“Can we *BLANK*?” is one of the site’s most popular and frequently referenced posts. You can go read the details, but the short version is that just about any sexual activity is acceptable within marriage! But it may not surprise you to learn that people in the middle ages had a different view on sex.

If it’s not procreative, it’s fornication. If it’s done on a holy day, it’s fornication. You see above what happens if it’s oral: you get a life sentence of penance.

The penitential writers saw marital sex as a concession, not as a right or even a gift from God. The pleasure it brought was inherently sinful, a gateway to lust, so sex within marriage should be carefully contained and scheduled to ensure the most possible procreation and the least possible pleasure. Married couples had to abstain regularly or the very state of their marriage would degenerate into an illegitimate and sinful union. Even the children born of sex during a period where the couple should have abstained — mainly based on the Church’s liturgical calendar and on the wife’s reproductive cycle — were to be considered bastards.

There’s even a handy flowchart!

It’s no surprise that Christians often bring so much baggage into their marriages! These man-made rules and fears can steal away the joy of sex with our spouse.

Of course, people then weren’t much different than people now — it’s one thing to write a bunch of rules, and it’s another thing to follow them. Fortunately God hasn’t created nearly as many rules as people have.