"Be fruitful and multiply."
(Gen. 1:28)
"Between the conception
(Gen. 1:28)
"Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response....
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence....
Falls the shadow."
(T. S. Eliot "The Hollow Men")
The burning coals of criticism presently being heaped against the Roman Church for her stand on gender and sexual issues now extend far beyond the matter of birth control. Her distinctly anti-modern stand on issues such as women priests, homosexuality and gay marriage, pre-marital sex, divorce, abortion, pornography and masturbation, continues to incense the corrupt societies in which She exists. Holy men and women who continue to support long-held moral values are now viewed not merely as out-of-date or reactionary, but as actually sinful and evil. Mother Teresa has been seen by her critics as an oppressor of the poor, because of her opposition to contraception, in spite of all the years of work and suffering she spent on behalf of the poor of India. Bishops and Cardinals who insist on abstinence and refuse to accept the condom are deemed personally responsible for exacerbating the AIDS crisis in Africa.
At the opposite end of this bizarrely inverted morality, the conservative Christian surveys the sexual wasteland of the modern West, and is appalled. Divorce rates increased dramatically during much of the last century. Homosexuality, once taboo, is now openly accepted, and gay marriage is actively promoted. Gay rights activists desecrated St. Patrick's Cathedral in Boston, made a mockery of Christianity, and masturbated in the streets. The deadly cancer of pornography continues to pervade our society. The yearly number of abortions has reached mind-numbing figures. "Legitimate" organizations such as NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association), and the Rene Guyon society, with its diabolical slogan "sex before age eight, or else it's too late", have actively promoted pedophilia, and lobbied Congress to lower the legal age of consent. All of this and more, coupled with broken families, rampant STD's, and psychological ailments, leaves the Christian with the desolate realization that the "free love" of the sexual revolution was only the freedom of death.
Certain Christian communites, once the bulwark of sexual morality, have also bowed and broken before the secular onslaught. The Anglican Church, in 1930, condoned contraception for special cases at the Lambeth Conference, something which had previously been forbidden by all forms of Christianity. In the century since every other major Protestant and Evangelical church has followed suit. Homosexuality and divorce have gained acceptance in some churches, as well.
In light of all of this we must pause and ask ourselves a crucial question: Can the Christian communities of the world condone one or two areas of formerly taboo sexual morality (e.g. contraception, divorce), and still hope to stand firm against the swelling tide of modern sexual immorality? More specifically, is contraception a minor or irrelevant issue that can be safely ignored while we continue to preach agains pedophilia, homosexuality, and pornography, or is it central to our understanding of sex and essential to our message?
I firmly believe that the countless tenets of Catholic doctrine form a single cohesive body of thought; like pieces of a puzzle when put together they will form a single image-- the image of religious man, God, and the communion between the two. It is all too easy to take a critical scalpel and surgically remove one doctrine from another, leaving Catholic dogma in various pieces, some of which may be accepted, some of which may not. We must never forget that a divided body is also a lifeless body. We can never hope to remove the heart of a theological issue and still cling to various doctrinal limbs. They too will wither and die. For example, if a Christian community were to deny the inspiration of Sacred Scripture, it will soon happen that belief in the Divinity of Christ will be denied as well. If the theology of the Incarnation is abandoned, the Sacraments will disappear as well. This is the great fallacy of liberal Catholics who presume to hold what the Church teaches in almost every area, but deny Her teaching against contraception. If the teaching of the Church is questioned in this area, it follows that other issues such as divorce and homosexuality will soon be questioned as well. These example could easily be multiplied.
Secondly, I believe that it is vital to understand that the "thou shalt not's"of Catholic dogma are not designed to be a negative list of rules, but rather flow from the positive affirmation of some good, and function as a safeguard of theology and moral behavior, a wall around the Garden of Life.
Therefore, let us look for a while at the Church's teaching on contraception and sexual issues, keeping these two facts in mind: 1., that we must strive to view Catholic sexual teaching as a whole, and 2., that it is imperative to discover the goodness of human sexuality to which all the negative prohibitions represent a protection.
