Posted on 05/18/2008 5:30:41 PM PDT by markomalley
On May 10th, Pope Benedict XVI called Paul VI’s landmark encyclical On Human Life an act of courage which has “become a sign of contradiction.” He made his remarks at a conference on the fortieth anniversary of the encyclical held at the Pontifical Lateran University. While many Catholics still find Humanae vitae’s condemnation of contraception difficult to understand and accept, it should be more than evident by now that the Catholic vision of life and love enunciated by Pope Paul VI is one of the great keys to reviving our dying culture. Rejection of the Encyclical
I take it as a given that the widespread use of contraception among Catholics does not reflect a reasoned response to Church teaching. Rather it arises from the prevailing patterns of our sex-saturated culture and the widespread rejection of Humanae vitae by the secularized moral theologians who have passed themselves off as Catholic teachers over the past two generations. While it did take some time for the Magisterium and faithful theologians to articulate persuasively the reasons for the immorality of contraception, it has long since become clear that the immediate and prolonged rejection of the Church’s teaching was rooted as much in moral turpitude as in intellectual difficulties. Many in the academy and elsewhere had their own perverse sexual habits to protect. Essentially, Paul VI articulated the timeless Catholic teaching that there is an inseparable bond between the unitive and procreative aspects of marital love, and that it is always wrong to deliberately frustrate either the unitive or the procreative purpose of the marital act. The core of the teaching, which is a matter of the natural law, is most succinctly summarized in section 12:
This particular doctrine, often expounded by the magisterium of the Church, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act. Reading a little further, in section 13, we find the essential moral context, with a strong suggestion of the nobility of adhering to God’s plan:
Hence to use this divine gift while depriving it, even if only partially, of its meaning and purpose, is equally repugnant to the nature of man and of woman, and is consequently in opposition to the plan of God and His holy will. But to experience the gift of married love while respecting the laws of conception is to acknowledge that one is not the master of the sources of life but rather the minister of the design established by the Creator. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Catholic couples have never been presented with a clear outline of the Church’s teaching on this matter, nor of the consequences of ignoring it, nor of the benefits of following it.
Fundamental Vision In his comments at the anniversary conference, Pope Benedict emphasized that “no mechanical technique can substitute for the act of love that husband and wife exchange as a sign of the greater mystery, in which they are protagonists and co-participants in creation.” Paul VI saw clearly that this “act of love” is not merely a physical act, but a truly marital act of love in all of its dimensions, an act which both recognizes and expresses the dignity of the spouses and their mutual relationship to God, and an act in which the spouses surrender themselves to each other, holding nothing back, yet without ever losing that fundamental discipline of love which puts the other and God above their own individual pleasure. In a critical passage in section 21, which is worth quoting at length, Paul VI expresses something of the true and complete dimensions of this act of love:
The right and lawful ordering of birth demands, first of all, that spouses fully recognize and value the true blessings of family life and that they acquire complete mastery over themselves and their emotions. For if with the aid of reason and of free will they are to control their natural drives, there can be no doubt at all of the need for self-denial. Only then will the expression of love, essential to married life, conform to right order. This is especially clear in the practice of periodic continence. Self-discipline of this kind is a shining witness to the chastity of husband and wife and, far from being a hindrance to their love of one another, transforms it by giving it a more truly human character. And if this self-discipline does demand that they persevere in their purpose and efforts, it has at the same time the salutary effect of enabling husband and wife to develop their personalities and to be enriched with spiritual blessings. For it brings to family life abundant fruits of tranquility and peace. It helps in solving difficulties of other kinds. It fosters in husband and wife thoughtfulness and loving consideration for one another. It helps them to repel inordinate self-love, which is the opposite of charity. It arouses in them a consciousness of their responsibilities. And finally, it confers upon parents a deeper and more effective influence in the education of their children. As their children grow up, they develop a right sense of values and achieve a serene and harmonious use of their mental and physical