I grew up in a Catholic family. I mean the kind of Catholic where my mom dragged me by the hair to Confession just because I picked the neighbor's apple tree bare for a rock fight with other neighbors. (I was out of rocks.) But despite my upbringing, I turned into a hardcore agnostic (if that's not an oxymoron.)
I would've been an atheist but I thought I was smarter than them too. Needless to say, the older I got, stealing apples for rock fights was the least of my transgressions. I went to college because I wanted to make a lot of money. I went to a Catholic college because I wanted to marry an Irish-Catholic accounting major. I know it sounds weird but I didn't like the girls I found around myself at the time and thought college would open me up to a wider field.
It was a Jesuit college so I wasn't in too much danger of getting brain-slammed by any orthodoxy but it happened anyway. It started when I accidentally read the Church Fathers and oops I became a Catholic. I know this sounds funny to say but I really didn't see that coming. Believe me when I say I would've much rather become something exotic like a Zoroastrian but instead, my leap of faith brought me exactly where I started. (I don't have mad hops, I guess.)
But at that point I was a Catholic but not really into all the rules. I was heavy into the whole primacy of conscience thing which meant for me that I could pretty much do whatever I wanted but I could still feel holy about it.
A week into my senior year, I met my Irish-Catholic accounting major dream girl --the girl I came to college to find. I knew the second I saw her that she was The One. She, however, needed a bit more convincing. But I wore her down and convinced her to go on a date with me. And that's the week I accidentally read Humane Vitae.
Oh nooooooooo!
Think about it - young man escapes clutches of evil restrictive psycho-Catholic parents and mistakenly reads Humanae Vitae and transforms into evil restrictive psycho-Catholic.
I still remember reading it in the library, rereading it immediately, slowly putting it down, walking outside into the slightly chilly night, and being at once so excited to know that I had just read something that I knew in my heart to be truth and also being completely outraged that I picked this moment, literally days after I met the woman of my dreams to read the truth. Darn it! Thanks a lot Humanae Vitae! Thanks a lot.
I recently remembered this and told it to Mary Eberstadt, the author of of "Adam and Eve after the Pill." I'm not name dropping on you. I'm bringing this up because in her book she has this great chapter on how Humanae Vitae has proved prophetic in so many ways. She's got lots of great chapters but they're not the ones I'm telling you about right now. We laughed about how stupid I was in college and how much Humanae Vitae changed my life. Eberstadt called Humanae Vitae "the most reviled document of the last 50 years." I can honestly say it was the most reviled document of my senior year at college.
She said a few years ago she realized that she hadn't read the document before but when she did, she said she was "blown away" by its prophetic nature. And the fact is that my unwanted acceptance of Humanae Vitae has made me happier in the long run than I've ever been in my life. Happier than I ever thought I could be. But what cultural damage has been done by ignoring it? Eberstadt told me sadness, confusion, and hurt are the rampant symptoms of the sexual revolution.
And what's worse is that you're not allowed to acknowledge any of it. Sure, you can say you're having trouble finding "the one" but you're not allowed to wonder aloud if perhaps the reason for it is that you already slept with "the one's" roommate.
Think about, are we truly happier, more fulfilled by by this sexual free-for-all that's turned into a cultural cage match between the sexes? I don't think so. I see all the hurt and confusion out there and I think that could've been me but for a night at the library where I stumbled onto a papal document.
All this is my way of saying that you should read Humanae Vitae and Mary Eberstadt's book while you're at it. I don't think I've ever read a book that shows more clearly how upside down we've gotten on so many things on premarital sex, contraception and porn among other wonderful things. I don't mean to turn this into a commercial but you can buy it by clicking here.
I want to thank Mary Eberstadt for writing it. And now I'm going to take a walk outside in the slightly chilly night and thank God He led me to the library that night so many years ago now. Oh, and I guess for leading me to my Irish-Catholic accountant wife too. (In case she's reading.) And I'll sign off with an apology to my old neighbors just in case they read this newspaper. I'm sorry I cleaned out your apple tree. I feel comfortable saying this because I'm pretty sure the statute of limitations has expired. And I already confessed it.