The wellspring of all Catholic doctrine is the Blessed Trinity, the fullest revelation of the Eternal God ever vouchsafed to man. The doctrine of the Trinity by itself sets Christianity apart from all other monotheistic religions. The Church teaches us that God, the great I Am, is one, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, immanent, transcendent, etc. She also teaches us that God is an eternal community of persons, yet still one God, "neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the substance" as the Athanasian Creed states. From God the Father proceeds eternally the Person of the Divine Logos, the Son of God. From the Father and the Son, in their perfect communion, proceeds eternally the Personal Love of God, "the Holy Spirit, the Lord the Giver of Life." Thus the God Who is Love Himself is an eternal communion of Persons, a community of infinite bliss, dwelling in perfect beatitude. And this same God, Whom the theologians tell us is perfect Being and of Whom St. John the Divine said "God is Love"-- this same God Who is perfect Love, perfect Being, and a Trinity of Persons, chose in His own free will to create ex nihilo the angels, the universe and its contents, and finally Man in His own Divine Image.
Since man was made in the Divine Image, man cannot be understood except in light of the Trinity. We see in man that he is made in God's Image because of his intellect, consciousness of self, and freedom of will. But it seems that man represents the likeness of God in more ways than these. Man was called in the beginning to live and understand God, not in solitude, but in community. The first account of the creation of man in Genesis says that God created them male and female. From the first man was not made to be a solitary creature, but was made as two parts of a whole, so to speak, so that he would learn love only through the gift of himself to the other, and the reciprocal gift of herself to him. Dare I say that it almost seems to me as though the perfection or fulfillment of man was divided from the beginning into two pieces, so that through uniting with the one who was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, man would learn what love is, and what is the nature of God. And perhaps here in a certain sense the Imago Dei shines forth more clearly than even in the angels. It is also necessary to note here that for Adam and Eve to experience the bliss of their interpersonal communion, it was absolutely essential that the full personhood of neither be damaged, reduced, or distorted in any way. Love cannot exist where freedom and respect are denied, where the person of the other is injured. Love must truly be a free gift, a mutual self-donation (to borrow the language of Blessed John Paul II), a meeting of two free persons.
Inscribed into the very nature of our creation is the additional remarkable fact that when man and woman express the Love of God in sexual union, this free act of love, this mutual self-donation in interpersonal communion, results in the genesis of new life, another person who is the offspring of giving and the fruit of love. Again we see here the pattern of the Trinity expressed in the life of man. No wonder then that the sexual impulse is so strong, for this pattern of love is inscribed into the very being of men and women and speaks of the Divine Image. No wonder, too, that when perverted it can take such dreadful and diabolical shapes.
Let us look a little further and notice two more facts about humans and sexuality. The first is that God gave Adam and Eve only two positive commands-- to be fruitful and multiply, and to tend and keep the garden. Having already seen the creative power of the Word of God in Genesis, we must surely assume that these two commandments were also inscribed deep into the very heart and nature of man. Here again we see man expressing the Image of God. The God Who created gives to man a creative impulse of his own, to be fruitful and multiply. The God Who sustains and upholds all that He made, offers man a share in tending and keeping the Creation. Reproduction and work remain two essential elements of human society to this day.
The second fact is to notice that man, who is designed to express the communal Love of God, is given a body, a fact that distinguishes him from the purely intellectual beings known as angels. The gift of himself that man is meant to give to the other, his knowledge of the other, and his communion with the other, all occur in the body. The body, created in the beginning to be completely integrated with the soul, expresses the soul's will and desires. Man hears, sees, speaks, acts, works, and loves through the body. The body is man's meeting place with the other. Insofar as man is meant to give himself in love he gives his body to the one loved. Man communicates through the body, loves through the body. Man fell through the body, and was redeemed through the Body. In Eden, before death, pain, and suffering entered the world, the greatest expression of love that Adam and Eve could give to each other was the intimate and total gift of their bodies in blissful marital love. Of course the Eucharistic overtones of this are profound. We remember that the Eucharist, which we so appropriately call Communion, is our Divine nuptial feast, in which God Himself says "This is My Body, given for you."
Of course, we know that man fell, and the relationship between body and soul disintegrated. Now the flesh wars against the spirit, and the spirit wars against the flesh, as St. Paul tells us. The body no longer expresses the soul as perfectly as it did. And with the advent of death and pain the loving gift of himself which man expresses through the body changes. It may now not always be blissful, but often entails pain. Love is mingled with suffering, the gift of the body is often expressed through pain and even death. Now when someone truly loves the other and gives him/her self to the other, that person in effect says "I give you my body entirely-- I will suffer for you, defend you, work for you, hurt for you, if need be die for you. Come what may, my body is entirely yours." No longer is marital union the greatest natural expression of man's love, but the total gift of the body in suffering and death. Christ tells us that the greatest love that anyone can show for the other is to lay down one's life for the other.
