Contraception and Cultural Chaos — Part 1 of 6

By Christopher West

This July 25th marks the 40th anniversary of one of the most controversial papal
documents in history: Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae which reaffirmed the traditional
Christian teaching on the immorality of contraception. If you have wrestled with this
teaching, believe me, I can relate. Years ago I almost left the Church over it. Forty years
of perspective provide an opportunity to take another look. That's what I'll be doing in
[the next] several columns.

You may have noticed above that I said "traditional Christian teaching" on contraception.
Only in the last 50-70 years has this been viewed primarily as a "Catholic" issue. Until
1930, all Christian bodies stood together in their condemnation of any attempt to
sterilize the marital act. That year, the Anglican Church broke with more than nineteen
hundred years of uninterrupted Christian teaching. When the pill debuted in the early
1960's, the Catholic Church alone was retaining what in 30 short years had come to be
seen as an archaic, even absurd position.

One way to begin understanding the Church's stance is by "judging the tree by its fruit."
This is what first made me realize that contraception was a much more important issue
than I had realized.

When Margaret Sanger and her followers started pushing contraception in the early
1900's, wise men and women — and certainly not just Catholics — predicted that
severing sex from procreation would eventually lead to sexual and societal chaos.
Today's culture of adultery, divorce, premarital sex, STD's, out-of-wedlock births,
abortion, fatherless children, homosexuality, poverty, crime, drugs, and violence was all
foreseen.

What's the connection with contraception? While today's societal chaos is certainly
complex, the following demonstrates the "inner logic" of contraception's contribution.
People are often tempted to do things they shouldn't do. Deterrents within nature itself
and within society help to curb these temptations and maintain order. For example, what
would happen to the crime rate in a given society if jail terms suddenly ceased?

Apply the same logic to sex. People throughout history have been tempted to commit
adultery. It's nothing new. However, one of the main deterrents from succumbing to the
temptation has been the fear of pregnancy. What would happen if this natural deterrent
were taken away? As history demonstrates, rates of adultery would skyrocket. What's
one of the main causes of divorce? Adultery. Apply the same logic to pre-marital sex.
Such behavior has, indeed, skyrocketed. Premarital sex, as a kind of "adultery in
advance," is also a prime indicator of future marital breakdown.

It gets worse. Since no method of contraception is 100% effective, an increase in

adultery and pre-marital sex will inevitably lead to an increase in "unwanted
pregnancies." What's next? So many people think contraception is the solution to the
abortion problem. Take a deeper look and you'll see that that's like throwing gasoline on
a fire to try to put it out. In the final analysis, there is only one reason we have abortion
— because men and women are having sex without being "open to life." If this mentality
is at the root of abortion, contraception does nothing but foster and afford this mentality.
Not everyone will resort to abortion of course. Some will choose adoption. Other mothers
(most) will raise these children by themselves. Hence the number of children who grow
up without a father (which has already been increased by the rise in divorce) will be
compounded. And a culture of "fatherless" children inevitably becomes a culture of
poverty, crime, drugs, and violence. All of these social ills compound exponentially from
generation to generation since "fatherless" children are also much more likely to have
out-of-wedlock births and, if they marry at all, divorce.

What about homosexuality? Our culture is impotent to resist the "gay agenda" because
we have already accepted its basic premise with contraception — the reduction of sex to
the exchange of pleasure. When openness to life is no longer an intrinsic part of the
sexual equation, why does sexual behavior have to be with the opposite sex?

Forty years after the release of Humanae Vitae, many people are beginning to see that
the Church might not be crazy after all.

Does Contraception Foster Love? — Part 2 of 6

By Christopher West

We continue a series of reflections on the issue of contraception in light of the 40th

anniversary of [1] Humanae Vitae.

When Pope Paul VI issued this document on July 25, 1968, it fell like a bomb. Many
people wished the issue would just go away. It hasn't. And it won't. In fact, it can't "go
away." This encyclical takes us to the very foundations of human life.

In the [2] last column we looked at how contraception has played a key role in the
cultural chaos in which we're now immersed. Here we'll look briefly at what seems to be
at the heart of the matter — love. It all comes down to this: What is love? Does the mere
exchange of sexual pleasure offer any surety of love? Our culture is sated with sexual
indulgence but remains starved for love. Perhaps contraception has had something to do
with this sad state of affairs.

