Morals and Marriage; The Catholic Background to Sex, by T. G. Wayne
Published: Longmans, Green and Co., 1936
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MORALS AND MARRIAGE
The Catholic Background to Sex
by T. G. WAYNE
Inter virum et uxorem maxima amiatia esse videtur; adunantur enim
non solum in actu carnalis copulae, quae etiam inter bestias
quamdam suavem amicitiam facit, sed ad totius domesticae
conversationis consortium.
--ST. THOMAS AQUINAS.
1936, LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
Nihil obstat:
EDOUARDUS CAN. MAHONEY, S.TH.D.
Censor deputatus.
Imprimatur:
JOSEPH BUTT,
Vic. Gen.
Westmonasterii,
die 27a JUNIS, 1936.
CONTENTS:
PREFACE, BY A PRIEST
I. INTRODUCTION
II. HUMAN RELATION
III. SACRAMENTAL CONTRACT
IV. MORALITY OF INTERCOURSE
V. OBLIGATION
VI. ABUSE
VII. FRUITFULNESS
VIII. FAITHFULNESS
IX. GRACE
PREFACE
BY A PRIEST
THOSE who are engaged in the work of education, and who thus come into
intimate contact with contemporary family life, are well aware that
interest in sex is a characteristic of the modern outlook, and that, owing
to the complications and false standards of much of our life as it is
lived today, the right conduct of married life cannot be left to the
guidance of unaided instinct. Undue secrecy about these matters is
dangerous, especially to-day, because the atmosphere of the world in which
we live often leads to the distortion of truth by isolating the idea of
sex from its proper context in married love and all that the true
companionship of marriage implies. Experience shows that many marriages,
which might have been ideal, are damaged by lack of knowledge and
especially by the failure to realize that sex instincts and powers are an
integral part of the wider gift of that human love which is the true basis
of marriage.
It is no longer possible, even if it were desirable, to keep sex questions
shrouded in a veil of mystery; they are openly discussed and written
about, often on no solid foundation of principle. For this reason alone it
is imperative that sound Christian teaching should be made accessible to
those who need it, whether for their own lives or for the successful
guidance of others.
It is with this object in view that "Morals and Marriage" has been written
by a professor of theology and doctor of Catholic philosophy. Those who
are best acquainted with the many problems which surround this difficult
question will, I think, be in no doubt as to the success with which they
have been tackled. The book appears under a pseudonym and the preface is
anonymous solely in deference to the judgment of an authority, and not
from fear of any irregularity of doctrine, for these pages have passed
under this head the scrutiny of more than the usual number of theological
revisers.
I. INTRODUCTION
"HAVE you not heard that he who made man from the beginning made them male
and female? For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall
cleave to his wife, and they two shall be in one flesh." So our Lord
stated the primary force of sex.
This bodily and spiritual power is made by God in all its processes,
expressions, duties, joys: so necessary a part of human nature that
although conventions may complicate, sentimentality may cheapen and sin
may spoil, this relationship of man and woman must always form, not indeed
the whole of life, yet a principal human interest.
For various reasons, however, there is a natural aversion from discussing
the subject in public, and sometimes custom conspires to suppress the
subject. Undue secrecy enhances curiosity and allows unhealthy habits to
develop and establish themselves unchecked by proper knowledge. The sex
impulse is too deep and far-reaching and beset by such dangers that
reticence should not be allowed to continue causing the ignorance from
which has come much human suffering. Though premature knowledge is not
desirable, information may come too late, and then the consequences may be
really damaging. Instruction about the Christian conception of sex and the
physical and psychological outlines is often a grave matter of justice.
The aim of this book is to give some prosaic general principles of moral
theology as a setting for sex. They need to be made common property in
English, and not kept to the Latin pages of the clerical text-books, since
they intimately concern the lives of so many. In this brief exposition
much of the religious background must to some extent be assumed; it is not
a complete treatise on the sacrament of marriage, but an essay on the
workings of the moral virtues in married life, and chiefly as regards the
special actions of sex. Consequently the moral virtues, which apply a
reasonable standard, are more explicitly considered than the higher
theological virtues and the gifts of the Holy Ghost, which are more
notably supernatural because of the transcendence of their object and
their more than human mode of action. The infused moral virtues are also
part of the equipment of grace, and provide a supernatural motive and
force. But their field overlaps that of the natural virtues, and the
measure they impose is rather rational than mystical.
So much must be said lest the emphasis of these pages leaves the
impression that human love is an ultimate. It is not. All the same, it is
precisely this plane of human values that must be understood in order to
be supernaturalized, and that is so treated theologically by St. Thomas in
the pages of his "Summa." Grace goes beyond, but is based on and works in
with the action of nature.
Sex cannot be confined to a special part of the body, nor to the body
alone. Anatomy and physiology deal with essential elements of the subject,
but psychology, which tries to discover and deal with what lies behind our
bodily processes, must also be brought in, for sex sets up problems of
mental health as well as of bodily health. The two aspects should not be
widely separated. It is necessary to go further still, beyond material
science and psychology, for an adequate knowledge of sex. Medical men may
deal with certain immediate origins, needs and objects, and may promote
present health; complete human welfare, however, is not for sixty or
seventy years, but for eternity. Sex must be seen against the whole
background of human life, as a human, that is, a religious question. Human
beings are placed by God in the stream of sex he himself has made. "God
created man to his own image, male and female he created them."
Consequently the theological approach to the subject is not less necessary
than the medical and sociological, and it would be an unscientific to
neglect what religion has to say as to pay no attention to the physical
characteristics. Catholicism provides a map of life, and indicates the
place of sex in the scheme of personal and social happiness: it does not
suppress sex, as is sometimes imagined, but draws the frontiers.
Sex divides average human nature into two halves, male and female, each
relative to the other. There are other sides to human nature, but in this
regard man is made for woman and woman for man, and both for the race.
This relationship is fulfilled when they join themselves together, not
only by physical communion but in their whole lives, not only in an action
but in a lasting companionship. This companionship when accepted by God is
a true marriage; and when supernaturally blessed by him is the sacrament
of marriage. Normally the family is the completion of marriage.
II. HUMAN RELATION
HUMAN beings are social by nature, they crave for human contacts, and live
and grow by them. Even those who, following a special vocation, withdraw
into enclosed religious orders, form themselves into groups and look for
the companionship of the community. One of the deepest and the most common
expressions of this natural sociable impulse is the decision of a man and
woman to come together, share their lives, and form a family. "It is not
good for man to be alone": there is a bodily and spiritual need in both
which only the other can supply. This sex attraction is the basis of
marriage, and is possessed and penetrated by the grace of the sacrament.
Love is a general word for many kinds of movement and action: the desire
for health, knowledge, sleep, food; pleasure in sailing a boat, riding a
horse, playing a game; attraction for another person, worship of God, and
so on. Every motion of life is covered, and even as regards the love of
another person, specific sex love is only one of its forms. The attention
given to sex love in these pages must not convey an exaggerated impression
of its importance in human living and loving.
STAGES OF LOVE
Love of another can advance through three stages: desire, devotion,
friendship.
Desire (amor concupiscentiae) is caused by a need in us, the love of
another for our own sake. With sex this springs from a natural attraction
of body and soul lying deeper than deliberate choice; a desire for the
excitement and rest of coming close together, for the life that only the
other can awaken and share; a need to hold and be held in love. The will
must establish control over this impulse and guard its expression if
dissipation into lust and waste is to be avoided. Passion should not have
full control. Nevertheless, the desires of both will and passion are in
themselves quite healthy and caused by God; the natural hunger of every
creature to strengthen and comfort its life from outside. The mutual
attraction between men and women is certainly not the result of the Fall.
Unruliness, not ardour, is the effect of original sin, through which man
is deprived of supernatural life and disorganized in his natural life.
Powers which should work in harmony tend to seek their own satisfaction to
the detriment of the whole personality. This general disorder is not
confined to the field of sex, though here its results are particularly
evident. Maturity consists in establishing a central control over many and
various desires, of being master of oneself: sexual disorders mark a
certain childishness to the theologian as well as to the psychologist.