powers. Humanae vitae was prophetic when it was first promulgated, because the consequences of breaking the bond between the unitive and the procreative in marital love were not then as clear as they are now. Within twenty years, however, the trends had become very clear indeed: contraception leads to selfishness, the pursuit of sexual pleasure for its own sake, objectification of spouses, pornography, sexual exploitation, divorce, homosexuality and abortion. These trends are now so obvious that Catholic leaders who do not yet instinctively understand the centrality and importance of the Church’s vision of human life and love are simply incapable of representing the Church and transmitting Christ’s salvific power to society today. The Contraceptive Mentality Every age and culture is marked by characteristic vices. Our culture is drowning in sexual selfishness, an insatiable desire for constant gratification without consideration of the consequences. Of course each person is highly complex, and I do not mean to suggest that everyone who uses contraception will inevitably be led into every other sexual vice. But the connections are there. As soon as we start thinking of sex only in terms of pleasure, divorcing it from the power to generate new life, we not only trivialize it but also alter its defining purpose. The clearest example of this is the use of abortion as backup contraception. If the sole purpose of sex is pleasure, then one can only assume that it is perfectly moral to attempt to prevent conception. If the attempt fails, abortion becomes the logical means to retain the original goal of trouble-free sexual pleasure.
Moreover, the connections between contraception and homosexuality (and other forms of sexual perversion) should by now be equally clear. If the purpose of sex is pleasure, then its purpose is properly fulfilled by any use of our sexual faculties that brings pleasure. It is very nearly impossible for someone who approves of contraception to argue against homosexual acts, or even homosexual “marriages” (which arise when marriage is redefined as a close personal union designed to give pleasure). No, the key to that castle has already been given away. But this is also true of every kind of perversion, including the most widespread contemporary form, pornography. For pornography is also a use of our sexual faculties to produce pleasure. When the ends of human sexuality are not understood, pornography is self-justifying. Yet it is precisely in the worldwide pornography epidemic that we can most easily see the power of ill-defined sexuality to destroy relationships. Since this is more commonly a male problem, I’ll illustrate it in male terms. The husband (or significant other, already a distortion) finds pleasure in certain pornographic images. He becomes dissatisfied with the pleasure “produced” by his wife. He wants her to do things differently. He begins to twist her into a sort of performing object for his own sexual gratification. Still unsatisfied, he begins to look for even more gratification elsewhere. Respect and love vanish. The couple is now on the path to pain, rejection, divorce. But of course it can start even earlier. A young man more or less habituated to pornography will have a very difficult time forming a whole and deeply personal relationship with any woman. Far less often, but with no less devastation, the pornographic shoe can be on the feminine foot. Chastity The purpose of sex is not merely pleasure. Its purpose is the procreation of new life with God in a unifying embrace which progressively forms a couple into a stable, mature and self-sacrificing union designed for their own sanctification and that of their children. This is what marital love means, and this is what human sexuality is for. Therefore, when couples catch the vision of Paul VI—when they “make love” in a context of self-discipline, deep mutual respect, sacrifice for the other and openness to life, including periodic abstinence – they find that their personalities really do develop. They become more sensitive to each others’ needs, more inclined to communicate in other ways, more capable of working through problems and deficiencies that stand in the way of marital growth. Chastity, one of the great virtues of self-mastery, is no less needed in marriage than in the single state. The fruits of this virtue are enormous, fruits directly opposing those of the contraceptive mentality, which is the hallmark of our culture’s collective abandonment of chastity. I repeat that Catholic leaders—for example, professors, priests and bishops—who cannot by now see these connections are uniquely unfit to minister to the pressing Christian needs of contemporary civilization. For it is not that the Catholic Church is “hung up” on sex. Rather, it is contemporary culture which is “hung up” on sex-for-pleasure. This is a lethal fixation, a poison that leads only to death, death at every conceivable level. Not surprisingly, the only antidote is to reinvest into sexuality the one thing that it has been missing now for far too long, that is, Life—the life of our spouse, the life of our child, the life of our God. |
This speaks for itself.
