of a man and a woman to one another. The sex? Maybe 10% - 20% but not for some a must have. Then again I suppose some folk can't go a day without it. LOL.
A doctor at Pat Neal Rehab Center told us many years ago it is the married couples where disability occurs during marriage he worries about. His reasoning was based on experience. The married couples many times expected their spouse to do things they could previously do after their injury. The couples entering into marriage after disability have accepted the disability.
Churches can be cruel. One was real cruel to my uncle. He was a Deacon and Elder in his church. His time and a lot of his money had been vested in the church including their home being used for visiting preachers.
In his later years he became unable to care for himself or his wife who was also ill. So him and his wife ask her cousins to help one a man one a woman. His wife passed and his health fell even more. Both of his wife's cousins who were brother and sister moved in to care for him. His church had a fit because she was living in his house caring for him and they were not married. He had to leave the church. The man could no have done anything in the way of sex. Who was doing GOD's Will? The ones caring for him or the church who offered rules and no compassion?
28 years ago I was given a choice to make and one that had serious implications not just on my own future but others including my girlfriend whom I loved and would have been placed in a nursing home and her kids took to an orphanage or foster care as the dad was unfit. Or I could act in obedience with what was placed on my heart after a few weeks of prayer.
I did not marry out of pity I married out of love. I was lead into this by The Spirit and by a chain of events it would take pages to list of events that occurred within a few months of my first wifes death that were were to even ever meet each other. I didn't even know her before I lost my first wife yet she was tied in to my first wifes mother and their next door neighbor because her boss was my ex mother in laws friend. She {my wife now} also cared for their next door neighbor mother who was in a nursing home we both worked in after my first wifes death.
I want to point out something. GOD's reason for making woman was for companionship and to be his helper. The other parts occurred after the fall.
GOD knows our future. Before I lost my first wife He was preparing me for mine even as far back as my 7th and 8th grade being placed in a school for kids with disabilities.
Months before her death I would get overwhelming feelings that something was wrong. I was on the road working gone a week or three at a time. I'd stop the rig and call her and shed be fine. I quit my job and took a job in a nursing home doing electrical/HVAC maintenance. Within a moth afterward she passed one morning after I had left for work.
I took a few weeks off and went back. A transfer was offered to me that I wasn't going to take but at the last minute changed my mind and I didn't know why. That was how I met my wife now.
I was with her when this hit and she almost died. We had a police escort from the mall to St Mercy. On the way she was dieing and describing it. Two panicked kids in the car also. Have you known KPD to do a police escort to an Emergency Room? We live in the same area so KPD should ring a bell as well as the mall on the eastern end.
GOD knows our future. In our weaknesses he makes us strong and shows His strength and reveals His plan for us. Nine years after we married I became disabled. Only mine wasn't a spinal issue. Mine is a sensory processing issue that triggers seizures and limits concentration and ability to withstand certain sounds or visual stimulation. But GOD left me with all I need to care for her needs and her strengths are my weaknesses and vice versa.
Although at the times these events began to happen there was much sorrow and pain I was told by what I can only call the presence of The Holy Spirit that It was going to be OK.
I have a wife I love even despite our typical with anyone disagreements that happen, the two kids got a dad to help raise them into adults and have kids of their own. I also have a deeper understanding of Grace and GOD ability to overcome what is put before us.
Looking back I hate to think of where I could have ended up. GOD had a plan even in my youth which gave me a different insight to those with severe disabilities. We are very happily married.
As for your last sentence? Homosexuality is condemned in The Bible in several places. There is no compressions to that and what I'm saying.
Not sure how this is relevant. Caregivers (doctors, nurses, CNA's, LPN's, even other family members) handle naked patients and touch private parts of the body all the time. It is not a violation of modesty/purity. It is an everyday reality of caregiving.
"Better still what about other factors? A healthy couple dating and becoming very close in love with each other suddenly face a catastrophic illness. Marriage for that matter had already been discussed as a likely-hood within a year. What do you do? You love the person for who they are."
No on is doubting their love. What is certain, is that if they are not capable of a Marriage Act, they cannot marry as the Church defines the Sacrament as instituted by Divine and Natural Law. They may still be devoted to each other, but the Sacrament of Marriage-- like every Sacrament ---- requires a specific outward sign, and the specific outward sign of Matrimony is marital intercourse.
This in no way minimizes their love. It may be a beautiful, devoted, and lifelong thing. If they have never been able to mate/marry (physically), it is simply not the Sacrament of Matrimony. But it is still love!!
"I'm not talking Gay here I'm talking about heterosexuals. What could be implications if one of the persons said the church would not recognize our marriage so we can't marry? I don't want to get too much into technicalities but what if the woman is the one injured but can not feel anything from the neck down but can still get pregnant?"
If it is the case that she can receive her husband's penis in her vagina --- whether she can feel it or not --- then she can participate in marital intercourse: i.e. her husband can deposit semen in her vagina. That is the basic minimum required for marital intercourse.
"I think marriage is 80% - 90% spiritual commitment before GOD of a man and a woman to one another. The sex? Maybe 10% - 20% but not for some a must have. Then again I suppose some folk can't go a day without it. LOL."
It's not a question of the frequency or the level of desire or satisfaction. One act of intercourse between the wedded husband and wife, consummates marriage.
There are many kinds of love --- brothers, sisters, friends, maybe even the most devoted and committed kind of super-friendship. We are just talking about what specifies marriage. And that is the Marriage Act. The Church is very realistic about this.
"A doctor at Pat Neal Rehab Center told us many years ago it is the married couples where disability occurs during marriage he worries about. His reasoning was based on experience. The married couples many times expected their spouse to do things they could previously do after their injury. The couples entering into marriage after disability have accepted the disability."
It would be very difficult to be deprived of marital sexual relations entirely, after having been married perhaps for only a short time, and then facing a lifetime of continence. We must pray for such people to grow to a heroic level of commitment to each other, whether they can go on having intercourse or not.
The situation you mentioned about the cousins is cruel, and I understand our sensitivity to the injustice of it all. However that is not something that would happen n the Catholic Church. The Church does not consider live-in caregivers to be cohabitators or fornicators, good grief! A caregiver is in a completely non-marital, therapeutic assistant category. No sexual implications at all. Otherwise how could one ever receive care from a nurse or CNA? In that situation you described, that church--- whatever it was --- was just wrong.
"GOD's reason for making woman was for companionship and to be his helper. The other parts occurred after the fall."
If you are saying that sexual relations were not part of God's intentions before the Fall, you are mistaken. Sexual relations were a blessing which Adam and Eve could share in Paradise with complete innocence. Jesus said that "in the beginning" they were intended to become "one flesh." That's sexual union: the one-flesh union. Also, to increase and multiply --- all this before the Fall.
BTW, you have told me much of your story and I am touched by it. It is a moving story and you obviously have much love and caring between the two of you, despite all hardships, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, Amen!
Nothing of what I am saying diminishes or disrepsects the quality of your devotion to each other. I am just addressing the question of whether there can be the Sacrament of Matrimony where there is absolutely no sexual act --- that is, not one instance of physical, genital union. The answer is: there has to be an act of sexual intercourse to consummate a marriage.
This is completely separate from the question of whether you can have love and lifelong devotion. You apparently have that, and I thank you for sharing a very impressive story of your spiritual journey.
God has blessed you --- may He bless you forever.