32. Human Procreation
Part III
Mission of the Family: Serving Life
Divine love—always a gift—is the reason of our existence as persons. Conjugal love—an echo of divine love—is the reason of the family’s openness to new life. Parents are co-workers and interpreters of God’s own love when they transmit life and raise a child according to God’s fatherly plan. Human life is a gift that is received in order to be given as a gift. In giving origin to a new life, parents recognize that the child, as the fruit of their mutual gift of love, is, in turn, a gift for both of them, a gift that flows from them.1
The second role of the Christian family, according to Familiaris Consortio, is “serving life.” This mission should be studied in its two aspects:
i) Transmission of life
ii) Education
We will develop the “transmission of life” from the following viewpoints:
· Human procreation
· Responsible parenthood
· Contraception and abortion
· Natural regulation of fertility
· Artificial fertilization
Human Procreation
30. The Dignity of Human Procreation
Man is “the only creature on earth that God has wanted for its own sake.”1 Man’s coming into being does not conform to the laws of biology alone, but also, and directly, to God’s creative will. By divine design, the generation of the human body, to which every act of sexuality is ordained by nature, is necessarily united to the creation by God of an immortal soul, destined to enjoy the glory of the children of God. God “willed” man from the very beginning, and God “wills” him in every act of conception and every human birth. God “wills” man as a being similar to himself, as a person. Like his parents, the new human being is also called to live as a person; he is called to a life “in truth and love.” This call is not only open to what exists in time, but is also open to eternity. Thus, the conjugal act is sacred. In it, the spouses give not only themselves but also the reality of children. Children are a living image of the couple’s love, a permanent sign of their conjugal unity, and a manifestation of their being father and mother. Inscribed in the personal constitution of every child is the will of God, who wills that man should share his own divine life.2
30a) Love and Human Sexuality
Occupying a central part in the dignity of the person is the dignity of his human sexuality, a reflection of the love of God.
Human sexuality is a good, part of that created gift that God saw as being “very good” (Gn 1:31) when “male and female he created them” (Gn 1:27) in his image and likeness.3
Man is called to love and to self-giving in the unity of body and spirit. Sexuality is a fundamental component of personality, one of its modes of being, of manifestation, of communicating with others, of feeling, of expressing and of living human love. The human body, with its sex, and its masculinity and femininity, is not only a source of fruitfulness and procreation but includes right “from the beginning” the “nuptial” attribute, that is, the capacity of expressing love: that love precisely in which the man-person becomes a gift and—by means of this gift—fulfills the very meaning of his being and existence.4
The marital act expresses and builds the spouses’ married love, their mutual and total gift of self, and their selfless love, as a faithful image of God’s creative love, which brought about man’s existence. Man’s greatness lies precisely in his being an image of God. Physically, the spouses will use the natural expressions of human affection—kisses, caresses, and embraces—while seeking the union of their bodies, as an expression of the union of intentions in their project of building a family. Emotionally, they will try to express the desire of loving each other, with the deep joys that come with the raising of a family. The marital act will make their love grow stronger as they renew in their will the determination to support one another in the difficulties and challenges that come to all people in this life.
During the marital act, they are collaborating with God by sharing in his love and power as Father and Creator of life. Children are conceived as a result of the father’s mediation of God’s love and the mother’s receptivity to God’s love. Just as God’s love resulted in creation, conjugal love results in new life. Man discovers—within the family—his dignity as a “co-creator” with God as new life is brought into the world.
Marriage is the wise institution of the Creator to accomplish in mankind His design of love. By means of the reciprocal personal gift of self, proper and exclusive to them, husband and wife tend toward the communion of their beings in view of mutual personal perfection, to collaborate with God in the generation and education of new lives.5
Thus, the fundamental task of the family is to serve life, to actualize in history the original blessing of the Creator—that of transmitting by procreation the divine image from person to person.6
30b) Life, a Gift of God
We see that life is a good, a gift that God has given us. Here, we refer to the gift that God has given us in calling us to life, to exist as man or woman in an unrepeatable existence, full of endless possibilities for growing spiritually and morally: “Human life is a gift received in order then to be given as a gift.”7
Why is life a good? Why is it always a good? The answer is simple and clear: Because the human person is an image of God. Human life comes from God and is destined to God. While sin darkens life by threatening it with death and throwing into doubt its nature as a gift, Redemption frees human life, lifting it up in the expectation of the gift of eternal life. Gratuitously, the Father calls each individual, in and through his Son, to partake of the fullness of divine life, by becoming “sons and daughters in the Son.” The sublime dignity of human life thus shines forth not only because of its origin but even more so because of its destiny.8
31. Attacks on the Dignity of Human Procreation
When the life of the conceived human being is not respected, it no longer makes sense to speak of human dignity. Some might have difficulty understanding the doctrine of the Church on the mission of marriage and the family with relation to the transmission of life, but this only makes it “more urgent and irreplaceable”9 to proclaim it, in order to promote “the true good of men and women.”10 The main theological point is not about birth or conception; it is about the nature of human sexuality. Human sexuality cannot be true to itself unless its openness to life and its connection to human love are both preserved.
