Two Become Family Podcast: Conversations and Encouragement For Your Catholic Family

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What can Blessed Fulton Sheen teach us about marriage today?
Discover Sheen, inspired by his beatification, not just through clips on Instagram. He has more to say! Here are his writings:
Three to Get Married - the essential starting point for his thoughts on the sacrament of marriage: https://a.co/d/0hZ61jqS
Children and Parents - focused more directly on parenthood and the dynamic of family relationships.
Way to Happiness - Sheen’s vision of the Christian life, love, virtue, and happiness.
In honor of his beatification, we’re revisiting some of our favorite wisdom from Fulton Sheen’s Three to Get Married and talking about what it looks like when that wisdom meets actual married and family life.
How do you give yourself to your spouse and children without losing yourself? When does healthy self-care become selfishness? Are our desires and passions themselves bad—or does the problem come from what we do with them? And after years of marriage, kids, schedules, work, and responsibilities, can we still remain fascinated by the person we married?
After 20 years together, some of Sheen’s words hit very differently than they did when we first read them as newlyweds.
We talk about self-gift without self-erasure, keeping our desires rightly ordered, motherhood and fatherhood, and Sheen’s beautiful idea that love flourishes in the ongoing “mystery” of the other person.
Because your spouse isn’t someone you finish figuring out.
Chapters
00:00 — Celebrating Blessed Fulton Sheen
01:12 — Why Three to Get Married Still Matters
01:50 — How Do You Love Yourself Without Being Selfish?
03:22 — Do You Lose Yourself in Marriage and Parenthood?
05:45 — God as the Guardrails for Self-Gift
08:20 — When Self-Care Becomes Self-Indulgence
10:00 — Are Our Passions and Desires Bad?
11:23 — Fulton Sheen’s Clarity About Marriage
13:48 — Knowing Where the Boundaries Are
14:00 — Why Love Needs Mystery
16:05 — Reading Sheen After 20 Years Together
17:37 — When Marriage Becomes All Tasks and Schedules
19:57 — Your Worth Isn’t Based on What You Do
20:44 — “Love Demands Something Unrevealed”

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BOOKS, WRITING, AND RESOURCES
📕 Order Lovemaking: How to Talk about Sex with Your Spouse
https://www.avemariapress.com/products/lovemaking

✍️ Read our writing on Catholic marriage, family life, communication, intimacy, parenting, and ordinary holiness: https://twobecomefamily.substack.com

🎤 Book Renzo and Monica to speak for your parish, diocese, marriage retreat, conference, or Catholic event: https://twobecomefamily.substack.com/p/book-renzo-and-monica-to-speak-for

