Natural Family Planning: Offering the Full Gift of Self

By Bishop Paul S. Loverde
Special to the HERALD
(From the issue of 5/6/04)

In the fourth of a six-part series, "Love, Freedom, and the Person: Sexuality and the Catholic Church," Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde will examine the Church’s teaching on contraception and natural family planning. In this series, Bishop Loverde will show that the Church’s teachings — so often misunderstood as a litany of prohibitions — are grounded in a holistic understanding of the human person and because of this, they open the door to an authentic understanding of love and freedom. Next week Bishop Loverde will examine homosexuality, to be followed by a concluding column on the virtue of chastity. The series is archived online at www.catholicherald.com.

Next Sunday’s Gospel aims right for our hearts. If we listen, if we allow Jesus’ three-word commandment to probe and examine the horizons of our lives, you and I may become uncomfortable. Apathy, hardness of heart, or a wandering mind may cause us to look away. The alternative, an honest face-to-face meeting with Jesus, might exact an untold price in our lives.

"I give you a new commandment," Jesus will say, "love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another" (Jn 13: 31-33).

In recent weeks, we have considered how the teachings of the Church on the human person, the body, marriage, and the family free — rather than limit — us to "become who we are": persons made in the "image of God" (Gn 1:26). Each of us, as Pope John Paul II has said, can discover his or her own vocation only "in the total gift of self,"1 a gift which is both life-giving and love-giving. Rooted in these teachings, let us look at contraception and natural family planning in light of Jesus’ command to "love one another as I have loved you."

In the sacrament of marriage, man and woman are the "image and symbol of the covenant which unites God and His people."2 The husband and wife are "ministers" in this covenant, and the "sign" of their union is their becoming "one flesh" in sexual union. This is one reason why in the Latin-rite Catholic Church, the bride and groom are the ones who actually celebrate the sacrament, while the priest merely "witnesses." The married man and woman are called to celebrate this "sign" of their unity "in truth and love," thereby expressing "the maturity proper to persons created in the image and likeness of God" (The Family in the Modern World, 12).

In the past 40 years, a chasm has opened between the Church’s view of marriage and that espoused by many in our society. As denizens of a culture now accustomed to a contraceptive mentality and a 50-percent divorce rate, we would do well to read or revisit Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae. "[A] man," wrote Pope Paul VI in what could pass for a description of our society today, "who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection" (HV, 17).

In addressing the moral question of contraception in Humanae Vitae¸ Pope Paul VI drew our attention to two world-views which compete for the heart of marriage. To the mistaken idea of man as the "arbiter" or "master of the sources of life," the pope put forth a holistic vision of man and woman as the "minister[s] of the design established by the Creator" (HV, 13). In the words of the above passage, the spouses face a choice: on the one hand, "reverence," "equilibrium," and true "partnership," and on the other, a "reduced" view of the spouse as "mere instrument."

When you and I meet someone new, we naturally observe that person’s body language. In addition to their choice of words and tone of voice, our interlocutor — through posture, eye contact and poise — conveys a host of "signs" or signals. If, for example, this person’s words are warm and engaging, but his posture is defensive and he is staring at the floor, we might be puzzled by the mixed signals and disconnect between his verbal and non-verbal communication. Our dialogue can be verified or undermined by our own body language.

Humanae Vitae and the subsequent contributions of Pope John Paul II take body language and the dialogue of the husband and wife very seriously. The union of husband and wife in the conjugal act, the encyclical teaches, bears an "intimate truth" which signifies both love and fertility. If the two meanings — the love-giving (unitive) and the life-giving (procreative) — of the conjugal act are honored in the one act, then there is a "truthful" union of husband and wife, and their "marital dialogue"3 is deeply enriched.