It seems what we often call "love," when submitted to honest examination, amounts to
little more than mutual using for pleasure. In the language of John Paul II, the opposite of
love is not hatred. The opposite of love is using another person as a means to an end. I
know this is a cliche, but why do so many wives claim "headache" when their husbands
want sex? Might they feel used rather than loved?

The Catholic teaching on sex is an invitation to embrace the love that really corresponds
to the deepest desires of the human heart. That is a demanding love, to be sure. Should
we expect it to be otherwise as followers of Christ? "Love one another," Jesus says, "as I
have loved you" (Jn 15:12). This means it's going to hurt. It's going to demand sacrifice.
St. Paul says it plainly: husbands are to love their wives "as Christ loved the church" (Eph
5:25). Then he concludes this marvelous passage with the most exalted presentation of
sexual love in all of human history: "''or this reason a man shall leave his father and
mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' This is a great
mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the church" (Eph 5:21-32).

The Church, so often accused of devaluing sex, ascribes to sexual love the highest
possible value — it is meant to be a merging of the human and the divine. Anything less,
the Church proposes, is a counterfeit for the love we yearn for at the deepest level of our
beings. Sexual love is meant to image the mysterious and eternal "exchange of love"
within the Holy Trinity. In the normal course of events, the mutual exchange of husband
and wife leads to a "third" — a new human life conceived through the work of the Holy
Spirit, "the Lord, the Giver of life."

Contracepted intercourse marks a determined "closing off" of the sexual act to the Holy
Spirit, to the very life and love of God. In short, whether they realize this or not,
contracepting couples are saying, "We prefer the momentary pleasure of sterilized sex
over the opportunity of participating in the eternal love of the Trinity." To which I respond
…bad choice! But do you think if couples really knew they were saying this, that they
would continue to do so? "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Lk
23:34).

Most couples simply have no idea what they're getting themselves into when they
sterilize their sexual acts. So none of this is about assigning culpability. If I drink a cup of
poison — but don't know it's poison — I haven't committed suicide; I'm not culpable for
my own death. But it will still kill me, because whether I think it's poison or not has no
bearing whatsoever on whether it is poison or not. Furthermore, if you know it's poison
and I don't, what would be the loving thing to do if you saw me reaching out to drink it?

The Church is not trying to impose her morality on us. Like any loving mother, she is
trying to prevent her children from unwittingly ingesting a very dangerous "poison to
love." As the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae approaches, let us thank Pope Paul VI
for loving us so much.

Contraception and the Language of the Body — Part 3 of 6

By Christopher West

We continue our series commemorating the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae. Pope
Paul VI released this oh-so-controversial encyclical on July 25, 1968, re-affirming the
constant teaching of the Church on the immorality of contraception. To this day it
remains a "thorn in the side" of many. It was once a thorn in my side as well. John Paul
II's "theology of the body" helped remove that thorn and show me the glorious fragrance
of the rose.

Last time we observed that contracepted intercourse marks a determined "closing off" of
the sexual act to the Holy Spirit, to the "Lord and Giver of Life." In this way, as John Paul
II expressed it, contraception falsifies "the language of the body."

We all know that the body has a "language." A wave of the hand says "hello" or
"goodbye." A shrug of the shoulders says, "I don't know." A raised fist expresses anger.
What is sexual intercourse meant to express? What is its true language, its true
meaning?

According to Scripture, the sexual embrace is meant to express divine love. Precisely
here, in the consummation of their sacrament, spouses are meant to participate in the
"great mystery" of divine love. Whether spouses realize this or not, this is the
sacramental power of their love. It's meant to be an image and a real participation in
Christ's love for the Church (see Eph 5:31-32).
As John Paul II candidly expressed, "Through gestures and reactions, through the whole
… dynamism of tension and enjoyment — whose direct source is the body in its
masculinity and femininity, the body in its action and interaction — through all this man,
the person, 'speaks.' …Precisely on the level of this 'language of the body' … man and
woman reciprocally express themselves in the fullest and most profound way made
possible for them by … their masculinity and femininity" (/TOB/ 123:4).