🏠 Learn more about Two Become Family: https://twobecomefamily.com

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What does the Catholic Church actually mean when it says that every marital act must remain “open to life”?
Order Lovemaking: How to Talk about Sex with Your Spouse
https://www.avemariapress.com/products/lovemaking
In Part 1, we started following the footnotes.
Now we’re going further. Beginning with Catechism paragraph 2366, we follow the Church’s citations through Humanae Vitae, Casti Connubii, and Pope Pius XII’s 1951 Address to Midwives to answer a controversial question:
Does the Church actually teach that sexual activity within marriage must retain its intrinsic relationship to intercourse and procreation—or is that simply one interpretation Catholics have added later?
Along the way, we also wrestle with the difficult real-life questions that come with that teaching. What if a couple knows they’re infertile? What about pregnancy or menopause? What if you’re practicing NFP during an infertile phase? Does every moment of sexual arousal between spouses have to end in intercourse?
What if intercourse is painful? And what happens when a teaching of the Church genuinely feels impossible in your marriage?
One of the most important distinctions in this conversation is between something being infertile and something being deliberately rendered contrary to its natural ordering.
Humanae Vitae explicitly recognizes that married couples can engage in intercourse when conception is impossible for reasons independent of their will. Infertility does not make marital intimacy meaningless.
At the same time, as we continue following the Church’s own sources, the consistent principle becomes increasingly clear: Catholics are not free to deliberately change the nature of the marital act simply because conception isn’t possible.
That doesn’t mean every difficult situation has a simple answer. Pain is real. Infertility is real. Fear surrounding another pregnancy can be real.
Serious problems within a marriage are real. Those circumstances deserve genuine compassion and accompaniment. But accompaniment isn’t the same thing as pretending the Church hasn’t taught something simply because living it is difficult.
Chapters
00:00 Settling What “Open to Life” Actually Means
 01:08 Humanae Vitae 11: What the Church Actually Says
 02:04 Can Sex Be Open to Life When Pregnancy Is Impossible?
 03:30 What About NFP, Pregnancy, Infertility, and Menopause?
 04:06 Does Every Moment of Arousal Have to End in PIV?
 05:04 Intention Matters in Catholic Marital Intimacy
 06:27 Chastity Doesn’t Mean Being Afraid of Your Spouse
 07:23 Why Affection and Arousal Aren’t Automatically Sinful
 08:01 Why Infertile Sex Is Still Noble and Worthy
 09:44 God’s Design Includes Natural Periods of Infertility
 11:08 What Does “Intrinsic Relationship to Procreation” Mean?
 12:56 What If This Teaching Feels Impossible in Your Marriage?
 14:18 Following Humanae Vitae to Casti Connubii
 15:20 What Does “Deliberately Frustrated” Mean?
 16:57 What If Intercourse Is Painful?
 18:10 You Don’t Have to Finish Just Because You Started
 18:46 Why Pain Is Different From Deliberately Avoiding the Marital Act
 20:36 Does Something Being Good for Your Marriage Make It Morally Good?
 21:55 Is the Church Really Prescribing PIV?
 23:08 Pope Pius XII on the Marital Act
 26:37 Is This Church Teaching Permanent?
 27:56 How Catholic Couples Can Help Other Couples Live This
Two Become Family exists to encourage Catholics who love the Church, love each other, and still find marriage and family life harder than it’s supposed to be.
BOOKS, WRITING, AND RESOURCES
📕 Order Lovemaking: How to Talk about Sex with Your Spouse
https://www.avemariapress.com/products/lovemaking

✍️ Read our writing on Catholic marriage, family life, communication, intimacy, parenting, and ordinary holiness: https://twobecomefamily.substack.com

🎤 Book Renzo and Monica to speak for your parish, diocese, marriage retreat, conference, or Catholic event: https://twobecomefamily.substack.com/p/book-renzo-and-monica-to-speak-for

🏠 Learn more about Two Become Family: https://twobecomefamily.com

📲 Follow us on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/twobecomefamily/
Our Shop
https://www.two-become-family-shop.fourthwall.com
Support the show
BOOKS, WRITING, AND RESOURCES
📕 Order Lovemaking: How to Talk about Sex with Your Spouse
https://www.avemariapress.com/products/lovemaking

✍️ Read our writing on Catholic marriage, family life, communication, intimacy, parenting, and ordinary holiness: https://twobecomefamily.substack.com

🎤 Book Renzo and Monica to speak for your parish, diocese, marriage retreat, conference, or Catholic event: https://twobecomefamily.substack.com/p/book-renzo-and-monica-to-speak-for

🏠 Learn more about Two Become Family: https://twobecomefamily.com

📲 Follow us on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/twobecomefamily/
Our Shop
https://www.two-become-family-shop.fourthwall.com

