In 1952, “Hitler’s Pope”, Pius XII, wrote an official Monitum, or disciplinary warning, clearly disapproving of Synergy-style lovemaking. See “Catholic hierarchy meets Synergy”.
The Church also forbade anyone to republish or translate French author Paul Chanson’s books on the subject: The Art of Love and Conjugal Continence and The Reserved Embrace: Spouses’ Testimony. (A French scholar’s summary of the arguments appears at the bottom of this post for anyone who just can’t quell a thirst for theology.)
More importantly however, since Pius XII was gathered to his forebears, four major texts have quietly rewritten the Church’s understanding of sexual union. Sex, once permissible only with procreative intent, is now recognised as having merit for its divine gifts of joy and pleasure.
The Church’s volte-face
First came Gaudium et Spes (1965), one of the four magisterial dogmatic constitutions produced by the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). These are foundational documents that articulate the Church’s understanding of its nature, mission, and liturgy, and they carry the highest level of magisterial authority within the Council’s outputs. This one placed the love of spouses on equal footing with procreation—an unthinkable statement a decade earlier. It also dared to affirm that the joy and pleasure of the body are gifts of God.
Then came Humanae Vitae (Paul VI, 1968), while reaffirming the ban on artificial contraception, introduced a crucial nuance: it recognised the “unitive” significance of the conjugal act as well as its “procreative” significance. That opened a door for viewing marital intimacy as a mutual gift rather than a tolerated necessity.
Next came John Paul II’s Theology of the Body (1979–1984), a series of 129 lectures that reframed the human body as having “spousal significance.” In his view, self-mastery and continence weren’t negations of pleasure but ways of ordering desire toward authentic communion—a clear echo of Chanson’s insight, though not expressed in the language of non-orgasmic technique.
Benedict XVI’s Deus Caritas Est (2005) completed the circle. He wrote that eros and agapē are not opposites but two aspects of the same love—the first ascending, the second descending. He famously wrote that eros “wants to lift us in ecstasy toward the Divine.” Some of his fellow theologians teasingly called him “the tantric Pope” for this passage, though his tone was thoroughly theological, not exotic. Still, the parallel is striking: what Chanson once framed in the experiential language of restraint and tenderness, Benedict articulated as the purification of eros into love’s higher octave.
Chanson is not redeemed yet
In light of these weighty pronouncements, the reasoning behind Pius XII’s musty old Monitum has simply dissolved. Chanson’s intuition—that the mastery and tenderness during intimate embrace can be both spiritual and moral—now resonates almost line for line with John Paul II’s “gift of self” and Benedict’s redeemed eros.
In short, what was once censured as dangerous mysticism has become orthodox doctrine. It’s ironic that the “tantric Pope” ended up vindicating the man once silenced by the clergy (Chanson).
So, would a pope condemn non-orgasmic sex today? Probably not.
Yet despite the Church’s seismic shift, no pope has issued a statement retracting the outdated Monitum. The Monitum still stands, even if solely a disciplinary warning.
C’mon gentlemen! Time to put your stamp of approval on Chanson’s beautiful, inspiring work so it can help couples worldwide.
~~~
The following passage is translated from the French book Le Sixième Commandement by scholar Martine Sevegrand. Chapitre XV. Chasteté, concupiscence et plaisir au xxe siècle
What about [Chanson’s] “reserved embrace”?
Among the many post-war publications, let’s not forget a small book of 158 pages entitled Art of Love and Conjugal Continence58 which cause a ruckus and measured the attitude of the clergy towards sexual pleasure. Its author, Paul Chanson, was a layman, a very fervent Catholic, and close to the ecclesiastical milieu thanks to his brother Albert, professor of theology at the major seminary of Arras.
In his book, Chanson advocated the “reserved embrace” as a means of limiting births. This sexual technique59 had long been known to theologians as Reservata, but Chanson now gave the practise a remarkable push.
Paul Chanson criticised husbands – most of them according to the Kinsey report60 – unable to contain the seminal emission for more than two or three minutes, who left their wives unsatisfied. He advocated a prolonged embrace for up to one hour.
Couples snapped up his books while the clergy split. Many priests, especially young ones, embarrassed by the questions of their penitents on the limitation of births, promoted the Reservata. Others, such as Father Caffarel, founder of the Équipes Notre-Dame [a lay Catholic movement focused on married spirituality and the sanctification of marriage], and the great Dominican sermoniser Ambroise-Marie Carré were worried. The latter wrote:
The use of carnal life, even a legitimate use, always risks obscuring the mind, making the taste for spiritual things less. The more we give to the flesh, the more she claims 61.
It appeared to them that “the flesh” could only be an obstacle to “spiritual matters.” It is true that the “reserved embrace” carried with it an exaltation of the carnal dimension of marriage which was, in the eyes of the Catholic tradition, intolerable. And were not some priests used to advising husbands: “Let it be short and good”?
At the same time,
Paul Chanson received the support of some renowned theologians. First, the Dominican Henri Féret62, who supplied a long theological Afterward to Chanson’s work, as well as Mgr Martin, Canon Renard, the future cardinal, Dr. Chauchard63 and several Belgian moralists including the canon Leclercq. The latter had noted concerning the treatises on morals: “Reading them one would conclude that the only object of marriage is to practice chastity64”.
However, a genuine moral question arose, that of female pleasure. For if the man was deprived of it – since he should not ejaculate – what about the wife? Keep in mind that the extended duration of the “reserved embrace” permitted a large number of wives to discover pleasure.
Paul Chanson received many testimonies from couples. For example, a Tourcoing couple leading a group of large families wrote to Chanson after a conference he had held in their city that the “reserved embrace” allowed them to experience a second honeymoon although they’d been together twenty-five years! And they were saddened to observe that most mothers did not get from their husbands all the carnal joys they are entitled to in order to compensate them, if possible, for the multiple burdens and renunciations resulting from pregnancies and births 65.
As good Catholics,
this couple had for several years prior to Chanson’s work known, “the life of a rabid dog that consists in living side by side and in the same bed, without daring to touch each other [for fear of pregnancy].” For those households in which the woman discovered the joys of the “reserved embrace”, there was no longer any question of depriving herself of it.
Yet most moralists claimed that as the husband was deprived of orgasm, the wife must be too66. Paul Chanson’s brother, the canon Albert Chanson, was one of them. [Couples then would have been practising actual Synergy! Albert was a wise man.] Theological tradition asserted that the “voluptas venerea completea” [climax] is only allowed for the complete act (fertilisation-driven sex). Paul Chanson and Father Féret were aware of this argument against the Reservata and tried to finesse the issue by sidestepping it.
But some theologians considered that the principle “only complete acts allow complete pleasure” was only valid for man. For the woman, the complete pleasure that she may experience during the Reservata is independent of fertilisation. Therefore, if she seeks only to show her love to her husband (secondary end) – without seeking pleasure of course – “her voluptuousness is considered an epiphenomenon involving in itself no moral issue67. ” In theology, the morality of an act is determined by its object. If the object is good, the act is good as well as the pleasure that accompanies it.
On June 30, 1952, a Monitum (warning) of the Holy Office warned against the “reserved embrace” and the shameless explicit accounts of authors. Priests were forbidden to affirm that there was nothing wrong with the “reserved embrace”. The spread of this method was thus stifled.