The encyclical Humanae Vitae states that there are aspects of human sexuality that are not merely instrumental, subject to human whim or human choice. Since the 1960s, however, the notion of human sexuality as instrumental has been prominent. This notion claims that sexuality can be used for the particular benefit of a given individual, or some others, or society. Following this line, the acceptance of birth control logically leads to the acceptance of homosexuality, divorce, and even abortion.
The source of the problem about human sexuality today is often a flawed concept of man. Man is precisely a person because he is master of himself and can exercise self-control. He is not a helpless victim of his passions or society’s manipulation, yet many people view man as powerlessly subject to forces outside of himself and, accordingly, discount his ability to master himself.
32. The Church Stands for Life
Since service to life is the fundamental task of the family, openness to life becomes the condition of true conjugal love and a sign of its authenticity. “Love between husband and wife must be fully human, exclusive, and open to new life.… Fecundity is the fruit and sign of conjugal love, the living testimony of the full reciprocal self-giving of the spouses.”11 This is the Church’s teaching and norm, always old yet always new.
Pope John Paul II describes some aspects of the modern situation and mentality that lead to a misunderstanding of the doctrine of the Church and give rise to contemporary difficulties:
· Technological knowledge and progress, which arouse in some an anxiousness about the future
· A consumer mentality, which makes some incapable of understanding the spiritual rightness of a new life
· A certain panic that is derived from some ecological and futuristic studies on population growth, which sometimes exaggerate the danger of demographic increase to the quality of life, to the point that they create an anti-life mentality
At their root “is the absence in people’s hearts of God, whose love alone is stronger than all the world’s fears and can conquer them.”12
To counteract this misunderstanding, it is necessary to build a doctrinal and formative work that is based on the following pivotal truths:
· There can be no true contradiction between the divine law on transmitting life and that on fostering authentic married love.
· The Church must act as teacher and mother for couples in difficulty.
· All spouses are called to live the fullness of the divine law.
33. Harmony between Transmission of Life and Married Love
The sign of authentic married love is openness to life. This is the doctrine that is established by the Second Vatican Council, and the papal documents Humanae Vitae and Familiaris Consortio.
To understand this point, one must begin from an integral vision of man. The two elements of morality (the object of the chosen act, and the intention of the agent) are mentioned in Familiaris Consortio. But this exhortation is, above all, attentive to the object of the moral act, to the question of its intrinsic evil.
Some authors erroneously claim a moral equivalence between contraception and recourse to infertile periods. They focus solely on the intentions or motives of the persons involved, without considering that some actions are evil by their nature.
On the other hand, the Catechism affirms that contraception (as a moral object) is intrinsically evil.13 This is so because man cannot, on his own initiative, break “the inseparable connection, willed by God … between the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning of the conjugal act.”14 From all this, one can understand the radical “difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle.”15 Familiaris Consortio affirms that, in contraception, spouses act as arbiters of the divine plan; in having just recourse to the infertile periods, on the other hand, they act as its ministers.
34. The Procreative and Unitive Aspects
34a) The Two Aspects of the Conjugal Act
Conjugal love joins husband and wife not merely at the level of bodies but also at the level of persons. Thus, there are two aspects to the conjugal act: (a) the unitive aspect, by which the spouses express their love by the gift of self in their union, and (b) the procreative aspect, whereby this union is open to life. These two aspects are inseparable. “By safeguarding both these essential aspects … the conjugal act preserves in its fullness the essence of true mutual love and its ordination towards man’s most high calling to parenthood.”16 The two aspects of the marital act are intimately related: The life-giving aspect of the marital act is part of its love-giving aspect. The two are inseparable because no whole can be without its essential parts.17 There are not two acts but two aspects of the same act.