Excellent article!
It seems to me that our society has established “scr#wing around” as the norm, and that every other choice - religious celibacy, single lay celibacy, marital chastity - is an exception. There’s a long way to go back to some kind of functional reality.
Our parochial vicar, in his homily today, linked the use of contraception to a denial of the Trinity: a lack of utter giving of oneself to the other, thus bringing forth life.
And I won't do his homily justice, so I won't try, but it went along those same lines.
Great job from your vicar! Our deacon just talked about the Trinity (in Spanish), hurrying so we could wrap up in time for the First Communion Mass following :-).
Back in Oklahoma, our pastor once mentioned on Father’s Day that being sterilized wasn’t an act of courageous fatherhood. People were flabbergasted.
Taken literally, this would suggest that it is also immoral to practice natural birth control by only having sex when you know you can't get pregnant, or even abstaining from sex in marriage to avoid getting pregnant.
As I doubt many of us believe that, we are back to asking what steps to prevent procreation are acceptable, and which are sinful. As a non-Catholic, I don't feel compelled by edicts, but I can still look at the issue from a religious and theological perspective.
I appreciate the conservative viewpoints of our Catholic brethren, so I don't get upset when I am occasionally confronted with their belief that I'm a practicing sinner and worthy of condemnation. Everybody has their religion, and they aren't generally kind to each other.
I use contraception, and I most certainly do not deny the trinity.
“... being sterilized wasn’t an act of courageous fatherhood”
WOW!!! I haven’t heard even a whisper about birth control in a Catholic Church that I can remember. You’d think that something so widely abused would garner a little more attention. It’s a shame, really. It took a few years for dh and I to figure that out. We almost didn’t make it. God’s plan for us is so much better than we ever could have imagined!
Father Gaalaas didn’t let anything keep him from telling the truth. He looked like an ethereal little elf, but then people would realize they’d been smacked down. He’s a Monsignor now, and I still hope he’ll be the next Bishop of Tulsa; Bishop Slattery, a good man, has been in place a long time.
My current pastor has never mentioned contraception, that I recall. At least he’s rock-solid in condemning abortion.
However to summarize, the Church distinguishes between the natural law (i.e. the natural cycle of fertility with its inherent infertile periods) and artificial means of preventing contraception. It also emphasizes the virtue of self-discipline implicit in the practice of periodic continence.
A quote from the above encyclical:
"If therefore there are well-grounded reasons for spacing births, arising from the physical or psychological condition of husband or wife, or from external circumstances, the Church teaches that married people may then take advantage of the natural cycles immanent in the reproductive system and engage in marital intercourse only during those times that are infertile, thus controlling birth in a way which does not in the least offend the moral principles which We have just explained. (20)
Neither the Church nor her doctrine is inconsistent when she considers it lawful for married people to take advantage of the infertile period but condemns as always unlawful the use of means which directly prevent conception, even when the reasons given for the later practice may appear to be upright and serious. In reality, these two cases are completely different. In the former the married couple rightly use a faculty provided them by nature. In the later they obstruct the natural development of the generative process. It cannot be denied that in each case the married couple, for acceptable reasons, are both perfectly clear in their intention to avoid children and wish to make sure that none will result. But it is equally true that it is exclusively in the former case that husband and wife are ready to abstain from intercourse during the fertile period as often as for reasonable motives the birth of another child is not desirable. And when the infertile period recurs, they use their married intimacy to express their mutual love and safeguard their fidelity toward one another. In doing this they certainly give proof of a true and authentic love."
I Think The Popes Vision dropped the scales from some of The Social Justice Crowd of Priests!
Thank you. I am somewhat understanding of the Catholic view. I have read some, and watched a presentation on the local Catholic channel.
However, and I don’t mean to be disrespectful, in my opinion if I accept the premise on which the prohibition of birth control is based, the exception for the use of natural rythms is inconsistent with that premise.