Send us Fan Mail
Order Lovemaking: How to Talk about Sex with Your Spouse
https://www.avemariapress.com/products/lovemaking
What does the Catholic Church actually mean when it teaches that sex between husband and wife must be “open to life”? Does every sexual encounter have to end in intercourse? What about couples dealing with infertility? What about pregnancy, menopause, or times when conception simply isn’t possible?
And is the idea that the marital act needs to remain ordered toward procreation actually Church teaching—or simply one interpretation promoted by Catholic authors and speakers?
In this episode, we start following the footnotes. Rather than relying only on what Catholic marriage writers, Theology of the Body speakers, or “Catholic sex influencers” say, we go directly to the Catechism of the Catholic Church and then follow its citations into Humanae Vitae to understand what the Church means when it talks about the unitive and procreative meanings of sex.
But there’s another important part of this conversation. Catholic teaching on sexuality isn’t meant to become a checklist that ignores the actual state of a marriage.
A husband and wife can technically follow a sexual rule while still struggling with resentment, coercion, emotional disconnection, selfishness, or serious disagreements about family life.
So what does faithful Catholic marital intimacy actually require?
In this episode we talk about:
What Catholics mean when they say sex must be “open to life”
Why we use the abbreviation PIV when discussing the marital act
Whether the Church actually teaches that every marital act must remain ordered toward procreation
How to distinguish Church teaching from someone’s interpretation of Church teaching
What the Catechism says in paragraph 2366
Why the Church connects the unitive and procreative meanings of sex
Whether infertile, pregnant, or postmenopausal couples can still be open to life
What Humanae Vitae 11 says about marital intercourse when conception isn’t possible
Why Catholic teaching describes marital sexuality as noble and worthy
Why difficult circumstances require genuine pastoral accompaniment
How infertility and trying to conceive can change a couple’s experience of sex
Why simply following the “rules” doesn’t automatically create healthy marital intimacy
Chastity, self-mastery, and genuinely giving yourself to your spouse
Why lust, coercion, or using your spouse for gratification are incompatible with authentic marital intimacy
When deeper problems in a marriage need to be addressed before sex can become truly unitive
One of the most important distinctions in this conversation is this: Knowing what the Church teaches and knowing how to accompany a struggling couple are not competing goals.
Pastoral care requires compassion for the actual circumstances of a marriage. But good pastoral care also needs something solid underneath it—a clear understanding of what the Church actually teaches.
So we’re going to the sources. And because this conversation turned out to be much bigger than one episode, this is only the beginning.
Chapters
00:00 What Does “Open to Life” Actually Mean?
01:28 Is Catholic Teaching About Sex Too Legalistic?
04:05 Is This Church Teaching or Just an Interpretation?
05:26 What About Pregnancy, Infertility, and Menopause?
06:25 Following the Footnotes
08:34 What the Catechism Actually Says About Sex
10:44 When Church Teaching Feels Impossible to Live
13:35 Pastoral Care Cannot Change the Truth
15:00 What Humanae Vitae Says About Infertile Sex
16:08 Sex Should Be “Intimate and Chaste”
19:26 Following the Rules Isn’t Enough
21:01 Lust, Coercion, and Using Your Spouse
23:19 Where We Go From Here
Two Become Family exists to encourage Catholics who love the Church, love each other, and still find marriage and family life harder than it’s supposed to be.
BOOKS, WRITING, AND RESOURCES

📕 Order Lovemaking: How to Talk about Sex with Your Spouse
https://www.avemariapress.com/products/lovemaking

✍️ Read our writing on Catholic marriage, family life, communication, intimacy, parenting, and ordinary holiness: https://twobecomefamily.substack.com

🎤 Book Renzo and Monica to speak for your parish, diocese, marriage retreat, conference, or Catholic event: https://twobecomefamily.substack.com/p/book-renzo-and-monica-to-speak-for

🏠 Learn more about Two Become Family: https://twobecomefamily.com

📲 Follow us on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/twobecomefamily/

Our Shop
https://www.two-become-family-shop.fourthwall.com
Support the show
Support the show
BOOKS, WRITING, AND RESOURCES
📕 Order Lovemaking: How to Talk about Sex with Your Spouse
https://www.avemariapress.com/products/lovemaking

