Sex Au Naturel (16 page)
Authors: Patrick Coffin
In every Christian wedding, we hear the words from Matthew’s Gospel, “What God has joined let no man put asunder.” But this is exactly what contraception does on the biological and interpersonal level. It puts asunder the two meanings of sex that God has joined, the unitive and the procreative.
Humanae Vitae
The core principle of the encyclical—the hook upon which the whole garment hangs—is conveyed in one sentence: “The Church, nevertheless, in urging men to the observance of the precepts of the natural law, which it interprets by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life” (HV 11).
The above is from the official Vatican translation. (Although Latin is the official language of the Church, not all papal documents are originally written in Latin. Paul VI penned
Humanae Vitae
in Italian and French.) The Daughters of Saint Paul translation renders the italicized key phrase above as, “[The Church] teaches that each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life.” Dr. Smith’s own version is: “[The Church] teaches that it is necessary that each conjugal act remain ordained in itself to the procreating of human life.”
Like different camera angles used to shoot the same scene, these renderings say the same basic thing, which is that the marital act—each and every one, not an aggregate “totality” of marital acts over the years—is ordained in itself to bring forth new human beings. Being the extraordinary site, so to speak, of God’s interaction with His beloved co-creators, this act ought never be tainted by the ambushing of its potentialities.
Prior to
Humanae Vitae
, the major encyclical that addressed birth control was
Casti Connubii
(“On Christian Marriage”), issued by Pius XI
12
on December 31, 1930. It was the
de facto
Catholic response to the Anglican exit from the historic Christian position at the Lambeth Conference in August of that year; and, like
Humanae Vitae
twenty-eight years later,
Casti Connubii
invoked the natural law and the divine origins of the Church’s role as Teacher, albeit in more muscular language:
Since, therefore, the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children, those who in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural power and purpose sin against nature and commit a deed which is shameful and intrinsically vicious.
Small wonder, therefore, if Holy Writ bears witness that the Divine Majesty regards with greatest detestation this horrible crime and at times has punished it with death. As Saint Augustine notes, “Intercourse even with one’s legitimate wife is unlawful and wicked where the conception of the offspring is prevented. Onan, the son of Judah, did this and the Lord killed him for it.”
Since, therefore, openly departing from the uninterrupted Christian tradition some recently have judged it possible solemnly to declare another doctrine regarding this question, the Catholic Church, to whom God has entrusted the defense of the integrity and purity of morals, standing erect in the midst of the moral ruin which surrounds her, in order that she may preserve the chastity of the nuptial union from being defiled by this foul stain, raises her voice in token of her divine ambassadorship and through Our mouth proclaims anew: any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin. (CC 54–6)
There’s potent language, and then there’s potent language. “Shameful,” “intrinsically vicious” (i.e., giving in to vice), “horrible crime,” “moral ruin,” “foul stain,” “offense against the law of God,” “branded with the guilt of a grave sin.”
13
Could two papal writing styles be more different? Paul VI was criticized for the conclusions of
Humanae Vitae
, but the most combative word he used was “illicit”!
Beneath the diversity of tone, however, is a deeper unity of truth. All popes that have addressed the issue of artificial birth control have spoken with one voice: It is a violation of the pro-life, pro-fecund law God has inscribed in our natures.
In its section on the moral life, the
Catechism
is redolent of John Paul II: “Freedom makes man a moral subject. When he acts deliberately, man is, so to speak,
the father of his acts
” (CCC, no. 1749, emphasis in original). Extending this conjugal metaphor, we can say that when we act wisely and well, we give birth within ourselves to twins: happiness and holiness. Following the Lord then becomes an adventure as sweet as it is bracing, because we know that His laws are for our good. As we progress in the Christian life, our salt gets saltier and our light switches more easily to high beam (cf. Lk. 11:36).
With the exception of keeping the Sabbath holy, God did not need to reveal the Ten Commandments. But like an accommodating father, He wanted His law to suffuse our darkened minds and weakened wills. As Augustine wrote, “He wrote on the tables of the Law what men did not read in their hearts.” With the coming of Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit, we have an even greater advantage: our searching for God opens our eyes to His search for us and the communication of His loving plan. Unlike, say, the pygmies in Papua or the pagans in pre-Christian Rome, we can’t plead invincible ignorance.
Both the Old Law of Moses and the natural law discovered by reason are perfected by the New Law of Christ. This New Law “
is the grace of the Holy Spirit
given to the faithful through faith in Christ. It works through charity; it uses the Sermon on the Mount to teach us what must be done and makes use of the sacraments to give us the grace to do it” (CCC, 1966, emphasis in original). It’s an inside job, and was already anticipated by the Prophet Jeremiah: “I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel.… I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jer. 31:31, 33).
