Chapter 8
Humanae Vitae
(On Human Life)
The
previous cycle (5th cycle) of the Theology of the Body series
discussed the question of marriage as presented primarily in the fifth
chapter of Ephesians. As we have seen, in that analysis of marriage John
Paul applied the results of the studies of the human body-person
undertaken in the first three cycles. In those first three cycles, as the
reader may remember, the Holy Father discussed the human person in the
Garden of Eden before sin (1st cycle), the human person after
sin, i.e., historical man, (2nd cycle), and the human person
after the Second Coming and the final resurrection (3rd cycle).
The first three cycles took their beginnings from the words of Christ: his
teaching that divorce was not allowed “in the beginning” (1st
cycle), that looking lustfully constitutes “adultery in the heart” (2nd
cycle), and that after the final resurrection, there is no giving and
taking in marriage (3rd cycle). In each of these three
conditions of the human person, the human body manifested, revealed and
expressed the human person, but in different ways. The results of these
analyses illuminated the question of virginity and celibacy in the fourth
cycle and the question of marriage in the fifth cycle.
The
final cycle of the Theology of the Body series, nos. 114-129, the crowning
conclusion of the entire set of reflections, re-reads the encyclical of
Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, On
Human Life, promulgated on July 25, 1968, in light of the results of the
first three cycles of his Theology of the Body series. In this last
cycle, the Pope also uses the results of his study of marriage undertaken
in the fifth cycle. In the sixth cycle, John Paul addresses the “problem”
of Humanae Vitae.
Humanae Vitae is the well-known “birth
control” encyclical. In this world-famous document, Pope Paul VI
responded to the advent of the contraceptive pill in the early 1960’s by
holding that it (i.e., the pill) and all other contraceptive devices were
immoral violations of the marital union of husband and wife. It is fair to
say that no teaching of the Church since the sixteenth century has been as
thoroughly rejected and even ignored as Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae.
In fact, it was rejected before it was even read!
On the
evening July 25th, 1968, the day the encyclical was released in
Rome, but before the text of the Pope’s new document was even available in
the United States (those were the days before the instant electronic
movement of documents via the Internet), interested parties on the east
coast of the U.S. were calling prominent scholars, theologians, priests,
religious brothers and sisters, to solicit their names for a full-page ad
opposing the teaching of Pope Paul VI to appear the next day in the New
York Times. While some refused to lend their names to the ad (partly
because they believed it was patently unfair and unjust to oppose
something from the Pope which they had not even read!!!), sixty-seven
other Catholic priests, scholars, and religious signed this ad BEFORE THEY
HAD EVEN READ THE TEXT. Humanae Vitae might be said to have been
“dead on arrival,” at least in the U.S. Other parts of the world reacted
with as much or more opposition. At least two national conferences of
bishops voiced unprecedented objections to the papal teaching. Although
Pope Paul VI probably knew that his teaching would raise a bit of a storm,
he would not have been human if he were not surprised at the violence of
the opposition. It is interesting to note that from July 25, 1968 until
his death on August 6, 1978, some ten years later, Pope Paul VI never
issued another encyclical. Some suggest that the reason why he never
wrote another encyclical after Humanae Vitae was because of the
opposition that encyclical occasioned.
John
Paul alludes to the storm over Humanae Vitae when he writes that
“the encyclical, in responding to some questions of today in the field of
conjugal and family morality, at the same time, also raised other
questions, as we know, of a bio-medical nature. But also (and above all)
they are of a theological nature; they belong to that sphere of
anthropology and theology that we have called ‘theology of the body.’ The
reflections we made consist in facing the questions raised with regard to
the Encyclical Humanae Vitae. The reaction that the encyclical
aroused confirms the importance and the difficulty of these questions.”
John Paul goes on to
say that the questions arising from Humanae Vitae “permeate the sum
total of our reflections.”
In other words, John Paul determined very early in his pontificate, within
the first year, to address the questions arising from Humanae Vitae.
He decided to address these questions through his Theology of the Body.
In addition, he specifically notes that these addresses, resulting from
objections and questions presented to the Church in light of Humanae
Vitae, constitute a development of divine Revelation because they
examine the “problem” of Humanae Vitae from the point of view of
the individual human person. “The analysis of the personalistic aspects of
the Church’s doctrine, contained in Paul VI’s encyclical, emphasizes a
determined appeal to measure man’s progress on the basis of the ‘person,’
that is of what is good for man as man—what corresponds to his essential
dignity. The analysis of the personalistic aspects leads to the
conviction that the encyclical presents as a fundamental problem
the viewpoint of man’s authentic development; this development in
fact is measured to the greatest extent on the basis of ethics and not
only on technology.”