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Did you give up paragraph breaks for Lent? ‘Cuz it’s Easter now…
Awesome! I can relate in so many, many ways, but I’m with Margaret….Lent’s over, buddy boy, how ‘bout hitting ‘Enter’ once in a while?
I also read Humanae Vitae in college coming into it with the same “theology” and had virtually the same experience. I was also amazed at how short and readable it is. I went to a liberal public university with a Newman Center that was definitely left of center, but someone had the gall to put out some of those little Knights of Columbus booklets about the faith. I’m so glad they did.
I wish now that the encyclical had made its way to me when I was younger…
I sometimes have the same thoughts, Quo Vadis, but then I think maybe I wasn’t ready to “hear” it? God, is good - He pursued me and now I actually get it ;-)and it seems so do you, my brother.
Great article - thanks. To the paragraph police - if you email the article to yourself, the paragraphing of the article will miraculously take place :-)
LOL: “It started when I accidentally read the Church Fathers and oops I became a Catholic.”
Mine came after two perfect children, a boy and a girl, two years apart. Then 2 IUDs and three years later, Humane Vitae. Husband came home to a wife in a puddle on the floor. The rest is history, four more beautiful children and a whole passel of grandkids, mostly boys. Which one would I give up for an IUD and freedom???
Methinks Humane Vitae saved my everlasting life. And showed me God’s glory.
BRAVO! I especially enjoyed “...being at once so excited to know that I had just read something that I knew in my heart to be truth and also being completely outraged that I picked this moment, literally days after I met the woman of my dreams to read the truth. Darn it!” I could hear the different inflections on the two thank yous after this also and cracked up. Ignorance may be bliss but it can kill you. I wish Humanae Vitae were required reading for all people in the medical field.
I know that feeling when you read something that your heart knows as truth. I was in a group that was reading and discussing Fides et Ratio,and I marveled at these great theologian brains not comprehending what the Holy Father had written when as I read it it was like someone had given words to what my heart and soul always knew but my brain couldn’t translate into words.
This really does strike a chord with me, and so do comments on how we didn’t “get” Humanae Vitae sooner, because we weren’t ready to hear it. It’s only when the student is ready then the teacher will come. For me, it was a priest telling my fiance and I telling us why cohabitation was sinful, and our taking his advice. Then came an NFP class, and what should they have included in our information packet but Humanae Vitae.
How does one “stumble upon” Humanae Vitae in the library? That’s funny. I have actually never read the whole thing. I guess you could say that I was sold on the church’s teachings with the “cliff notes”—someone gave me a pamphlet. The pamphlet also demonstrated how protestant churches were also against birth control up until Margaret Sanger’s revolution. I realize I need to take things slow with those who have not yet been enlightened to the beauty of being open to life, because my own initial reaction was “You’ve got to be freakin’-dark-ages-kidding-me!” Oh dear Lord, thank GOODNESS, you sent me that busy body with the pamphlet! My children, (who have come roughly every three years for the past 26 years) are my treasures.
@ Ed—not trying to be the paragraph police. It’s just as originally posted, the piece read like an over-caffeinated manic stream-of-consciousness rant rather than the heartfelt “conversion story” on contraception that it truly is.
Thank you for writing this article.
I am a psycho-Catholic parent.
If you don’t believe me,ask any one of our nine
children.
You have given me hope that my children may one day
accidently find the Catholicism I tried to impart to them, make it their own and they ,too, may become psycho-Catholic parents to my grandchildren.
Wonderful article.
Happy Easter
Loved this. As a single person born Protestant and converted Catholic, I proclaim the joys of abstinence. Just wish I’d been ready for that message to absorb and assimmilate a few years before it did.
God bless all bloggers on NCR & thanks for being on Facebook where I can read you all daily.
I have given a copy of Humanae Vitae to the second year confirmation class that I teach(The students are in 10th grade). I highlighted sections 14 & 15. I am hoping that it will help at least a few of the kids and their families. I included an article by Janet Smith and made the topic into a separate class so that I could go over it with them…..I hope it helps!!
