Contraception - its meaning

CONTRACEPTION!

This is one of the paramount places where we are confronted in the most direct way with the Mystery of Predestination, Grace and Free Will. In everyday life, we can see that all three strands of the Mystery must operate, otherwise the Gospel would make no sense; but we cannot fit them all together in our heads at the same time. One reason for this is our perception of Time, which is not God's way. It is so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that our own perceptions of Reality are the Real Thing; this gets us into hot water. For example, God does know which ones of us here are going to be Saved, and which ones Damned. Now if I had that certain knowledge now, it could only be if we had no free choice in the matter, otherwise our destiny would not be predictable. But God can see the action of our Free Will, and this knowledge is with Him for all Eternity.

When we plan a thing, we don't know what is going to happen; but when God makes a Plan, He DOES know the future: He can see it in front of Him. No wonder we can't get our heads round this.

Before God created the World, He contemplated an infinite number of possible souls, possible individuals, whom He would call out of an idea in His Mind and into actual, independent Reality, and give them the Gift of Eternal Life. Out of an infinite 'catalogue' of possibilities, He chose you and me for this unspeakably precious Gift. "Before you were in the womb I knew you" (Jer 1:5). And also, out of an infinity of possibilities, He decided how to bring us into existence. He would create, immediately, out of nothing, an immortal soul, and place it in a material body that had been constituted in that moment. And how was it to be constituted? Who but God would have thought of arranging it that it would be formed from the highest expression of mutual love between two of His creatures?

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Naturally we must speak directly here. The physical pleasure of lovemaking is meant as the reward for the previously-established lifelong commitment, and in the opening to the possibility of one more immortal soul coming into existence, pre-ordained by God before Creation, yet dependent on the action of our Free Will. To frustrate this primary purpose, yet to indulge in the physical action, is by the very definition, Perverted Sex. And it is to acknowledge God, but to tell Him, "I realise You have invented a procedure for populating the world and Heaven, but we have thought of a better one!"

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There is a far more disturbing possibility. What if God has planned certain souls for eternal life, from before Creation, but has respected our Free Will to the extent that, if we frustrate His plans for their conception, that soul will now never exist?

G.K.Chesterton wrote a poem in which a soul is making a series of ever-more-extravagent promises of what it will do, if only it is allowed to exist.

What if, at the Last Judgment, we are asked, "Where are your other children?" Or even, "Where are your children?"

It is good to tell the following to teenage boys (and some older males) – Your body is not a toy for you to play with. And a girl is not a toy for you to play with. Our human bodies are God's appointed means for bringing Eternal Life into this world, destined for the Next.

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The day that a man and woman make their Wedding Vows, God has already determined which, and how many, children He is going to send them. And He is not so incompetent as not to make provision for all their real needs. He does not necessarily promise them an easy or comfortable life on this earth. One million years from now, we will be able to look back and see what eternal value attached to our trials down here – and Eternity will still only be beginning.

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There is God's Direct Will and His Permissive Will. He has 'permitted' that certain children will be conceived out of wedlock, sometimes in the course of a crime against the mother. Yet these children too were destined, from before Creation, for an Eternity with him. As for the wrongdoers, the criminals? " 'Vengeance is Mine: I will repay', saith the LORD." In His infinite courtesy, He allowed His own bloodline to be dotted with every kind of crime: yet in the fulness of time, this tainted bloodline flowered in the Saviour (cf Hebrews 1:2).

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All red-blooded men know the following: Woman is by far the Queen and Crown of God's Creation. It is appropriate for a young man to approach his first encounter with young women with a certain awe. Yet if a woman falls for the con, and allows herself to be artificially sterilised, she becomes just another object for man's enjoyment.

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And if she accedes to this out of a real fear for the consequences – medical or poverty, or other – you might be surprised at what the Catholic Church actually does teach. It is NOT Catholic teaching that a married couple is under a moral obligation to produce the maximum possible number of offspring, regardless of all consequences. There might be legitimate grounds for suspending the openness to a new child within a marriage. This could be health or even poverty. (At the present time, the earth is still producing, daily, sufficient food for double the present population. Many cities are crowded and squalid, and families are trapped in them through no fault of their own. Within the past decade, for the first time in history, the percentage of the human population living in cities passed 50%. And how much of the world's land surface do they occupy? It is 3%.)

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Now, if there is a legitimate hardship envisaged, couples are still urged to be 'generous' in the number of children they are willing to bring into the world. Yet if there is necessity to limit their fertility for a limited time, there are two allowable options: They can live like Joseph and Mary for this time: a married unit in all other things, but as brother and sister concerning conception of children. Yet, as a concession to our fallen nature, we are permitted to make use of the natural times of infertility of the wife. Much here depends on a genuine desire to submit to God's Will. Marriage, as even the World acknowledges, is for Grown-ups.

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It is a mistake to believe that the last method may be used systematically, without serious cause, to achieve our own pre-determined number of children. And there are advances in science, in nutrition, in our everyday lives, which impinge on all this. But the above is the Catholic teaching, with the reasons given for them. It is not true that there are devious sinister motives behind them. Naturally, if followed through, it will lead to a growing and healthy population. The demographic crisis of the present decade, and those coming up next, would have been avoided if God's own plan for the population of the World and of Heaven, had been met.