✍️ Read our writing on Catholic marriage, family life, communication, intimacy, parenting, and ordinary holiness: https://twobecomefamily.substack.com

🎤 Book Renzo and Monica to speak for your parish, diocese, marriage retreat, conference, or Catholic event: https://twobecomefamily.substack.com/p/book-renzo-and-monica-to-speak-for

🏠 Learn more about Two Become Family: https://twobecomefamily.com

📲 Follow us on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/twobecomefamily/
Our Shop
https://www.two-become-family-shop.fourthwall.com

Send us Fan Mail
Season 5 is here—and we’re starting with sex.
Order Lovemaking: How to Talk about Sex with Your Spouse
https://www.avemariapress.com/products/lovemaking
More specifically, we’re jumping into a debate happening in Catholic circles online:
Are Catholic marriage speakers being more prescriptive about sex than the Catholic Church actually is?
Recently, Catholic speakers such as Jackie Angel have received criticism for saying plainly that sexual intimacy between husband and wife should culminate in intercourse—what we refer to in our book Lovemaking as PIV. The criticism isn’t simply that this language is too explicit.
The deeper argument is: The Church never actually says that. You’re adding your own interpretation to Church teaching. So… are we?
In this season-opening episode, we begin working through that question by going directly to Humanae Vitae 11 and 12 and asking what the Church means when it teaches that every marital act must preserve both its unitive and procreative meanings. And we quickly discover that the disagreement isn’t only about sex.
It’s also about how Catholics read Church documents, how doctrine gets pastorally communicated, how natural law works, and whether making a teaching easier to understand is the same thing as adding something to it.
We talk about:
Why Catholic social media is arguing about how married couples should have sex
The criticism directed toward Jackie Angel and other Catholic marriage speakers
Why we use the abbreviation PIV when discussing intercourse
Whether talking explicitly about sex is inappropriate or actually necessary
The difference between being explicit and being irreverent
Whether saying marital intimacy should culminate in intercourse goes beyond Church teaching
What Humanae Vitae 11 and 12 actually say
What the Church means by the unitive and procreative meanings of sex
Why every marital act must retain its relationship to procreation
What natural law means in Catholic moral theology
Why Church documents aren’t always easy for ordinary Catholics to interpret
The difference between doctrine and pastoral application
Why some Catholics genuinely need someone to tell them plainly, “What does this actually mean?”
Why social media makes pastoral accompaniment especially difficult
Why the unitive meaning of sex deserves just as much attention as the procreative meaning
What it means for intimacy to be rightly ordered toward life
Why helping someone understand Church teaching isn’t necessarily the same thing as adding to it
How couples’ lived experiences should be acknowledged without changing moral truth
One of the biggest questions we raise is this: If Humanae Vitae says that every marital act must preserve both its unitive and procreative meanings, what exactly does that require of a married couple?
Because simply repeating the words “unitive and procreative” doesn’t necessarily tell a couple what to do. Some Catholics want the theological principle.
Others are asking: Okay—but what does that actually look like?
And sometimes pastoral care means someone has to be willing to say the difficult thing clearly. This episode begins a three-part conversation examining what the Catholic Church actually teaches about marital intimacy, being “open to life,” and whether the common Catholic understanding of the marital act can really be found in the Church’s own documents.
Chapters
00:00 Welcome Back to Season 5
 01:12 Why the Internet Is Arguing About Catholic Sex
 01:24 The Controversy Over Jackie Angel’s Marriage Advice
 02:32 Why We Use the Term PIV
 03:23 Is Talking Explicitly About Catholic Sex “Cringeworthy”?
 04:15 Are Catholics Adding Rules the Church Never Taught?
 05:04 What Humanae Vitae Actually Says About the Marital Act
 06:26 Why Church Documents Can Be Difficult to Understand
 07:35 What Natural Law Actually Means
 09:24 “Each and Every Marital Act” — What Does That Mean?
 10:16 Doctrine vs. Pastoral Application
 11:35 Why Catholic Social Media Gets This Conversation Wrong
 13:24 Why Some Couples Need Clear, Prescriptive Answers
 15:09 Why Catholic Speakers Need to Say the Difficult Thing
 16:01 Can Sex Be Procreative Without PIV?
 17:23 What Does “Ordered Toward Life” Actually Mean?
 18:32 The Unitive Meaning of Catholic Sex Matters Too
 20:03 Why Some Catholics Need Someone to Just Say It
 21:46 Are We Misinterpreting Humanae Vitae?
 22:24 What Does “Unitive” Actually Require in Marriage?
 23:39 Truth, Pastoral Care, and a Couple’s Lived Experience
 25:11 Where This Conversation Goes Next
Two Become Family is conversations and encouragement for your Catholic family—helping couples believe in what they are and become the family God created them to be.
BOOKS, WRITING, AND RESOURCES