It must be remarked that sex desire is not merely bodily and animal, a
blood-and-muscle movement pointing only to the sensuous satisfaction of
male and female intercourse; a relief of tension; an effect of glands.
Underlying this necessary stream in sex there should exist a complete love
between two human persons which is more than an attraction between bodies,
more than male and female desire. The chief quality of the union sought is
that it represents the intimacy of two persons who are in love with one
another. It is not just a man-woman relationship, but essentially the
relationship of this man and this woman and no other.
Devotion (amor benevolentiae) marks a stage past desire. This
disinterested affection wishes and works for and enjoys the happiness of
another without much thought of self. Here is wonder and reverence and
self-sacrifice.
Beyond desire and devotion, yet including them both, comes friendship
(amor amicitiae), the love by which two people belong, as it were, to one
another, sharing in something as equals. The foundation of friendship may
be a common occupation or interest, but no foundation is so deep and
lasting as a whole life shared in common, the life of marriage that
gathers in the everyday joys and worries and humours as well as the
greater concerns of love, birth, death, grace. Sex love at its best is
such a friendship, including but also surpassing the primary bodily and
biological relationship. Mutual desire, mutual devotion, and penetrating
these the certainty that each is committed to the other. In their equal
dignity as persons made to the image of God, a man and woman give
themselves to one another, not for an incident, not for a period, but for
a whole life; not only that their bodies may be stirred and satisfied and
tended, not only that children may be born from them and cared for and
trained, not only that they may interest and support one another, but that
two persons, immortal souls animating bodies that will rise again after
death, may draw close to one another and in their joys and sorrows shared
may be alive and strong together in the eternal life of God. "Two in one
flesh"; even more than that.
The purely physical side of sex may be more or less satisfied outside
marriage, at least as regards the main bodily sex act, but complete and
generous sex love demands the promise of a lasting bond of friendship and
an exclusive intimacy; a companionship that will outlive the first passion
of youth. In this matter the doctrinal teaching of Christianity is in
accord with the instinct for giving oneself uniquely to one person,
recognizing something rather imperfect in sexual promiscuity and temporary
marriage; is in accord, too, with the sound psychology of organizing sex
within a larger system of life.
PLEASURE
Sex pleasure should be human pleasure, more than bodily gratification. The
pleasure proper to human nature is neither merely animal nor exclusively
spiritual. Following the complete activity of special powers through
bodily organs capable of experiencing great and peculiar pleasure, the
satisfaction of sex would yet be less than human were it restricted to
them: not that these parts are shameful, but that they are only parts,
less than the whole body, less than the person. Preoccupation with them is
not a worthy expression of complete love between two persons; the
happiness they should find in one another deserves to be greater than a
localized excitement and ease. Sex activity moves on the human not the
animal plane, and in its right exercise the entire person strives to
express the strength and happiness of love. Consequently it is fitting
that all the senses should be engaged and not only a particular part of
the sense of touch.
The complete happiness of sex is not obtained merely by the physical
intercourse of man and woman. The Bible speaks of a man knowing his wife.
Indeed it is a close form of knowledge, a human experience in which the
mind and will take part. This is fully guaranteed only when the man and
woman are bound together in a friendship no power on earth can break, no
other person may enter, and when they know their union is accepted and
blessed by God. The very limitations set by God and applied by the
Catholic Church are not devised for the suppression of joy, but as means
to human happiness. The dearness and comparative rarity of full sex
happiness is one indication of its value. Indulgence cheapens and even
tends to destroy the bodily pleasure itself. Sex is too good to be an easy
joy. Sin is really an attack on the very happiness it seeks.
LOVE-LIFE
The satisfaction should at the same time spring from and lead to the
healthy activity of the whole person. Sex love, however ardent and
passionate, should not be isolated from the general scheme of life. It is
said that men are more prone to treat it as an incident than women are,
for in women the sex powers are more deep-seated and their effects more
extensive and enduring than in the case of men. In both, the sex action
should be rooted in their companionship together, not for one kind of
action, but for their lives. They take one another for better and for
worse; their union, which above all depends on the quality of their
characters to help and fit in with one another, makes gracious and human
every physical element in their intercourse.
"The woman has no longer power over her own body, but the man; in like
manner, the man no longer has power over his body, but the woman has."
This must be accepted without evasion or pretence, without any attempt to
frustrate the nature of the complete sex act for reasons of merely
immediate advantage. Sex must be taken honestly and without reservation.
Apart from the sterility which results from interference, the very fact
that the spontaneous rhythm and devoted giving of the action are hindered
provides grounds for suspicion.
Only through an ungrudging acceptance of its nature can sex love normally
develop from desire to responsibility and maturity, through self-
discipline and unselfish care of the other and the mutual acceptance of
the duties of the marriage state.
These may include the birth and bringing up of children. The companionship
of a man and a woman is completed by the child which comes from them both
and forms their common care. Their love is not wrapped up in themselves
but given to the new life they have formed. "God created man to his own
image: he created them male and female. And blessed them and said: Be
fruitful." It is not for the sake of the commonwealth alone that children
are born in marriage, the sex love of the couple themselves demands to be
life-giving.
Back in the early stages of desire there is an instinct for fatherhood and
motherhood; their sex love is deepened and widened when this is fulfilled.
In the responsibilities that follow they learn patience and justice, a
love greater than its expression in the act of intercourse. That the woman
is filled with new life by the man is a blessing on the sex action. This
life-giving power is essential to the nature of the action. When this is
thwarted, the practice tends to undermine the sex happiness of the couple
themselves.
Sex leads to marriage, and in general marriage leads to a family. In
marriage a man and woman engage themselves to something greater than
themselves alone. It may even be said that they risk their immediate
personal happiness by concentrating on it. Marriage is more than a free
contract of association between a man and woman for their own personal
joy; it is a special state of life instituted by God; it forms a group in
society. Though they enter on marriage of their own free choice, they are
not at liberty to change its nature, but must take it as they find it.
They cannot bargain with the nature of things.
Despite the comfort and happiness given, they would find that marriage
demanded too high an ideal to be lived up to were they not filled with
grace through their sex love and given strength more than their own. They
are so helped because God has taken this human contract and raised it to
the dignity of a Christian sacrament.
Before considering the special action of sex in married life, which is the
main subject of this essay, it will not be out of place to indicate in
outline the laws which are, as it were, its frame of social justice.
III. SACRAMENTAL CONTRACT
A SACRAMENT is an outward sign ordained by Jesus Christ to give us grace
and bring us to eternal life. The union of the sexes in marriage is
blessed by God as a sacrament; the granting of intimate rights between a
man and woman is made the sign and cause of divine grace to both. Thus
marriage is a means not only to a fuller natural life, but to supernatural
life as well. Through it grace acts on sex in every implication; the union
of two in one flesh, the sharing of the happiness and trials of life, the
formation of a family. The grace of the sacrament strengthens the love on
which it is based, drawing man and woman together so that they symbolize
the union of Christ with his church. The marriage act itself and every
human detail of their life together are charged with grace. The first
miracle wrought by Christ, the changing of water into wine at the marriage-
feast, sets a divine approval on the very gaiety from which it starts.
An outward profession in the celebration of marriage is the sign of their
union, and also the instrument by which God gives them the strength to
master human weakness and inconstancy and to remain devoted to one another
and faithful to the obligations of their state through all the ups and
downs of life. It is strong love that makes vows.
Because God has chosen to give special grace through this means it follows
that its administrations can be judged and determined only by his
authority, and that the Catholic Church is the only official power on
earth that can issue regulations governing the sacrament.
Of these regulations some establish the conditions necessary if marriage
is to be a true or valid sacrament, while others determine whether it is a
lawful or licit sacrament. An invalid sacrament is no sacrament at all,
though it may look like one, for instance a bigamous marriage: an illicit
sacrament is a true sacrament, but an element of illegality is present,
for instance when banns have been omitted without good reason or
permission.