In the
teaching of Pope Paul VI found in Humanae Vitae, John Paul
recognizes a profound truth about human persons. Grounding this truth in
objective criteria (as Pope Paul VI did—i.e., on the basis of the way God
created human beings) is essential, but John Paul II also wants to ground
the teaching of the encyclical in what he calls the “true development of
man” or “man’s authentic development.”
John Paul wants to show through his Theology of the Body that what the
Church teaches in an objective way—as given by God at the dawn of
Creation—is also the only path for the individual to follow if he or she
wishes to develop himself or herself in a truly human way. Not only does
John Paul accept that God created each of us in such a way as to exclude
what Paul VI excludes in Humanae Vitae, but he demonstrates through
the Theology of the Body addresses that the individual who acts contrary
to the teaching in Humanae Vitae harms himself or herself and acts
contrary to his or her true and authentic development. The sins listed in
Humanae Vitae are not just contrary to God and human nature,
considered in a kind of abstract way, but they harm and hurt the
individual who engages in them in his or her own body. John Paul is at
pains to show that the sins listed in Humanae Vitae are not just
sins because God “said so,” they are sins because they involve a
manipulation and use of human persons. Since persons are to be loved, and
not used, such sins damage, harm, and hurt the individual who engages in
them and all those who engage in these with him or her. The sins listed
in Humanae Vitae are not just sins because they violate the
biological laws of the human body established by God when He created us,
they are sins because the violations of human biology are attacks against
the human body, i.e., attacks against human persons. As we quoted above,
Humanae Vitae raised questions of “a bio-medical nature. But …
[these] belong to that sphere of anthropology and theology that we have
called ‘theology of the body’ ”
because the human body is not just a collection of biological functions,
but the expression of the individual human person. When one touches the
body, one touches the person!
Therefore, as the Pope writes, the reflections on Humanae Vitae,
the sixth cycle of the Theology of the Body, “is not artificially added to
the sum total but is organically and homogenously united with it.”
In re-reading Humanae Vitae in this sixth cycle, the Pope makes use
of the conclusions from the first three cycles and from the fifth cycle.
It is obvious then, that it is necessary to summarize the conclusions from
the first three cycles and the fifth before we begin to understand what
John Paul is teaching in this final cycle of the Theology of the Body.
The
burden of the first and second cycles of the Theology of the Body is to
establish that the human body is the expression of the human person.
Further, since each human person is an image of God, not only are we
called to express our own persons in and through our bodies, but, called
by our very humanity, our creation in the image and likeness of God, we
are called to act as God acts and express those acts in and through our
human bodies. The human body then can be said to speak a language, the
language of our persons, and even the language of God. In and through our
flesh and blood, when we act as God acts, we, individually, reveal
something of our own persons and something of God. Since God loves, we
are called to love as He loves and express those loving acts in and
through our bodies. The human body, in its masculinity and femininity,
reveals to us that we are called to love, to make a self-donation of
ourselves to others—this is the nuptial meaning of the body. Adam and Eve
made such a self-donation to each other and lived a loving communion in
the Garden of Eden before sin.
However,
sin entered human history with the fall of Adam and Eve to the temptations
of Satan. This fall caused a rupture within man so that the human body no
longer always and infallibly responded to the dictates of the personal
powers in man, i.e., to the mind and the will. There was a “constitutive
break in the human person, almost a rupture of man’s original spiritual
and somatic unity.”
It became very difficult for human persons to love as they should. This
condition was revealed to Adam and Eve in and through their bodies by
their changed experience of their own nakedness after sin. Still, they
were not completely destroyed and they were still called to love as before
and to express that love in and through their bodies. Now, however, they
needed the help of a Redeemer and so God the Son became man, suffered,
died, was buried, and rose from the dead accomplishing the redemption of
the body. This redemption of the body meant that human persons now had
the help of divine grace which made it possible, if not easy, to love as
they should. But that love required an effort, even with the help of
grace. That effort is the work of purity, of the power to see in every
one, most especially in those of the opposite sex, the dignity and value
of the person revealed in and through their masculinity or femininity.
The
first and second cycles showed that there were two ways the human body
“spoke” the language of personhood: in the Garden of Eden before sin; and
in “historical” man after sin redeemed by Christ. There is a third way,
the fulfillment of the redemption of the body. That third way will be
realized after the Second Coming when our bodies will be resurrected and
reunited with our souls. This third way that the body speaks the language
of personhood was sketched in the third cycle of the Theology of the Body,
the one that considered the state of human persons after the resurrection
of their bodies.
