Sex and Contraception: Straight Talk about It

Straight Talk about Contraception

By Fr John Bartunek, L.C., S.T.D.

Contents Sometimes Things Go Wrong ............................................................................................................................... 1 Facing the Tough Truth .........................................................................................................................................2 God‟s View of Sex ................................................................................................................................................2 It‟s Not Easy to Love .............................................................................................................................................3 Calling a Spade a Spade ........................................................................................................................................4 Pre-Marital Sex? ....................................................................................................................................................4 Auto-Erotic Sex? ...................................................................................................................................................5 Homosexual Sex? ..................................................................................................................................................5 Sex with Contraception? ........................................................................................................................................5 Sex with Natural Family Planning (NFP)? ............................................................................................................5 Aren‟t NFP and Contraception the Same? .............................................................................................................6 The Proof is in the Pudding ...................................................................................................................................6 Questions for Small Group Discussion: .................................................................................................................7 Questions for Discussion and/or Personal Reflection: ........................................................................................... 7

Sometimes Things Go Wrong Most of us are familiar with the often tragic and always painful consequences of eating disorders like anorexia, binge eating, and bulimia. Perhaps we‟ve suffered through them ourselves, or have friends or relatives suffering through them right now. In each one of them, a perfectly normal, natural, necessary human activity – eating – becomes disordered, distorting the natural process of nutrition. God created us with bodies, and our bodies need nourishment. God also created food to supply that nourishment, and he gave us the sense of taste and smell so that eating would be not only mechanical but also pleasurable. Eating disorders throw that natural, God-designed process out of whack. Those suffering from bulimia, for example, enjoy bouts of voracious eating and then try to get rid of the calories by inducing vomiting, misusing laxatives, or using some other extreme method.

Usually these eating disorders both stem from and aggravate a deeper personal problem, maybe physiological, maybe psychological or social, maybe spiritual, or maybe a combination.

No one claims that eating disorders are “OK.” No one says “Hey, if it‟s what they want, let „em do it – don‟t impose your views on them.” Experts and non-experts

alike recognize that when people unnaturally separate eating from nutrition, when they can‟t keep a balance between eating and health, something is wrong. And for the sake of their physical survival, as well as for their emotional and spiritual happiness, we do everything we can to help them get back on track.

Facing the Tough Truth There is a unanimous consensus about eating disorders; but there is only one voice speaking out about sex disorders: the voice of the Catholic Church. Only the Catholic Church has had the courage and the love to continue speaking out against every kind of sexual abuse – not only the most egregious, like rape, incest, pedophilia, and sexually transmitted diseases. Only the Catholic Church, guided by the Holy Spirit through the teaching of its popes and bishops, has never stopped announcing Christ‟s beautiful and joyful vision for human sexuality and denouncing the lies that try to cover up sex disorders – which are much more destructive than eating disorders, because they never affect only one person.

Contraception is one of these sex disorders. But we can‟t understand why until we understand God‟s vision for our sexuality.

God’s View of Sex When God created the human race, he created us male and female, man and woman. In other words, sexuality was in God‟s plan from the very beginning. As a matter of fact, he invented it, just as he invented eating. But sexuality is a much nobler activity than eating, much more important and beautiful in God‟s eyes.

The complementarity – biological, emotional, and spiritual – of man and woman was God‟s way of calling every human person to the highest vocation, a vocation that none of the other animals share: the vocation to love. In a sense, God created us incomplete; only when we give ourselves fully to another – and that is love – do we achieve our full human potential and accomplish our task of imaging God, who created us “in his image and likeness.”

God himself, as he has revealed to us, is a relationship of love, a family. The Father eternally loves the Son and pours himself into the Son; the Son eternally loves the Father and gives himself back to the Father; and their love is so dynamic, their self-giving so complete, that it is personified in the Holy Spirit, the living bond of divine love.

That love of the Trinity, that divine family, is the model for human sexuality, for the love of husband and wife that gives rise to each human family.

Just as God‟s love is complete and selfless, so the spousal love of husband and wife is called to be complete and selfless, to be a total self-giving: physical, emotional, and spiritual. In living out that vocation to love, through good times and through bad, a husband and wife achieve meaning and fulfillment, discover their own identities as children of God, and manifest God‟s glory. The pleasure of sexual intimacy is part of that manifestation, part of God‟s plan, as is the begetting of children.

Here is how the Catechism sums up this vision of sexuality: “Sexuality, by means of which man and woman give themselves to one another through the acts which are proper and exclusive to spouses, is not something simply biological, but concerns the innermost being of the human person as such. It is realized in a truly human way only if it is an integral part of the love by which a man and woman commit themselves totally to one another until death” (#2361).

That is God‟s vision, in a nutshell, for human sexuality. You can see how beautiful it is: much more positive and dynamic than what most of us have ever heard before. Far from something dirty and shameful, God designed human sexuality to be a vehicle of his grace. Another quotation from the Catechism emphasizes this truth: “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.

Sexuality is a source of joy and pleasure” (#2362).

It’s Not Easy to Love Because of original sin, however, which weakened our ability to govern our natural tendencies, living out God‟s plan for sexuality is no simple task. We can easily let our God-given sexual drive get out of control; in fact, of all our natural urges, the sexual urge is one of the most difficult to harness; precisely because it touches the very core of our vocation as human persons, it especially was affected by original sin. Advertisers, TV and music producers, Web masters, and moviemakers have caught on to this, and use provocative images and music to manipulate us into buying their products. This in turn has the side effect of giving our society an unhealthy obsession with sex.

