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More
on ‘Married Love and the Gift of Life’
PRAISED BE JESUS
CHRIST!
(Now and Forever)
Last week I shared with my readers a document that won’t make the
best-seller list and which was more or less ignored by media when it was
approved by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops last
November. Titled Married Love and the Gift of Life, it
addresses what the Catholic Church teaches about marriage and the
meaning of the “yes” that the bride and groom give to each other on
their wedding day. In the Rite of Marriage, a man and woman are asked if
they will love one another faithfully and totally. They respond that
they truly are prepared to accept each other and all that may come from
their union, completely and forever. Serious stuff, to say the least.
Spouses, of course, seal their love and commitment through their sexual
union. Yet the common vision of sex in our culture is negative: avoiding
disease and using contraceptives to prevent pregnancy. The Catholic
Church teaches that married life and love is far richer and fulfilling,
a source of joy and pleasure that helps the spouses give themselves to
each other completely and for their entire lives. Marital sex is seen as
a deeply personal and powerful encounter between spouses.
Married Love
poses nine 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 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?
- And, is it
true, as some claim, that some methods of birth control can cause an
abortion?
Five of these
questions were addressed last week. To finish the sequence, Married
Love asks, “What is Natural Family Planning?” It is responsible
parenthood based on an understanding of human fertility, specifically
female fertility.
A woman
experiences clear, observable signs indicating when she is fertile and
when she is not. Learning to observe and understand these signs is at
the heart of education in Natural Family Planning.
Natural Family
Planning is most helpful for couples who desire to have a child because
it identifies the time of ovulation. It is most effective, too, when
couples decide to postpone pregnancy. It has little to do with calendars
(the old so-called rhythm method). Its focus is fertility and how to
recognize it.
The difference
between using contraception and practicing Natural Family Planning is
that the first does not respect God’s gifts to us, while the second
does. When couples use contraception, either physical or chemical, they
suppress their fertility, asserting that they alone have ultimate
control over this power to create a new human life. With Natural Family
Planning, spouses respect God’s design for life and love. Couples may
choose to refrain from sexual union during a woman’s fertile time, doing
nothing to destroy the love-making or life-giving meaning that is
present. It’s the difference between choosing to falsify the full
marital language of the body and choosing at certain times not to speak
that language.
Couples who after
using contraception embrace Natural Family Planning testify that they
have experienced a profound difference in the meaning of their sexual
intimacy. They are conforming themselves to God’s will rather than
rejecting it. They are embracing God’s call to holiness. As one husband
put it, it called him to cherish his wife rather than simply desire her.
Married Love
makes another point. Some methods of artificial birth control are
designed to prevent the union of sperm and egg and therefore act only as
contraceptives. Hormonal methods, however, may work in several ways.
They can suppress ovulation or alter cervical mucus to prevent
fertilization, and thus act contraceptively. But they may at times have
other effects, such as changes to the lining of the uterus. If the
contraceptive action fails and fertilization takes place, these hormonal
methods may make it impossible for a newly conceived life to implant and
survive. That would be a very early abortion. Medical opinions differ on
whether or how often this may occur. According to Married Love,
there is now no way to know precisely how these drugs work at any given
time in an individual woman. Nonetheless, one cannot rule out the
possibility that some methods of birth control may cause an abortion.
By using
contraception, couples may think that they are avoiding problems or
easing tensions, that they are exerting control over their lives. But
the gift of being able to help create another person, a new human being
with his or her own life, involves profound relationships. It affects
our relationship with God, who created us complete with the powerful
gift of fertility. It involves whether spouses will truly love and
accept each other as they are, including their gift of fertility.
As to what impact
widespread contraception has had on society, Pope Paul VI has proven to
be a prophet. Back in 1968, in his much ridiculed encyclical letter
Humanae Vitae, he warned that the use of contraception would allow
one spouse to treat the other more like an object than a person.
A few years later,
Pope John Paul II called attention to the close association between
contraception and abortion, noting that “the negative values inherent in
the ‘contraceptive mentality’ are such that they would strengthen the
temptation to abortion when an unwanted life is conceived.”
Today we see an
enormous rise in cohabitation, one in three children are born outside
marriage, respect for life and the sanctity of marriage has been
seriously eroded, and our culture often presents sex as merely
recreational.
During this Lenten
season, the Church calls us to conversion. Conversion is multifaceted.
Always it is challenging for it calls for systemic change. Were it not
for the grace won for us by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ, conversion would no doubt be mission impossible. We would follow
our own selfish instincts, making adjustments to our lifestyle only when
the alternatives were perceived to be an obvious impairment to quality
of life. A person decides to diet because if weight isn’t lost there
will be serious health problems, for example.
But if we are
serious about the holiness we are called to achieve, we know conversion
— a radical reorientation away from selfishness toward God — is a
necessary path to true fulfillment.
Conversion rarely
happens overnight. It is ongoing and lifelong. Perseverance, prayer,
faith and determination, rooted in belief in a forgiving and merciful
God who wants only the best for us, is an inescapable part of
conversion.
Married Love
and the Gift of Life offers substantial material for meditation for
those called to holiness in the vocation of marriage and parenthood. |