The
fifth cycle of the Theology of the Body concluded that the sacrament of
Creation, i.e., making God visible in and through a human body, was taken
up again in Christ Who made God visible perfectly because His body
expressed and revealed God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Adam and
Eve’s human bodies “spoke” the language of personhood, i.e., they revealed
themselves in and through their bodies, but they also revealed God
Himself. Further, they were “graced” in their love for one another.
Theirs was a spousal love which revealed the mystery hidden in God from
all eternity. The “spousal” character of Christ’s love is fundamentally
grounded on the foundation of making the mystery hidden in God from all
eternity visible in and through a human body and, secondarily, on the
gracing which Christ accomplished as compared with the gracing of our
first parents. Therefore, the sacrament of redemption is founded on the
sacrament of creation. But all this can be accomplished only if the human
body in speaking the language of personhood, speaks that language
truthfully.
In the
first address of the sixth cycle, no. 114, John Paul notes that he does
not plan to comment on the entire text of Humanae Vitae, but only
on the central passage which speaks of the two significances of the
marital act: conjugal love and procreation. (In the Theology of the Body
addresses, John Paul uses the term “significances” of the marital act. In
the usual English translation of Humanae Vitae, the Latin for
“significances” is translated as “meanings,” i.e., the two meanings of the
marital act are the conjugal love meaning and the procreative meaning.
Since we are following the Theology of the Body addresses, we will use the
English translation of the Pope’s addresses and continue to refer to the
two “significances” of the marital act.) As is well known, Pope Paul VI
taught that there was an inseparable connection between these two
significances of the marital act and that they cannot be separated if the
couple is not to sin. In other words, a married couple should never engage
in the conjugal act without authentic love and without an openness to the
procreation of children.
John
Paul then remarks that in the physical union of husband and wife during
the conjugal act, it is especially important “that the ‘language of the
body’ be re-read in truth. This reading becomes the indispensable
condition for acting in truth, that is, for behaving in accordance with
the value and the moral norm.”
The couple, each in his or her own way, must re-read the language of each
of their bodies in the midst of the conjugal act and realize the truth,
the value, expressed. If done properly, the couple will subjectively
internalize the teaching of the encyclical and not be in a state of
tension regarding the two significances. The two will become one reality,
under the rubric of their loving union. “The encyclical leads one to see
the foundation for the norm [i.e., that the two significances of the
marital act are inseparable] which determines the morality of the acts of
the man and the woman in the marriage act, and more deeply still in the
nature of the subjects of themselves who are performing the act.”
This line is the central thesis of the last cycle. The norm of the
encyclical is revealed to the husband and wife in the midst of the
conjugal union through their re-reading of the language of their bodies.
The norm is known through the spouses’ own experience of the conjugal
union during which they come to know the language that each of their
bodies speak. The teaching of the encyclical is not “out there” in the
sense that it is an objective norm imposed on the couple. Rather, it is
found in the language of their own bodies.
John
Paul sees Humanae Vitae pointing to this truth, i.e., that the
inseparable connection of the “two significances” of the marital act can
be known by the couple if they correctly read the language of their own
bodies, because Paul VI writes that the two significances of the marital
act are found in the “fundamental structure” of the marital act written
into the very nature of man and woman. The two significances are found in
the act itself, i.e., as John Paul interprets it, in the two subjects, the
husband and wife, themselves, or more precisely, in their bodies. So,
“the ‘fundamental structrue’ (that is, the nature) of the marriage
act constitutes the necessary basis for an adequate reading and
discovery of the two significances that must be carried over into the
conscience and the decisions of the acting parties . . . .”
The couple must come to an awareness through the language of the body of
the meaning of the marital act and realize themselves that the two
significances are inseparable. This realization will then become part of
their consciousnesses and will shape their consciences. As always, John
Paul II shows that the ethical norms of the Gospel must become part of the
subject, of the person, who then acts in accordance with those norms.
Further, he is maintaining, as he always does, that the truth of the moral
norms can be experienced and “read” in the lives of individuals if they
act in accordance with the truth. In the case of norms pertaining to
bodily acts (i.e., most of the moral norms), they are experienced and
revealed in and through those very bodily acts IF the individual or
individuals are “reading” the language of the body according to truth,
i.e., they are reading it as it is given without any preconceived notions.
In the
next address, no. 115, John Paul shows that the norm taught in Humanae
Vitae is contained in the natural law and is part of the content of
the Church’s Tradition. The norm of Humanae Vitae “is in accordance
with the sum total of revealed doctrine contained in biblical
sources.”
