The human belly, after all, can only process so much nutrition. After that, it just starts adding fat. But the human soul, under the right conditions, can develop appetites far more powerful than that — appetites for luxury, for indulgence, for what has now come to be called “comfort food.” And so the Romans went ahead and had their 26-course banquets, their seventh and eighth bottles of wine. And then, between each course, they discreetly expelled the now-useless material (useless once it had passed the palate on the way down) into stylish silver pails carried between the tables by well-dressed slaves designated for that purpose. And voila! — the problem of weight-loss was instantly solved: no pain, all gain. Who says you can’t have your cake and eat it too?
Most modern Americans, of course, find this idea sickening. Even if such a practice could be made medically safe (and the Romans went a long way towards doing that, incidentally) there’s still something horrible, something violently unnatural about it that sends a chill up the spine. And we feel that weight loss ought not to come so cheaply, don’t we? Physical well being is nature’s reward for moderation and hard work, and there’s an organic connection between health of body and health of soul that ought, we feel, to be maintained. Anything else is … decadent, diseased, and morally repugnant.
Interestingly enough, we Americans felt exactly this same way about artificial birth control not so long ago, and for pretty much the same reasons. But like the ancient Romans, we gradually let our inflamed appetites overcome our natural, God-given revulsion.
The parallel should be fairly obvious; artificial contraceptives are the sexual equivalent of those elegant silver buckets. Just as the purpose of eating is nutrition, the purpose of sexual intercourse is procreation. This is not to say, of course, that either one of these acts must or should be done for that one reason alone. The natural and spiritual pleasures which accompany sex are just as legitimate in the eyes of God as the pleasures of fellowship and cookery that accompany a good meal; and the Church has never demanded that a man eat only enough to keep himself alive or that a married couple come together only when their sole intent is to have a baby. What the Church has set herself against, however, is this mad epicurian itch to strain off the pleasure and leave the purpose behind. Food does not become useless material as soon as it enters the stomach; a man’s seed does not become superfluous (or even dangerous) flotsam the moment it enters his wife’s body. That way lies madness, as the old saying goes — and it’s one of the glories of the Catholic Church that she has continued to say so, in or out of season.
The Church wants the man who seeks to lose weight to do so through self-control, not self-abuse. Likewise, she wants married couples who seek to regulate their pregnancies to do so by self-control; by voluntary periods of abstinence during a portion of the month, which are themselves spiritually beneficial as fasts. In short, the Church pays us a compliment — she believes us capable of acting like grown-ups. And we know instinctively that to behave otherwise — to deliberately free the pleasure-mongering side of ourselves from all fear of natural consequence — is to transform our society into a nation of Dorian Grays … if not Mr. Hydes.
This is what Pope Paul VI warned us about in his famous encyclical Humanae Vitae. The Pope worried that to unleash the birth control pill on the world would be to create something he called “a contraceptive mentality.”
What was this Contraceptive Mentality? Well, part of it, obviously, was the enormous loosening of sexual morals that came in the Pill’s immediate wake — that worldwide catastrophic event which the complicit media describes as “The Sexual Revolution.” But even more serious perhaps, are the less obvious aspects of this mindset — the deeper implications. What, in other words, would the world look like if everybody in it suddenly decided that they could, by God, have their cake and eat it too?
Alas, it’s no longer much of a mystery what it would look like. The Contraceptive Mentality is one of mankind’s oldest nightmares coming true right before our eyes. It’s Red Riding Hood taking the short cut through the woods, it’s the Little Pigs building houses of sticks and straw, if not on shifting sand. It’s everything shabby and slippery and conniving and devious. It’s “working the system.”
The Contraceptive Mentality is a whole culture that needs its luxuries now, and borrows them on credit cards from high-class loan sharks. The Contraceptive Mentality is a nation without savings, whose idea of providing for their children’s education is to hold a lottery. The Contraceptive Mentality calls casinos a business, calls pornography an industry. It’s a country whose answer to unhappy marriage is divorce, whose answer to impoverished mothers is abortion, whose answer to unemployment is population control, whose answer to sickness is euthanasia. It’s any old quick fix at all, just so we can all get back to the essential business at hand — that of skimming as much pleasure off the top as is humanly possible.
The Contraceptive Mentality also sees the human body as a machine, to be tinkered with until it happens to suit the purposes of that raging, ravenous soul within. Pope Paul said that this Mentality refuses to accept the body’s limitations and declares unlimited dominion over them, like Dr. Frankenstein over the laws of nature. Is it any wonder then, that the Contraceptive Mentality has begun taking new Frankenstein-like liberties in the areas of fetal experimentation, cloning, and in-vitro fertilization?
As Catholics — as the trustees of Christ’s own teachings for the world — God is counting on us to save our country from the Contraceptive Mentality. But salvation begins at home. If you aren’t following the Church’s teaching on this subject (and statistics show that 9 out of 10 of you are not), then I urge you to repent and believe the Gospel. If your pastor ignores these teachings, or even denies them, I urge you to protest — to him first, and then, if necessary, to his bishop. “Having your cake and eating it too” is for spoiled brats, not for children of the King.
And the next time somebody offers you the no-fat, sugar-free strawberry cheesecake with aspartame … try one of God’s little green apples instead.
