The Fruitfulness of Married Sexuality
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The Weirdness of the Silent Schism
They call it the “silent schism”, the fact that such a huge percentage of Catholics in the pews reject the Church’s teaching on contraception. It’s really astonishing that this is the issue, the teaching, that is so incomprehensible that people just can’t accept it.
Are people really going to say, “Oh sure, a homeless guy walking around Palestine was the Creator of the universe. What looks like bread and wine – also the Creator of the universe. And there’s only one God, but it’s Three Persons. Not three Gods.
“All that totally makes sense to me. No problem. What I just can’t get my head around is that sexuality is directed towards fertility. That’s just too mysterious for me to accept.”
Seriously? Or could it just be that we know the Church’s teaching is true – we just would rather do what we want to do?
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Structure of our desires
The connection between sexuality and fertility is obvious just from our bodily design
Our reproductive organs are our sexual organs. Even at the level of our desires, there is the connection between sexuality and fertility. In a man, the sexual act is accompanied by the urge to give his fertility and a woman’s libido peaks at ovulation. In other words, in men, sexuality is linked with a desire for fertility and in women, fertility is linked with a desire for sexuality.
So yet again, all the Church is doing is saying, “Hey, respect how you are made! Don’t act against the design of your body. Don’t frustrate the intrinsic form of your desires. Don’t rip apart what belongs together in the human person. Leave sexuality and fertility together.”
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Self-sterilizing
It’s never healthy to separate what belongs together in the human person. Jesus Himself said it, “What God has joined, let no one separate.”
It’s not healthy to totally separate a person’s head from their body. It’s not healthy to totally separate your work life and your home life. It’s not healthy to totally separate your personal convictions from your public actions. By the same token, it’s not healthy to separate sexuality from fertility.
Don’t sterilize your sexuality. Don’t sterilize yourself. Your fertility is a good thing. It’s a gift from God. Don’t attack it, don’t eliminate it, even for one night, don’t do anything to violate the way God has made you.
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NFP / “Infertile Couples”
Now sometimes, even when you begin the procreative process through a physical act of love between man and wife, some later event will prevent that process from terminating in a child.
There are a lot of conditions that have to be just right for conception to happen. And some later breakdown of the procreative process doesn’t go back in time to change the nature of the earlier act between husband and wife.
The point is that not every act has to end up producing a kid. Which might be fine. Kids are the biggest responsibility human life has to offer. They are a crushingly heavy, beautiful gift, and there may be reasons to hope that God doesn’t give you that gift at the moment.
So if a couple decides to refrain from intimacy when it’s more likely that it could result in a kid, that’s okay. As long as they are pursuing some other proportionate good, that’s their call.
They don’t have to engage in the marital act, which is designed to get the procreate process started, all the time. But when they do, they can’t do something to deliberately thwart the procreative process they themselves have begun. They must trust in God, and be grateful for whatever gift He gives, no matter how heavy.
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The Temptation to Selfishness
Everyone struggles to be selfish with their sexuality. And everyone, just about, is intimidated by parenthood. But what God has done is tied the two most beautiful loves life has to offer. He has bound them together so that in pursuing the delightful, we will come to accept the heroic.
Let’s not shortcut God’s design. Everything God has arranged, He has arranged for our happiness. Love of spouse flows naturally into love of children. And it is very good that it should be so.