Seeing as I've had some feedback on my most recent post, I thought I would respond to them in a brand new one. It's hard to answer critiques concerning contraception on anything but a case-by-case basis, so I will answer the two questions in the order they were asked.
First, and rather bluntly, is sex for babies, or can it be also or exclusively for pleasure? The Vatican documents say that it is for both (in the following, "union" and "unity" are referring at least in part to pleasure):
Union and Procreation
"This particular doctrine, often expounded by the magisterium of the Church, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.
"The reason is that the fundamental nature of the marriage act, while uniting husband and wife in the closest intimacy, also renders them capable of generating new life—and this as a result of laws written into the actual nature of man and of woman. And if each of these essential qualities, the unitive and the procreative, is preserved, the use of marriage fully retains its sense of true mutual love and its ordination to the supreme responsibility of parenthood to which man is called."
So, while pleasure is an indissoluble telos/end of the marital act, it is morally impermissible to intentionally separate it from its other telos. The reasoning of this judgment relates more closely to the second question, which will be addressed next. But for this particular question, this gives a preliminary answer. For further evidence, see John Paul II's work in "Love and Responsibility" (the work from which much of the modern position takes its cues) in which he says that is is morally incumbent on the husband to not look only for his own gratification; that is, he is morally required to please his wife. I hope that is helpful in understanding the situation here.
Now, as regards the second question, I'm afraid my own reading of Humanae Vitae (HV) may have gotten in the way. HV does not explicitly deal in terms of "communication" and "conversation." This was my own reading. In this reading's defense, I will briefly try to explain it in those terms, and then switch frameworks for a more thorough discussion.
In my analysis in the previous post, I failed to make explicit something that I had internally and perhaps uncritically assumed: namely, that the uterus is in a particular way the source of God's communication. On further reflection, that is NOT a position that I would like to espouse; it seems a little "fundy" to me. Instead, I'd like to re-define the word 'conversation,' which leads into the more common way of defending HV.
In John Paul II/Karol Wojtyla's work in "Love and Responsibility" (a work that I have not read, admittedly), he takes up sex in a larger framework of human communication. As embodied, intelligent creatures, human beings communicate in many ways: through words, speech, the arts, their bodies. Very much can be communicated in a look, without a word being spoken. Watch "Lie to me" for a television example. It's all about body language, and it has scientific psychological/physiological foundations.
Sex, I think most can agree, is a very - probably the most - intimate form of self-expression and body language. By its nature, it says (or wants to say), "I love you." To be sure, this message can be and often is distorted, but Wojtyla is clear that, at least for Catholics, it is a sacramental act that reflects and reveals Christ's kenotic (self-giving/emptying) love for the Church. The spouses love each other in the way Christ loves his Church. That is: totally, holding nothing back. Thus, for the act to hearken back to its sacramental referent, nothing about it can say "you can have this much of me, but no more."
And this, Wojtyla argues, is precisely what artificial contraception does. It creates a physical and psychological barrier between the spouses, who thereby fail to mirror Christ for one another. It says, "I give myself to you, but I am not willing to bring life into the world with you." It holds back something of crucial importance, both for marriage and for the Christ/Church referent, because both of these are intrinsically life-giving. A married couple, by definition in the Church and at least implicit in their vows, must be open to life. This is so, in turn, because Christ's love for his Church is also fecund; it brings true life to those who believe.
None of this undermines the ability of spouses to make and express their opinions about whether they are meant at a particular time to bring life into the world. But it does require them to be open to the possibility in each and every act; they cannot know for certain that God is not calling them to it.
Finally, there is one other thing in HV that I am almost hesitant to bring up, because I don't want it to shut down the conversation; we NEED to ask these hard questions, so I am thankful for those who have. The document argues that the authority and binding nature of the judgment does NOT lie in any particular or even the overall reasoning of the document. Rather, the document deserves our assent because of the voice that proclaims it. The document, in addressing priests and teachers of moral theology, states:
"For it is your principal duty—We are speaking especially to you who teach moral theology—to spell out clearly and completely the Church's teaching on marriage. In the performance of your ministry you must be the first to give an example of that sincere obedience, inward as well as outward, which is due to the magisterium of the Church. For, as you know, the pastors of the Church enjoy a special light of the Holy Spirit in teaching the truth. (39) And this, rather than the arguments they put forward, is why you are bound to such obedience."