However, and more importantly for the purposes of John Paul’s commentary,
the norm of Humanae Vitae can be found in the Theology of the Body,
i.e., it can be read by the couple if they look to their own bodies in the
midst of the conjugal act and read the language of their bodies in truth.
In the
next address, no. 116, John Paul links Humanae Vitae with
the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,
Gaudium et Spes. He argues that both documents are pastoral in the sense
that they respond to practical questions raised by the men and women of
the contemporary world. Further, both documents were inspired by a
genuine concern for the authentic good of each and every person in the
world. “Whoever believes that the Council and the Encyclical do not
sufficiently take into account the difficulties present in concrete life
does not understand the pastoral concern that was at the origin of those
documents. Pastoral concern means the search for the true good of
man, a promotion of the values engraved in his person by God
he innate language
that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is
overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language,
namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not
only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification
of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself
in personal totality.”
The contraceptive marital act is not an act of love because the conjugal
union is “deprived of its interior truth,”
because its interior truth—the truth of their bodies—includes the
possibility of new life. In effect, the couple contracepting speaks a lie
with the language of their bodies.
A gift is a disinterested present made by
one person to another to benefit the recipient, not the one giving. For
example, at Christmas time, we try to give gifts which will please and
benefit the recipient. If, in giving, we are trying to benefit ourselves,
e.g., a brother gives his sister a new CD player only because he wants to
use it all the time, this is quickly recognized as a non-gift, as an act
which benefits the supposed giver, and not the recipient. Such a “gift”
is in effect not a gift because a gift is defined as something for the
benefit of the recipient. The marital act is a gift of one spouse to the
other for the sake of the spouse. Clearly, then, the act must not be done
for the benefit of the one giving. (Of course, since both have this
attitude and the act is a mutual giving, both usually benefit, but the
motive of each must be for the benefit of the other.) Selfishness is
excluded from the marital act.
Obviously, given the “constitutive break
within the human person,”
it is difficult in the sexual union to make a dis-interested gift to one’s
spouse. Such an act requires a self-mastery as the Pope has explained in
previous addresses in his Theology of the Body series. The problem with
contraception is that instead of a self-mastery, e.g., a postponement of
the marital act for the sake of responsible parenthood, the couple claims
a control over their own bodies. They “manipulate and degrade”
themselves so that they may engage in the marital act without the
possibility of new life. “The problem consists in maintaining an
adequate relationship between what is defined as ‘domination . . . of
the forces of nature’ (HV 2) and the ‘mastery of self’ (HV 21) which is
indispensable for the human person. Modern man shows a tendency to
transfer the methods of the former to those of the latter. ‘Man has made
stupendous progress in the domination and rational organization of the
forces of nature,’ we read in the Encyclical, ‘to the point that he is
endeavoring to extend this control over every aspect of his own life—over
his body, over his mind and emotions, over his social life, and even over
the laws that regulate the transmission of life.’ This extension of the
sphere of the means of ‘domination of the forces of nature’ menaces the
human person for whom the method of ‘self-mastery’ is and remains
specific. . . . The resort to ‘artificial means’ destroys the
constitutive dimension of the person . . . and makes him an object of
manipulation.”
Technology is very, very good, but when applied to the human person, body
and soul, it must be applied according to the structure of the person.
One of the aspects of the structure of the human person, taught in the
Theology of the Body, is that the human body speaks the language of
personhood. It speaks this language through all of its functions and so
none of these healthy functions should ever be altered, harmed or
destroyed. To do so, is to attack the body as the expression of the
person and to manipulate the person. Contraception alters and harms our
fertility, a function of our bodies.
As Pope John Paul II remarks in no. 121,
“The concept of morally correct regulation of fertility is nothing other
than the rereading of the ‘language of the body’ in truth. . . . It is
necessary to bear in mind that the ‘body speaks’ not merely with the whole
external expression of masculinity and femininity, but also with the
internal structures of the organism.”
One of the criticisms of Pope Paul VI’s teaching in Humanae Vitae
was that it rested moral truths on human biology. The question was asked:
“If we can dam up rivers, defy gravity by flying, launch men and machines
so that they can journey to the moon, why cannot we alter our own
biology? Why is human biology off limits, but gravity is not? John Paul
answers this question precisely when he teaches that the body is more than
its biological parts. Through these apparently understandable functions,
the mystery of the human person and even the mystery of God is expressed.
