Human beings are the only earthly creatures God created in His image and likeness.  As human beings we are different from the animals and plants because we are persons--beings endowed with the capacities of thinking and choosing.  Our bodies are to express or manifest our persons: what we know and choose…since we are created in God’s image and likeness and…our bodies can and should express or manifest God.  In other words, our bodies are to make visible the “mystery hidden since time immemorial in God.”⁽²⁾  We are also different from the angels.  They are created in God’s image and likeness, but they do not have bodies and cannot make visible what has been hidden in God. The Catechism of the Catholic Church emphasizes the same point:

 Marriage & Family Life (Theology of the Family)

Created in God’s image and likeness, we are called to act like Him. We are called to love because He loves.  In fact, love is God’s activity.  Our bodies, especially, in their masculinity and femininity, are to express this act, this divine love: a self-gift of one person to another.

 God created man in his own image and likeness: calling him to existence through love, he called him at the same time for love.

 God is love and in himself he lives a mystery of personal loving communion.  Creating the human race in his own image and continually keeping it in being, God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion.  Love is therefore the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being.

The theology of the body and the theology of the family are two distinct points of view.  The theology of the body examines the eistence (being) of the individual human body-person.  This examination is logically prior to any relationship of the human person with God, the angels or other human beings.  The theology of the family considers the noble and almost unbelievable vocation of man and woman to enter into a familial communion in imitation of the Blessed Trinity.

 As images of God, married couples are to “be fruitful and multiply.” (See Gen. 1:28.)  Created in God’s image and likeness, we are called to act as God acts.  In other words, we are called to love as God loves.  But before we can love as God loves, we need to know how He loves.  Christ shows us how God loves because Christ is God and He came to reveal how God loves.

 The sacrifice of Christ on the cross is the clearest and most dramatic revelation of God’s love.  It is clear from the account of the Agony in the Garden that Christ freely chose to die on the cross for us.  It was His own choice. He sweat blood over this choice.  Christ’s choice to die on the cross was an informed decision.  He knew that His death would mean our salvation.  He made His choice based on that knowledge.  Further, Christ’s sacrifice was a self-gift.  He gave Himself on the cross to the Father for us.  How could He have given more?  Christ’s gift of Himself is permanent. He always remains the Lamb of God and the effect of His sacrifice extends to eternity. 

 Finally, His sacrifice on the cross is life-giving. Through this act of salvation, we are able to share the very life of God: grace.  There are five characteristics of God’s love as revealed in Christ’s sacrifice:  1) a choice; 2) based on knowledge.  This choice is 3) a self-gift and this self-gift is 4) permanent and 5) life-giving.

 If we are to love as God loves, our love must have the five characteristics of divine love.  Our love must be a choice based on knowledge.  This choice must be a decision to give oneself.  The gift of self must be permanent and life-giving.

 To love as God loves and express those acts in and through the body is a testimony to the Trinity.  When we imitate God and love as He loves, we show the world not just how we love, but how God loves.  A married couple who loves as God loves becomes an outward sign of the love of the Blessed Trinity.  As a preface of the wedding liturgy testifies, the “outpouring of love in the new covenant of grace is symbolized in the marriage covenant that seals the love of husband and wife and reflects your divine plan of love.”⁽³⁾ 

 When couples enter into marriage and strive to love in this way, they form a communion of persons, a union of themselves.  This communion mirrors and reflects the communion of the Trinity.  No other human union is as intimate a reflection of the Trinity as the bond of a man and a woman in marriage.

 Excluding the supernatural relationship with God through grace, the most intimate and intense human relationship of love is marriage: the partnership of life and love.⁽⁴⁾  Even though other human relationships of love are expressed in and through the human body, the union of husband and wife in marriage is of a totally different order because marriage depends on the body in a way that no other human relationship does!  The act of married love is the defining characteristic of marriage.  So, in marriage, the union of two people in the physical act of married love is their love in a way that no other bodily expression love can be.

q    NFP

The special reciprocity between masculinity and femininity enables a man and a woman to love in a unique way. (In this context, we are presuming that the man and woman are parti-cipating in the five characteristics of love….they are married and acting in accordance with their dignity.)  In fact, it can be said that through the human sexual powers we can love in a more profound way than through any other of our physical attributes.  (Not that there are not greater acts of love, e.g., the mystical union with God which some of the saints have experienced, but such acts of love are primarily movements of grace within the soul and in essence are not physical.)  Since our sexual powers enable us to love in a unique way, they enable us to act like God in a unique way…. we become visible images of God in a very special way.  In other words, in the physical act of love, the body expresses the person and reveals God in a most profound way.  In studying about this way of loving, we study what the body is revealing, i.e., we study the body’s language.  Since this language reveals ourselves and even God, in “reading” this body language, we come to know ourselves and God in a very special way.  Our sexuality is, in a sense, a window to the soul.