The State may rightly decide as to the civil effects of matrimony and
reasonably require certain conditions to be fulfilled for it to be
regarded as a valid contract in the eyes of the law, but has no power to
govern the inner sacramental reality, on which a man and woman minister
grace to one another. This power belongs to the Church alone, the official
guardian and dispenser of the sacraments.
CONDITIONS
For two people to be married, some conditions are absolutely necessary and
are matters of natural law that cannot be altered. They affect everybody,
and though taught and applied by the Church are not instituted by the
Church. Three conditions of this kind are that the parties concerned are
not already bound in marriage, that they know the nature of the contract
and freely undertake it, and that they are capable of having sex
intercourse.
Other conditions are chiefly matters of positive law, enacted by the
Church, and applying in principle and practice only to baptized persons.
A person belongs officially to the Church by the sacrament of baptism,
which is necessary for the reception of the other six sacraments. Only
people who are baptized, therefore, can receive the sacrament of marriage.
In other cases marriage is a true and binding contract and a state of life
set up by God, but it is not stamped with the seal of a Christian
sacrament.
An outward sign denotes a sacrament. In marriage this is the mutual
promise of a man and woman to give their bodies to one another in sex-
intercourse when this is reasonably required. For the promise to be valid
it must be honestly intended; it must be free and not forced; it must be
mutual and not one-sided; it must be taken as binding from that time
onwards; it must be expressed in a sufficient legal form; it must not
withhold anything that belongs to the very nature of marriage, but must be
an unconditional acceptance of the essential obligations of the state.
Because of defect regarding the necessary conditions of marriage, the
Church may make a declaration of nullity. This is not a dissolution of
marriage, for real marriage in such cases has never existed.
The ministers of this sacrament are the man and woman themselves, not the
priest. Thus each gives divine life to the other. In the case of
Christians in complete communion with the visible Church, their union
requires to be blessed by a priest, save in those extraordinary cases
where his presence is not possible and sacramental marriage may anticipate
the liturgical ceremonies.
According to the Christian ideal, marriage is monogamous and life-long:
these two characteristics of unity and indissolubility are essential, so
that if conditions opposed to them are laid down at the outset the
marriage is null and void.
UNITY
Marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Societies are not unknown
that allow one woman to have more than one husband at the same time, an
undesirable custom because against the proper begetting and bringing up of
children and a profound and civilized instinct of sex.
The position is not quite the same as regards one husband having more than
one wife at the same time. It runs counter to a human feeling that sex
relations at their best are between two exclusively. Men have this feeling
despite the fact that their surface sex instincts are supposed to be more
promiscuous than those of a woman. This polygamy, however, while it cannot
foster the welfare of children or promote perfect family life so well as
monogamy, does not theoretically attack the very nature of a family. It
was permitted in Old Testament times.
Jesus Christ restored the original dignity of marriage as a unique
companionship of two only in one flesh, and under the Christian
dispensation polygamy is forbidden.
INDISSOLUBILITY
The companionship of marriage is designed to be life-long. No earthly
power can loose the bond of consummated sacramental marriage: "whom God
has joined together, let no man put asunder." The Catholic position with
regard to divorce is uncompromising. This is not to deny the existence of
real human difficulties and problems.
The problems are urgent at the present time when there is a feeling,
caused by the fact that people are losing their hold on many principles
yet have real sympathy with the suffering caused by the growing number of
unhappy marriages, that people who cannot make a success of their married
lives together should be allowed to break completely and try anew without
any fuss. This general kindly feeling is partly responsible for the very
evil it inveighs against; Catholics hold that permission for divorce is
really against the eventual interests of married people themselves, that
legislation should work on the principle that prevention is better than
cure, and that the happiness of the married state demands an unwavering
insistence on the indissolubility of the bond even to the extent of
personal sacrifice.
To clear up some common confusion on the subject of divorce two
distinctions must be drawn: first, between separation and divorce; and
second, between divorce of marriage considered as a religious state and of
marriage considered as a civil state.
As regards the first distinction. A divorced man and woman are considered
to be no longer married to one another; they are free to marry again.
Separation means that the couple live apart, the marriage tie itself
remaining radically unchanged. The Catholic Church does not allow divorce
in the case of a sacramental marriage lawfully contracted, performed, and
completed by the sex intercourse of husband and wife. The tie of marriage
is indestructible and ceases only with the death of one of the parties.
Separation, however, is another matter: the marriage bond is not called in
question, though unfortunately the couple must live apart. They themselves
may agree on this course without reference to a higher authority.
As regards the second distinction. Marriage is both a religious and a
civil engagement. As a religious engagement it is lifted above all earthly
power, beyond the changing moods of husband and wife and beyond the
control of the State. But as a civil engagement there are civil conditions
and effects to be provided for; the control of the children, property
rights, and so on. As such marriage justly falls partly under the
regulation of the State, and to this extent may be declared by the proper
authority no longer to possess the status of civil marriage previously
accorded to it. Such a decision cannot claim to touch the inner integrity
of sacramental marriage.
That the Christian refusal to admit divorce and consequent re-marriage
sometimes occasions great suffering is undeniable. But it does not come
from a cruel and legalist attitude of indifference to individual cases,
but from the realization that an inflexible law is necessary for the
happiness of the great majority of families; for the sake of husbands and
wives who must be set an ideal of life-long loyalty and whose love must
aspire to be stronger than passion; for the sake of the children who must
be assured an enduring background of family life; for the sake of the
community, the health of which is based on family homes.
Merely on temporal grounds the case against divorce is very strong, and is
considered by some to be sufficient. Hard cases make bad law, it is said.
Ultimately the reason for the Church's attitude is found in the principle
that marriage is not an institution invented by men, but instituted by
God. Individuals are left to embrace it of themselves, but once the choice
has been made, they must take marriage as they find it and not alter its
character to suit their convenience. They can contract relationships that
can be terminated at will, but such relationships are not real marriages.
Marriage has been made indissoluble by God. That is the fact that the
Church accepts, does not make. On temporal grounds such an arrangement
promotes individual and social welfare on the whole, despite hard
exceptions. If it appears to break down, then the cause may usually be
found in the deficiencies of individuals or the unjust structure of
society. On eternal grounds, it establishes the dignity of human love and
responsibility.
Christian marriage is a grace-giving sacrament. If people set themselves
to fulfil its obligations, the necessary help will not be wanting. No
Christian may permit himself to think that grace is not sufficient to
tackle its own demands and to master the most difficult problems that
arise from the attempt to observe the divine laws of the universe.
Marriage is greater than the two people who contract it, for God is a
party to it. And it is not empty optimism, but common sense, to be
confident that he will help to make a success of an undertaking that he
has blessed, and that is directed of its nature to well-being now and
hereafter. God makes laws, not to thwart our happiness, but to encourage
it. But it is a happiness not always brought about by easy and agreeable
means.
IV. MORALITY OF INTERCOURSE
AT the outset it must be stressed that the bodily union of sex intercourse
which is called the marriage act is only one part of marriage. Though it
is the central physical event of married life, there are many other
marriage actions in their ways quite as important. Marriage means a life
lived in common, the whole business of eating, talking, thinking, loving,
worrying, praying, enjoying, caring for the children, building up the home
and all that implies. That the man and woman should go to sleep together
is one of the facts, and a very important one; but marriage calls into
activity not only what are called the primary sexual characteristics,
namely, those powers immediately ordered to the generative act, but also a
whole set of secondary sexual characteristics, the difference of voice,
manner, movement, approach, general appearance, ways of mind and will; all
those primitive, civilized sociable reasons which make a person seek the
society of the opposite sex.
It is necessary to see things in proportion: considered in terms of the
whole business of life, the so-called secondary sexual characteristics are
probable more predominant than the primary sexual characteristics. These
latter have their moments, but the others are always present, and a
successful marriage chiefly depends on the character of the whole
personality of the man and the woman.
On this point, goodwill, frankness, common sense, experience, and a love
that seeks understanding are demanded for the successful living together
of two such different creatures. Their differences make for difficulty,
but also for love and happiness. Love is an art that must make this
personal adjustment.
