I once met a fellow on an Internet discussion group who not only approved of contraception but claimed to be contraception. You see, his summer job was to chaperone teenagers at a co-ed camp. And that’s what contraception does, right? He was there to keep the male entities and the female entities from having any encounters.
Well, he was missing a few important distinctions, and the same problem showed up when he began to deride Catholic teaching on the difference between contraception and Natural Family Planning. He was joking when he said that having the same goal as a contraceptive — preventing pregnancy — makes him a contraceptive; but he was serious when he claimed that the Church is inconsistent to allow NFP but not contraception. After all, they can have the same goal — the goal of not conceiving a baby.
I've heard the same charges of inconsistency leveled against the Church over and over — and they all represent serious misunderstandings of the teachings. First, people often assume that what the Church doesn't like about contraception is that it is “artificial.” And so they point out that the Church doesn't condemn other kinds of technology, like airplanes, wheels, and thermometers.
But it's not technology the Church objects to; it's interference with the nature of the marriage act. Note the very different sense of the word “nature” in this context. The Church's premise is that when the marriage act is fertile, it's fertile not by accident, but by God's design — and that this is a design so sacred that it is wrong to interfere with it. This is why Humanae Vitae says “… an act of mutual love which impairs the capacity to transmit life which God the Creator … has built into it, frustrates his design.” A woman's cycles of fertility and infertility are natural — designed by God. Contraception is unnatural, in the sense that it sabotages God's sacred design.
The second misunderstanding I often see has to do with Humanae Vitae’s declaration that the unitive and the procreative aspects of sex must not be separated. Many people take that to mean that the Church thinks sex is really only OK if you're trying to have a baby. But the Church teaches no such thing. She only says that we must not separate the two aspects.
Humanae Vitae recognizes that the procreative aspect of sexual intercourse is not the only thing that makes it good. “Sexual activity … does not cease to be legitimate even when, for reasons independent of [the spouses'] will, it is foreseen to be infertile. For its natural adaptation to the expression and strengthening of the union of husband and wife is not thereby suppressed.” It is the removal of the procreative power of the act which is sacrilegious.
The third misunderstanding involves the requirement that married couples be “open to life.” Now, Humanae Vitae acknowledges that the avoidance of a conception can be a morally legitimate aim: “If there are reasonable grounds for spacing births … the Church teaches that then married people may take advantage of the natural cycles immanent in the reproductive system and use their marriage at precisely those times that are infertile, and in this way control birth…”
But isn't a couple who has chosen a particular day for intercourse precisely because they know it will be infertile — so they won't conceive — just as closed to life as a couple who uses a condom for the same reason? How can you call the first couple “open to life” when they not only don't expect to conceive, but are trying not to conceive?
I want to set aside the question of the general orderedness of a marriage towards children and speak of the openness within each particular act of intercourse. What is required is only that the couple has taken no action to deliberately close the act to life.
In my opinion, it would be a bit clearer to say that sex “must not be made closed to life,” than to say that it “must always be open to life.” It's not the couple's general attitude, or their knowledge about the act, or the state of their bodies we're talking about here. We're only referring to their specific actions. The act must be “open to life” only in the sense that the couple has not interfered with it in such a way as to close off its life-giving power, if this power is present.
Again, these points are only intended to distinguish what the Church really tells us from people's mistaken impressions of her teachings. If you want the whole story, read Humanae Vitae — it's short, easy reading as encyclicals go, and full of wisdom and light.
(Mrs. Tardiff and her husband and six children live in New England. This article is reprinted with permission from Canticle Magazine (www.canticlemagazine.com.)
(To read a particularly moving Pro-Life testimony click here.)