One way of thinking about this is the old line of high school biology
teachers that the human body is worth less than $10 in terms of the
minerals and valuables it has within it. Would any one actually take $10
for a child’s life, or a spouse’s life? Of course not. We are more than
the sum of our biological parts. In and through the body, it is the
mystery of personhood which is expressed and we dare not reduce a human
person down to his or her “biology.” But if couples are to exercise
responsible parenthood and at the same time speak the language of
self-gift in and through their bodies, it is obviously necessary that the
develop a self-mastery or what is sometimes called, continence.
There is no question that this is a
daunting task assigned to married couples. But they have help. The power
of the Holy Spirit is poured out into their hearts through the sacraments,
especially those of the Holy Eucharist and the of Reconciliation. “These
are the means—infallible and indispensable—for forming the
Christian spirituality of married life and family life. With these, that
essential and spiritual creative ‘power’ of love reaches human
hearts and, at the same time, human bodies in their subjective
masculinity and femininity.”
In the next address, continuing the same subject, the Pope writes that
“the powers of concupiscience try to detach the ‘language of
the body’ from the truth, that is, they try to falsify it, the power of
love instead strengthens it ever anew in that truth, so that the
mystery of the redemption of the body can bear fruit in it.”
In this passage, John Paul asserts that the power of love safeguards the
language of the body in the marital embrace. It is important to remember
that the language of the body in the marital embrace, as he has previously
mentions, includes the possibility of procreation. Therefore, love has
the role of “safeguarding the inseparable connection between the ‘two
meanings’ of the conjugal act.”
(Here, the English translation of the Pope’s address uses the phrase, “two
meanings.” Previously, as we have noted, the term was “two
significances.” Clearly, there were different English translators of
these addresses.)
Love unites the two “meanings” into one
reality because love is the self-gift of the spouses, their whole beings,
to each other. They could not love, they could not give themselves
completely to each other and reciprocally accept the gift of the other
without at the same time giving and accepting that part of themselves
which includes the possibility of life. Another way of looking at the
same problem is to realize that love is THE activity of God, spectacularly
manifested in the life of Christ, particularly in His passion, death, and
resurrection. His love was a union of wills (“Not my will, but yours be
done), founded on the knowledge that the dignity and value implanted in
each and every human being required for its fulfillment that there be at
least a possibility of heaven for each and every individual. Love in
Christ then is a union of wills based on the recognition of the value of
dignity of the one loved. Christ’s love was a self-gift (what more could
have given that what He gave on the cross?). Christ’s love is also
permanent and life-giving. (He remained on the cross to the bitter end and
He retains the wounds of His passion in His humanity even now in
heaven—and will for all eternity be marked by those wounds. From His
wounded side flowed blood and water, the source of the sacramental life of
the Church.) Love then has five characteristics: 1. a union of wills
created through a choice; 2. this choice is founded on the dignity of the
person loving and one or ones loved; 3. the choice is a self-gift which
is 4. permanent and 5. life-giving. Authentic love unites the inseparable
connection of the two “meanings” of the marital act and unites them in one
reality. There really are not two things, but one: love. But true love
cannot be given or received without self-mastery, without overcoming the
falsification of love caused by concupiscence. For this reason, couples
desperately require the love “poured out to them” by the Holy Spirit
through the sacraments, especially those of the Holy Eucharist and
Reconciliation.
It is vital to remember that love is
founded on the recognition of the dignity and value of oneself and of the
ONE LOVED. This recognition of the other’s dignity and value is essential
to love—to giving oneself. The recognition of the dignity of the other is
the REASON why one would choose to make such a stupendous donation: the
donation of oneself. Self-mastery or continence is required for the
recognition of the dignity of the other because “concupiscence of the
flesh itself, in so far as it seeks above all carnal and sensual
satisfaction makes man in a certain sense blind and insensitive to the
most profound values.”
If all a husband considers when he sees his wife is “what can she do for
me,” he is looking at her solely as one that can satisfy his desires. He
does not see her as a person created for her own sake. He does not see
the awesome and fearful dignity and value with which God created her.
Rather, he sees her as a thing, something to be used, to satisfy his needs
or desires. This is a reduction of the incredible dignity of a human
person to an object. Such a reduction prevents love because love depends
on the recognition of the dignity and value both of the one loved and the
one giving himself or herself in love. To “ ‘defer to one another out of
reverence for Christ’ (Eph. 5:21) seems to open that interior space in
which both become ever more sensitive to the most profound and most
mature values that are connected with the spousal significance of the
body and with the true freedom of the gift. If conjugal chastity (and
chastity in general) is manifested at first as the capacity to resist the
concupiscence of the flesh, it later gradually reveals itself as a
singular capacity to perceive, love, and practice those meanings of
the ‘language of the body’ which remain altogether unknown to
concupiscence itself and which progressively enrich the marital dialogue
of the couple, purifying it, deepening it, and at the same time
simplifying it.”
