I have
had a nightmare marriage. My husband has been condescending in non-stop ways.
I have been henpecked and could do nothing right. He has disciplined me in
front of the children. . . . I feel he is oversexed and does not understand
the word “No” in bed. I woke up the other night feeling like I
was being raped. He thinks it is my Catholic duty, under pain of mortal sin.
He is always telling me I need to do my duty. . . . He is never guilty of
wrongdoing. I am always to blame. . . . I just don’t know what to
do.
 ctually, when a man demands
sexual contact like this from his wife, he
is the one committing mortal sin.
Now, that statement might shock
a lot of people, but that’s only because they don’t understand
the entire concept of marital obligations as described in the
Bible.
Saint Paul describes the relationship
of a wife and a husband as a reflection of the relationship of the Church
to Christ—and this relationship demands mutual respect and honor. “Be
subordinate to one another,” he says, “out of reverence to
Christ” (Ephesians 5:21). So, when Saint Paul says that wives should
be subordinate to their husbands, he means that wives have a duty to their
husbands in the same way as the Church has a duty to serve Christ.
But Saint Paul also says that
husbands must love their wives even as Christ
loved the Church (Ephesians 5:25). Thus a husband has an obligation to
treat his wife without bitterness (Colossians 3:19), to sanctify his wife,
to cleanse her, and to present her to Christ without blemish (Ephesians
5:26-27).
Therefore, when a husband fails
in his Christian duty to live with his wife “in understanding, showing
honor” to her (1 Peter 3:7), his vows of Holy Matrimony become a spiritual
failure, and he has no claim on his wife’s duty to him.
That is, if the husband blames
and humiliates his wife, or if he reduces physical intimacy into lust, or
if he is emotionally absent from the family, or if he shirks his responsibility
as a father, then he clearly is not “nourishing
and cherishing” (Ephesians 5:29) his family according to his
Christian duty.
To demand sexual contact with
his wife under these conditions is equivalent to making her into a prostitute.
Prostitution is a mortal sin because
it “does injury to the dignity of the person who engages in it”
(Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2355).
Christ does not treat the Church
like a prostitute, and so a husband who violates his wife’s dignity
by treating her like a prostitute in effect excommunicates himself from the
Church and severs himself from God by such a grave, unloving act.
If, after you explain these things
to your husband, he continues to place his desire for bodily pleasure above
the welfare of his soul, the welfare of your children’s souls, and the
welfare of your soul, then he has openly declared his renunciation of his
baptismal vows. His state of
spiritual blindness and
mortal sin give you full justification to distance
yourself from him physically, to protect your own soul.
  
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