In light of this we can also understand that celibacy is not a denial of bodily love, but rather an excellent fulfillment of it. In this fallen world the celibate's choice of abstinence is not a selfish holding back of his or her body, but rather a total giving of it to God and world through suffering and self-denial. The celibate does not keep his body for himself or his own pleasure, but gives and consecrates it for the other.
And so we have, to the best of my abilities here, a dim and poorly sketched picture of the original beauty and meaning of sex. Man, created in the Image of God, learns love and expresses God in a fruitful, life-creating interpersonal communion through the gift of himself to the other through the body. Thus sex involves love (gift), fruitfulness (new life), and community (mutual self-donation).
So where has all of this brought us in connection to the original theme of this essay? Simply this: the various forms of sexual behavior which the Church condemns as immoral are not a randomly selected list of taboos and "thou-shalt-not's". Rather, in light of the preceding paragraphs, we will see that without exception the Church consistently condemns all forms of sexual behavior that willingly and intentionally frustrate the three principles of love, life, and communion, and that deny personal freedom and damage the personhood of either party involved. A few examples should suffice.
1. Perhaps the most obvious example is that of rape. This action, although it may accidentally cause life, is totally devoid of love, for it is antithetical to the personhood of the other. The rapist utterly divorces personhood from the act, and completely objectifies the victim. There is no freedom, no gift, no interest in the person, and hence no love. The action is of sole importance to the victimizer, the victim has no meaning. The result of this is isolation, the very opposite of communion. The rapist's actions are completely self-centered, his action express his rejection of the other's personality, and hence he creates for himself a life of isolation.
2. Pornography. Although not as violently damaging to the other as rape, pornography is still intrinsically disordered as it denies both love and life. Again, it is focused on the action instead of on the person (who is not even present), and results in objectification and a denial of personality. While many who use pornography (sinful and isolating in itself) would prefer the real to the image, it often happens that the person who frequently uses pornography becomes addicted to it, and finding it free of responsibility and personality comes in the end to prefer the picture, which demands no love, respect, or gift, to the actual person. Pornography use is also a supremely isolating and narcissistic act.
3. Contraception. Here at last we return to the original topic of this post. The Catholic Church has often turned to the story of Onan, who refused to raise up an heir for his late brother, to support her opposition to contraception. Onan, ordered to go into his deceased brother's wife, refused to complete the sexual act with her (because he knew that the heir would not be his own), and spilled his seed upon the ground. Scripture says that the thing which Onan did was detestable to God, and God slew him because of it. It is worth noting three characteristics of Onan's action. First, it was an intentional frustration of fruitfulness, a sexual action opposed to life. Secondly, it was supremely selfish, since Onan refused to give his body for anything which could not directly benefit himself. Thirdly, I suspect that it was objectifying as well, for Onan seems to have had no trouble with enjoying the woman, provided that no life could come from it. Here we see the Divine Image, which ought to have been expressed in human love, so obscured as to be utterly unrecognizable. Simply put, contraception is opposed to life, and therefore the Church is opposed to it. It focuses yet again on the action, but strives to avoid the responsibiliy that stems from that action. It is uninterested in forming new life. It tends toward objectification because responsibility toward the other is reduced.
Contraception is not an isolated "problem area" of sexual morality. Rather, it is intrinsically connected with our concept of sex, and is an espression of the modern misunderstanding and abuse of the beautiful gift of sex. It is a plague that is rapidly destroying the very moral fabric of our culture. It results from, and tends toward the objectification of the sexual act. The body of man, once designed to express human love in a fruitful union, has been divorced from the soul of man from which that love flows. The body now becomes our focus, the action becomes our goal. Sensation is now the end, not life. The field is tilled, but not planted. There is pleasure, but no potency. Love is divorced from responsibility, fruitfulness is removed from marriage, and personhood sundered from sex. Interpersonal communion breaks down and the other is seen more and more as merely a body-- the object of self-gratification.
If what I have written here seems extreme or unkind, let me state clearly that I am considering the general causes and effects of contraception, not attempting to judge the hearts of individuals. There are countless thousands of well-meaning persons who, out of ignorance or difficult circumstances, unwittingly practice contraception (although it is still wrong, even under these conditions). But when our culture, secular and Christian alike, has virtually en masse condoned contraception, then we know that a deadly decay has set in. Interest in, and respect for life decrease; the value of the person is diminished; and freedom and responsibility are reduced. Objectification and selfishnes increase; divorce rates soar; and homosexuality and pornography become ever more acceptable.
