Local Church

July 20, 2006

John Paul II and Humanae Vitae

By Katrina Zeno
Special to The Catholic Sun

Want to ruin your next Thanksgiving dinner? Try dropping this line in the midst of the conversation: “Did you know John Paul II said the conjugal act artificially deprived of its procreative capacity also ceases to be an act of love? Pass the potatoes please...”

This is guaranteed to be a conversation stopper. In fact, you might get booted out of the dinner party. This would surprise Pope Paul VI who said in his 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae, “We believe that the human beings of our day are particularly capable of seeing the deeply reasonable and human character of this fundamental principle.” What principle was he referring to? Preserving the innermost structure of the conjugal act in which the union of husband and wife is inseparably connected with the capacity to conceive new life.

Our technological age, however, regards this inseparable connection as an imposition. Fertility can and should be controlled. Therefore, the Church should get with the times and revise her teaching to acknowledge that contraceptive intercourse is as natural as a body builder taking steroids. It enhances performance, not detracts from it.

‘Theology of the Body’

The key issue is not performance, but love. In a collection of reflections known as the “Theology of the Body,” John Paul II stated that we need an ever “clearer discovery of God’s plan for human love” since “the one and only true good of the human person consists in putting this divine plan into practice.”

Christianity, as the expression of the divine plan, is not a religion of separation, but of integration. We see this supremely in the Incarnation where divinity is united with humanity; it is also inscribed in human nature where body is united with spirit.

In the most intimate love expression between a husband and wife, it’s clearly “reasonable” that God would not design separation as the goal, but union.

“The human body,” John Paul II says, “is not only the field of reactions of a sexual character, but it is… the means of the expression of man as an integral whole… which reveals itself through the ‘language of the body.’”

In other words, we express the fullness of who we are through our bodies. Our rational freedom allows us to express the whole truth of our person through body and spirit working together.

Nowhere is this body-spirit integration more critical than in the marital union. John Paul II says the conjugal act perfects the consent husband and wife gave to each other at the altar. What happens at the altar can’t be separated from what happens in the bedroom.

Why? Because marriage is a sacrament. It’s a sign of the indissoluble union between husband and wife. At the altar, bride and groom publicly promise the whole of their life to each other: “for better or worse; in sickness and in health….”

When they enter into conjugal union, John Paul II says, they are re-proposing the vows they made on their wedding day. They are saying again with their bodies what they said at the altar, “I give the whole of myself to you.”

As if that wasn’t enough, marriage is also a visible sign of Christ’s love for the Church. As John Paul II reminded us: “The spousal relationship that unites spouses, husband and wife, must… help us to understand the love that unites Christ with the Church.”

In this love, Christ gives Himself totally to the Church — both body and spirit — to bring about our holiness, our redemption.

Redemptive and spousal

Marital union is designed by God to mirror the wedding vows and Christ’s love for the Church. The “language of the body” expressed by husband and wife in every aspect of conjugal life is designed by God to say, “I give myself totally and irrevocably to you. I hold nothing back, including my fertility.”

John Paul II goes a step further: Christ’s love, and therefore marital love, is redemptive as well as spousal. Spousal love is designed by God to be a means of grace. Those are humbling and thought-provoking words — to think that spouses can be a channel of the very life of God to each other and to a brand new human life through one-flesh union.

Does this require heroic sacrifice? Absolutely. The difficulty in giving up contraception is, ironically, the struggle to integrate body and spirit. Without recourse to contraception, husband and wife must practice periodic abstinence in order to postpone pregnancy.

This requires self-mastery, i.e., the ability to master, control and orient our sexual impulses so that we open ourselves to the deeper and more mature values inherent in human and divine love.

‘Total self-giving’

Ultimately, such a life in which union and procreation, body and spirit, spousal love and redemptive love are integrated and held in inseparable esteem matures in fully developed personalities enriched with spiritual values.

Deep, personal communion is fostered from the breakfast table to the dinner dishes especially when abstinence is the order of the day. Total self-giving in the bedroom becomes total, redemptive self-giving in every aspect of daily life.

That indeed is something every human being is capable of seeing as deeply reasonable — and fulfilling.

Katrina J. Zeno is an international speaker and coordinator of the John Paul II Resource Center for Theology of the Body and Culture for the Diocese of Phoenix. For more information, visit www.wttm.org.