34b) Inseparability
The conjugal act is a life-giving love experience. If one deliberately destroys the power of the conjugal act to give life (procreative aspect), one necessarily destroys its power to signify love. Contraceptive spouses may love each other, but it is not a true conjugal love, because their intentions are diverted from the good of the other person and directed to mere egoistic enjoyment. The person as co-creator of love disappears, and there remains only the partner in an erotic experience. They refuse to found their relationship on a co-creativity that is capable of opening them out to one another and the whole of creation. In contraception, the spouses will not let the word—which their sexuality longs to utter—take on flesh. Contraceptive intercourse is not really an example of human sexual act; it is an intercourse of sensation but with no real human sexual knowledge or love. Contraceptive sex separates not only the unitive from the procreative, but also sex from love.18
Humanae Vitae speaks of the blessings that will come from preserving the inseparability of the unitive and procreative aspects of the conjugal act. It claims that spouses will especially develop the spiritual dimensions of their personalities. It speaks of the serenity and peace that come with discipline, a discipline that flows over to the other areas of one’s life. Perhaps most important, spouses will become unselfish as they begin to be concerned more about the well-being of their spouse rather than of themselves.
35. The Role of the Church as Teacher and Mother
The Church as a mother gives birth, so to speak, to the Christian family. To understand this, we need to consider the relationship between Baptism and marriage.19 The Church must also act as teacher and mother for couples in difficulty. She speaks the truth about love by adhering to these fundamental issues and giving full meaning to the norms that are established by God.
As Teacher, she never tires of proclaiming the moral norm that must guide the responsible transmission of life.… As Mother, the Church is close to the many married couples who find themselves in difficulty over this important point of the moral life.…
Specifically, she calls to mind the necessity of stirring up the virtues of persistence and patience, humility and strength of mind, filial trust in God and in His grace, and frequent recourse to prayer and to the sacraments of the Eucharist and of Reconciliation.
Also necessary as a condition for achieving this goal are knowledge of the bodily aspect and body’s rhythms of fertility and, above all, the absolute necessity for the virtue of chastity and for permanent education in it.20
Only the truth saves. The Church acts with eminent charity toward souls by spreading the saving teaching of Christ; she struggles to create all the conditions necessary to let it be understood and lived. The truth about man cannot be understood unless one is aware of the proper relationship of man to God, and, therefore, of his own eternal destiny.
36. The Virtue of Chastity
Sacred Scripture explicitly teaches that the complete exercise of the generative faculty outside of legitimate matrimony (adultery, fornication, etc.) is a mortal sin, since it excludes from the Kingdom of heaven (cf. Mt 5:28; 19:18; Mk 10:19; Rom 1:21–29; 1 Cor 6:9–10; Gal 5:19–21). The virtue of chastity is the joyous affirmation of someone who knows how to live self-giving. It is not to be understood as a repressive attitude, but rather as part of temperance—a cardinal virtue that is elevated and enriched by grace in Baptism.
The Catechism describes and, in a sense, defines chastity in this way: “Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being.”21
When the person understands chastity correctly, he is rendered capable of a higher kind of love than concupiscence, which sees persons only as objects, as means to satisfy one’s appetites. The person is capable of friendship and self-giving, with the capacity to recognize and love persons for themselves.
36a) Chastity in Marriage
“Married people are called to live conjugal chastity; others practice chastity in continence.”22 Parents are well aware that living conjugal chastity themselves is the most valid premise for educating their children in chaste love and in holiness of life.
The acts in marriage by which the intimate and chaste union of the spouses takes place are noble and honorable; the truly human performance of these acts fosters the self-giving they signify and enriches the spouses in joy and gratitude.23
This means that parents should be aware that God’s love is present in their love, and hence that their sexual giving should also be lived out in respect for God and for his plan of love, with fidelity, honor, and generosity toward one’s spouse and the life that can arise from their act of love. Only in this way can their love be an expression of charity.
Therefore, in marriage, Christians are called to live this self-giving in a right personal relationship with God. Only in this way do they respond to the love of God and fulfill his will. There is no legitimate love, at its highest level, that is not also love for God. To love the Lord implies responding positively to his commandments: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (Jn 14:15).