As death occurs when the blood is separated from the body, so too, we are slowly dying because we have tried to separate things which were never meant to removed from each other-- things which God Himself has "joined together". We have tried to divorce:
love from life,
body from soul,
freedom from responsibility,
sex from procreation,
fruitfulness from marriage,
and our physical nature from the Divine Image.
And so we, who have contracepted life, are dying a slow and agonizing death-- death by rubber, death by pill. The great loving and creative impulse of man, made in the Image of God, has had a condom put over it; and millions of abortions, sexual perversions, rapes, and addictions, bear witness to the hell that we create when the orgasm, not life, becomes our only goal.
"Others are hell." Sartre
"Lust has no friends, it is not interested in persons." Fr. Vincent Miceli, The Roots of Violence
"The transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator." Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae
"The way to plan the family is Natural Family Planning, not contraception. In destroying the power of giving life, through contraception, a husband or wife is doing something to self. This turns the attention to self and so destroys the gift of love in him or her. In loving, the husband and wife must turn the attention to each other. Once that living love is destroyed by contraception, abortion follow very easily." Blessed Teresa of Calcutta
In light of all of this we must pause and ask ourselves a crucial question: Can the Christian communities of the world condone one or two areas of formerly taboo sexual morality (e.g. contraception, divorce), and still hope to stand firm against the swelling tide of modern sexual immorality? More specifically, is contraception a minor or irrelevant issue that can be safely ignored while we continue to preach agains pedophilia, homosexuality, and pornography, or is it central to our understanding of sex and essential to our message?
I firmly believe that the countless tenets of Catholic doctrine form a single cohesive body of thought; like pieces of a puzzle when put together they will form a single image-- the image of religious man, God, and the communion between the two. It is all too easy to take a critical scalpel and surgically remove one doctrine from another, leaving Catholic dogma in various pieces, some of which may be accepted, some of which may not. We must never forget that a divided body is also a lifeless body. We can never hope to remove the heart of a theological issue and still cling to various doctrinal limbs. They too will wither and die. For example, if a Christian community were to deny the inspiration of Sacred Scripture, it will soon happen that belief in the Divinity of Christ will be denied as well. If the theology of the Incarnation is abandoned, the Sacraments will disappear as well. This is the great fallacy of liberal Catholics who presume to hold what the Church teaches in almost every area, but deny Her teaching against contraception. If the teaching of the Church is questioned in this area, it follows that other issues such as divorce and homosexuality will soon be questioned as well. These example could easily be multiplied.
Secondly, I believe that it is vital to understand that the "thou shalt not's"of Catholic dogma are not designed to be a negative list of rules, but rather flow from the positive affirmation of some good, and function as a safeguard of theology and moral behavior, a wall around the Garden of Life.
Therefore, let us look for a while at the Church's teaching on contraception and sexual issues, keeping these two facts in mind: 1., that we must strive to view Catholic sexual teaching as a whole, and 2., that it is imperative to discover the goodness of human sexuality to which all the negative prohibitions represent a protection.
The wellspring of all Catholic doctrine is the Blessed Trinity, the fullest revelation of the Eternal God ever vouchsafed to man. The doctrine of the Trinity by itself sets Christianity apart from all other monotheistic religions. The Church teaches us that God, the great I Am, is one, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, immanent, transcendent, etc. She also teaches us that God is an eternal community of persons, yet still one God, "neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the substance" as the Athanasian Creed states. From God the Father proceeds eternally the Person of the Divine Logos, the Son of God. From the Father and the Son, in their perfect communion, proceeds eternally the Personal Love of God, "the Holy Spirit, the Lord the Giver of Life." Thus the God Who is Love Himself is an eternal communion of Persons, a community of infinite bliss, dwelling in perfect beatitude. And this same God, Whom the theologians tell us is perfect Being and of Whom St. John the Divine said "God is Love"-- this same God Who is perfect Love, perfect Being, and a Trinity of Persons, chose in His own free will to create ex nihilo the angels, the universe and its contents, and finally Man in His own Divine Image.