But if sexual love is meant to express Christ's love, we must properly understand the
"language" of this love. Christ gives his body freely ("No one takes my life from me, I lay
it down of my own accord" -Jn 10:18). He gives his body totally — without reservation,
condition, or selfish calculation ("He loved them to the last" -Jn 13:1). He gives his body
faithfully ("I am with you always" -Mt 28:20). And he gives his body fruitfully ("I came
that they may have life" -Jn 10:10).

If men and women are to avoid the pitfalls of counterfeit love, their union must express
the same free, total, faithful, fruitful love that Christ expresses. Of course, as fallen
human beings, we'll never express Christ's love perfectly. Even so, we must commit
ourselves to the life-long journey of learning how to express this love and, at a minimum,
never willfully act against it. The name for this commitment is marriage.

This is precisely what a bride and groom consent to at the altar. The priest or deacon
asks them: "Have you come here freely and without reservation to give yourselves to
each other in marriage? Do you promise to be faithful until death? Do you promise to
receive children lovingly from God?" The bride and groom each say "yes."

In turn, spouses are meant to express this same "yes" with the "language of their bodies"
whenever they become one flesh. "In fact, the words themselves, 'I take you as my
wife/as my husband,'" John Paul II says, "can only be fulfilled by conjugal intercourse."
With conjugal intercourse "we pass to the reality that corresponds to these words" (TOB
103:3).

Intercourse, then, is where the words of the wedding vows become flesh. It's where men
and women are meant to incarnate divine love. It's a fine thing when a couple returns to
the church to renew their vows on a special anniversary, but this shouldn't undermine
the fact that every time a husband and wife have intercourse they're meant to renew
their wedding vows with the "language of their bodies."

How healthy would a marriage be if spouses were regularly unfaithful to their vows? On
the other hand, how healthy would a marriage be if spouses regularly renewed their
vows with an ever-increasing commitment to them? If you'd prefer the latter type of
marriage, you have just accepted the teaching of Humanae Vitae. In the next column, I'll
unfold why.

Sex Speaks: True and False Prophets — Part 4 of 6

By Christopher West

July 25th marks the fortieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI's famous re-
affirmation of the Church's constant teaching on contraception. In commemoration, we
continue our reflections on this critical issue.
I ended my last column by asking: How healthy would a marriage be if spouses were
regularly unfaithful to their wedding vows? On the other hand, how healthy would a
marriage be if spouses regularly renewed their vows with an ever increasing
commitment to them? Then I stated, if you'd prefer the latter type of marriage, you have
just accepted the teaching of Humanae Vitae.

This is what is at stake: fidelity to the wedding vows; fidelity to love. At the altar, the
priest or deacon asks the couple: "Have you come here freely and without reservation to
give yourselves to each other in marriage? Do you promise to be faithful until death? Do
you promise to receive children lovingly from God?" The bride and groom each say "yes."
In turn, spouses are meant to express this same "yes" with the "language of their bodies"
whenever they become one flesh. Sexual intercourse, then, is where the words of the
wedding vows become flesh. Or, at least, it's meant to be.

Everything the Church teaches about sex begins to make sense when viewed through
this lens. The Church's teaching is not a prudish list of prohibitions. It's a call to embrace
our own "greatness," our own God-given dignity. It's a call to live the love we so ardently
desire. It's a call to embrace divine love and share it with one's spouse bodily.

John Paul II goes so far as to describe the body and sexual union as "prophetic." A
prophet is someone who speaks for God, who proclaims his mystery of love. This is what
the marital embrace is meant to proclaim. But, as the Pope adds, we must be careful to
distinguish true and false prophets (see /TOB/ 106:4). If we can speak the truth with our
bodies, we can also speak lies.

As a sacrament, marriage not only signifies God's life and love, it really participates in
God's life and love. However, for sacraments to convey God's life and love, the physical
sign must accurately signify the spiritual reality. For example, through the physical sign
of cleansing with water, baptism truly brings about a spiritual cleansing from sin. But if
you were to baptize someone with mud or tar, no spiritual cleansing would take place
because the physical sign is now one of making dirty. This would actually be a counter-
sign or an "anti-sacrament."

