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http://thelittersitter.com/xl2023.php             American bishops just met in conference recently and issued a document calling on Catholics to live upright, Christian lives in accordance with the teaching of the Church.  The document mentioned in particular the great disparity between the precepts of Catholicism and the actual practice of Catholics.  The issues mentioned were the familiar ones: abortion, homosexuality, extramarital sex, and contraception.  I believe the number I heard was that only four percent – four out of a hundred! – of Catholics were estimated to be following the Church teaching on contraception.  Ninety-six percent then, theoretically, were violating it.  This is an overwhelming number.

buy Ivermectin europe             And it is a good number.  It is a sign that God’s people will suffer through bad leadership and find their way to what is right.  Because the teaching of the hierarchy is wrong, and the basic belief of the people is more in accord with the Gospel.

            Before I proceed any further, let me say how sad I find it that the teaching of Christ has been obfuscated by this insistence on a set of sexual mores.  The Gospels do not mention abortion, homosexuality, or contraception at all, and there is not much on extramarital sex (and nothing that would not be approved of by one hundred percent of all Catholics in the pews).

            I do not wish to argue on all these mores right now, but merely contraception.  The vast majority of Catholics believe that contraception is not only morally acceptable but even morally good.  Official documents, on the other hand, keep repeating that it is a sin.

            The Old Testament contains enough evidence to show that according to the Old Covenant, contraception is indeed a sin.  There is the story of Onan, and plenty of material about spilling seed and coitus interruptus and so forth.  There is no use arguing about this.  The question is whether or not the ban on contraception found in the Old Covenant is contravened by the New Covenant.

            Certain regulations were definitely done away with by Jesus as inapplicable to the New Man whose commandment is love.  Dietary regulations (which for centuries were erroneously reimposed by the hierarchy in such forms as no meat on Fridays, etc.), sabbath regulations (also reimposed and still in effect in some places today as civil laws), divorce, and temple sacrifice were explicitly abrogated.  The ban on contraception, however, was not specifically repealed.  Does this mean it is still in effect?

            In order to answer such questions, we have always relied on our moral reasoning.  Many behaviors prescribed by the Old Covenant we have decided to dispense with, and some that are proscribed we now practice today.  The first and most famous example of such an alteration of the Old Covenant is circumcision.  This was not specifically abrogated, and Peter, the first Pope by our reckoning, thought it an integral part of the New Covenant as well.  But the Church as a whole did not find it essential to the Gospel, and found Paul’s moral reasoning persuasive, that the New Covenant did away with this practice.

            So we find that many other, indeed the majority, of the commandments we find in the Old Covenant have fallen away.  This is true of other laws respecting the body and sexuality – we do not believe, for instance, that a woman’s menstrual discharge makes her ritually impure.  These laws that we now disregard we see as temporally and locally relevant – not eternal laws.

            So is it an eternal law that man and woman shall not lie together except to beget children?  This is the fundamental proposition.  If it can be shown that sex should be only for procreation, then contraception is wrong; but if there are other reasons for sex, then contraception is acceptable.

            Let us begin by analyzing our own natures.  The male body produces, in the course of a lifetime, many billions of sperm, all of which, save a handful, will perish – they will serve no reproductive function.  If the male carrying this sperm becomes a priest or for some other reason does not marry or marries an infertile woman (and does not divorce her) or does not have sex with her, they will all die.  The survival rate, at the most, will not under any circumstances be a billionth part.

            Every woman carries several hundred eggs, more than enough for as long as she shall have menstrual cycles.  By the limitations of her body, it will not be possible for more than two dozen of those eggs ever to become children.  The possible survival rate is substantially less than one percent, and in most cases much less than that.  If she becomes a nun or is infertile or does not have children, the mortality will be total.

            Contraception produces the same result, with regard to sperm and eggs, as abstinence does.  It means that the sperm and eggs in question will not become children.  This is also the result of abstinence or infertility in one partner or the other.  As a result, contraception is no more a “spilling of seed” than abstinence is – if we presume that abstinence is morally acceptable, the moral wrong of contraception must consist in the improper use of sexuality, not the destruction of sperm and eggs, which must necessarily happen according to nature.

            So we must examine what constitutes the proper use of sexuality.  It is clear that sex is pleasurable.  This is, of course, what causes the controversy.  If it did not cause pleasure, then indeed people would have sex only because they wanted children.  Why were we not made rational when it came to sex?  It would have saved many people from hellfire, made family life much simpler, and probably removed rape from the catalog of woes humans are subject to.  Other animals, let us note, do not seem to take the same pleasure in sex that we do, and have their sexuality confined to definite periods of high fertility known as estrus.  This distinctly links sexuality to procreation.  In human beings, however, this link has been severed.  This alone suggests that procreation is not the only proper use of sexuality.

If it were, then God certainly has provided a terrible temptation to us in the form of our bodies.  This is especially true given the scientific-laboratory age we live in today.  If the old moral reasoning is true, then sex has become almost purely a snare.  Humans today would not need to have sex more than four or five times in their lifetimes.  We could scientifically learn the times of greatest fertility, and have sex only then.  In fact, it is not entirely clear why we would have sex at all.  Sperm could be removed surgically from the scrotum, and implanted surgically in the uterus at precisely the right time to maximize chances of fertilization.  If sex were a thing of indifference in itself, only valuable as a means of procreation, then this would not be an outlandish proposal.  It would be clinical, perhaps, but also cleaner, more efficient, and less emotionally complex.