As long as we view our response to Christ’s covenant as one big inconvenience, we’ll never make His will our preference, our first love. As long as our theme song is
I Did It My Way
, we’ll always balk at doing the right thing. Cardinal Newman called conscience “the connecting principle between the creature and his Creator.” In light of our baptism, how much closer does the conscience of children connect them with their doting Father?
The Lord Jesus wants to stay “nickname close” with us as our Best Friend; and our ability to see the meaning and beauty of human sexuality is critical to preserving this closeness. “If God is for us, who is against us?” (Rom. 8:31). When Baptist leader James MacDonald uses the phrase, “When God says, ‘Don’t,’ he means, ‘Don’t hurt yourself,’” he lays hold of a very Catholic principle.
Come Lord Jesus, fill me with a newfound love of your law, written naturally in my heart, supernaturally in the Old Law, yet more abundantly in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Help me to see your law as my trusted Guide and Rescuer, especially when it comes to the great gift of my sexual desire. Help me to trust your law even as I trust in your present and future care for me, forgive the ways I have seen it as my enemy, and grant me the grace to know to love only what is lovely in your sight. Amen.
1
^
Dualism disposes us to see our body parts as machine-like cogs that can be adjusted, snipped, or removed in a morally neutral way for any motive of the “real self ” who “owns” them. According to dualism, a person in an irreversible coma (“the grandpa we remember”) is deemed no longer to be meaningfully present in the body, and is therefore marked for termination.
2
^
For a comprehensive treatment of dualism in theory and practice, see Patrick Lee and Robert P. George,
Body-Self Dualism in Contemporary Ethics and Politics
(Cambridge University Press: 2008).
3
^
Daniel J. Sullivan,
Introduction to Philosophy: The Perennial Principles of the Classic Realist Tradition
(Rockford, IL: Tan Books, 1992), 140.
4
^
I borrow here from the useful summary given by William E. May in
Introduction to Moral Theology
(Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1994), 43; 60–65.
5
^
Second Vatican Council, Declaration on Religious Freedom
Dignitatis Humanae
(December 7, 1965), no. 2 (hereafter cited in text as
DH
)
.
6
^
George Cardinal Pell, “The Inconvenient Conscience,”
First Things
, (May 2005), 23.
7
^
For further treatments of the natural law from varying perspectives, see John Goyette, Mark S. Latkovic, Richard S. Myers, eds.,
Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Natural Law Tradition: Contemporary Perspectives
(Washington: Catholic University of America Press: 2004); Janet E. Smith,
Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later
(Washington, DC: Catholic University Press of America, 1991), 69–128; J. Budziszewski,
Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law
(Downer’s Grove, IN: InterVarsity Press, 1997); Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, and John Finnis, “Practical Principles, Moral Truth and Ultimate Ends,” in
American Journal of Jurisprudence
32 (1987), 99–151; Russell Hittinger,
A Critique of the New Natural Law Theory
(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987); Saint Thomas Aquinas, Questions 91–94, I-II, in the
Summa Theologica
; C.S. Lewis,
The Abolition of Man
(New York: MacMillan, 1955).
8
^
Cf. Janet E. Smith, “Contraception: Why Not?” a compelling talk recorded and distributed by One More Soul (see Appendix to order a copy).
9
^
A conspicuous exception to the idea that contraceptive behavior is always deliberately immoral (“meddling”) would be a woman married to a tyrant or living in, say, a one-child-only dictatorship such as communist China. Smith points out that it’s dubious at best to assume that such women are intentionally trying to avoid the burdens of motherhood.
10
^
Smith,
Humanae Vitae
, 99, 102–104.
11
^
Veneration comes from the Latin verb
venerari
, meaning “to regard with great respect,” and derives from the same root as Venus, the Roman goddess of love.
12
^
Born Achille Ratti, Pius XI was a kindred spirit of Pope John Paul II. Pius XI was a linguist, a scholar (obtaining three doctorates), and an avid mountain climber. Seeing the vast evangelistic potential in the nascent mass media, he started Vatican Radio in 1931 and became the first pope on the radio. In 1937, this proto-Wojtyla wrote the first papal condemnations of Nazism (
Mit Brennender Sorge
) and of Communism (
Divini Redemptoris
).
13
^
One grins at Pius XI’s “moral ruin” of the 1930s. What would he have thought about
Hustler
in corner stores, abortion on demand, the “gay” marriage movement, no fault divorce, and condoms in schools?
Chapter Seven
The whole truth is generally the ally of virtue; a half-truth is always the ally of some vice.
—G.K. Chesterton