Concupiscence is the inordinate desire
for sexual gratification. In a marriage, if one or both partners are
acting out of concupiscence, they reduce the significance of the spouse to
only one value: the value of his or her ability to satisfy a sexual
desire. There is a reduction of the other person to one aspect. In this
reduction, the other person is not seen as he or she is, but only
according to one aspect. As concupiscence is indulged, it grows and the
blindness to the full reality of the other person becomes more and more
intense. Finally, the other is seen solely as the one who satisfies the
sexual desire. Eventually, others will be found who will do this in a
more exciting way or in a different and new way. The blindness to the
full truth of the other person makes the love-union of marriage senseless
and impossible. Even if the marriage does not end in divorce, there
remains little of the original communion of persons which supposedly the
spouses commenced when they said their vows. Since we are created as
images of God to love as He loves, a loveless marriage renders life
meaningless and empty because “life is senseless” without love.
However, self-mastery, achieved through
continence, allows one to look beyond the spouse as merely one who
satisfies a sexual longing. The sexual longing desires to possess the
other person in order to satisfy itself. In mastering this longing, one
does not give up any hope of receiving the other (although it may seem
like that on occasion and especially at first), but rather the sexual
longing is mastered and subordinated so that one will be able to receive
the other as a true gift of the other in all the mystery and awe of his or
her personhood. When this occurs in a marriage, the spouses are in awe of
the wonder and absolute astonishing gift they have received: precisely the
gift of another human person in his or her entire mystery as a person who
reflects the infinity of God. The joy of receiving this gift so
transcends any merely carnal satisfaction that no one would ever want to
return to merely seeking a sexual satisfaction from the other. Further,
the awe and wonder at the gift of the spouse (How can I be so incredibly
fortunate as to be the recipient of the self-gift of this other marvelous,
wondrous person?) extends to an awe and wonder at the creative power of
God who created the spouse and enabled him or her to give himself or
herself to me. The awe and wonder at the gift of the spouse and at God
quickly turns to gratitude and gratitude always increases love. In such
couples, the love of each other grows almost daily and the love of God
also increases.
The Pope teaches that the apparent
contradiction in Humanae Vitae between the two meanings of the
marital act disappears with love. “There would be a ‘contradiction’
(according to those who offer this objection) between the meanings of the
conjugal act, the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning (cf. HV 12),
so that if it were not licit to separate them, the couple would be
deprived of the right to conjugal union when they could not responsibly be
permitted to procreate.”
There is no contradiction because in accepting the spouse for who he or
she is in all the mystery of his or her creation, including his or her
fertility, the other spouse also refuses to do harm to the spouse or to
the marriage. If it is not prudent to bring a child into the world, and
each spouse truly loves the other, accepts the other as he or she actually
is, why would either one INSIST on the privileges of marriage---this would
not be an act of love, but simply the surrender to sexual longing. Such a
surrender is excluded by the love each has for the other. The sexual
longing is subordinated to the love and is mastered through continence FOR
THE SAKE OF THE MUCH GREATER GIFT. As the Pope writes, “It is indeed a
matter of not doing harm to the communion of the couple in the case
where for just reasons they should abstain from the conjugal act.”
Of course, this self-giving love, founded
on self-mastery, is not usually easy. But couples grow in their ability to
love as they should as they pass through life. They also help one another
and above all, they must make use of the powers of the Holy Spirit,
dispensed through the sacraments. Neither Pope Paul VI or Pope John Paul
II is teaching that this is “easy” for couples, especially at first. They
are, however, teaching that it is the only path for true happiness because
the only “way” for man is love (a paraphrase of some language John Paul II
used in his first encyclical, Redeemer of Man, Redemptor Hominis.)
As John Paul notes in the next address, no. 125, “It is often thought that
continence causes inner tensions from which man must free himself. In the
light of the analyses we have done, continence, understood integrally, is
rather the only way to free man from such tensions.”
A man and a woman in coming to know each
other, when the beginnings of a relationship are occurring, experience
both an emotional excitement and what might be called sensual reactions.
The sensual reactions might be called the anticipation of the sexual
pleasure of the conjugal act. The emotional response, while conditioned
by the masculinity or femininity of the other, is often expressed by “manifestations
of affection.”
