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.
Many things some churches do to people are wrong. It was my uncle whom was persecuted by his {Baptist} church for having a woman living in his home outside of marriage. Never mind he was in his late 70's and ill. But that was that churches misguided rules made by misguided men. A church more interested in making Laws to place burdens upon members than being Christ like in service.
I do have two female cousins in wheelchairs one is married and has grown kids. Biblical I see no prohibitions upon marriages entered into with disabilities where the marriage can not be consummated. While it may be a reason for annulment if determined after the fact meaning right after the wedding it isn't stated as mandatory. Maybe it's why so many marriages fail today. The focus is more on sex and less on the spiritual aspect of the union. As well as a person ages sex quickly becomes less and less an important issue.
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.
Uh this usually involved men leaving women. The woman couldn't do the cooking, go all the places they went before, etc. They can't accept the persons new limitations. They expect the person to get up and go do what they did before. That is why he stated the after the fact marriages fair much better. The disability is accepted beforehand. That was many years ago.
The thing I do know about my wife is this. If it had been me this happened to while we were dating no one would have stopped her from our marriage and caring for me. The churches see their man made rules. Yea there couple be living together as caregiver and no marriage. But neither one of us would have been comfortable with that.
10Jesus’ disciples then said to him, “Then it is better not to marry!” 11“Not everyone can accept this statement,” Jesus said. “Only those whom God helps. 12Some are born as eunuchs, some have been made that way by others, and some choose not to marry for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. Let anyone who can, accept this statement.”
In the case of spinal cord injuries and disabilities the male is in fact not biologically a eunuch making one without such desire. The hormones are in fact still intact as is the biological attraction to women. Even in the case of males whom are in adult life made eunuchs in medical treatment for such illness as Prostate Cancer they still can have attraction to women. Someone very, very, close to me had to undergo such and it did buy him about ten more years with us. Never at any point was he any less a man I knew and he was a great husband still to his wife and father to his adult kids.