In the Christian view, chastity in marriage by no means signifies rejection of human sexuality. Rather, it signifies spiritual energy that is capable of defending love from the perils of selfishness and aggressiveness.24
To live chastity well, the Church insists on the need of the spouses to acquire a deep spiritual life, rooted in prayer and the frequent reception of the sacraments. Only in this environment can conjugal love (and its attendant, generosity in the transmission of life) develop. The results of conjugal chastity are an inner serenity and peace, a good understanding between the spouses, an increased sense of responsibility, and a greater efficiency in the educational thrust within the family.25
36b) Offenses against Chastity
(1) Masturbation
Sexuality is naturally geared to another; thus, masturbation, or self-abuse, is contrary to nature. But masturbation is also contrary to the social nature of man, not only because it reflects self-centeredness, but also because a person who is unwilling to control his vital urges is not adjusted to society, and so may easily injure justice in any of its forms. On masturbation, the Catechism has the following to say:
By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. “Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action.” “The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose.” For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of “the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved.”26
To form an equitable judgment and guide pastoral action fairly, pastors must take into account the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety of the subject, and other psychological or social factors that can lessen—if not even reduce to a minimum—moral culpability.
Moreover, marriage is not the solution for the problem of masturbation, since marriage also demands a great deal of capacity for self-control against the temptations of infidelity and for those periods when it would be imprudent or even unjust to have sexual relations (in case of the infectious disease of one of the two, for example), or when it is impossible to do so (enforced absence, for example).27
(2) Fornication
Fornication (sexual relations between a man and a woman, both of them unmarried) is a grievous sin that is contrary to the rational nature of man, since it does not express the mutual self-giving of the life-long union. It is an intrinsically evil act but not contrary to nature. (It is, however, if they are homosexual relations.)
(3) Adultery
Adultery (sexual relations between a man and a woman, at least one of whom is married) shares the malice of fornication and is also contrary to justice, because it damages the rights of a third or even fourth person. It is a known fact that in the first centuries, adultery—along with murder and apostasy—was put among the three most serious sins and required a particularly heavy and lengthy public penance before the repentant sinner could be granted forgiveness and readmission to the ecclesial community.28
(4) Other sins of impurity
Pornography is a grave offense that consists in removing real or imaginary sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners in order to deliberately display them to third parties.
Prostitution is a grave sin that does injury to the dignity of the person who engages in it, reducing the person to an instrument of sexual pleasure.
Rape is a grave sin against chastity, justice, and charity. Graver still is the rape of children that is committed by parents (incest) or by those who are responsible for the education of the children who are entrusted to them.
In addition to these sins, the unnatural consummated sins of impurity are onanism (or withdrawal, coitus interruptus), sodomy, and bestiality.
Footnotes:
1. GS, 24.
2. Cf. John Paul II, Letter to Families, Feb. 2, 1994.
3. Cf. Pontifical Council for the Family, Guidelines for Education within the Family, 11.
4. Ibid., 10.
5. Paul VI, Enc. Humanae Vitae, 8; cf. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 28.
6. Cf. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 28.
7. John Paul II, Enc. Evangelium Vitae, 92.
8. Cf. Ibid., 34–46.
9. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 30.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., 28–29.
12. Ibid., 30.
13. Cf. CCC, 2370.
14. Paul VI, Enc. Humanae Vitae, 12.
15. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 32.
16. Paul VI, Enc. Humanae Vitae, 12.
17. Cf. W. May, Marriage, the Rock on which the Family is Built, 74.
18. Cf. C. Burke, Marriage and Contraception, in “Position Papers,” (Osaka, Japan), 160 (Series A).
19. Cf. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 13.
20. Ibid., 33.
21. CCC, 2337.
22. Ibid., 2349.
23. GS, 49.
24. Cf. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 33; R. García de Haro, Marriage and Family in the Documents of the Magisterium, (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1994), 360.