Pope John Paul II elaborates beautifully on Humanae Vitae in the The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World (Familiaris Consortio) and his lectures on the "theology of the body." Husband and wife find themselves wrapped up in a "great mystery" (Eph. 5:26), one authored by God and given a structure, or grammar, based in truth and "objective moral norms."4 In sexual union, the spouses are "called to express that mysterious language of their bodies in all the truth which is proper to it."5 Husband and wife are called, when celebrating the "truth of the sign" 6 (conjugal union), to observe and honor the "life-giving" and "love-giving" grammar of that language. Their union is a radical moment of expressing, in their God-given bodies, the mutual gift of self.

So what about contraception? Does it really harm the relationship of man and woman in marriage?

The conjugal act can only be truthful if it is not frustrated or impeded in its two-fold purpose by a deliberate, intentional choice made by one or both spouses. Humanae Vitae declares immoral "every action which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" (HV, 14).

Sexual union is the last place spouses would wish to encounter "mixed signals" or "disconnect." The all-encompassing marital vow of unconditional love doesn’t stand for falsity, but instead the "total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife" (FC, 32). When this God-given language of love is overlaid by a "contradictory language," namely that of contraception and its "refusal to be open to life" (FC, 32), the result is not only a mixed message, but also a "falsification" of the sign of the sacrament of marriage.

By separating the love-giving and life-giving meanings of conjugal love, contraception implies that the life-giving meaning of sexual union is manipulable, a disposable "extra," something less than fully human. The "nuptial meaning" of the human body is violated, and the relationship of the spouses is harmed as they are reduced to objects of mutual self-gratification.

When someone befriends us and subsequently "uses" us in some way, how do we feel? This person, instead of respecting and loving us for who we are, used us. We become the "object," a mere "means" to that person’s "end." Contracepted sexual union turns an act of love into one of use through the deliberate choice to deprive it of its life-giving potential. By altering this part of their bodies or placing a barrier between them, spouses are in fact withholding, or rejecting, a part of their personhood – their fertility. From the "personalist" or who-we-are standpoint, when we flaw the life-giving dimension, we inevitably flaw the love-giving dimension. The result is what Pope John Paul II calls "sexual utilitarianism."

But what makes Natural Family Planning (NFP) different from artificial contraception? The difference is not simply one of method or technique.

NFP respects the language of the other’s body by viewing fertility as an essential element of what it means to be human. NFP shows on the part of the couple an openness to the gift of life and demonstrates that children are the norm, rather than the exception, in marriage.

Of course, a couple practicing NFP may determine, in prayer, that circumstances preclude them from trying to become pregnant at a particular time. Responsible parenthood requires that the spouses, in "the right and lawful ordering of the births of children" (HV, 21), take into account the good of their own family, their state of health, their means, the good of the society to which they belong, the Church, and all mankind.7 At such times, NFP tells a couple when to avoid coming together in the marital embrace for the good of the marriage. During times such as this, they express their love in ways other than through the conjugal act.

Pope John Paul II recognizes that even NFP can be used in a selfish way with a "contraceptive mentality." Yet the practice of NFP, even for imperfect reasons, can lead one toward good. As Jesus has told us, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (Jn 8:32).

If we allow Jesus’ command to "love one another" as He loved us to penetrate every aspect — emotional, physical, intellectual and spiritual — of our lives, we had better brace ourselves for renewal. Taking the "gift of self" seriously will exact a price. Husbands and wives who courageously take up their role as "ministers" of the sacrament of marriage indeed know that "the gate is narrow and the way is hard" that "leads to life" (Mt. 7:14). I thank God that for them, and for every one of us in our respective vocations, the "sweetness of the yoke of Christ"8 together with the Church, which "flings wide open the channels of grace,"9 stands waiting.

1 Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, 85.

2 Pope John Paul II, The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World (Familiaris Consortio), 12.

3 Pope John Paul II, Theology of the Body (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1997), General audience, October 24, 1984.

4 Theology of the Body, p. 398 (General audience, August 22, 1984).

5 Ibid, p. 397 (General audience, August 22, 1984).

6 Ibid., p. 406 (General audience, October 3, 1984).

7 Ibid., p. 402 (General audience, September 5, 1984).

8 Humanae Vitae, 25.

9 Humanae Vitae, 25.