 Therefore, the study of our sexual powers is, in a sense, the practicum of the theology of the body and it reveals the profound mystery of the human person and even to some extent, the mystery of God!  This study is undertaken by the teachers and students in the NFP apostolate…. [by examining] our fertility.  [NFP] reads the “language” of love written by the body….  There is a distinction between knowledge of fertility and its application.  Married couples may apply the knowledge of their fertility to plan their families, but this actually is responsible parenthood.

 Since NFP is the study of our sexual powers, the window to the soul, NFP reveals the profound mystery of the human person.  …men and women see the mystery which is expressed in and through these faculties.…(and will) perceive the dignity of the body and its sacramental value as a physical image of God.  …begin to respect the body and hold it in awe and reverence.  NFP is the means to teach the world the incomparable dignity of the human body as the expression of the human person…  When men and women understand the truth about themselves, they will … act responsibly… in  accordance with their truth and value.  But it is impossible to act responsibly if one is unaware of the truth.  NFP teaches the truth about fertility.  As such, NFP, properly taught, will usually lead to virtue.  The Church  encourages its use as a means of developing a holy life. 

 NFP has been elevated to an apostolate.  It is the study of human fertility, of sexuality, which shows the individual that she or he is truly an image of God created to love as God loves.  NFP probes the unchartered and infinite depths of each individual human person as an image of God.  It gives people a sense of their own worth and dignity.

 q    Responsible Parenthood

As a relationship of love, marriage must have the five characteristics of divine love, and the bodies of the spouses must participate in the characteristics of divine love insofar as is possible.  Each spouse must choose to give himself or herself to the other.  The choice must be based on the recognition of the value and dignity of the spouse.  The decision to give oneself to the other must be permanent and life-giving.

 If even one of these five characteristics is missing, the spouses do not love each other.  Clearly, the body cannot make a choice since it does not have a will.  Further, it cannot recognize the value of another person because it does not have a mind.  Lacking a will, the body cannot give itself.  However, the body can share in the permanent characteristic of love because it can be given as a permanent gift until death.  Our bodies do not require a series of partners over life as they require food.  If God had created the human body to need a series of  partners over a lifetime, there could be no permanent bodily gift to one other person.  In this case, the physical union of two people in marriage would not be love because one of the necessary characteristics of love: permanence, would be missing from such a relationship.

 The body also participates in the fifth characteristic of love: life.   God has joined the physical expression of love between two married people to the creation of new human life.  It must be this way if married love is truly to be love.  God’s love is always life-giving.  If married love is to be truly love, it must be at least potentially life-giving.  The intimate physical gift of love between husband and wife includes the possibility of physical life.  If this were not the case, the physical union of the two people in marriage would not be love.  But the body does participate in the fifth characteristic of love: life.  If the human body could not participate in this characteristic of love, husbands and wives would be using each other rather than loving each other.  But God created us to imitate Him in his love and so the physical love of spouses is truly love because it is physically permanent and life-giving.

 God allows married couples a unique participation in the power of creation.  The animals reproduce, but their offspring are not persons. The angels do not give life to new angels.  Only human persons can bring new embodied images of God into our world….can give life to new unique persons of equal value to themselves.  Each child is another expression of God in this world and will live for all eternity.  Nevertheless, God did not intend that every act of marital love should result in a new human person.  There are only a few days in a woman’s cycle when a pregnancy is possible.  Further, God gave us a mind and a will so that we could cooperate with Him in the creation of a new human person: procreation.  Responsible parenthood signifies the virtuous choice made by a married couple either to strive to procreate or to try to postpone conception.