25. Cf. Paul VI, Enc. Humanae Vitae, 21.
26. CCC, 2352; cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Decl. Persona Humana, 9.
27. Cf. J.M. de Torre, Person, Family and State, 82.
28. Cf. John Paul II, Enc. Evangelium Vitae, 54; CCC, 2351–2356.
Mission of the Family: Serving Life
Divine love—always a gift—is the reason of our existence as persons. Conjugal love—an echo of divine love—is the reason of the family’s openness to new life. Parents are co-workers and interpreters of God’s own love when they transmit life and raise a child according to God’s fatherly plan. Human life is a gift that is received in order to be given as a gift. In giving origin to a new life, parents recognize that the child, as the fruit of their mutual gift of love, is, in turn, a gift for both of them, a gift that flows from them.1
The second role of the Christian family, according to Familiaris Consortio, is “serving life.” This mission should be studied in its two aspects:
i) Transmission of life
ii) Education
We will develop the “transmission of life” from the following viewpoints:
· Human procreation
· Responsible parenthood
· Contraception and abortion
· Natural regulation of fertility
· Artificial fertilization
Human Procreation
30. The Dignity of Human Procreation
Man is “the only creature on earth that God has wanted for its own sake.”1 Man’s coming into being does not conform to the laws of biology alone, but also, and directly, to God’s creative will. By divine design, the generation of the human body, to which every act of sexuality is ordained by nature, is necessarily united to the creation by God of an immortal soul, destined to enjoy the glory of the children of God. God “willed” man from the very beginning, and God “wills” him in every act of conception and every human birth. God “wills” man as a being similar to himself, as a person. Like his parents, the new human being is also called to live as a person; he is called to a life “in truth and love.” This call is not only open to what exists in time, but is also open to eternity. Thus, the conjugal act is sacred. In it, the spouses give not only themselves but also the reality of children. Children are a living image of the couple’s love, a permanent sign of their conjugal unity, and a manifestation of their being father and mother. Inscribed in the personal constitution of every child is the will of God, who wills that man should share his own divine life.2
30a) Love and Human Sexuality
Occupying a central part in the dignity of the person is the dignity of his human sexuality, a reflection of the love of God.
Human sexuality is a good, part of that created gift that God saw as being “very good” (Gn 1:31) when “male and female he created them” (Gn 1:27) in his image and likeness.3
Man is called to love and to self-giving in the unity of body and spirit. Sexuality is a fundamental component of personality, one of its modes of being, of manifestation, of communicating with others, of feeling, of expressing and of living human love. The human body, with its sex, and its masculinity and femininity, is not only a source of fruitfulness and procreation but includes right “from the beginning” the “nuptial” attribute, that is, the capacity of expressing love: that love precisely in which the man-person becomes a gift and—by means of this gift—fulfills the very meaning of his being and existence.4
The marital act expresses and builds the spouses’ married love, their mutual and total gift of self, and their selfless love, as a faithful image of God’s creative love, which brought about man’s existence. Man’s greatness lies precisely in his being an image of God. Physically, the spouses will use the natural expressions of human affection—kisses, caresses, and embraces—while seeking the union of their bodies, as an expression of the union of intentions in their project of building a family. Emotionally, they will try to express the desire of loving each other, with the deep joys that come with the raising of a family. The marital act will make their love grow stronger as they renew in their will the determination to support one another in the difficulties and challenges that come to all people in this life.
During the marital act, they are collaborating with God by sharing in his love and power as Father and Creator of life. Children are conceived as a result of the father’s mediation of God’s love and the mother’s receptivity to God’s love. Just as God’s love resulted in creation, conjugal love results in new life. Man discovers—within the family—his dignity as a “co-creator” with God as new life is brought into the world.
Marriage is the wise institution of the Creator to accomplish in mankind His design of love. By means of the reciprocal personal gift of self, proper and exclusive to them, husband and wife tend toward the communion of their beings in view of mutual personal perfection, to collaborate with God in the generation and education of new lives.5
Thus, the fundamental task of the family is to serve life, to actualize in history the original blessing of the Creator—that of transmitting by procreation the divine image from person to person.6
30b) Life, a Gift of God
We see that life is a good, a gift that God has given us. Here, we refer to the gift that God has given us in calling us to life, to exist as man or woman in an unrepeatable existence, full of endless possibilities for growing spiritually and morally: “Human life is a gift received in order then to be given as a gift.”7
Why is life a good? Why is it always a good? The answer is simple and clear: Because the human person is an image of God. Human life comes from God and is destined to God. While sin darkens life by threatening it with death and throwing into doubt its nature as a gift, Redemption frees human life, lifting it up in the expectation of the gift of eternal life. Gratuitously, the Father calls each individual, in and through his Son, to partake of the fullness of divine life, by becoming “sons and daughters in the Son.” The sublime dignity of human life thus shines forth not only because of its origin but even more so because of its destiny.8
31. Attacks on the Dignity of Human Procreation
When the life of the conceived human being is not respected, it no longer makes sense to speak of human dignity. Some might have difficulty understanding the doctrine of the Church on the mission of marriage and the family with relation to the transmission of life, but this only makes it “more urgent and irreplaceable”9 to proclaim it, in order to promote “the true good of men and women.”10 The main theological point is not about birth or conception; it is about the nature of human sexuality. Human sexuality cannot be true to itself unless its openness to life and its connection to human love are both preserved.
