This is the first half of Part Four in a six-part series. Click on Part One, Part Two or Part Three for previous columns. The second part of this essay will appear in this space tomorrow.
The gospel for the 5th Sunday of Easter aims right for our hearts. If we listen, if we allow Jesus' three-word commandment to probe and examine the horizons of our lives, you and I may become uncomfortable. Apathy, hardness of heart, or a wandering mind may cause us to look away. The alternative, an honest face-to-face meeting with Jesus, might exact an untold price in our lives.
“I give you a new commandment,” Jesus will say, “love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” (Jn 13: 31-33).
In recent weeks, we have considered how the teachings of the Church on the human person, the body, marriage, and the family free " rather than limit " us to “become who we are”: persons made in the “image of God” (Gn 1:26). Each of us, as Pope John Paul II has said, can discover his or her own vocation only “in the total gift of self,”(1) a gift which is both life-giving and love-giving. Rooted in these teachings, let us look at contraception and natural family planning in light of Jesus' command to “love one another as I have loved you.”
In the sacrament of marriage, man and woman are the “image and symbol of the covenant which unites God and His people.”(2) The husband and wife are “ministers” in this covenant, and the “sign” of their union is their becoming “one flesh” in sexual union. This is one reason why in the Latin-rite Catholic Church, the bride and groom are the ones who actually celebrate the sacrament, while the priest merely “witnesses.” The married man and woman are called to celebrate this “sign” of their unity “in truth and love,” thereby expressing “the maturity proper to persons created in the image and likeness of God” (The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World, 12).
In the past 40 years, a chasm has opened between the Church's view of marriage and that espoused by many in our society. As denizens of a culture now accustomed to a contraceptive mentality and a 50 percent divorce rate, we would do well to read or revisit Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae. “[A] man,” wrote Pope Paul VI in what could pass for a description of our society today, “who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection” (HV, 17).
In addressing the moral question of contraception in Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI drew our attention to two world-views which compete for the heart of marriage. To the mistaken idea of man as the “arbiter” or “master of the sources of life,” the pope put forth a holistic vision of man and woman as the “minister[s] of the design established by the Creator” (HV, 13). In the words of the above passage, the spouses face a choice: on the one hand, “reverence,” “equilibrium,” and true “partnership”; and on the other, a “reduced” view of the spouse as “mere instrument.”
When you and I meet someone new, we naturally observe that person's body language. In addition to their choice of words and tone of voice, our interlocutor " through posture, eye contact and poise " conveys a host of “signs” or signals. If, for example, this person's words are warm and engaging, but his posture is defensive and he is staring at the floor, we might be puzzled by the mixed signals and disconnect between his verbal and non-verbal communication. Our dialogue can be verified or undermined by our own body language.
Humanae Vitae and the subsequent contributions of Pope John Paul II take body language and the dialogue of the husband and wife very seriously. The union of husband and wife in the conjugal act, the encyclical teaches, bears an “intimate truth” which signifies both love and fertility. If the two meanings " the love-giving (unitive) and the life-giving (procreative) " of the conjugal act are honored in the one act, then there is a “truthful” union of husband and wife, and their “marital dialogue”(3) is deeply enriched.
Notes:
1. Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, 85.
2. Pope John Paul II, The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World (Familiaris Consortio), 12.
3. Pope John Paul II, Theology of the Body (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1997), General audience, October 24, 1984.