Therefore, unless we make a constant effort to practice Christian virtue in all aspects of our lives, unless we take full advantage of God‟s grace through a deep prayer life and a conscious, heartfelt participation in the sacraments of the Eucharist and confession, unless we have the courage to avoid situations that we know will lead us into temptation, we will simply not be able to follow God‟s plan and experience the joy and peace of sexual maturity. Instead, we will fall into sex disorders, which, like eating disorders, distort God‟s natural design, and, also like eating disorders, have destructive consequences.

Calling a Spade a Spade In general, though, sex disorders are harder for us to identify than eating disorders, mainly because our society encourages, praises, and glorifies them. This is possible because the damage caused by sex disorders is often more hidden than damage caused by eating disorders, while the fleeting pleasure they offer is more intense.

These hidden repercussions of sex disorders can lead to unstable family life, sterility, and alienation from God; they inhibit our ability to have lasting friendships, to find true meaning, to fulfill our vocation to love; they inflate our selfishness, egoism, and pride. These kinds of repercussions are less tangible – at least in the short run – than the excesses associated with eating disorders, but that doesn‟t make them less real.

The common denominator of these sexual disorders is that they break apart God‟s unified plan for our sexuality; they separate what God has joined together: spousal love, sexual pleasure, and fertility. In this sense, they are all unnatural and degrading, treating people as if they were things.

Pre-Marital Sex? Pre-marital sex is the most common sex disorder. It, along with adultery, is unnatural because it separates the physical and emotional intimacy of sex from the total personal commitment signified by that intimacy. The language of sexual intimacy says, “I am giving myself totally to you; you can trust me completely,” but when that language is not backed up by total commitment, a commitment proper to a husband and wife, it is a lie. This abuse is even more pronounced in cases of rape or date rape, which violate the meaning of human sexuality and human freedom.

Auto-Erotic Sex? Masturbation and pornography are disordered because they separate the pleasure God linked to intimacy from the interpersonal relationship that that pleasure was meant to enhance. Human sexuality is God‟s call to self-giving, not to selfindulgence.

Homosexual Sex? Homosexual sex is disordered because it closes sexual intimacy off from the gift of new life and contradicts natural sexual complementarity.

Sex with Contraception?

Artificial contraception is also a sex disorder, even within marriage. It is defined as the use of mechanical devices (like condoms), chemical alterations (like the pill), or medical procedures (like sterilization) to prevent conception from taking place as a result of sexual intercourse.

It cuts sexual acts off from their natural and proper end of giving new life, and it contradicts the total self-giving that forms the bond between spouses; it makes spouses into liars. It says, essentially, “I love everything about you – except your fertility.” Contraceptive sex is selfish sex; it‟s selfish pleasure without the gift of self; it‟s like bulimia, which wants the pleasure of eating without the consequence of calories. It treats the spouse not as a person, but as an object of pleasure. And that in turn erodes true love. Contraception can easily turn into marital suicide.

Sex with Natural Family Planning (NFP)?

Some people accuse the Catholic Church of contradicting itself by condemning artificial contraception, but allowing Natural Family Planning.

Natural Family Planning is the method of planning or avoiding pregnancy by observation of the naturally occurring signs of the fertile and infertile phases of the menstrual cycle; when married couples have a real need to regulate their births – a real need, not just a fashionable desire – the Church recommends using this method, which, contrary to popular misconceptions, is tested, scientific, and effective when followed properly.

Aren’t NFP and Contraception the Same?

Church critics say that artificial contraception is no different from Natural Family Planning. They are wrong.

First of all they forget that Natural Family Planning is equally effective for achieving pregnancy as for avoiding it.

But more importantly, artificial contraception treats fertility like a disease instead of a gift from God; it treats new life like a consumer product, not as a natural, Goddesigned and given fruit of spousal love. It does not respect God‟s vision for human sexuality; it does not respect oneself as a sexual person; it does not respect the other person. But Natural Family Planning respects them all. It maintains openness and communication between spouses, fosters charity, self-control and mutual esteem, and joyfully reveres in its entirety the wonderful gift of human life and sexuality.

The Proof is in the Pudding It is no coincidence that among couples who use Natural Family Planning, divorce and separation rates tend to be well below the average.1 God invented sexuality; when we respect his plan for it, we are healthier and happier not only in the life to come, but even here on this earth.

The Church‟s condemnation of artificial contraception is neither irrational nor prudish; it is the application of Christ‟s own vision of sexuality to an age-old temptation that modern technology has made much more tempting.

Artificial contraception is one of many sexual disorders that tend to offer temporary and superficial satisfaction in exchange for long-lasting frustration and broken relationships.

Perhaps it‟s unfair to refer to them as “disorders.” “Disorder” implies a lack of personal responsibility. It may be more accurate to call them what the Church has always called them: sins. That‟s an uncomfortable word, true, but in a world where sexual “disorders” are the “order” of the day, maybe we need someone to jostle us out of our comfort zone.

1

See the summary of Dr Robert Lerner‟s study on couples using NFP here: http://www.physiciansforlife.org/content/view/193/36/

Questions for Small Group Discussion: 1. What struck you most in this essay and why? What did you learn that you didn‟t know before?

2. Why does contraception introduce a germ of selfishness and untruth into the spousal relationship? How have you witnessed this sad fact in real relationships?

3. How do the Church‟s teachings on various aspects of human sexuality defend our dignity and integrity as spiritual persons?

4. How have you seen the “hidden damage” caused by sex disorders in real lives? On the brighter side, how have you seen the integrity and wholeness of married couples whose gift of self is total and true?

Questions for Discussion and/or Personal Reflection: 1. Are any of the Church‟s teachings in this area of sexuality difficult for you to accept? Which ones and why?

2. How can you resist the messages of a culture that makes what is abnormal seem normal and accepted?

3. Why are we afraid to call sins by their proper name? Why is it a disservice to the person to refer to them as “disorders”? How does it close them off from forgiveness in the sacrament of confession?