The following chapters deal with the reasonable activity and harmonious
relation of the primary sexual characteristics, the specialized physical
function of sex in men and women. Between husband and wife there should be
no need too intimate for delicate and frank expression. Love needs
knowledge. Ignorance can weaken and even destroy love. And where there is
no love in married life there is usually aversion, though other interests
may keep the marriage going fairly happily.
Some general theological principles concerning sex intercourse must here
be considered; first, as regards the morality of the marriage act; second,
its obligation; third, its abuse.
PURITY IMPLIES SEX
The apparent purposes of the physical union of men and women are to
release their energy, to satisfy their mutual desire for the utmost human
closeness and communion, to express their love and grow in it, to form a
family together, and to perpetuate the human race. All of them are so
elemental and ordinary that it is difficult not to feel that the glamour
and secrecy and fulminations that surround the subject are largely
fantastic. The act, which is accompanied by a peculiar and intense bodily
pleasure, is instinctively guarded from the common gaze, though between
man and woman, in the privacy of their love, there is no genuinely human
desire and movement that should not be shared.
Not infrequently a streak in people makes them think that pleasure is
somehow wrong just because it is pleasure; an attitude which causes
pleasure to be not exactly denied, but taken guiltily. This puritan
sentiment may be innate to human nature, or it may be the result of
tradition and training, but there it is, with results sometimes stuffy and
absurd, sometimes austere and admirable.
In addition, the ethical ideal of duty for duty's sake, quite independent
of other considerations in human life, of the categoric command of what is
right isolated from all other claims of human nature, has helped to form
the feeling that anything which is extremely pleasant must be suspected as
indicating selfishness. This uneasiness is increased by a misunderstanding
of the negative commands of religion and its counsels of mortification.
Furthermore, there is the religious stress on the needs of the soul, the
cultivation of what is called the spiritual life, with the consequent
temptation to detach this from the rest of life, to treat it as a special
cell that thrives best when it is enclosed from the rest of the world.
Anything full-blooded and high-spirited is looked at askance as a
hindrance to the life of the spirit. The sharp edge of Christian theory
and practice of sacrifice and mortification is sometimes treated as a very
blunt instrument indeed.
Thus a kind of religion shrinking from sex intercourse in itself is not
unknown, because it is both bodily and pleasurable. An extreme form of
this attitude holds that the marriage act is evil in itself. This view has
been condemned by the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, a feeling remains
that there is something rather shameful and sordid about the action, that
it needs to be excused, and is excused only by the fact that it prevents
greater evils and the human race from dying out.
There is a false theory behind this attitude, a theory that treats
pleasure as somehow immoral, an exaggerated austerity that identifies the
good with the difficult, a programme that lays an exclusive emphasis on
disembodied values.
In point of fact pleasure itself is neither right nor wrong. It all
depends on whether the antecedent action is right or wrong. That an action
is pleasurable is, if anything, an indication that the action is sound and
in accordance with human nature. Pleasure is congenial to good action. It
is true that our nature is ill and our desires disorganized by original
sin, and that consequently we can enjoy things out of place. Yet pleasure
is not a luxury, but a necessity; the sign and stimulus of healthy
activity.
In theory the good is the pleasant; in practice, pleasant things in excess
are bad for us. Desires must be toned and intensified by opposition; self-
denial and discipline, apart from the imitation of Christ, are necessary
for health, otherwise even the zest for life will be lost. An Epicurean
practises abstinence, realizing that few things destroy pleasure so surely
as unrestricted indulgence.
Aversion from sex intercourse on the score of the needs of the spiritual
life must be checked by the doctrine that man is not a spirit, and is not
designed by God to be a spirit. Soul and body fuse in him to form one
personality. Perfection implies his complete development. Spirit should
master matter, the soul dominate the body, but this is no detriment to the
body, as is shown by its state when the soul loses hold.
Bodily high-spirits may indeed flourish at the expense of the soul; they
need to be trained and disciplined by the will, but not suppressed or
enfeebled. The soul must be a hard taskmaster but not a savage one, and
the body is not made abject, but dignified by its rule. Bodily powers gain
grace and strength and bodily pleasures lose nothing of their intensity.
The attempt to live a purely soul-life is wrongheaded to start with and
can never succeed. It works from the idea that man is an angel, mistakes
the senses for hindrances instead of helps, and misses the point of the
Incarnation. Man must work through the nature of things, God has composed
his nature of body and soul, and sex is older than original sin.
As a further corrective to the aversion from sex is the recognition that
the marriage act is not merely pleasurable, but is full of love and
implies the highest human responsibilities; that it is not merely bodily
but livened with the noblest activity of the soul; and that it is filled
with the grace of the sacrament. Furthermore it should be realized that a
reasonable sex action is an act of the virtue of purity, for purity, far
from being the repression, is the right ordering of passionate love.
The complete pleasure of human sex intercourse is not morally shady; the
action in itself is natural and rational when it fits in with the divine
plan of the world. Taking into account the great power of the impulse and
its profound effects on the individual and on society and the dangers of
its excess and abuse, it is not surprising that the right exercise of sex
is limited to certain situations. As a matter of fact restricting
conditions surround every desire, for ruin would result if immediate
satisfaction were open and granted to every one of them.
In the scheme of the universe established by the will of God, marriage is
the appropriate situation for the complete activity of sex. The only
proper complete sex act is the marriage act. Consequently sex desires must
be disciplined to the purpose of proper sex love, which implies the
devotion of husband and wife, the blessing of family life, and the welfare
of society.
The fact that complete sex enjoyment is reserved to the state of marriage
is a sign, not of its worthlessness, but of its dignity. Dear, not cheap.
By complete sex enjoyment is here meant the use of the primary sexual
functions. The pleasure normally taken in the company and conversation of
the opposite sex is clearly not meant to be restricted to marriage.
Complete sex activity springs from the virtue of purity when it expresses
the devoted love of husband and wife and is done in the right way, that
is, when the inherent direction of the act towards generation is not
tampered with and when it is endowed with the three blessings of marriage,
namely, faithfulness, fruitfulness, and the sacramental bond (bonum
sacramenti).
Faithfulness (bonum fidei) implies a love, ardent and humble, intimate and
reverent, which each reserves for the other, serving to draw them ever
closer to one another, strengthening a tie that must take the strain of
adversity, worry, sickness, unhappy moods.
Fruitfulness (bonum prolis) implies the natural conjunction of the bodies
of man and woman unhampered by artifice, a family and social action of its
nature since it is of the kind from which a child can be born. Whether or
not birth actually follows depends on other factors as well, but these do
not affect the intrinsic direction of the act towards generation, its
movement to new life.
A not uncommon difficulty here crops up. Is sex intercourse lawful
according to Catholic morality only when a child may possibly result from
it? And must Christian people use their sex powers fully only when they
intend to have a baby? Most people will rightly feel that a command or
counsel to that effect would be quite unreal, out of touch with the actual
facts and needs and desires of human love, and anyhow practically
impossible of fulfilment. Should men and women have intercourse with the
sense of a solemn social duty? It is known that the Church has no
objection to people marrying at an age when child-bearing is impossible or
to intercourse under conditions when conception is impossible. Yet how
reconcile all this with the doctrine that the begetting of a child is the
primary and essential purpose of sex-action?
To arrive at the exact position it must be noted that three elements must
be taken into account in judging the character of a human action: first,
the objective nature of the action considered in itself, or the deed;
second, the personal reasons for performing it, or the motives; third, the
surrounding situation, or the circumstances. Any deficiency in one of
these factors spoils the action, as when a good deed is done for bad
motives or a well-intentioned action is performed out of place. All three
factors must join to make a morally sound action.
This test applies to the human act of sex intercourse. Accordingly three
aspects must be considered in it, respectively the general nature of the
action, the personal motives inspiring it, and the attendant circumstances.
DEED
For the action to be sound in its general nature it is required that the
parties to it are a man and woman married to one another and that their
natural bodies are joined in life-giving intercourse. Here a distinction
must be drawn between the human action considered in itself and the whole
set of complicated and lengthy natural processes which precede and follow
it. (See Fig. 1.)