I see it as an understandable “line of demarcation” which allows the teaching to have effect, by giving an easy way out so people can obey the rule. If the rule was too hard, everybody would break it.
There is no deliberate frustration of the sex act with a natural form of birth control. And therein lies the difference. Contraception alters the nature of the sex act. Not having sex at a certan time does nothing to the sex act.
A husband and wife who practice natural forms of birth control engage in the identical practices when a child is conceived and when one is not. That can’t be the same for the contracepting couple.
Depends on the end you have in view, doesn’t it? If you never intend to have child, you aren’t really married. If you have only one child or two for less than honorable reasons, such as unwillingness so give up luxury. But if you can’t afford more than a few children, or simply are not strong enough, then that is another matter. I pass no judgements. However, remember this: the condom was developed for use by whores, to keep them from becoming pregnant. When you use a rubber, it diminishes the sexual act. But of course I am assuming that you value the traditional ideals of Christian marriage. Hard to live up to, requiring in the end, God’s grace. Mostly we all far short of that end, on many different counts.
There are those who actually share that viewpoint. They are called the Full Quiver movement. God Bless 'em, but a theological understanding of Humanae Vitae shows that this idea misses the point of the doctrine.
As I doubt many of us believe that, we are back to asking what steps to prevent procreation are acceptable, and which are sinful. As a non-Catholic, I don't feel compelled by edicts, but I can still look at the issue from a religious and theological perspective.
Again, the mere issue of birth control is not the point, it is the effect.
I appreciate the conservative viewpoints of our Catholic brethren, so I don't get upset when I am occasionally confronted with their belief that I'm a practicing sinner and worthy of condemnation. Everybody has their religion, and they aren't generally kind to each other.
And I appreciate the mature attitude that you have. Whether or not one is in communion with Rome, we are all part of the Body of Christ. St. Paul disparaged divisions in that Body (reference multiple points throughout his writings, particularly in his first letter to the Church in Corinth). We ALL (of whatever confession -- and I include myself in this reproof) should keep that context uppermost in our minds.
I use contraception, and I most certainly do not deny the trinity.
Ah, context. There was one thing that I didn't put down here as well as I should have (considering to whom I was posting, I didn't feel it necessary...forgot that others read my posts, as well). Sorry about that. Again, I find myself without adequate time to really explain this properly, but in short:
The Church teaches that marriage is an icon of the Trinity. In the Trinity, the Father and the Son are inseparable and of the same substance. Their very nature as Love send forth the Spirit throughout creation. Nothing separates them: they are one. They are all-giving without reservation.
In marriage, the two become one flesh. Contraception prevents this from happening. There is a block that prevents the natural, God ordained outcome from happening. There is a limit placed on the giving of yourself to your spouse (That's why abstinence for a period is not seen in the same light as artificial birth control). God the Father did not place any limits or restrictions on His giving. God the Son likewise gave His all. There are no limits as to the extent of God the Spirit.
If there are limits placed on the degree of giving in the marriage relationship, it is seen as a denial, in practice, of the two becoming one flesh (one flesh, except...). Thus it is seen as a denial of that marriage truly being an icon of the Trinity (and perhaps that is how I should have said it).
I realize that you see it differently...
Life begins at the moment of contraception. ;)
Now that you mention the “full quiver” movement, I believe I watched a 1-2 hour presentation from a member of that group. That may have shaped my opinion on the matter.
Most churches until the 1930’s viewed contraception as very immoral. It wasn't until the late 40’s or so that it became accepted, and longer than that in some areas. My LCMS church back home had an average family size of four to five.
Most of the problems that the article talks about are true. We are also heading into a demographic winter like the world has never seen. At least in the US, we have the Hispanics who still have large families. In Europe, it is the muslims.
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I have always loved that tagline
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The first one to jump ship was the Lambeth Conference that was held back in the 30s (forget the exact date right now).
And it’s all gone downhill from there.
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