 Some people think that a decision by a couple to time their acts of love in order to space children using NFP is the same as the decision by a couple to avoid pregnancy through contraception.  This is a confusion of purposes and means.  Even if it is granted that the purpose is the same,  the means are different.  The NFP couple delaying another pregnancy and the contraceptive couple delaying a pregnancy are engaging in two radically different acts.  The difference between the NFP couple and the contracepting couple is as wide as two men who decide to go to the bank to withdraw $100.  The one who fills out a withdrawal slip and takes the money from his account is doing a totally different act from the other one who holds a gun to the teller and takes $100 in a robbery.  The NFP couple, while engaging in non-procreative intercourse by making use of the infertile times, give themselves to each other totally and completely as they are at that moment.  The contracepting couple withholds their fertility from each other in an anti-procreative act and do not give themselves totally.  (Remember, love is defined as a total self-gift which is life-giving.)  The NFP couple engages in an act of authentic love, while the contracepting couple does not, even if they think they are.  It should be further noted that God never told married couples when they should make love.  That is totally up to the couple.  What He does say (through His act of creation in that we are called to love as He loves) is that when married couples love, they are to give themselves totally to one another with nothing done to prevent life.  The NFP couple does that while knowing that they are infertile.  The contracepting couple does not because they withhold their fertility from one another.   Further, the contracepting couple alters either both their bodies or one of them and in so doing they violate the integrity of their own bodies.

 But the purpose of the contracepting couple and the NFP couple are different!  The contracepting couple while engaging in the marital act, has excluded procreation both physically and purposely (in their wills).  Such a couple has said “No” to new life.  The NFP couple has said to God, “We do not think this is the time, but if you wish a new life, we will accept that life.” In this sense, the NFP couple making use of the infertile times have not excluded the (remote) possibility of procreation physically or purposely (in their wills).  There is a radical difference in these intentions.

 Couples who have developed a familial spirituality and who are acting responsibly in planning their families will always accept the potential for new life while engaging in the marital act.  If a responsible couple has decided to postpone a pregnancy for a time by having recourse only to the infertile periods, they still have not excluded the possibility of procreation in their intentions (or physically).  If a pregnancy should occur during these times, the couple will accept the child as a precious new life given to them by God.  The Church’s constant teaching is that the procreative purpose may never be excluded in the physical or intentional orders.  While teaching that procreation can never be excluded, the Church also encourages responsible parenthood and the spacing of children through the application of fertility awareness.

 It is clear that the NFP couple and the contracepting couple have different intentions while engaging in a specific marital act.  However, some criticize those who use NFP with having a contraceptive mentality because they intend not to have children over the course of some months or years.  In other words, even though each act is “ordained to the transmission of life” as Pope Paul VI insisted in Humanae vitae (no. 11.), still the NFP couple is criticized, even condemned, because, say the critics, their general intention is identical to the general intention of the contracepting couple.  These critics are charging the NFP couple not with having the same specific intention in each marital act as the contracepting couple, but with having the same general intention as the contracepting couple. Intentions or thoughts can be sinful, e.g., the thought of hating someone to the point of wanting him or her dead, or worse, in hell for all eternity, is sinful.  However, with regard to individual acts, e.g., acts of conjugal love by married partners, the Church never examines a general intention.  Rather, it is always the specific act and the specific intentions which accompany the specific act which weigh as evidence in the judgment.  In other words, an NFP couple may have some vague general intention about postponing children for months or even years, but that does not matter.  It is the specific intention which they both have when engaging in an act of love which either contributes to the virtue of the act or to its sinfulness.  And, as we have seen, the specific intention of the NFP couple is not contraceptive.  Therefore, the NFP couple does not have a contraceptive mentality in the individual act.

 This distinction between the general intention and the specific intention explains one of the effects of NFP on couples.  Since the advent of modern NFP, pastoral practice has been to encourage couples to use NFP even if they did not have the most virtuous of general intentions.  Pastors were pleased if an engaged couple agreed to use NFP and generally never addressed further the question of spacing children.  It is the universal experience of the Church in the last twenty years all over the world that couples who began using NFP with the intention to exclude children in their marriage for a long time or to have only one or two, usually “change their minds.”  Pastors have often met couples whose marriages they witnessed years before who have five, six and even more children and often they are closely spaced.  When asked, the couples who more often than not only wanted two and those widely spaced, will say: “We changed our minds.”  Partly this is attributable to their discovering through NFP that they are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (see Psalm 139:14).  They encountered their wonder and dignity by learning the theology of the body through the practice of NFP.  But something else also is happening when couples “change their minds.”  The general intention at the beginning of their marriage (which might be called contraceptive) has given way to the series of specific intentions they had when they engaged in the marital act.  Each marital act (with the proper intention, i.e., an openness to life) weakened the general intention until the general intention was conformed to the specific intentions accompanying each act.  It is impossible to maintain a general intention towards something and continually act contrary to that general intention.  Either the specific intentions will change to conform to the general intention or the general intention will change to conform to the specific intentions.  When NFP is successfully and faithfully practiced, the initial general intention (which might be contraceptive) disappears in favor of the specific intention (openness to life).  This is another way that NFP builds virtue.  It is also the reason why pastors always encourage its use, even if the general intention of a couple is not the best at the beginning!

