Withdrawal, barriers and incomplete acts

Couples sometimes ask whether certain practices are acceptable because they seem less artificial than pills or devices. Withdrawal is the most common example. Others wonder about acts that begin as marital intimacy but end differently. This lesson explains the Church's principle and applies it carefully, without unnecessary detail.

The principle behind the answers

The Church teaches that "each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life" (Humanae Vitae 11, cited in CCC 2366). This openness does not mean every act must result in conception, which is impossible during infertile times, pregnancy or after menopause. It means that the couple does nothing to the act itself to prevent it from being what it naturally is.

From this follows a simple rule that moral theologians have taught consistently: the marital act must be completed in the natural way, with the husband's climax taking place within intercourse. Pope Pius XI described any use of marriage in which the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power as an offense against the law of God (Casti Connubii 56).