And for the dissent:
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Most people believe that the Catholic Church thinks that sex is wrong and dirty. This is completely incorrect, as a brief reading of Humanae Vitae will show.
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Instead, the Catholic Church puts sex on a pedestal. Anything less than perfect, unitive and procreative sex is sinful. The problem is that this view fails to see the value of any sexual acts that fall short of this ideal. The Catholic Church sees sex as all-or-nothing, either a gift of God or intrinsically evil, which does not match the experience of many couples. In other words, there is value in sex with contraceptives, lesser value, perhaps, but value nevertheless, and the Catholic Church denies this, focusing on what is lost instead of what is gained.
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The Catholic Church’s position on abortion and sterilization (either permanent or temporary, like the pill) stand on their own. But their teaching against pure contraception (condoms, withdrawal, etc.) is a teaching in search of a justification.
OK, I’ll bite.
“Anything less than perfect, unitive and procreative sex is sinful.”
I’m not sure exactly what the argument is here. If by “perfect sex” you mean sexual relations which fall short of the Church’s teaching on what this should be, then yes, this is sinful. But then anything falling short of “perfect eating” (gluttony) or “perfect honesty” (lying) or “perfect charity” (selfishness) is also sinful.
There is a difference with sex, however, as you suggest. The marriage act has a built-in significance, so acting in a manner which deliberately frustrates this purpose is wrong.
What the Church teaches is that sex always be open to life - in other words, be true to its nature - otherwise the act is sinful. It isn’t clear to me how something (contraceptive) which negates the God-given purpose of an action (sexual relations) can have value.
You say that this “does not match the experience of many couples.” It also is not clear to me how or why the experience of couples is determinative of the Church’s teaching. Many Catholics have a very hard time seeing the sense of the Church’s teaching on the value of suffering. But then, it’s a divine teaching, so maybe that shouldn’t be surprising? Many teachings go against the grain of our human tendencies and expectations. Christ himself, after teaching that divorce is forbidden (something that certainly did not agree with the “experience” of the disciples!), said, “Not all can accept this word,* but only those to whom that is granted.”
If nothing else, one could always posit the experience of other couples which finds tremendous value in the teaching of Humanae Vitae. Who are you going to believe?
I really want to make Humane Vitae go viral, and maybe we’ll see more of these happily unwanted conversions lol.
@Sam Schmitt: If it is a divine teaching, then the Church should teach it as such. The prohibition on divorce and remarriage, for example, is a divine teaching, but this prohibition is limited to Christians. But they do not. They teach that contraception is contrary to the natural law, which means it is wrong for everyone, not just Catholics.
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The Catholic Church can define what is and is not sacramental however it wants. And if a sexual act is non-sacramental, that does not necessarily make it sinful any more than consuming non-consecrated bread and wine is sinful. But case that pure contraception is contrary to the natural law is weak at best.
@Jim: The Church does teach marriage is sacramental. It assumes all marriages, whether Catholic, Christian, or otherwise, are valid. It does not apply that “rule” only to Catholics: ask anyone who has been married outside of the Church, but is now seeking to get married within the Church. Or am I missing the point of your argument?
Also, the Church teaches that sexual union between spouses is an extension of the marital vows, so yes it, in a sense, teaches that sex is sacramental. See Christopher West’s “Good News About Sex and Marriage”, or pretty much any of his books. He writes quite extensively on the topic.
I don’t understand your argument about pure contraception and natural law, either here or in your previous post. Mr. West explains the Church’s position quite well regarding frustrating the natural end of sexual congress by whatever means.
And I don’t know if it’s a sin per se, but Catholics are in fact to refrain from consuming bread and wine in the context of Communion if it has not be consecrated (i.e. not Catholic, but in another church). I mean, I can eat bread and drink wine with my supper all I want, but within the context of the Mass, that’s different.
If the Catholic Church treated the marriages of non-Christians the same as Christians, we wouldn’t have the Petrine Privilege. Remember that non-Catholic Christians and Catholics who marry outside the Church are still Christians.
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Without resorting to sacramental theology, the Church has no justification for the position that frustrating the “natural end” of sexual congress is sinful.