The encyclical Humanae Vitae states that there are aspects of human sexuality that are not merely instrumental, subject to human whim or human choice. Since the 1960s, however, the notion of human sexuality as instrumental has been prominent. This notion claims that sexuality can be used for the particular benefit of a given individual, or some others, or society. Following this line, the acceptance of birth control logically leads to the acceptance of homosexuality, divorce, and even abortion.
The source of the problem about human sexuality today is often a flawed concept of man. Man is precisely a person because he is master of himself and can exercise self-control. He is not a helpless victim of his passions or society’s manipulation, yet many people view man as powerlessly subject to forces outside of himself and, accordingly, discount his ability to master himself.
32. The Church Stands for Life
Since service to life is the fundamental task of the family, openness to life becomes the condition of true conjugal love and a sign of its authenticity. “Love between husband and wife must be fully human, exclusive, and open to new life.… Fecundity is the fruit and sign of conjugal love, the living testimony of the full reciprocal self-giving of the spouses.”11 This is the Church’s teaching and norm, always old yet always new.
Pope John Paul II describes some aspects of the modern situation and mentality that lead to a misunderstanding of the doctrine of the Church and give rise to contemporary difficulties:
· Technological knowledge and progress, which arouse in some an anxiousness about the future
· A consumer mentality, which makes some incapable of understanding the spiritual rightness of a new life
· A certain panic that is derived from some ecological and futuristic studies on population growth, which sometimes exaggerate the danger of demographic increase to the quality of life, to the point that they create an anti-life mentality
At their root “is the absence in people’s hearts of God, whose love alone is stronger than all the world’s fears and can conquer them.”12
To counteract this misunderstanding, it is necessary to build a doctrinal and formative work that is based on the following pivotal truths:
· There can be no true contradiction between the divine law on transmitting life and that on fostering authentic married love.
· The Church must act as teacher and mother for couples in difficulty.
· All spouses are called to live the fullness of the divine law.
33. Harmony between Transmission of Life and Married Love
The sign of authentic married love is openness to life. This is the doctrine that is established by the Second Vatican Council, and the papal documents Humanae Vitae and Familiaris Consortio.
To understand this point, one must begin from an integral vision of man. The two elements of morality (the object of the chosen act, and the intention of the agent) are mentioned in Familiaris Consortio. But this exhortation is, above all, attentive to the object of the moral act, to the question of its intrinsic evil.
Some authors erroneously claim a moral equivalence between contraception and recourse to infertile periods. They focus solely on the intentions or motives of the persons involved, without considering that some actions are evil by their nature.
On the other hand, the Catechism affirms that contraception (as a moral object) is intrinsically evil.13 This is so because man cannot, on his own initiative, break “the inseparable connection, willed by God … between the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning of the conjugal act.”14 From all this, one can understand the radical “difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle.”15 Familiaris Consortio affirms that, in contraception, spouses act as arbiters of the divine plan; in having just recourse to the infertile periods, on the other hand, they act as its ministers.
34. The Procreative and Unitive Aspects
34a) The Two Aspects of the Conjugal Act
Conjugal love joins husband and wife not merely at the level of bodies but also at the level of persons. Thus, there are two aspects to the conjugal act: (a) the unitive aspect, by which the spouses express their love by the gift of self in their union, and (b) the procreative aspect, whereby this union is open to life. These two aspects are inseparable. “By safeguarding both these essential aspects … the conjugal act preserves in its fullness the essence of true mutual love and its ordination towards man’s most high calling to parenthood.”16 The two aspects of the marital act are intimately related: The life-giving aspect of the marital act is part of its love-giving aspect. The two are inseparable because no whole can be without its essential parts.17 There are not two acts but two aspects of the same act.