Sex intercourse is the responsible human action of a man and woman in
bodily communion; a moral fact as well as a physical fact. This action
must be of that kind from which generation can follow, the male seed being
left in the proper female organ, the vagina. If this be done in the
natural manner and there be no attempt to impede or frustrate its
consequences, then in itself the action possesses an inherent direction
towards the blessing of fruitfulness, and is a life-giving, or more
precisely a life-offering action, whether actual generation takes place or
not. On the contrary, if the seed is not sown in the vagina but in a
pseudo-vagina or is sterilized in the vagina or is prevented from entering
the womb within the period of the action, then the action is altered in
its very nature and cannot be called a generative kind of act.
Actual generation depends on many other factors besides sex intercourse.
The human action is part of a wider and more secret process, a series of
natural activities that are not in themselves under the power of the mind
and will directly to control. The generative act of human intercourse
lasts a relatively short time, while the process of generation is a matter
of months, if it is confined to the period starting with the fusion of the
male seed and the female ovum and ending with the birth of the child; or a
matter of years, if it is rightly considered from the gradual preparation
of the bodies of the parents until the time when the child no longer needs
their care and can stand by itself in the world.
The set of natural processes which for nine months prepares the body of
the child in the mother's womb is distinct from the marriage-act which
starts it going. The line must be drawn somewhere, and the human act must
be considered to end when the couple have rested after the climax of their
love, and their action is sound in itself if during this period nothing
has been done to change its nature. The rest belongs to the workings of
nature, though other human actions may be inserted subsequently into the
process of forming and bearing and feeding and tending the baby. Yet
whether or no conception actually comes about, or whether or no conception
is impossible owing to the state of the woman, the proper performance of
the human deed of intercourse remains unaffected in its nature. The action
is generative of its kind even though a baby cannot be born from it
because of other conditions, as when the woman is sterile or already
pregnant.
MOTIVES
The morality of a human act is not only determined by a consideration of
its general nature. The abstract must be made concrete. Consequently the
personal motives for a particular action must also be taken into account.
In this connection it may be asked: should husband and wife seriously
intend to have a child whenever they have intercourse and should they try
to restrict intercourse to those times when the conception of a child is
possible?
The answer is negative. There are other valid reasons for intercourse
besides procreation. These are the healthy expression of passion, the
fostering of mutual love, the strengthening of the sacramental bond of
marriage. These are worthy motives, implying the human love and devotion
of marriage, including more than the mere appetite for pleasure, which is
not a sufficient motive for any action. The intention of trying to have a
child is not necessary as a regular motive.
All healthy married people who are capable of bearing and rearing children
are under some obligation in the matter, but the command applies more
directly to their married state than to each and every act of intercourse.
There may be good reasons for intercourse, the bodily and spiritual
welfare of them both, at times when conception is impossible or unlikely
or undesirable. Of course they must reserve their impulses, for marriage
does not legitimize sex indulgence in any form, but rather requires the
exercise of purity as much as does a single life. On this supposition,
however, the satisfaction of sex without the intention of procreating is
according to the divinely-appointed nature of marriage, so long as the act
is life-offering, serving to strengthen the sacramental bond and to assure
the stability of family life on which the welfare of children in general
depends.
SOME PRINCIPLES
Before touching on the circumstances surrounding sex intercourse, the
following principles and conclusions of Catholic morals can be laid down
with regard to the action and its motives.
In general, sex intercourse is good and holy when its manner is natural,
when it expresses the marriage love of man and woman, and when it promotes
their bodily and spiritual well-being. That is the first guiding principle.
With respect to the nature of the act, this is spoilt only when its
character is vitiated by the sin of onanism, which is treated of in a
later chapter. Intercourse is lawful between couples who are sterile,
whether one or both, as is the case with a woman whose ovaries or womb
have been removed by surgical operation: a child cannot be conceived, but
the generative act can be performed. It is lawful at those periods of the
month or at those times of life when conception is unlikely or even
impossible: thus the incidence of the so-called "safe period" or of old
age does not affect the essential character of the act. It is lawful
during pregnancy, so long as it is not hurtful to the woman or to the
child in her womb.
With respect to the motives, there is evil if they can be reduced to the
mere desire of pleasure; if the action is merely sensual indulgence; if
the attempt is to snatch as much satisfaction while at the same time
evading the care and responsibility that is implicit in intercourse.
Husband and wife will be quick to discern whether their actions be sub-
human, selfish, unworthy of the love they should bear one another, as when
a man uses his wife as a convenience without regard to her feelings; when,
as St. Thomas says, he treats her just as a woman, not as his wife, his
special and separate friend. The relationship is not merely between man
and woman; this is included, but the dignity of friendship between equal
persons is added. The action must be taken at this level. Sinful motives
are also present in their state of mind if a couple who are in a position
to have a child selfishly decide to the contrary and avoid intercourse
without the virtue of virginity or deliberately restrict it to certain
times in order to avoid conception.
Intercourse is good when it supports and expresses the blessings of
marriage. In summary the motives may be one, or two, or three of the
following: the making of a family by the birth and bringing up of
children; the intense and intimate friendship of a man and woman; the
healthy and human satisfaction of physical passion. The special happiness
of marriage calls for the presence of the second, since the chief purpose
of every marriage considered in the particular is the happiness of husband
and wife themselves. Under this aspect its character as a sacramental
companionship is more important than its social function of propagating
the race or its hygienic function of remedying lust. Children should come
from parents who are companions; a bodily passion should be satisfied not
as a principal preoccupation, but as part of a wider and more human
situation, the intimacy of the greatest human friendship.
CIRCUMSTANCES
The rightness of a human act is coloured by the surrounding in which it is
performed; attendant circumstances must be considered in addition to the
two main determining moral factors of nature of deed and motive.
Sex intercourse is supposed to be a complete human situation, an entire
expression of love and delight between a man and woman. It should not be
the securing of a local stimulus and satisfaction or just a physical
action to be performed, a duty to be endured, but should be deeper and
wider in its cause and effect, enjoyable to persons, not pleasurable
merely to sexual organs.
Rightly should the man delight in the whole person of the woman, and the
woman likewise in that of the man. Often the climax of passion is reached
and passed more quickly in the man than in the woman; he should therefore
prepare her in ways that their frankly shared instincts will suggest, so
that both may reach their happiness together and at the same time. He
should not turn from her immediately afterwards, for mere bodily passion
should no more hold sway in the after-effects than in the human action.
Relapse into personal satisfaction brings about the very loneliness that
the impulse seeks to break down. It must be repeated that the union is
human, not physiological, and should be endowed with the gracious virtues,
including art. Love-making is the proper preparation for intercourse,
according to both medical and theological science. It is right and
healthy, serving to keep the relationship at the human level of mutual and
devoted affection and enjoyment, preventing an undesirable preoccupation
with the merely genital side of the action.
The details of these circumstances need not be entered into; enough to
note that discipline and restraint are not the same as awkwardness,
brusqueness, and coldness, and that they will not break the rhythm of the
action. The warmest and most tender love need never be beastly or maudlin.
The general principle here is that a couple may seek as much closeness and
intimacy as possible so long as the situation remains human, that is, does
not deteriorate into animality and does not seek the culmination of
pleasure outside the natural act. For the rest, while they know they are
two in one flesh and love one another and do not desire to use one another
for purely selfish and private gratification, they will come to no harm if
they follow their natural promptings and take the greatest and widest joys
together in their love.
Love-making should never grow stale; there is variety and freshness within
the limits of what is right. The art of courtship, though it may change
and develop with the years, should never die out. What has been said above
about the importance of the secondary sex characteristics may here be
recalled: special sex intercourse is only one part of the general
intercourse of married life.