Since man was made in the Divine Image, man cannot be understood except in light of the Trinity. We see in man that he is made in God's Image because of his intellect, consciousness of self, and freedom of will. But it seems that man represents the likeness of God in more ways than these. Man was called in the beginning to live and understand God, not in solitude, but in community. The first account of the creation of man in Genesis says that God created them male and female. From the first man was not made to be a solitary creature, but was made as two parts of a whole, so to speak, so that he would learn love only through the gift of himself to the other, and the reciprocal gift of herself to him. Dare I say that it almost seems to me as though the perfection or fulfillment of man was divided from the beginning into two pieces, so that through uniting with the one who was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, man would learn what love is, and what is the nature of God. And perhaps here in a certain sense the Imago Dei shines forth more clearly than even in the angels. It is also necessary to note here that for Adam and Eve to experience the bliss of their interpersonal communion, it was absolutely essential that the full personhood of neither be damaged, reduced, or distorted in any way. Love cannot exist where freedom and respect are denied, where the person of the other is injured. Love must truly be a free gift, a mutual self-donation (to borrow the language of Blessed John Paul II), a meeting of two free persons.
Inscribed into the very nature of our creation is the additional remarkable fact that when man and woman express the Love of God in sexual union, this free act of love, this mutual self-donation in interpersonal communion, results in the genesis of new life, another person who is the offspring of giving and the fruit of love. Again we see here the pattern of the Trinity expressed in the life of man. No wonder then that the sexual impulse is so strong, for this pattern of love is inscribed into the very being of men and women and speaks of the Divine Image. No wonder, too, that when perverted it can take such dreadful and diabolical shapes.
Let us look a little further and notice two more facts about humans and sexuality. The first is that God gave Adam and Eve only two positive commands-- to be fruitful and multiply, and to tend and keep the garden. Having already seen the creative power of the Word of God in Genesis, we must surely assume that these two commandments were also inscribed deep into the very heart and nature of man. Here again we see man expressing the Image of God. The God Who created gives to man a creative impulse of his own, to be fruitful and multiply. The God Who sustains and upholds all that He made, offers man a share in tending and keeping the Creation. Reproduction and work remain two essential elements of human society to this day.
The second fact is to notice that man, who is designed to express the communal Love of God, is given a body, a fact that distinguishes him from the purely intellectual beings known as angels. The gift of himself that man is meant to give to the other, his knowledge of the other, and his communion with the other, all occur in the body. The body, created in the beginning to be completely integrated with the soul, expresses the soul's will and desires. Man hears, sees, speaks, acts, works, and loves through the body. The body is man's meeting place with the other. Insofar as man is meant to give himself in love he gives his body to the one loved. Man communicates through the body, loves through the body. Man fell through the body, and was redeemed through the Body. In Eden, before death, pain, and suffering entered the world, the greatest expression of love that Adam and Eve could give to each other was the intimate and total gift of their bodies in blissful marital love. Of course the Eucharistic overtones of this are profound. We remember that the Eucharist, which we so appropriately call Communion, is our Divine nuptial feast, in which God Himself says "This is My Body, given for you."
Of course, we know that man fell, and the relationship between body and soul disintegrated. Now the flesh wars against the spirit, and the spirit wars against the flesh, as St. Paul tells us. The body no longer expresses the soul as perfectly as it did. And with the advent of death and pain the loving gift of himself which man expresses through the body changes. It may now not always be blissful, but often entails pain. Love is mingled with suffering, the gift of the body is often expressed through pain and even death. Now when someone truly loves the other and gives him/her self to the other, that person in effect says "I give you my body entirely-- I will suffer for you, defend you, work for you, hurt for you, if need be die for you. Come what may, my body is entirely yours." No longer is marital union the greatest natural expression of man's love, but the total gift of the body in suffering and death. Christ tells us that the greatest love that anyone can show for the other is to lay down one's life for the other.
In light of this we can also understand that celibacy is not a denial of bodily love, but rather an excellent fulfillment of it. In this fallen world the celibate's choice of abstinence is not a selfish holding back of his or her body, but rather a total giving of it to God and world through suffering and self-denial. The celibate does not keep his body for himself or his own pleasure, but gives and consecrates it for the other.
And so we have, to the best of my abilities here, a dim and poorly sketched picture of the original beauty and meaning of sex. Man, created in the Image of God, learns love and expresses God in a fruitful, life-creating interpersonal communion through the gift of himself to the other through the body. Thus sex involves love (gift), fruitfulness (new life), and community (mutual self-donation).
So where has all of this brought us in connection to the original theme of this essay? Simply this: the various forms of sexual behavior which the Church condemns as immoral are not a randomly selected list of taboos and "thou-shalt-not's". Rather, in light of the preceding paragraphs, we will see that without exception the Church consistently condemns all forms of sexual behavior that willingly and intentionally frustrate the three principles of love, life, and communion, and that deny personal freedom and damage the personhood of either party involved. A few examples should suffice.
