Fertility

"For God, the Lord of life, has conferred on men the surpassing ministry of safeguarding life in a manner which is worthy of man. Therefore from the moment of its conception life must be guarded with the greatest care while abortion and infanticide are unspeakable crimes. The sexual characteristics of man and the human faculty of reproduction wonderfully exceed the dispositions of lower forms of life. Hence the acts themselves which are proper to conjugal love and which are exercised in accord with genuine human dignity must be honored with great reverence. Hence when there is question of harmonizing conjugal love with the responsible transmission of life, the moral aspects of any procedure does not depend solely on sincere intentions or on an evaluation of motives, but must be determined by objective standards. These, based on the nature of the human person and his acts, preserve the full sense of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love. Such a goal cannot be achieved unless the virtue of conjugal chastity is sincerely practiced. Relying on these principles, sons of the Church may not undertake methods of birth control which are found blameworthy by the teaching authority of the Church in its unfolding of the divine law.(14)

All should be persuaded that human life and the task of transmitting it are not realities bound up with this world alone. Hence they cannot be measured or perceived only in terms of it, but always have a bearing on the eternal destiny of men."

(Gaudium Et Spes. #51)

WHAT IS THE ESSENCE of the teaching of the Church about the transmission of life in the conjugal community, the essence of the teaching recalled for us by the Council’s pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes and the encyclical Humanae Vitae by Pope Paul VI? 

The problem lies in maintaining the adequate relationship between that which is defined as “domination…of the forces of nature” (HV 2) and “self-mastery” (HV 21), which is indispensable for the human person. Contemporary man shows the tendency of transferring the methods proper to the first sphere to those of the second. “Finally and above all, man has made stupendous progress in the domination and rational organization of the forces of nature,” we read in the encyclical, “such that he tends to extend this domination to his own total being: to the body, to psychical life, to social life and even to the laws which regulate the transmission of life” (HV 2). 

This extension of the sphere of the means of “the domination…of the forces of nature” threatens the human person for whom the method of “self-mastery” is and remains specific. It—that is, self-mastery—corresponds in fact to the fundamental constitution of the person: it is a perfectly “natural” method. The transposition of “artificial means,” by contrast, breaks the constitutive dimension of the person, deprives man of the subjectivity proper to him, and turns him into an object of manipulation.

(Theology of the Body. 123:1)

The human body is not only the field of reactions of a sexual character, but it is at the same time the means of the expression of man as an integral whole, of the person, which reveals itself through the “language of the body.” This “language” has an important interpersonal meaning, especially in the area of the reciprocal relations between man and woman. In addition, our earlier analyses show that in this case the “language of the body” should express, at a determinate level, the truth of the sacrament. By participating in the eternal plan of Love, “Sacramentum absconditum in Deo” [the mystery hidden in God], the “language of the body” becomes in fact a “prophetism of the body,” as it were. 

One can say that Humanae Vitae carries this truth about the human body in its masculinity and femininity to its final consequences, not only its logical and moral, but also its practical and pastoral, consequences.

(Theology of the Body. 123:2)

When couples, by means of recourse to contraception, separate these two meanings that God the Creator has inscribed in the being of man and woman and in the dynamism of their sexual communion, they act as "arbiters" of the divine plan and they "manipulate" and degrade human sexuality - and with it themselves and their married partner - by altering its value of "total" self-giving. Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality.

When, instead, by means of recourse to periods of infertility, the couple respect the inseparable connection between the unitive and procreative meanings of human sexuality, they are acting as "ministers" of God's plan and they "benefit from" their sexuality according to the original dynamism of "total" selfgiving, without manipulation or alteration.

(Familiaris Consortio. #32)

Discuss how using contraception is similar to using performance enhancing drugs in sport.

Complete the crossword puzzle below.