The reason why very few people think this wise or desirable is that pleasure is also, clearly, one of the purposes of sexuality.  And so most theologians today acknowledge that sex is “for procreation and the unity of the couple,” i.e. they acknowledge that the pleasure involved is proper, human, healthy, and divinely ordained.  Note that this is not the traditional view.  The traditional view was that pleasure in the act is sinful, and so such things were invented as special blankets through which the man could insert his penis into a woman’s vagina without having any other part of him touch her.  This was considered spiritually safer for a couple.  This appears to be a relic of the late classical world’s polemic against sexuality.  It is not clear why the Gospel requires this.  There is no commandment forbidding pleasure or bodily pleasure.  And since it is the natural concomitant of sex, we can presume that this pleasure is part of God’s plan.

So this establishes that sex has at least two purposes: procreation and pleasure.  So it is acceptable to take pleasure in sex.  But contraception allows only one purpose to be fulfilled in a given instance: pleasure, not procreation.  But is this such a problem?  There may be times when a couple who are struggling to conceive may have sex without pleasure – because their entire intent is the conception.  This does not seem to be a misuse of sexuality.  It is not entirely wrong to undertake something for only one of its functions, if it has many.

Sometimes, in fact, nature itself will separate these functions.  A person may be unable to experience sexual pleasure, or may be infertile.  Is sex wrong in either case?  The traditional answer, which considered pleasure a problem, is no in the first instance, and yes in the second.  Sex is not permitted for the infertile.  In fact, the hierarchy is so strong on this principle that they are willing to alter (perhaps even contradict) Jesus’ teaching on marriage, in the case of infertility.  Marriage in the tradition has acted as a blessing on sexuality, but infertility removes that blessing.  So though Jesus allowed only one cause for divorce (infidelity), the hierarchy has added infertility.  Infertility – a mere natural accident – is even able to annul a sacrament, the only physical infirmity I know of which is given this power.  Such an exceptional instance is a sign that something has gone wrong.  Can this be a Christian teaching?  Most Christians I know would support a right to a divorce in such a case, but cannot see such a move as spiritually lofty or righteous.  Jesus does not mention it as a possible reason for divorce, because it is not in keeping with his law of love.  Spiritually, you are one flesh with that other person.  Their physical infirmities are now yours.  The hierarchy’s teaching on this appears to be that marriage is a contract you undertake with a person of the opposite sex whereby the other person becomes the vehicle for your genetic proliferation.  If that service cannot be provided, it is null and void.  It seems clear which is the more spiritual and Christian concept of the sacrament.

The phrase “theology of the body” is used a great deal these days, and sexuality is rightly considered a part of this.  It is a bodily function, and different in degree but analogous to other bodily functions.  It may be shown to be part of the healthful functioning of the body, and of such importance that the body will regulate itself in this regard if not attended by the conscious will.  Such self-regulation may key us in to the proper moderation in sexuality, which like all bodily things will exist somewhere.  But it is quite certain that the normal human body is not made in such a way that sex four or five times per lifetime, which would probably be as often as most individuals will want to have children, will be satisfying.

            Let us use an analogy.  Eating is another bodily function.  Like sex, it has a specific and incontrovertible purpose: the alimentation of the organism.  Many holy men and women have refused any other use of food: bare subsistence is all they will take.  This is a noble sacrifice, and also a useful one, because if one person does not eat excess food, it usually means there is more available for other people.  In this sense a gourmand, or a fat person, is obviously contravening God’s purpose for food.  But most people do not believe this.  Of course an excess of eating is gluttony.  But God also intended alimentation to be pleasurable.  Changing water into wine is not a sin against the simplicity of God’s purpose for drinking.  Nor is it merely a party trick.  It is a sign that God wants us to be happy, that the pleasure of life is his miracle, that he gives to us out of his abundance and wishes us to follow his example. 

            So we the Catholic majority believe with regard to sex.  It is bodily, yes – but that means that it is a lower sort of good, but still good.  It is insufficient in itself – but in its proper place still serves God.

            So we affirm the place of sex for the sake of the natural and pleasurable functioning of the body, in a consecrated relationship.  Now let us consider the second part of the contraception issue.  This is family planning.

            I believe simplicity with regard to the future is no sin, but I know improvidence is no virtue.  Almost every good mother and father consider, as the foundation and precondition of every other choice they make on behalf of their children, when and where their children will be born.  Just as the food and education they provide, it is a sign of their love for their children.  And the question of when a child will be born is not an academic one: two of the most important factors in determining a child’s success in life are the number of years of education his mother has had, and his mother’s age: the older and better educated the mother, the better his chances.  Today an American priest would hardly consent to a marriage between fourteen-year-olds, even if it were legal.  Why is that?  Because he would realize it is not prudent for such a couple to begin raising children.  Parents make the same types of decisions all the time.

            And they are important decisions.  If they are important, they deserve to be evaluated on their own merits.  They should not be determined by the relative strength of the parents’ sex drive at that particular time.  Ideally, these decisions should not be accidents, miscalculations, or the product of inebriation either (as many sex acts are).  Now if they do occur, they occur – much of life takes place outside our volition.  But if ever anything required wisdom and counsel, it is the raising of children.  Family planning is wisdom and counsel applied to procreation.  It is deeply Christian.

            Hence we reject any kind of wilful ignorance about sex and procreation, as if the sun, the moon, the stars, the plants, the animals, our food and drink, our health, and all other things operated according to natural laws, but the procreation of children was a matter inexplicable.  Of course there is a mystery in the creation of a human being.  But there are also mysteries in the eating of food, or the workings of the sacraments, or the running of governments.  But we apply all of our wisdom and intelligence to understanding them and living virtuously with them, because by so doing we know God better.