So, even if we find the reasoning behind the document to be flawed in some way, this does not undermine the authority of the magisterium to teach it in a way that calls for our assent. We are - I am - called to come to a deeper and deeper understanding of the teaching, and this requires struggle. But it does not mean that we can reject the doctrine out of hand - not to accuse anyone of having done so.
I hope this was a helpful exposition, though as I said, please feel free to continue asking questions.
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woops, I forgot to bring this up a while ago... after our conversation about this idea that sexual partners are supposed to emulate Christ's love for the Church by loving wholly and not holding anything back, I kept thinking about other analogies. I'm not sure that "not holding anything back" is a necessary condition for "loving wholly" in every particular instance. I thought of a better example: music.
ReplyDeleteWhen two people are playing music together, they can do an awful lot of forms - they can both read music, in which case the performance is kind of a technical thing, or they can improvise in really creative jazz stylish stuff, or they can just pound out something simple and fun like "Blitzkrieg Bop," or they can do any number of other things, all of which are legitimate uses of music between two people. They cannot possibly cover all the possibilities in one jam session, just as two people cannot cover all the possibilities for sex in one span of sexual activity. This doesn't mean that either is holding anything back, though; it just means that there are many different possibilities in the spectrum of music, and of sex. Just because two people end up staying away from some particular kind of music during a jam session together doesn't mean that they're holding anything back in a grand sense; "for everything there is a season." Similarly, just because two people end up deciding to stay away from having kids in some particular sex act doesn't mean that they're holding something back in a permanent way. If people were never open to the Blitzkrieg Bop or children, that might be a problem. (The children example is probably more serious.) However, I don't think that a focus on each and every sex act is a good idea. Musicians should be open to playing whatever God moves them to play, but I don't think it's a problem if they end up choosing to leave some things out of certain jam sessions.
I think this is an interesting example, Brendan. However, in line with our conversation a couple weeks ago, I would argue differently, even within your analogy. The question for me is whether a particular sexual act has a sacramental quality that refers back to the actual vows of the sacrament made on the wedding day. Within the analogy, this requires me to talk in semi-Platonic ways; that is, I would invoke the 'idea' or 'form' of Music. You are right to say that a particular instance of music does not have to partake of the entire breadth of possible genres in order to count as music. In fact, quite the opposite would be the case; if a piece tried to be everything, it would most likely be nothing. So within the music analogy, you are correct.
ReplyDeleteHowever, in drawing the connection to the sexual situation, I think the particular analogy you draw breaks down. Though I'd rather not be too explicit, your analogy would seem to correspond to running through the Kama Sutra rather than performing different levels of contraceptive intercourse. That is, your analogy appears to emphasize the quantitative aspects of music, where what I believe to be important are the qualitative aspects.
Thus, in order to ask whether a piece of music participates in the form of Music, I would ask questions like: does it have meter; does it produce sound; is it played with instruments; does it have melody or harmony; and so forth. Though depending on the genre these questions might differ slightly (or in the case of modern music, dramatically), my point is that I think you are asking the wrong question.
To draw it back to the sex side of the analogy, the questions are different, but the relationship is the same. Just as a particular piece of music by means of its distinctive musical qualities participates in the form of Music, just so does a particular sex act, by means of distinctive sexual qualities participate in the sacramental bond of marriage. And just as Music has a set of questions that can be asked of it to determine whether individual works partake of it (though we can debate what those are, of course), just so does Marriage have a set of questions that determine whether a particular sex act is sufficient as a renewal of those vows, namely: is it unitive, permanent, exclusive, procreative, and the like.
I hope this is helpful! Thanks for the question!
Hmm... That makes sense. I think maybe the part that is sticking for me is the basic premise:
ReplyDelete"This particular doctrine, often expounded by the magisterium of the Church, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act."
How is the idea that sex must be both unitive and procreative "established by God"? Now that I think about, I couldn't explain this. I mean, obviously coitus is physically unifying and can produce a child, but that is only one act among many. Why are its characteristics the moral standard for sex acts?