Last of two parts
My dear friends,
Whenever the Church teaches about Natural Family Planning, the skeptics respond that if natural methods of birth control are morally permissible, why should artificial ones be immoral? After all, the ends are the same — to prevent pregnancy. Only the means are different.
This reveals a lack of understanding about what the Church actually teaches about birth control. Perhaps the most misquoted document in this regard is “Humanae Vitae,” Pope Paul VI's prophetic encyclical.
Critics often interpret its stance against artificial means of birth control as a ban on any attempt to regulate the size of families. They repeat the worn out charge that the Church wants couples to have as many children as a woman can bear.
This is absolutely not true, and it never has been the teaching of the Catholic Church. What the Church has consistently taught is “responsible parenthood” and that “each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life.” (Catechism #2366-2368).
Couples can and should “space the births of their children” and decide how many they can raise responsibly, as long as “their desire is not motivated by selfishness,” the Catechism states. An intention against children, however, invalidates the sacrament of marriage, because its two-fold purpose is “the good of the spouses … and the transmission of life.”
The church also teaches that the sexual act is the ultimate expression of the total giving of man and woman to one another in marriage. Through this mutual love, men and women “share in the creative power and fatherhood of God.” To separate sex from procreation, then, is to sever a bond that was ordained by God himself.
That is precisely why “Humanae Vitae” teaches that artificial methods of birth control are immoral while natural methods are permissible. Natural methods work within God's creative plan: when couples want to avoid pregnancy, they abstain from sexual contact. Artificial methods, on the other hand, are barriers to the total self-giving that is intrinsic to married love and to God's plan for creation.
Although “Humanae Vitae” continues to be fiercely criticized by people who disagree with its conclusions — especially Catholics — there is no question that the past three decades have proven Paul VI correct — even prophetic.
He predicted that the pill and other artificial methods of birth control would have negative repercussions for humanity. Indeed, artificial contraceptives have severed the connection between sex, love and marriage. We now have sex without love, sex outside of marriage, and pleasure without responsibility.
The consequences of that thinking are evident in our sky-high rates of divorce, teenage pregnancy and sexually-transmitted diseases; and in the number of single parents, absent fathers, and abandoned children who languish in foster care in this, the most economically and technologically advanced nation on earth.
The pill has taught women to think of pregnancy as a disease that can be cured with a prescription or, when that fails, an abortion. It has taught men to believe that birth control is the woman's problem — as are the children who are born when the method fails.
The advent of the pill led us to conclude that science can control nature, and so we have moved on to artifical insemination, sperm donors, test-tube babies, cloning, and surrogate mothers. Who knows where else this kind of thinking will lead us?
It is time for Catholics and other people of good will to heed the wisdom of “Humanae Vitae.” Sex is a wonderful gift from God, meant to be enjoyed responsibly by men and women within the lifelong union of marriage. Through the sexual act, God has entrusted us with the awesome power of being co-creators with him.
When human beings trifle with God's plan and abuse that power, they imperil both their immortal souls and the well-being of their world. The evidence of our folly is all around us.