 Nevertheless, how do couples decide on the spacing of children?  In the past the Magisterium has taught that couples, who have recourse to the infertile periods only, should have “serious reasons.”⁽⁵⁾  However, in The Apostolic Exhortation on the Family (nos. 32 & 33), John Paul II does not use the phrase “serious reasons” when speaking of responsible parenthood.  Rather he sees the natural regulation of births as fidelity to “the Creator-person.”⁽⁶⁾  In another passage, the Holy Father writes that “responsible fatherhood and motherhood, understood integrally, is none other than an important element of all conjugal and family spirituality.”⁽⁷⁾  The Pope sees responsible parenthood as the fruit of a genuine familial spirituality, a familial holiness which is encouraged and developed through the theology of the body, NFP, and the theology of the family.  Studying the profound mystery of the human person as an image of God both in his individual existence (theology of the body and NFP) and in the family, a reflection of the Trinity (theology of the family), spouses will come to know themselves and God.  They will know the truth about themselves as images of God.  They will come to know something of the profound love which God has for them.  Spouses will realize that they are called to act as He does.  They will strive to respond to each other and to God with the same love and fidelity which He shows them.  Gradually, a familial spirituality will develop in the spouses.  Responsible parenthood flows from this familial spirituality which is developed through knowledge of the truth about man and God (theology of the body, NFP, and the theology of the family).  As in so many other areas, John Paul II has elucidated and clarified what lay behind previous magisterial teaching on responsible parenthood.  If the language of “serious reasons” has almost disappeared, it is because the Holy Father knows that these will exist as a matter of course if families respond to his challenge to learn the theology of the body, NFP, and the theology of the family.

Contraception and Sterilization

Contraception and sterilization violate the dignity of the human body.  Since the human body is the expression of the human person, it participates in the infinite value and dignity of the human person.  The human body is not simply a collection of biological parts functioning in a certain way.  It is through the functioning of those parts in their totality that the mystery of the human person is expressed, that the body “writes” the language of personhood.  The totality of the biological functions is more than the sum of the parts because through these apparently understandable functions an awesome and wonderful mystery is expressed in the language of the body: the mystery of an image of God.  Since the body is not a machine and is the expression of the person, the principles of the theology of the body teach that we should never harm or alter a major, healthy, functioning part of the human body. To do so is to try to “re-write” the language of the body, or, better put, to falsify the langauge of the body.  Both contraception and sterilization attack our reproductive systems: a major, functioning part of the body.  If the reproductive system is healthy, it should never be altered.  To alter it surgically, with drugs, or with other devices, is to attack the dignity of the human person and to manipulate the language of the body.  It is to treat the body as a machine, a thing, which the person owns.  Since the body is not a thing, but rather a part of the precious gift of life, it should never be treated as some thing which can be owned and manipulated.  Contraception and sterilization are a use of the human body.

Contraception and sterilization are also contrary to love.  When a couple employs contraception or sterilization, they are refusing life.  Since they refuse life, they no longer love because love, if it is truly love, must have the characteristic of life.  There is no love without the willingness to give life.  And there can be no bodily love (as expressed in the marital union) without couples’ willingness to accept life if God blesses them with a child.  This point is made by the Pope John Paul II in the now famous phrase from the Apostolic Exhortation on the Family, “the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradic-tory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other.” (no. 32.)  Contracepting and sterilized couples lie to one another when they engage in the sexual embrace: their body language speaks of a total self-gift and the contraception and sterilization speak of holding some-thing back.  Contracepting and sterilized couples do not love because they do not intend to give themselves totally to one another. (It is very important to note that if someone has been sterilized, the sin can be forgiven and the Church does not require such a person to undergo an operation to reverse the sterilization procedure.  Having confessed the sin and received absolution, a sterilized person can truly love his or her spouse in and through the body because he or she can intend to give himself or herself totally to the spouse.  Morally speaking, in this case, the sterilized person is comparable to a naturally infertile person.  Of course, knowing that a sinful act can be forgiven can never justify doing it.)

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END NOTES

Act!!!

3.       Promote Pope Paul VI Institute in your parish especially to couples experiencing in