Some practical principles with regard to the circumstances of the action
may be set down here. Since it may be full of grace, there is no
obligation to forego intercourse on the night before Holy Communion. If
both have been contented in a human manner and excess has been avoided,
there is nothing unworthy in the action or its after-effects; the mind is
left clear and content and prepared for prayer. We are speaking of an
ideal that can be realized given good-will, good health, and the use of
grace. Still, there is a sound Catholic tradition of sacrifice and the
best things make the best sacrifices. As offering a blessing to God, not
avoiding an evil, married people on occasion abstain from intercourse for
religious reasons. Generosity and common sense are here necessary, to
prevent religiosity and spiritual finickiness interfering with the proper
relations of husband and wife.
Circumstance may spoil the action when it is so frequent that it saps the
strength of body and soul. Hard and fast rules cannot be laid down on this
point; how often the act may take place depends entirely on the reasonable
judgment of the couple themselves. Sinfulness may also be present through
selfishness, levity, roughness, cruelty, meanness, indecency, lack of
control and consideration, and if the act, supposed to be mutual, is
forced by one and suffered by the other. It is wrong, also, when it is
harmful to the health of one or both or a child not yet born or weaned,
and when it would be a cause of reasonable distress. Spiritual adultery is
committed if one indulges in private imaginings that the action is taking
place with somebody other than the married partner.
V. OBLIGATION
BY marriage a man and woman grant to one another certain rights over their
bodies for the begetting of children, the increasing of love, the healthy
ordering of passion. The fulfilment of this concession is a matter of
justice, its denial an injustice, though a couple who are still newly in
love may smile at such terms. Justice, however, is a living virtue and not
confined to cold legal forms.
The principle is this: whenever either the husband or the wife seriously
and reasonably asks for the marriage due the other is bound to render it.
Reasonably asks: no one in marriage engages to become a convenience for
another's passion; neither must force their every wish on the other; they
are equal and, particularly as regards the marriage act, have the same
rights. It is most desirable that the action should be mutual. This will
not be too difficult if the two love one another in a human way and are
ready to be considerate and make sacrifices, if each tries to serve the
other, and if it is realized that for their happiness together the act
should be the comfort and content of both.
There are exceptions to the obligation of rendering the marriage due. A
married person is not strictly bound to grant it if the other has been
unfaithful to the extent of adultery. Normal relations are only re-
established by the generous forgiveness of the injured party. There is no
obligation if there is a danger of the infection of disease. Or if the
request is unreasonable, if it be under conditions that are genuinely
harmful and distressing, then it may be refused. This particularly affects
the woman; she has not promised to be the man's slave, but the sharer of
his human life, of his control as well as of his ease. It is commonly held
that a woman to whom pregnancy would be fatal or highly dangerous is not
bound to render the due; the request for it would be unreasonable.
Finally, there is no obligation of granting it, rather the reverse, if it
is going to be abused by the sin of onanism.
There is no obligation of asking for the due except when harm would be
done by abstinence, a weakening of love, a risk of impurity. In this
connection, husband and wife will learn to interpret and anticipate the
wishes of each other.
By mutual consent married couples may abstain from intercourse either for
a time or for ever, not as evading the obligations of their state, but as
an offering and sacrifice to God. They must not deny the existence of the
right, but may forgo the exercise of it.
VI. ABUSE
A MAN and woman should enjoy one another's bodies in an action of purity,
the virtue governing the desires of sex. Purity does not destroy sex love
but depends on it, controlling the impulse for the sake of the whole
welfare of the person and society.
Purity extends to thoughts as well as to deeds. Impurity committed by
married people is made worse by the fact that it lowers the sacramental
dignity of their state. If the impure action be mutual, then the man and
woman, instead of causing grace to one another, are the occasions of sin
to the person they should most care for and protect from harm.
The principal sin of impurity in married people is called onanism, after
Onan, an Old Testament character who spilt his seed rather than risk
having a child. The sin is very old, though in recent years scientific men
have developed its technique and commercial firms have pushed its appeal.
This sin covers all methods of contraception that affect the actual act of
intercourse. It would be out of place to describe the various methods
here, some are less harmful than others, but all are wrong, and for the
same reason.
Contraception is commonly called birth-control; an unfortunate term, since
birth-control as such obviously is a reasonable and necessary thing.
Catholics would be the last to deny that the human reason should control
as far as possible such an important matter as the coming of new life into
the world, with its added responsibilities to the parents. In point of
fact, the very institution of marriage is a method of birth-control, since
it limits procreation to those conditions in which a child will be cared
for.
Married people are called upon to be unselfish and generous, sometimes
even heroic. A child must be regarded as more important than the
refinements and luxuries of a social class. But they are not bound to have
a child, or children, if reasonable chances of proper education and
upbringing are lacking. The health and reasonable comfort of the mother
require the spacing of births at intervals to be sanely and sensibly
decided, though for the sake of the children themselves there should not
be too great a difference between their ages. Clearly procreation cannot
be undertaken without thought and control; trust in Providence does
not mean banking on a very doubtful future.
Let this be made quite clear. The Catholic Church is not opposed to
rational birth-control as an end. Catholics, of course, do not agree with
the propaganda for birth-control based on the difficulties of present
social and economic conditions. Blessings should not be surrendered when
the causes making them difficult can be changed. It should be intolerable
that in a world of plenty many parents are unable to have as many children
as they would like and could have, were the social structure not so
unjust. Nor can Catholics admit the disinclination to have children
because they are tiresome and worrying. Marriage is not a perpetual
honeymoon, but a serious responsibility, and none the less happy for that.
The Catholic Church's condemnation is directed at the means employed for
birth-control. What is opposed is not birth-control or the regulation of
births, but certain methods of ensuring this. They are generally without
qualification called birth control, but more accurately they should be
classed under the term of contraception. They consist in altering or
interfering with the natural character of sex-intercourse, or its
antecedent or consequent processes. They are species of injustice or of
impurity: of injustice when the family and social quality of sex is
affected; of impurity when the sex impulse itself is disorganized. All
wrongful methods of birth-control fall under these heads. Unjust methods
may be reduced to sterilization and abortion, impure methods to onanism.
(See Fig. 2.)
UNJUST MEANS
Our bodies are not our own to do with just as we will, they belong
completely to God alone who made them; we must take reasonable care of
them and administer them according to their nature. As we may not destroy
our bodies by suicide, so we may not mutilate them or deprive them of an
essential function, unless it be for the health of the body itself, when
the part must be removed for the sake of the whole. Leaving aside the
question of punitive and curative operations, the Catholic Church teaches
that it is unlawful directly to deprive oneself of a bodily power. Thus
all methods of eugenic sterilization are ruled out. They include surgical
operations on the male or female designed primarily to prevent their
having fruitful intercourse; also all mechanical or chemical methods of
sterilizing the female for a period.
Birth may be prevented after conception by chemical or mechanical or
surgical methods, all of which come under the head of injustice when the
taking of life is directly intended. Either they go so far as to murder
the child in the womb (and without baptism) or they destroy a living thing
that is becoming a human being. The unlawfulness of the operation is
intensified by the fact that, for all we know, an immortal soul may be
present from the moment of conception or soon after. The direct
destruction of a fetus is the sin of abortion.
IMPURE MEANS
Impure methods of birth-control, or those that alter the nature of the sex
act itself, are classed under the sin of onanism. Before considering this
attempt to secure sex satisfaction without proper intercourse, let us
return to the distinction of deed and motive.
Two aspects must be separately considered, sex intercourse itself, which
is the means, and the generation of a child, which is an end. Two aspects
in the action of the married couple correspond to this distinction, namely
their deed and their motives respectively.
First as regards motives. If a couple decide against the birth of a child
at a given time, the rightness or wrongness of their decision must be
tested by the question: ought they to try to have a child then? If their
decision springs from timidity, selfishness, love of ease and so on, then
it is wrong, whatever the means they adopt in carrying it into effect. If
the reasons against the birth of a child outweigh those in favour, if they
are prudent in a Christian sense, then their decision is just.
Up to the present it all hinges on the motives of the man and woman. In
the first case, the motives are unworthy; in the second case, they are
worthy. The question now narrows down to the nature of the means adopted.