Continence does not suppress these reactions so much as direct them
according to the true value of the other person. “Continence is not only
. . . the ability to ‘abstain,’ that is, mastery over the multiple
reactions, . . . but there is also another role . . . of self-mastery: it
is the ability to direct the respective reactions, both as
to their content and their character.”
Following this line of thought, John Paul
makes explicit in the next address, no. 126, what has already been
implied. A particular couple’s application of their knowledge of human
fertility either to achieve or to postpone a pregnancy is not simply the
application of biological knowledge. The very use of such information
pre-supposes self-mastery, otherwise they could not refrain when they
should (if it is not prudent to bring another child into the world), nor
could they truly give themselves in a loving way when they use the
privileges of marriage. As he puts it, “The knowledge itself of the
‘rhythms of fertility’—even though indispensable—still does not create
that interior freedom of the gift, which is by its nature explicitly
spiritual and depends on man’s interior maturity.” This freedom
presupposes such a capacity to direct the sensual and emotive reactions as
to make possible the giving of self to the other ‘I’ on the
grounds of the mature self-possession of one’s own ‘I’ in its
corporeal and emotive subjectivity.”
In other words, if I have self-mastery, I possess myself (in the proper
sense) and I can make a gift of myself. Without such self-mastery, there
can be no authentic love.
It is also true that couples grow in
continence, in self-mastery, as they grow into their marriage. Therefore,
the Church sees in the practice of Natural Family Planning what might be
called a school of self-mastery, continence, and love. While Natural
Family Planning is best defined as the knowledge of a couple’s fertility,
by applying this knowledge and refraining from the marital embrace at the
appropriate times (either because the couple wishes to achieve a pregnancy
or because they wish to postpone one), they develop and grow in
self-mastery and continence. This, in turn, develops in them an authentic
love for each other and for God.
Almost every priest in the U.S. has had
the experience of witnessing the marriage of a young couple who has agreed
to take a course in NFP. In taking this course, the couple may have
wanted to use a “natural” method rather than a chemical method of spacing
their children and they also may have begun their marriage with a
relatively ungenerous attitude toward future children. The couple
faithfully practices NFP, abstaining from the marital embrace at the times
the believe it imprudent to conceive a child. Then, experiencing some
difficulty in achieving a pregnancy, they abstain a bit, in order to
maximize the chance of conceiving a child. The first child is born and
both husband wife, now mother and father, see the wondrous, awesome gift,
God has given to them in the child. They see their own humanity
reproduced. They come to know each other in a different way, as mother
and father, than before and their appreciation and gratitude to each other
grows immensely. They come to see the mystery that each is more and more
and they are both awed at the gift they both have received form each
other. They also see in the child a reflection of the divine. They
realize that they alone are not solely responsible for the creation of
this child, but that God has had a part in it. Their gratitude at the
awesome gift of their child grows into a greater and greater love for
God. Love of the other spouse also grows in each. Love of each of them
for God grows. Love is of itself generous—it wishes to share itself with
others. As the spouses grow in their love for each other, their child,
and God, they grow more and more generous.
Some years later, they visit the parish
where the priest who married them is now serving. They now have (let’s
say, only by way of example), four children. The priest remembers them
and also remembers that while they agreed to use NFP, they said that they
were going to limit the size of their family to two children. He sees
them now with four and asks why they changed their minds? They usually
cannot explain what happened. But what happened, was that their love for
each other, for their children, and for God grew and grew and their
generosity and appreciation of life grew. NFP had been a school of love
for that family. For the Church, as the Pope hints, NFP is not so much a
means of spacing children (although it certainly is that), it is primarily
a school of love. (Of course, this example is not intended to diminish or
to denigrate in any way the challenges of family life today. But, without
love, those challenges can seem impossible. With love they are
manageable.) Obviously, as the Pope has said repeatedly, NFP can become a
school of love only if it is accompanied with true prayer and a frequent
reception of the sacraments.
In the next address, no. 127, John Paul
emphasizes that spouses must use the gifts of the Holy Spirit to help them
develop the proper attitude of love towards one another. In speaking
about the sacraments and prayer, the Pope previously accented sanctifying
grace, the life of God we receive through the sacraments. In this
address, and the next one, no. 128, he mentions the more transcendent work
of the Holy Spirit through the seven gifts. Couples, the Pope, teaches
need to develop a reverential fear before one another. This “fear of the
Lord” does not mean to cower in terror, but rather an awe at the work of
God in creating the other person, the spouse, and even in giving life to
the children of the spouses. Each of us reflects God in our own unique
ways. Each of us is an icon of God. In recognizing the aspect of the
divine mystery present in each of us, spouses need to see in one another
the spark of the divine. Respect for each other “is manifested as a
salvific fear: fear of violating or degrading what bears in itself the
sign of the divine mystery of creation and redemption.”
