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‘Married
Love and the Gift of Life’
PRAISED BE JESUS
CHRIST!
(Now and Forever)
“Getting married. What a blessed and hope-filled time.”
That is the first sentence of a pastoral statement, Married Love and
the Gift of Life, issued by the United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops in November of last year. Its focus is a topic few Catholics, it
would seem, want to think about: contraception. Yet, the pastors of the
Church have a responsibility to articulate what the Church teaches.
Married Love does that by asking a series of questions:
• What does the Church teach about married love?
• What does this have to do with contraception?
• Why does saying “yes” to children at the altar mean never using
contraception to close the act of intercourse to new life?
• Are couples expected to leave their family size entirely to chance?
• What should a couple do if they have a good reason to avoid having a
child?
• What is Natural Family Planning?
• Is there really a difference between using contraception and
practicing Natural Family Planning?
• What has been the impact of contraception on society? On married
couples?
• Is it true, as some claim, that some methods of birth control can
cause an abortion?
These are questions that do not win applause in most venues.
Contraception is taken for granted by most. Statistics suggest that
Catholics are no different from their neighbors in this area (as well as
many others that set them at odds with the teachings of the Church).
Is this ignorance of what the Church teaches or rejection of that
teaching? If it is rejection, what does one make of Jesus’ admonition:
“He who hears you, hears me. He who rejects you, rejects me. And he who
rejects me, rejects him who sent me”(Luke 10-16)?
The same Jesus also instructs, of course: “If you want to avoid
judgment, stop passing judgment” (Matthew 7:1).
The context is not judgment or threats, but a call to holiness. The well
catechized understand that to hear the voice of the Church on matters of
faith and morals is to hear the voice of Christ himself. Our task is to
struggle to accept that voice the best we can while relying on the grace
of the sacraments. We belong not to Caesar, but to God.
What then does the Church teach about married love?
Married Love reminds Catholics that marriage is more than a civil
contract. It is an intimate partnership in which husbands and wives
learn to give and receive love unselfishly, and then teach their
children to do so as well. It is a vocation, a call to holiness.
Spouses seal their love and commitment through their sexual union. It is
that union which most fully expresses what it means to become “one
body.” The Church teaches that the sexual union of husband and wife is
meant to express the full meaning of marital love, its power to bind a
couple together and its openness to new life.
So, what does this have to do with contraception? A great deal. This is
attested to by many couples who have turned away from contraception.
They witness that accepting marital love as taught by the Church adds to
the honesty, openness and intimacy of marriage and helps make couples
truly fulfilled.
How so? “When married couples deliberately act to suppress fertility …
sexual intercourse is no longer fully marital intercourse. It is
something less powerful and intimate. … Suppressing fertility by using
contraception denies part of the inherent meaning of married sexuality
and does harm to the couple’s unity” (Married Love).
The harm flows from the fact that in contraception spouses in effect say
to one another: “I give you everything except my fertility.” They
tell each other that they cannot have the total giving of “my” body and
soul.
Married Love points out that some argue that if a husband and
wife remain open to children in a general way, they need not worry about
using contraception occasionally. But practicing what is good most of
the time does not justify doing what is wrong some of the time.
If a person sees himself or herself as a truthful individual on the
whole, an occasional lie is still a lie and so is immoral. What I do
makes me the person I am.
This is no less true, Married Love points out, than when couples
falsify “the language of the body,” speaking total love and acceptance
of the other person while denying an essential part of that message.
The call to holiness in the vocation of marriage is a call to never
suppress or curtail the life-giving power given by God that is an
integral part of what is pledged by bride and groom in their marriage
vows. This is what the Church means by saying that every act of
intercourse must remain open to life and that contraception is
objectively im-moral.
Some listen to this, shake their heads, and tell themselves they are not
going to leave family size to chance. Is that, in fact, what the
Catholic Church expects couples to swallow? Certainly not.
Financial, physical and psychological circumstances, including
responsibilities to other family members, can and do arise to make an
increase in family size untimely, even irresponsible. This is
understood.
Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae made it clear that couples, for
serious reasons, may and will choose not to have more children for the
time being or even for an indefinite period.
The answer for the person serious about striving for holiness is found
in a husband and wife who are willing to cooperate with the body as God
has designed it. Admittedly this requires communication and commitment.
But, that is what marriage is supposed to be about. It’s called Natural
Family Planning, the general term for the methods of family planning
that are based on a woman’s fertility.
NFP has become more than a totally safe, healthy and reliable method of
birth regulation.
The qualities of self-restraint, self-discipline, mutual respect and
shared responsibility which are part and parcel of NFP carry over to all
facets of marriage, making the marital relationship more intimate. And,
couples who practice Natural Family Planning have a divorce rate of less
than 5 percent. Statisticians suggest that in the general population, it
is as high as 50 percent.
That in itself should get people’s attention.
More on this call to holiness next week. |