34b) Inseparability
The conjugal act is a life-giving love experience. If one deliberately destroys the power of the conjugal act to give life (procreative aspect), one necessarily destroys its power to signify love. Contraceptive spouses may love each other, but it is not a true conjugal love, because their intentions are diverted from the good of the other person and directed to mere egoistic enjoyment. The person as co-creator of love disappears, and there remains only the partner in an erotic experience. They refuse to found their relationship on a co-creativity that is capable of opening them out to one another and the whole of creation. In contraception, the spouses will not let the word—which their sexuality longs to utter—take on flesh. Contraceptive intercourse is not really an example of human sexual act; it is an intercourse of sensation but with no real human sexual knowledge or love. Contraceptive sex separates not only the unitive from the procreative, but also sex from love.18
Humanae Vitae speaks of the blessings that will come from preserving the inseparability of the unitive and procreative aspects of the conjugal act. It claims that spouses will especially develop the spiritual dimensions of their personalities. It speaks of the serenity and peace that come with discipline, a discipline that flows over to the other areas of one’s life. Perhaps most important, spouses will become unselfish as they begin to be concerned more about the well-being of their spouse rather than of themselves.
35. The Role of the Church as Teacher and Mother
The Church as a mother gives birth, so to speak, to the Christian family. To understand this, we need to consider the relationship between Baptism and marriage.19 The Church must also act as teacher and mother for couples in difficulty. She speaks the truth about love by adhering to these fundamental issues and giving full meaning to the norms that are established by God.
As Teacher, she never tires of proclaiming the moral norm that must guide the responsible transmission of life.… As Mother, the Church is close to the many married couples who find themselves in difficulty over this important point of the moral life.…
Specifically, she calls to mind the necessity of stirring up the virtues of persistence and patience, humility and strength of mind, filial trust in God and in His grace, and frequent recourse to prayer and to the sacraments of the Eucharist and of Reconciliation.
Also necessary as a condition for achieving this goal are knowledge of the bodily aspect and body’s rhythms of fertility and, above all, the absolute necessity for the virtue of chastity and for permanent education in it.20
Only the truth saves. The Church acts with eminent charity toward souls by spreading the saving teaching of Christ; she struggles to create all the conditions necessary to let it be understood and lived. The truth about man cannot be understood unless one is aware of the proper relationship of man to God, and, therefore, of his own eternal destiny.
36. The Virtue of Chastity
Sacred Scripture explicitly teaches that the complete exercise of the generative faculty outside of legitimate matrimony (adultery, fornication, etc.) is a mortal sin, since it excludes from the Kingdom of heaven (cf. Mt 5:28; 19:18; Mk 10:19; Rom 1:21–29; 1 Cor 6:9–10; Gal 5:19–21). The virtue of chastity is the joyous affirmation of someone who knows how to live self-giving. It is not to be understood as a repressive attitude, but rather as part of temperance—a cardinal virtue that is elevated and enriched by grace in Baptism.
The Catechism describes and, in a sense, defines chastity in this way: “Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being.”21
When the person understands chastity correctly, he is rendered capable of a higher kind of love than concupiscence, which sees persons only as objects, as means to satisfy one’s appetites. The person is capable of friendship and self-giving, with the capacity to recognize and love persons for themselves.
36a) Chastity in Marriage
“Married people are called to live conjugal chastity; others practice chastity in continence.”22 Parents are well aware that living conjugal chastity themselves is the most valid premise for educating their children in chaste love and in holiness of life.
The acts in marriage by which the intimate and chaste union of the spouses takes place are noble and honorable; the truly human performance of these acts fosters the self-giving they signify and enriches the spouses in joy and gratitude.23
This means that parents should be aware that God’s love is present in their love, and hence that their sexual giving should also be lived out in respect for God and for his plan of love, with fidelity, honor, and generosity toward one’s spouse and the life that can arise from their act of love. Only in this way can their love be an expression of charity.
Therefore, in marriage, Christians are called to live this self-giving in a right personal relationship with God. Only in this way do they respond to the love of God and fulfill his will. There is no legitimate love, at its highest level, that is not also love for God. To love the Lord implies responding positively to his commandments: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (Jn 14:15).