All of married life is meant to be a sign of God's life and love. But nowhere do spouses
signify this more profoundly than when they become "one flesh." Here, like no other
moment in married life, spouses are called to participate in God's life and love. But this
will only happen if their sexual union accurately signifies God's love. Therefore, as John
Paul II concludes, we can speak of moral good and evil in the sexual relationship based
on whether the couple gives to their union "the character of a truthful sign" (TOB 37:6).

Insert contraception into the language of the body and (knowingly or unknowingly) the
couple engages in a counter-sign of God's mystery, a kind of "anti-sacrament." Rather
than proclaiming, "God is life-giving love," the language of contracepted intercourse
says, "God is not life-giving love." In this way spouses (knowingly or unknowingly)
become "false prophets." They blaspheme. Their bodies still proclaim theology, but not
Christian theology; not a theology of the God who reveals himself as Father, as Son, and
as Holy Spirit. Contracepted sex, whether we realize this or not, attacks our creation in
the image of the Trinity at its roots. From this perspective we can see that contraception
is actually a sly betrayal of the deepest truth of our humanity.

The language of the body has "clear-cut meanings" all of which are "programmed," John
Paul II observes, in the vows. For example, to "the question: 'Are you ready to accept
children lovingly from God …?' the man and the woman answer, 'Yes'" (TOB 105:6,
106:3). If spouses say "yes" at the altar, but then render their union sterile, wouldn't they
be lying with their bodies? Wouldn't they be speaking against their vows?

Why, then, does the Church accept the practice of natural family planning? We'll see in
the next column.

Contraception v. Natural Family Planning — Part 5 of 6

By Christopher West

For several columns now we've been reflecting on the Church's teaching on
contraception in commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of Pope Paul VI's letter
Humanae Vitae. We've observed that sexual intercourse is meant to incarnate the
marriage commitment itself, and that an integral part of that commitment is openness to
children.

So, does fidelity to the wedding vows imply that couples are to leave the number of
children they have entirely to "chance"? No. In calling couples to a responsible love, the
Church calls them also to a responsible parenthood.

Pope Paul VI stated clearly that those are considered "to exercise responsible parenthood
who prudently and generously decide to have a large family, or who, for serious reasons
and with due respect to the moral law, choose to have no more children for the time
being or even for an indeterminate period" (/HV/ 10). Notice that large families should
result from prudent reflection, not "chance." Notice too that couples must have "serious
reasons" to avoid pregnancy and must respect the moral law.

Assuming a couple have a serious reason to avoid a child (this could be financial,
physical, psychological, etc.), what could they do that would not violate the consummate
expression of their sacrament? In other words, what could they do to avoid conceiving a
child that would not render them unfaithful to their wedding vows? You're doing it right
now (I presume). They could abstain from sex. There is nothing wrong with abstaining
from sex when there's a good reason to do so. The Church has always recognized that
the only method of "birth control" that respects the language of divine love is "self-
control."

A further question arises: Would a couple be doing anything to falsify their sexual union if
they embraced during a time of natural infertility? Take, for example, a couple past
childbearing years. They know their union will not result in a child. Are they violating
their vows if they engage in intercourse with this knowledge? Are they contracepting?
No. Contraception, by definition, is the choice to engage in an act of intercourse, but then
do something else to render it sterile. This can be done by using various devices,
hormones, surgical procedures, and the age-old method of withdrawal.

Couple holding hands Couples who use natural family planning (NFP) when they have a
just reason to avoid pregnancy never render their sexual acts sterile; they never
contracept. They track their fertility, abstain when they are fertile and, if they so desire,
embrace when they are naturally infertile. Readers unfamiliar with modern NFP methods
should note that they are 98-99% effective at avoiding pregnancy when used properly.
Furthermore, any woman, regardless of the regularity of her cycles, can use NFP
successfully. This is not your grandmother's "rhythm method."
To some people this seems like splitting hairs. "What's the big difference," they ask,
"between rendering the union sterile yourself and just waiting until it's naturally infertile?
The end result is the same: both couples avoid children." To which I respond, what's the
big difference between killing Grandma and just waiting until she dies naturally? End
result's the same thing: dead Grandma. Yes, but one is a serious sin called murder, and
the other is an act of God.

