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D) The "Remedy" of Concupiscence: Chastity
"The problem for [sexual] ethics is how to use sex without treating the person as an object for use."[94] A perceptive observation which brings a properly human focus to bear on the question of the pleasure of marital intercourse. Pleasure should not be sought just for its own sake, since self-seeking (and "other-using") will then tend to dominate. But pleasure can and should come, as an important concomitant of the union achieved. This in the truest sense is what is implied in the remedying of concupiscence. It is a challenge to love and a work of chastity.[95] Earlier we quoted St. Thomas (IV Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3, ad 4) on how grace is given in marriage as a remedy against concupiscence, so as to curb it in its root (i.e., in its self-absorbed tendency), and I have suggested elsewhere that one of the main graces bestowed by the sacrament of matrimony, as a "permanent" sacrament, is that of marital chastity in this precise sense.[96]
The goal cannot be not to feel pleasure or not to be drawn by it (both pertain to the instinct of conjugality), but not to be dominated by its quest (which is the very instinct of lust). Saint Augustine points out the alternatives: "whoever does not want to serve lust must necessarily fight against it; whoever neglects to fight it must necessarily serve it. One of these alternatives is burdensome but praiseworthy, the other is debasing and miserable."[97]
Marital intercourse is indeed a unique way of giving physical expression to married love, but it is not the only way. There are moments in married life (sickness, for instance, or periods just before and after childbirth) when love will not seek intercourse but still express itself in many other ways, even on the physical level. It is commonplace among marriage counselors and psychologists to assign as much or even more importance to these "lesser" physical expressions of affection and love as to the frequency of marital intercourse itself. John Paul II does not pass over this point. With finely drawn distinctions, he differentiates "sexual excitement" from "sexual emotion" in man-woman relationships, and comments: "Excitement seeks above all to be expressed in the form of sensual and corporeal pleasure. That is, it tends toward the conjugal act... On the other hand, emotion ... even if in its emotive content it is conditioned by the femininity or masculinity of the "other," does not per se tend toward the conjugal act. But it limits itself to other manifestations of affection, which express the spousal meaning of the body, and which nevertheless do not include its (potentially) procreative meaning" (Theology of the Body, 413).
Men and women, married or single, who wish to grow in mutual love cannot adapt themselves passively to the prevalent modern lifestyle which, especially as reflected in the media, is permeated with "sexual excitement" and forms a constant stimulus to it. Purity of heart, sight, and thought is essential if they are to keep sexual excitement within limits where it is at the service of sexual emotion and of genuine intersexual love. Their own intimate consciousness of the real nature of love will be the best incentive to help them keep firmly clear of all those external stimuli which necessarily subject a person more and more to the absorbing power of lust, and so lessen his or her capacity for a true, freely given, and faithful love.