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What is natural? Naturally, people can do all sorts of things with their genitals, which I will not describe in this post. If a married couple chooses to give mutual pleasure to each other this way, where is the harm? Abortion ends a life and sterilization damages the body, but where is the harm in a married couple using a condom for a mutually enjoyable encounter? The Church has no good answer for this question.
The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of Life. To contracept is saying to the HS that He cannot give life and the spouse is not giving himself/herself completely, ergo fertility, in the act so that something is withheld and the act is less than what God intended: the complete self-giving of the spouses.
Jim, where is the harm in self-pleasure? Or pre-marital sex? There are lots of things about which we can ask “Where’s the harm?” But just because the harm is not as readily obvious doesn’t mean it’s not there. There is a very subtle and very real harm that comes from self-pleasure, and a very subtle and very real harm to both partners that comes from using contraception. It’s a rejection of the holistic nature of the sexual union, demoting it to something akin to mutual self-pleasure.
I am happy that the Church places such a premium on sex, raising it on a pedestal, as you say. That’s because sex itself is a pretty deep and amazing thing, a foreshadowing of the beatific vision, and should be taken seriously, especially since it is so easily abused. The philosopher Dr. Peter Kreeft has a neat (and extremely readable) article that talks about the spiritual dimensions of sex here: http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/sex-in-heaven.htm.
Anyway, my experiences have taught me to trust the Church even if I can’t understand a teaching at first. Understanding comes with time — usually when I sense how much healthier my soul has been since I followed the teaching.
“...But their teaching against pure contraception (condoms, withdrawal, etc.) is a teaching in search of a justification.”
Hi, Jim! I encourage you to read this article, written by Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D, for the National Catholic Bioethics Center, titled, “NFP and the Telos of Sex.”
I know you did not specifically bring up NFP, but your objections to the church’s teaching about condoms & “withdrawal” somehow made me think of the analogy he describes in this article. God bless!
http://www.ncbcenter.org/page.aspx?pid=1124
The book mentioned in the article is a tour de force. Ms. Eberstat’s rhetoric, analysis, and examples are spot-on. I keep praying for one of those accidental moments when I can actually argue with someone, because I fee do well educated to be able to take on the feminists, the jezebells, and the chauvinists. It’s an amazing read for more than just Catholics, especially since most of her references come from secular studies and data.
“It isn’t clear to me how something (contraceptive) which negates the God-given purpose of an action (sexual relations) can have value.”
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To me either. It’s not about perfection…it’s a bit like being offered a filet mignon, and turning it down for McDonald’s.
“To me either. It’s not about perfection…it’s a bit like being offered a filet mignon, and turning it down for McDonald’s. “
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But when the filet is not available or too expensive, there is nothing morally wrong with eating at McDonald’s.
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This is especially true when the couple is tracking signs of fertility and having natural relations during days of infertility. I don’t know how many NFP conversations I have read where the couple is observing long periods of possible fertility and the extended abstinence is leading to a serious strain in their marriage. While natural is certainly better, threatening these couples with hellfire for using a condom does not strengthen anyone’s marriage or relationship with God.
We live in a culture where sex has become a right that we deserve rather than a privilege. Sexual relations is a privilege given to us by God to use within matrimony.
Jim, I would fall into the category of those you’ve had conversations with about couples “observing long periods of possible fertility and extended abstinence” and I’ll admit, it has been a source of strain in my marriage in the past. However, I have come to recently understand that just because I want sexual relations with my wife, that does not mean that I NEED to have it, or worse, that my wife should have sex with me just because I want it.
The devil has an uncanny way of taking a good and twisting it into something self-serving, wrong, and just plain evil, while still giving the appearance of being good. He has done this masterfully with sex. You are right, the Church places sex on a pedestal, right where it belongs. It is sacred and holy, a foretaste of heaven, and should not be used to fulfill selfish desires.
Using condoms, or any other form of artificial contraceptive, places a barrier between you, your spouse, AND God. It is effectively saying to your spouse that you want all of her except her fertility and it is saying to God that you do not trust Him to do what is best for you and your marriage. Artificial contraceptives cannot strengthen a marriage or a relationship with God. In fact, they weaken both.
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