In the Christian view, chastity in marriage by no means signifies rejection of human sexuality. Rather, it signifies spiritual energy that is capable of defending love from the perils of selfishness and aggressiveness.24
To live chastity well, the Church insists on the need of the spouses to acquire a deep spiritual life, rooted in prayer and the frequent reception of the sacraments. Only in this environment can conjugal love (and its attendant, generosity in the transmission of life) develop. The results of conjugal chastity are an inner serenity and peace, a good understanding between the spouses, an increased sense of responsibility, and a greater efficiency in the educational thrust within the family.25
36b) Offenses against Chastity
(1) Masturbation
Sexuality is naturally geared to another; thus, masturbation, or self-abuse, is contrary to nature. But masturbation is also contrary to the social nature of man, not only because it reflects self-centeredness, but also because a person who is unwilling to control his vital urges is not adjusted to society, and so may easily injure justice in any of its forms. On masturbation, the Catechism has the following to say:
By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. “Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action.” “The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose.” For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of “the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved.”26
To form an equitable judgment and guide pastoral action fairly, pastors must take into account the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety of the subject, and other psychological or social factors that can lessen—if not even reduce to a minimum—moral culpability.
Moreover, marriage is not the solution for the problem of masturbation, since marriage also demands a great deal of capacity for self-control against the temptations of infidelity and for those periods when it would be imprudent or even unjust to have sexual relations (in case of the infectious disease of one of the two, for example), or when it is impossible to do so (enforced absence, for example).27
(2) Fornication
Fornication (sexual relations between a man and a woman, both of them unmarried) is a grievous sin that is contrary to the rational nature of man, since it does not express the mutual self-giving of the life-long union. It is an intrinsically evil act but not contrary to nature. (It is, however, if they are homosexual relations.)
(3) Adultery
Adultery (sexual relations between a man and a woman, at least one of whom is married) shares the malice of fornication and is also contrary to justice, because it damages the rights of a third or even fourth person. It is a known fact that in the first centuries, adultery—along with murder and apostasy—was put among the three most serious sins and required a particularly heavy and lengthy public penance before the repentant sinner could be granted forgiveness and readmission to the ecclesial community.28
(4) Other sins of impurity
Pornography is a grave offense that consists in removing real or imaginary sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners in order to deliberately display them to third parties.
Prostitution is a grave sin that does injury to the dignity of the person who engages in it, reducing the person to an instrument of sexual pleasure.
Rape is a grave sin against chastity, justice, and charity. Graver still is the rape of children that is committed by parents (incest) or by those who are responsible for the education of the children who are entrusted to them.
In addition to these sins, the unnatural consummated sins of impurity are onanism (or withdrawal, coitus interruptus), sodomy, and bestiality.
Footnotes:
1. GS, 24.
2. Cf. John Paul II, Letter to Families, Feb. 2, 1994.
3. Cf. Pontifical Council for the Family, Guidelines for Education within the Family, 11.
4. Ibid., 10.
5. Paul VI, Enc. Humanae Vitae, 8; cf. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 28.
6. Cf. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 28.
7. John Paul II, Enc. Evangelium Vitae, 92.
8. Cf. Ibid., 34–46.
9. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 30.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., 28–29.
12. Ibid., 30.
13. Cf. CCC, 2370.
14. Paul VI, Enc. Humanae Vitae, 12.
15. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 32.
16. Paul VI, Enc. Humanae Vitae, 12.
17. Cf. W. May, Marriage, the Rock on which the Family is Built, 74.
18. Cf. C. Burke, Marriage and Contraception, in “Position Papers,” (Osaka, Japan), 160 (Series A).
19. Cf. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 13.
20. Ibid., 33.
21. CCC, 2337.
22. Ibid., 2349.
23. GS, 49.
24. Cf. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 33; R. García de Haro, Marriage and Family in the Documents of the Magisterium, (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1994), 360.
25. Cf. Paul VI, Enc. Humanae Vitae, 21.
26. CCC, 2352; cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Decl. Persona Humana, 9.
27. Cf. J.M. de Torre, Person, Family and State, 82.
28. Cf. John Paul II, Enc. Evangelium Vitae, 54; CCC, 2351–2356.