The couple may decide to abstain from intercourse. This means is not bad
in itself; the moral colouring comes from the motives; bad in the first
case, good in the second case.
But complete abstinence from intercourse is not easy, nor is it honestly
desirable in some cases from a Christian point of view. It is natural that
a man and woman living together should strongly desire one another's
bodies, and though grace is always sufficient for proper self-control it
does not blanket lawful desire, and the marriage act may be necessary for
the real happiness of their lives together.
Here is the real problem of contraception. How is it possible to combine
the reasonable avoidance of pregnancy with the reasonable exercise of sex
relations? The case of really selfish married people may be dismissed. We
are concerned with those who decided against a child, not for unworthy
motives, but because they feel they are not in a position to have one, for
such reasons as ill-health or poverty. Quite decently they feel the need
of intercourse. The rightness or wrongness of what they do turns on the
means they adopt.
If they commit onanism, then the Church judges that they do something
wrong in itself, a bad kind of action, leaving aside the question of
motives. It may be an act of self-indulgence, it may be an attempt to
express human love. In either case, the means is wrong. The noblest end
does not justify a bad means.
Onanism is that action between the bodies of a man and woman which goes as
closely as it can to proper sex union while at the same time attempting to
prevent the joining of the male seed and the female ovum from which new
human life begins. In old-fashioned onanism the act starts properly, but
the man withdraws before his seed can enter the woman's body. Modern
research has invented methods by which the man can remain united to the
woman, but his seed is either sterilized or prevented from joining the
ovum.
By this fact, the natural union of man and woman is not secured, and the
climax of sex pleasure is reached without the appropriate act. They do not
delight in one another as they really are, they do not commit themselves
in confidence and happiness to sex as God has made it. The intercourse is
bogus. They are not joined together immediately as man and woman, for an
instrument or chemical interposes and destroys the life-giving character
of the action. They have contrived to alter the situation and so use their
sex powers in an act which is not the generative act of sex intercourse,
but the reverse.
The attempt to secure sex satisfaction without the complete sex act
disorganizes the rational and natural arrangement of powers to their
proper ends, the proper purpose of sex powers being the life-offering
action of intercourse. With respect to the deed, there is little essential
difference between contraceptive intercourse and mutual masturbation,
though admittedly the surrounding psychological circumstances make for a
different situation.
Married people who use contraceptives may love one another decently and
humanly apart from this, but whether they use them with an easy or uneasy
conscience, the nature of the action in itself is not altered. According
to Catholic teaching, moral standards do not entirely depend on individual
judgement, and motives need not be considered for a kind of action to be
condemned. Contraception is wrong in itself, and no motive can justify it;
and it is gravely wrong, because of the importance of the action which is
spoilt.
It is worth noting that this attitude is not based principally on
Revelation or on the supernatural authority of the Church. It is a matter
of natural law. An instinctive repugnance to contraception which still
exists is an echo of the case against it which can be worked out on purely
rational grounds without appealing to doctrinal authority.
There are also secondary, though considerable, arguments against
contraception. It offers the occasion of sexual indiscipline; it can be
responsible for serious bodily and mental disorders; it makes acquiescence
easier in unjust social conditions; it is prejudicial to national life.
Yet the problem remains unsolved of what is to be done when at the same
time there are true and good reasons both against pregnancy and for sex-
intercourse.
We must go back and stress the necessity of making marriage a relationship
of human friendship depending chiefly on the characters of the two
persons, who enter the state to share their human lives together, to
strengthen one another, to build up their characters together. Their lore
is supported by the sacrament, which gives grace to all who try to live up
to the ideal it sets. The couple, whether they are in a position to have
a numerous family or whether they are not, must love one another with a
love stronger and deeper than passion.
But it is easier to preach than to practise. There are not a few cases
when children cannot be welcomed and at the same time mutual love must be
expressed through intercourse. It is possible that recent research has
discovered a partial remedy, a providential arrangement existing for the
benefit of such cases.
THE SAFE PERIOD
The writer is not qualified to judge medical matters, he is concerned only
with the moral aspect of intercourse during the sterile period of a
woman's life.
It has long been known that conception is less likely to occur at certain
times than at others. A woman's body goes through a monthly process in her
organs of generation, and for a period in the month, it is said, is less
ready to conceive than at other times. Some scientific men now say that
she cannot conceive at such times. Though it is impossible to lay down
hard and fast rules governing each and every case, they claim to be able
to determine this monthly period of sterility with a fair amount of
precision. It may be mentioned that this period lasts more than a few
days, that during it a woman is not physically averse from intercourse and
that it differs importantly as regards dates from the idea previously held
that a woman is less likely to conceive about midway between two
menstruations. The reader must be referred elsewhere for an account of
these investigations. The present question turns only on the point of
morals: may a married couple restrict intercourse to such periods?
The answer is affirmative, with two qualifications. First, there must be
no desire of evading an obligation to have children, when such exists; in
other words, the reasons against pregnancy at that time must be valid.
Secondly, intercourse must be really and genuinely desirable for good
reasons at such times (though clearly the need may not be so solemn as
this language suggests) and must serve to express and strengthen the
sacramental love of the man and woman. The habit of restricting
intercourse to such periods may become mixed with meanness and impurity, a
selfish prudence on one hand, mere indulgence on the other. But given
healthy motives, the action itself is sound and life-offering in the sense
described above, and intercourse at such periods is not wrong.
From what has been said in the course of the foregoing chapters it will be
realized that sex-passion is the field of the virtue of purity, and that
such questions as the childless marriage or the numerous family are more
directly the concern of the virtue of justice. A healthy sex life and the
family, though bound together, are two issues that should not be confused.
VII: FRUITFULNESS
THE life-long relation of a man and woman in marriage is profound and
complex. The sex-union of their bodies has more in it than the temporary
satisfaction of sense-needs or the beginning of new life; the whole
organism is modified, and stresses and processes are set up in the soul.
The action, too, is a social one, serving to preserve and propagate the
race. We must guard against oversimplification of a relationship that
includes the intimate and extensive rights and privileges of a life shared
by a man and woman, each of whom is an unique person, bringing to it a
whole set of particular needs and powers.
Nevertheless, in broad outline, a threefold blessing in marriage may be
indicated under the headings of fruitfulness (bonum prolis), devotion or
faithfulness (bonum fidei), and the sacramental bond (bonum sacramenti).
These three blessings, appreciated by the theologians of the Church since
the days of St. Augustine, are present in every perfect marriage. They
contain the three purposes of marriage commonly enumerated, namely,
procreation, solace, and the remedy against sin. The blessing of
fruitfulness includes what is called the primary end of marriage, the
begetting of children; whilst the blessing of faithfulness includes what
are called the secondary ends, the increase of love and the remedying of
lust.
In one respect men or women living by themselves are incomplete; they are
made for the society of one another. Even if they love and live together,
a fuller life still awaits them, for together may they make children and
form a family. Their mutual love is fruitful in new life. A happy family
is among the greatest achievements of human love.
One of the greatnesses of men and women is to be good fathers and mothers;
in their desire there is an instinct for fatherhood and motherhood. The
coming of children, quite apart from the needs of the nation, brings a new
value to the personal love of the couple and establishes it with fresh
strength. Their love is blessed when God's creative action works with it,
and may still spend itself generously in tending and forming the new life
they have made.
But for this fruitfulness of human love the race would die out. Hence
children are said to be the primary purpose of marriage considered from
the social point of view. The birth of a child cannot be regarded as a by-
product of sex love; but as, in this sense, its culmination.
This purpose of marriage is not just the birth, but also the proper up-
bringing of a child; not procreation alone, but education. Both processes
are part of the same situation. In preaching the value of the numerous
family, the Church by no means favours the idea of unrestricted
propagation, without regard for the welfare of the children. The act from
which they are born is a human act, and should not be done irresponsibly
and without some preceding consideration of its consequences.