This amounts, as the gift matures, to a “veneration for the essential
values of the conjugal union . . . [a] veneration for the interior
truth of the mutual ‘language of the body’.”
The gift of the Holy Spirit called the fear of the Lord helps each and
every one of us to hold in awe and reverence everything that is sacred and
holy. Every single human person is, in a sense, sacred and holy because
every single one of us is created in the image and likeness of God and is
redeemed by Christ. Since spouses “touch” the mystery of each other in an
extraordinarily profound way, more profoundly than in any other human
relationship, their awe and wonder, their “salvific fear” of each other
must be in place. The gift of “salvific fear” in the presence of the
sacred can help spouses always to hold each other in great awe and wonder
and always remind them of the gift that each of them is to the other.
Continuing the same theme in the next
address, no. 128, John Paul writes: “The attitude of respect for the
work of God, which the Spirit stirs up in the couple, has an enormous
significance” because it develops in the couple a “capacity for
deep satisfaction, admiration, disinterested attention to the ‘visible’
and at the same time the ‘invisible’ beauty of femininity and masculinity,
and finally a deep appreciation for the disinterested gift of the
‘other’.”
The argument of Pope John Paul II for the
teaching of Humanae Vitae in the sixth cycle of the Theology of the
Body can be summarized as follows. Authentic love is not possible without
self-mastery which only is attained with an effort of the will aided by
the virtue of continence given through God’s grace. Therefore, the
sacraments are essential to authentic love. In addition, the gifts of the
Holy Spirit help the couple develop that awe and wonder at each other
which helps them to “reverence each other” (Ephesians 5:21) as they would
Christ. Authentic love always includes the possibility of life because
without such a possibility, there is no love.
In beginning the discussion of the sixth
cycle of the Theology of the Body, we quoted from the last address, no.
129 and so it will not be necessary to summarize it again at this point.
There is no question that the entire
corpus of Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body was intended as a
exposition of the teaching of Humanae Vitae. However, it is much
more than that. Taking Christ’s words as the departure point, the first
three cycles of the Theology of the Body represent first of all a bit of a
theological experiment using the data of the earliest human experiences
recorded in Genesis as a mine of material for a phenomenological
examination of the human person. But since these recorded experiences are
contained in the inspired Word of God, the language used to record the
experiences also contains Revelation about ourselves and God. The
phenomenological examination of human experiences leads to questions about
the meaning of human life and also to some answers, but the Revelation of
the Scriptures also answers such questions. In fact, Revelation gives
definitive answers and phenomenology, as any philosophy, gives some
preliminary and incomplete answers. But the combination of phenomenology
and Revelation yields this double flow of data about the human person and
a new way of formulating the truths contained in Revelation. Therefore,
the first three cycles of the Theology of the Body results in a genuine
development in our understanding of the mystery of human personhood as
revealed to us by God most definitively in Christ. The fifth cycle
reformulates the teaching of St. Paul in Ephesians 5 on marriage and its
sacramentality in light of the previous analyses in the first three
cycles. This reformulation yields new insights and new developments. The
fourth cycle on celibacy and virginity might seem out of place at first,
but is vitally necessary, as a prelude to the discussion of the
sacramentality of marriage, because celibacy and virginity are for the
sake of the Kingdom of Heaven and that is the point of the sacrament of
marriage, i.e., spouses in marriage are to help each other come to the
glory of heaven. In this cycle, as in the fifth, there are some new
developments. Each cycle in its own way prepares for the crowning
conclusion found in the sixth cycle, but each cycle also has new insights
and new ways of teaching what the Gospel has always taught. Needless to
say, the re-reading of Humanae Vitae in the sixth cycle is not just
a re-reading, but a genuine and profound deepening, or grounding, of the
teaching of that encyclical in the roots of the Theology of the Body. We
must all always and everywhere give thanks to God for the teaching of Pope
John Paul II in the Theology of the Body series, but also in everything
else he has taught the world in his twenty-five years plus as the Vicar of
Christ! Ad multos annos!
Rev. Richard M. Hogan
March 31, 2004
Redeemer of Man,
Redemptor Hominis, March 4, 1979, no.
10. The full quotation is: “Man cannot live without love. He remains
a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless.”
See no. 124, Theology of the Body, October 24, 1984:
“Continence Protects the Dignity of the Conjugal Act,”
L’Osservatore Romano (English Edition), vol. 17, no. 44.
Posted April 12, 2004 ---- Fr. Richard Hogan
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