📕 Order Lovemaking: How to Talk about Sex with Your Spouse
https://www.avemariapress.com/products/lovemaking

✍️ Read our writing on Catholic marriage, family life, communication, intimacy, parenting, and ordinary holiness: https://twobecomefamily.substack.com

🎤 Book Renzo and Monica to speak for your parish, diocese, marriage retreat, conference, or Catholic event: https://twobecomefamily.substack.com/p/book-renzo-and-monica-to-speak-for

🏠 Learn more about Two Become Family: https://twobecomefamily.com

📲 Follow us on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/twobecomefamily/

Our Shop
https://www.two-become-family-shop.fourthwall.com
Support the show
BOOKS, WRITING, AND RESOURCES
📕 Order Lovemaking: How to Talk about Sex with Your Spouse
https://www.avemariapress.com/products/lovemaking

✍️ Read our writing on Catholic marriage, family life, communication, intimacy, parenting, and ordinary holiness: https://twobecomefamily.substack.com

🎤 Book Renzo and Monica to speak for your parish, diocese, marriage retreat, conference, or Catholic event: https://twobecomefamily.substack.com/p/book-renzo-and-monica-to-speak-for

🏠 Learn more about Two Become Family: https://twobecomefamily.com

📲 Follow us on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/twobecomefamily/
Our Shop
https://www.two-become-family-shop.fourthwall.com

Send us Fan Mail
Can Catholics French kiss before marriage? After Elizabeth Busby’s Theology of the Body Institute answer and Christian B. Wagner’s response, “No, You Can’t Kiss Your Girlfriend,” sparked a Catholic internet debate, Renzo and Monica enter the conversation as a married Catholic couple.
Is passionate kissing always sinful outside of marriage? Is arousal the same as lust? And what does chastity actually require from dating and engaged couples who are trying to love one another well?
This is a conversation about French kissing before marriage, Catholic dating, Theology of the Body, desire, chastity, and why marriage does not simply make using another person acceptable.
Follow us on Instagram @twobecomefamily.
Looking for some accompaniment when it comes to talk about sex with your spouse?, Check out our book and order Lovemaking: How to talk about sex with your spouse
Our other books
Go To Joseph: 10 Day Consecration to St. Joseph
Go To Joseph For Children
Don't forget to visit https://twobecomefamily.substack.com/
Support the show
BOOKS, WRITING, AND RESOURCES
📕 Order Lovemaking: How to Talk about Sex with Your Spouse
https://www.avemariapress.com/products/lovemaking

✍️ Read our writing on Catholic marriage, family life, communication, intimacy, parenting, and ordinary holiness: https://twobecomefamily.substack.com

🎤 Book Renzo and Monica to speak for your parish, diocese, marriage retreat, conference, or Catholic event: https://twobecomefamily.substack.com/p/book-renzo-and-monica-to-speak-for

🏠 Learn more about Two Become Family: https://twobecomefamily.com

📲 Follow us on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/twobecomefamily/
Our Shop
https://www.two-become-family-shop.fourthwall.com