In applying the test of the children's welfare, undue importance must not
be attached to their chances of being brought up with the same social
amenities that their parents have enjoyed. The main thing is their chance
of having a decent human existence, and of being fitted to love and serve
God in this life and to be happy with him for ever. If economic conditions
make it well nigh impossible for healthy husbands and wives to have
children, then the social organizations supporting such a state of affairs
is gravely unjust, for there is wealth enough in the world for them, and
they must be given the opportunity of obtaining it.
The character and religious training of the children is a matter for the
parents in the first place, the office of the State is to assist and
implement their education.
Sex love of its nature is directed to children, not as to its only
purpose, but as to its main purpose if sex is seen as part of the social
scheme. This fruitfulness is essential to the very nature of marriage, so
much so that if a man and woman come together and go through the ceremony
of marriage yet at the same time intend positively to prevent the blessing
of children by denying their right to the proper sex act then they are not
married.
Two difficulties occur here. First it may be asked: are marriages perfect
and complete only when they are fruitful? And secondly: must people
actually intend to have children when they come to be married? What if
they are too old, or poor, or prevented either permanently by reason of
some physical disability or for the time being because of economy or
health?
Two distinctions must be drawn. First, between marriage in general and
marriage in each particular case. Second, between actually having children
and doing nothing to prevent their coming.
As regards the first distinction, children are the primary purpose of
marriage, the happiness of the man and woman is the principal object of
marriages. These two reasons are distinct, and should not conflict in
thought, for the former belong directly to the institution of marriage,
while the latter belongs directly to the two lives shared as one in
marriage.
The double purpose is given in the Book of Genesis. First: God created man
to his own image. Male and female he created them. And God blessed them,
saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule
over the fishes of the sea, and the birds of the air, and all living
creatures that move upon the earth. Second: "And the Lord God said: It is
not good for man to be alone; let us make him a help like unto himself.
And he brought her to Adam. And Adam said: This is now bone of my bones,
and flesh of my flesh. Wherefore shall a man leave father and mother, and
shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh."
Considering, therefore, the biological nature of sex and the divine
command of fruitfulness, there is a general obligation on married people
to have as many children as they reasonably can. Few married couples will
want to deny themselves the blessing of children when they are in a
position to have them, except for what they will admit to be unworthy or
selfish reasons. As we have already noted, the real problem is when there
are serious objections to a child, either on the score of health or of
financial means. Must every married couple in this case still try to have
children if their marriage is to keep its direction to the primary end?
When it is said that the birth and education of children is the primary
end of marriage, marriage is taken in general, as the natural means and
divine institution for increasing the human race. Considered so, the
formation of a family is the main object of marriage. But it is one thing
to consider marriages collectively and "en bloc" in this way, another
thing to consider them in each particular case.
Here the second distinction must be introduced, in order to safeguard the
fruitfulness of intercourse and marriage in cases where children do not
come.
Sometimes conception may not be possible, because of age, or physical
disability, either permanent or temporary. Sometimes a child, though
really wanted for its own sake, is yet regretfully decided against, at
least for the time being, because of adverse health or economic position.
In all these cases the essential blessing of marriage which is
fruitfulness and the essential direction of marriage towards procreation
is not opposed, so long as the couple do nothing to exclude them
positively. They are so excluded in the latter case when intercourse loses
its fruitfulness and generative nature by being abused in the ways touched
on in a preceding chapter.
Proper intercourse is that kind of mutual action from which, considered in
itself, a new life may be born; that living act in which a man and woman
know one another without concealment. If this action can be performed and
is not denied, then the direction of marriage towards children is not
opposed at its beginning, and in those cases where the birth of a child is
physically or morally impossible and intercourse is sterile, marriage is
intact as regards the blessing of fruitfulness and its order to the
primary end of procreation.
In point of fact, no couple can entirely determine whether they shall be
parents or not. All that immediately falls under their control is the
human act of sex-union, the generative act. Processes of nature follow
this act, and though they be interrupted they are outside the positive
control of the couple. These processes may or may not lead to the birth of
a child, but in themselves they do not affect the fruitfulness of the
human act.
To parents able to bear and support and train them, children are blessings
difficult to prize too highly, bestowed by God, working through processes
that are still very mysterious to us. Their actual arrival is a completion
of marriage love, but not a necessary condition.
Yet though they carefully define the essential fruitfulness of sex
intercourse and credit it to cases where the consequences are barren,
Catholics cannot share in the feeling that marriage is almost entirely for
the private happiness of the couple concerned; that children may be a
consequence, but are scarcely a purpose; a charge rather than a joy; whose
education is more the affair of the State than of the parents. On the
contrary, the begetting of children should not be separated from the union
of man and woman, for in children is their love perpetuated and blessed.
VIII: FAITHFULNESS
THE instinct for private possession, for an exclusive and unique
relationship, is deeply engrained in human nature. The desire to be
devoted to one person above all and for that person to be so devoted in
return is human and healthy. It is promised in marriage. Husband and wife
are called to share a love and life that surpasses other earthly
relationships and may on occasion exclude them. "For this reason shall a
man leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife."
The intimate giving of their bodies to one another should be a sign of the
union of their souls. Mutual knowledge and confidence and support, an
exclusive regard that is good unless spoilt by jealousy or vanity.
This relationship of body and soul is an object of justice, vowed in
marriage, and any breach of it is a violation; is an injustice. "Thou hast
heard what was said of old: thou shalt not commit adultery. And I say to
you, that anyone who looks at a woman with lust, has already committed
adultery in his heart."
The positive side of the companionship of husband and wife covered by the
blessing of faithfulness is that they should love and grow together in
mutual love, serving each other with their bodies and souls, for comfort
and happiness and strength. The negative side is that through marriage
both may avoid sins of impurity.
The sex impulse is one of the strongest passions in human nature. Though
quite healthy in origin, it may develop in a way that is unhealthy,
dangerous for body and soul. It is important to realize that the passion
is not just tolerated in marriage, condoned as rather unworthy yet all the
same necessary. It leads up to and is present in sacramental marriage, and
there finds its complete and gracious expression. Sex intercourse enjoyed
rightly and in a human way is an act of the virtue of purity. It is none
the colder for that. Purity is not the absence or denial of passion, but
is passion justly ordered. In this matter a married couple will help one
another. Their bodies are granted, their passions satisfied, not by
indulgence, for that defeats its own end, but by a human act full of
grace, that does not diminish but rather increases the ardour, even the
passion, of love.
IX. GRACE
THE marriage vows, the bodily closeness, the human life lived together in
friendship, these things signify a deeper reality than themselves alone.
They are grace-giving symbols of a supernatural union what looks beyond
time to eternity. This joining of two in one flesh is a sign of "the Word
made flesh," who "dwelt among us," a sign of the union of Christ with his
Church.
Love through marriage becomes more than an incident, an action, it becomes
a life, and an enduring life. Emotion is included, but transcended. For
this love to persist through the varieties of experience and hold and
possess them, it must be strengthened from a source outside the will and
affections of the individual. Divine strength is given in the grace of the
sacrament, which the man ministers to the woman and the woman to the man
in the offering of their bodies and lives to one another. "Heirs
together of the grace of life."
This is the blessing of the sacrament which can and should infuse every
detail of their life and actions together. Perhaps we think of it chiefly
in connection with the trials of marriage. Yet the joys too deserve this
supernatural quality, and all of them, without priggishness or lack of
spontaneity, can be quickened by it. "The Song of Songs" is quite
naturally taken by Christian tradition to illustrate the devotion of
marriage love. A sacrament of grace, that is of life, of the true life of
men and women, bodies and souls, made by God to be completely happy. For
sufferings now are preparations for that perfect joy, and present joys
anticipations of it. Creation is one of a piece and the earth is the
threshold of heaven.
"Husbands love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church and delivered
himself up for it: that he might sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of
water in the word of life: that he might present it to himself, a glorious
church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should
be holy and without blemish. So also ought men to love their wives as
their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever
hateth his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, as also Christ
doth the Church; because we are members of his body, of his flesh and of
his bones. For this cause shall a man leave father and mother: and shall
cleave to his wife. And they shall be two in one flesh. This is a great
sacrament: but I speak in Christ and in the Church."
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