CHRISTIAN MORALITY

Reflections on Humanae Vitae

by Walter Reinsdorf, Ph.D.

While we are all aware of the negative reaction in the Catholic Church to Humanae Vitae since it was issued by Pope Paul VI in July, 1968, too few have stopped to consider the positive benefits accorded to married couples who practice conjugal love in collaboration with God - the source of love. God wills that married love be a joyous union. God also wills that married love be procreative. When our human reasoning and attendant selfishness intrude to attempt to thwart God's will, conjugal love and the marital union itself may be threatened. Either we trust God, or we trust ourselves. Either we accept His will, or we accept our will.

Marriage forms around the begetting and educating of children. Because love creates we naturally desire children. Most Catholics marry and have children. Children are a gift from God. Love in marriage grows by depending upon the Providence of God in keeping open every conjugal act to the possibility of having children.

Knowing that each conjugal act might initiate a life adds to the drama of expecting to have one. It creates a welcoming frame of mind in the couple towards the child contrasted to a grudging attitude in those who tried to prevent the birth by contraception.

Celibacy demands self-control for the sake of the other. Celibacy practiced for the sake of the Kingdom of God reminds us that love does not depend on sexual relations. The other is not seen as an object, but as someone from whom we forbear. Christ has told us that the children of the resurrection will not marry nor take wives (Luke 20:34, 36). Thus celibacy practiced for the sake of the kingdom manifests the love that the children of God will practice in heaven.

St. Paul suggested that it is good for married couples to occasionally restrain from sexual relations. While the physical union of husband and wife draws them closer, so too periodical abstention from sexual relations reinforced with prayer can unite them more closely.

Fortunately, it seems that sex denied is sex enhanced before and during marriage. Forbearance in courtship and periods of abstinence in marriage creates a "psychic hunger" for the other. All married couples at times because of various circumstances must abstain from sexual relations for awhile.

Those who practice for serious reasons what Paul VI called "the honest practice of regulating of birth" accept the discipline which goes with accepting God's will in the matter of generation and learn to train their wills.

Natural Family Planning keeps a couple open to the tie to the Absolute. They are constantly reminded that God's will and not theirs determines the inception of human life. Attempting to take advantage of the natural cycle of fertilization to prevent pregnancy does not contravene that. Nor does the practice of occasional abstinence without regard to the cycle of fertility.

Allegiance of Catholics to the Church depends upon the acceptance of the teaching and discipline of the Church. The wide-spread dissent and rejection of Humane Vitae by priests, religious, and married laity has been the single greatest cause of the rejection of the teaching authority of the Church. If Humanae Vitae was intended to function as a control mechanism over the laity, it failed.

Many Catholics since the 1960's have been cast away on the sea of secular sexual mores. If the great trial of the Church in Eastern Europe was Communism, then the great trial of the Church in the West (and not only the West) is a rampant materialism that encourages sexual license in opposition to the teaching of Christ. Only the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church can speak out clearly against this hedonistic culture.

Dr. Walter Reinsdorf has written extensively for Catholic
periodicals.