1. Perhaps the most obvious example is that of rape. This action, although it may accidentally cause life, is totally devoid of love, for it is antithetical to the personhood of the other. The rapist utterly divorces personhood from the act, and completely objectifies the victim. There is no freedom, no gift, no interest in the person, and hence no love. The action is of sole importance to the victimizer, the victim has no meaning. The result of this is isolation, the very opposite of communion. The rapist's actions are completely self-centered, his action express his rejection of the other's personality, and hence he creates for himself a life of isolation.
2. Pornography. Although not as violently damaging to the other as rape, pornography is still intrinsically disordered as it denies both love and life. Again, it is focused on the action instead of on the person (who is not even present), and results in objectification and a denial of personality. While many who use pornography (sinful and isolating in itself) would prefer the real to the image, it often happens that the person who frequently uses pornography becomes addicted to it, and finding it free of responsibility and personality comes in the end to prefer the picture, which demands no love, respect, or gift, to the actual person. Pornography use is also a supremely isolating and narcissistic act.
3. Contraception. Here at last we return to the original topic of this post. The Catholic Church has often turned to the story of Onan, who refused to raise up an heir for his late brother, to support her opposition to contraception. Onan, ordered to go into his deceased brother's wife, refused to complete the sexual act with her (because he knew that the heir would not be his own), and spilled his seed upon the ground. Scripture says that the thing which Onan did was detestable to God, and God slew him because of it. It is worth noting three characteristics of Onan's action. First, it was an intentional frustration of fruitfulness, a sexual action opposed to life. Secondly, it was supremely selfish, since Onan refused to give his body for anything which could not directly benefit himself. Thirdly, I suspect that it was objectifying as well, for Onan seems to have had no trouble with enjoying the woman, provided that no life could come from it. Here we see the Divine Image, which ought to have been expressed in human love, so obscured as to be utterly unrecognizable. Simply put, contraception is opposed to life, and therefore the Church is opposed to it. It focuses yet again on the action, but strives to avoid the responsibiliy that stems from that action. It is uninterested in forming new life. It tends toward objectification because responsibility toward the other is reduced.
Contraception is not an isolated "problem area" of sexual morality. Rather, it is intrinsically connected with our concept of sex, and is an espression of the modern misunderstanding and abuse of the beautiful gift of sex. It is a plague that is rapidly destroying the very moral fabric of our culture. It results from, and tends toward the objectification of the sexual act. The body of man, once designed to express human love in a fruitful union, has been divorced from the soul of man from which that love flows. The body now becomes our focus, the action becomes our goal. Sensation is now the end, not life. The field is tilled, but not planted. There is pleasure, but no potency. Love is divorced from responsibility, fruitfulness is removed from marriage, and personhood sundered from sex. Interpersonal communion breaks down and the other is seen more and more as merely a body-- the object of self-gratification.
If what I have written here seems extreme or unkind, let me state clearly that I am considering the general causes and effects of contraception, not attempting to judge the hearts of individuals. There are countless thousands of well-meaning persons who, out of ignorance or difficult circumstances, unwittingly practice contraception (although it is still wrong, even under these conditions). But when our culture, secular and Christian alike, has virtually en masse condoned contraception, then we know that a deadly decay has set in. Interest in, and respect for life decrease; the value of the person is diminished; and freedom and responsibility are reduced. Objectification and selfishnes increase; divorce rates soar; and homosexuality and pornography become ever more acceptable.
As death occurs when the blood is separated from the body, so too, we are slowly dying because we have tried to separate things which were never meant to removed from each other-- things which God Himself has "joined together". We have tried to divorce:
love from life,
body from soul,
freedom from responsibility,
sex from procreation,
fruitfulness from marriage,
and our physical nature from the Divine Image.
And so we, who have contracepted life, are dying a slow and agonizing death-- death by rubber, death by pill. The great loving and creative impulse of man, made in the Image of God, has had a condom put over it; and millions of abortions, sexual perversions, rapes, and addictions, bear witness to the hell that we create when the orgasm, not life, becomes our only goal.
"Others are hell." Sartre
"Lust has no friends, it is not interested in persons." Fr. Vincent Miceli, The Roots of Violence
"The transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator." Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae
"The way to plan the family is Natural Family Planning, not contraception. In destroying the power of giving life, through contraception, a husband or wife is doing something to self. This turns the attention to self and so destroys the gift of love in him or her. In loving, the husband and wife must turn the attention to each other. Once that living love is destroyed by contraception, abortion follow very easily." Blessed Teresa of Calcutta