If a person can tell the difference between euthanasia and natural death, he can tell the
difference between contraception and NFP. It's the same difference. I'm not equating
contraception and murder. That's not the analogy. Rather, Grandma's natural death and
a woman's natural period of infertility are both acts of God. But in killing Grandma or in
rendering sex sterile, we take the powers of life into our own hands — just like the
deceiver originally tempted us to do — and make ourselves like God (see Gn 3:5).

This is why Pope John Paul II concludes that contraception "is to be judged so profoundly
unlawful as never to be, for any reason, justified. To think or to say the contrary is equal
to maintaining that in human life, situations may arise in which it is lawful not to
recognize God as God" (address Oct. 10, 1983).

If you have resisted the Church's teaching on contraception, maybe it's time to give it
some more thought.

Humanae Vitae and True Sexual Freedom — Part 6 of 6

By Christopher West

This column concludes my series of reflections on Pope Paul VI's document Humanae
Vitae, which we have been reviewing in light of its fortieth anniversary.

In the last installment we examined the difference between rendering sex sterile with
contraception and choosing to abstain from intercourse during the fertile time. If one can
see the difference between telling a lie and remaining silent, one can tell the difference
between contraception and periodic abstinence.

One of the main objections to Humanae Vitae is that following its teaching (that is,
practicing abstinence when avoiding pregnancy) impedes couples from expressing their
love for one another. But of what "love" are we speaking: authentic conjugal love that
images God, or its perennial counterfeit — lust?

God is the one who united marital love and procreation. Therefore, since God cannot
contradict himself, as Vatican II taught, a "true contradiction cannot exist between the
divine laws pertaining to the transmission of life and those pertaining to the fostering of
authentic conjugal love" (Gaudium et Spes 51). It may well be difficult to follow the
teaching of Humanae Vitae, but it could never be a contradiction of love.

Following the Church's teaching is difficult because of the internal battle we all
experience between love and lust. Lust impels us, and impels us very powerfully, towards
sexual intercourse. But if sexual intimacy results from nothing more than lust, it's not
love. On the contrary, it's a negation of love. Love is being ready to sacrifice oneself
entirely for the good of the beloved, and for the good of the offspring that might result.
Lust seeks the pleasure and sensation of the sexual act, but without the sincere gift of
oneself.

If one is unprepared to receive a child, the only responsible choice is to abstain from that
act that leads to a child. And as any married couple knows, abstaining from sex can be a
profound act of love. In fact, there are many occasions in married life when a couple
might want to engage in sexual intercourse, but have a serious reason to abstain. Maybe
one of the spouses is sick. Maybe it's after childbirth. Maybe they're at the in-laws and
there are thin walls. If a couple can't abstain in these situations, their love is actually
called into question. It's the same thing with needing to avoid a pregnancy. If the couple
cannot abstain, their love is called into question.

What purpose does contraception really serve anyway? This might sound odd at first, but
let it sink in. Contraception was not invented to prevent pregnancy. We already had a
100% safe, 100% reliable way of doing that — abstinence. In the final analysis,
contraception serves one purpose: to spare us the difficulty we experience when
confronted with the choice of abstinence. When all the smoke is cleared, contraception
was invented because of our lack of self-control; in other words, contraception was
invented to serve the indulgence of lust.

Why do we spay or neuter our dogs and cats? Why don't we just ask them to abstain? If
we spay and neuter ourselves with contraception, we're reducing the "great mystery" of
the one flesh union to the level of Fido and Fidette in heat. What distinguished us from
the animals in the first place? Freedom! God gave us freedom as the capacity to love.
Contraception negates this freedom. It says, "I can't abstain." Hence, contracepted
intercourse not only attacks the procreative meaning of sex, as John Paul II observed, "it
also ceases to be an act of love" (TOB 123:6).

If you can't say no to sex, what does your "yes" mean? Only the person who is free with
the freedom for which Christ set us free (see Gal 5:1) is capable of authentic love.
Authentic love, as the Catechism observes, requires "an apprenticeship in self-mastery
which is training in human freedom. The alternative is clear: either man governs his
passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes
unhappy" (CCC 2339).

This is what is at stake in the prophetic teaching of Humanae Vitae: man's true peace
and happiness. I'm convinced that the teaching of Humanae Vitae — which is still being
rejected in the name of sexual "liberation" — will one day be vindicated as the only path
to authentic sexual freedom: the freedom to love.