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1. That surely takes away the response to spontaneity. She to he,"You've got that look in your eyes. Just a minute, we have to pray!" Another lost opportunity.

   Posted By: Deacon Bryan Sykes

2. The Church has a voyeur bent! Stay out of our bedrooms... it has nothing to do with you.

   Posted By: Jeff Kevin

3. Are you a married Deacon? As a married woman, I fail to see how God can be excluded from lovemaking.

   Posted By: cas

4. You have to be joking. Is there a prayer for the pedophile priest too?

   Posted By: Laurie Sheehan

5. In answer to Cas, of course Rev Bryan Sykes is married! His response to the suggestion in the article (that a couple should interrupt love making to make the sign of the cross) is the response of a married person.
   But Rev Sykes is much too kind: My response to this "prayer before sex" suggestion is "You have GOT TO BE KIDDING!"

   Posted By: Elias Nasser

6. Jeff Kevin: You think the Church "has nothing to do" with one of her own Sacraments, and should "stay out" of the foundation of the "domestic Church"?
   I would say it is you and the journalist here who have the voyeur bent, picking out,from the scores of prayers in the book, the only one prayer which is related to sex.

   Posted By: Peter G

7. Words from Christopher West from a Theology of the Body talk: If God = Love,and we say, "Keep God out of the bedroom!"
   What does that mean?

   Posted By: nathan

8. To Jeff Kevin: Yours is a comment so typical of the theological Left - dissent, dissent, dissent. The book promotes prayer to God. The sexual act has everything to do with him!

   Posted By: Michael Bernard

9. Hardly a best seller ... and wouldn't have known about if not for mention in CathNews. Doubt it will gain any traction.

   Posted By: peter

10. It's one thing to make love with respect and loving passion, to celebrate love as gift and worship, it's another thing entirely to begin each loving encounter with such artificial words as contained in Meney's little book.
    Preceding worshipful love-making with requests to intercession from virginal mothers constructs an utterly bizarre sexual context.

    Posted By: Mark

11. Actually, I don't see anything particularly the matter with "Just a minute, we have to pray!" It would serve as a much-needed reminder, particularly in this day and age that spouses are not meant to be used for our own pleasure, but are ends in themselves.
    An even more urgent need might be for a prayer before a date, because (in my own experience) the tendency to forget that we are living in the presence of God is greater in that case.

    Posted By: Adeodatus

12. Marriage is a Sacrament, therefore all activity directed to the good of the Covenant between husband and wife is of its nature holy. The sexual
    act is designed by God that love and life be the ruit of this sacred union. I think that could be called prayer?

    Posted By: david anthony davies

13. Personally I think this would make the act less spontaneous but then again the sign of the cross is a prayer so maybe we could all bless outselves before sex, then we can go about whatever we want to do, be it brutal, loving or whatever. Just as long as we say the prayer.
    Maybe the prayer could be so that the wife does not fall pregnant again and again when she is not allowed use birth control.
    I always thought that making love - not just sex - was the act of married people expressing their love for each other. I remember agreeing, in the marriage ceremony to love her body as I loved my own. So why do we need a prayer before hand.

    Posted By: Jim

14. I shouldn't be surprised at the ignorance some people have shown in not connecting, love, God and sex. As God created all things good, particularily the union of a married couple, why are some people so afraid and cynical about saying a prayer?

    Posted By: Markodan

15. There are some Catholics who think sex between husband and wife is holy! There's hope for the Church yet. Does that mean Jovinian was right when he taught that a baptised married woman is as holy as a virgin?

    Posted By: Cobber

16. Another secular paper gives an extract from the prayer in question: It asks the Holy Spirit to “place within us love that truly gives, tenderness that truly unites ....[and] loving physical union that welcomes ... clothe us in true dignity and take to Yourself our shared aspirations, for Your glory, forever and ever. Mary our Mother, intercede for us. Amen”
    If you object to that, I’d say you have some sort of problem.
    They even quote an endorsement by a secular psychologist from Relationships Australia: “Rituals like this do a potential good in that they remind us that we have a responsibility to another person as well and that can’t be a bad thing”.

    Posted By: Peter G

17. Jim: Surely you would agree that a mother preparing a meal for her family is an act of love? And the family convivially and amicably sitting around the table and eating the meal is also an act of love? So would you likewise say that therefore they don't need to say a prayer beforehand?
    Asking why we "need" to pray, before, after and during every human activity, is a bit like asking why do we need to breathe. If we don't pray, we are shutting out God and refusing to acknowledge His active presence in every facet of our lives. Not to mention that the act of marital love is where a married couple should be most aware of God's presence in their lives.
    

    Posted By: Peter G

18. The Church does not forbid people using birth control. She condemns all sexual acts which are “brutal”, including deliberately rendering the marital act infertile.
    As for “less spontaneous”, I hope for their wives’ sake that there are no husbands who seriously resent delaying for 30 seconds to say a simple prayer.
    

    Posted By: Peter G

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