Editor's Desk: Redeem the Time
By Michael F. Flach
HERALD Editor
At the 1930 Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Church
became the first Christian body to claim that
contraception could be morally acceptable. Pope Pius XI
responded to this pronouncement with his encyclical
"Casti Connubii" ("On Christian
Marriage") in which he reaffirmed the Catholic
Church’s constant teaching that contraceptive
methods of birth control are incompatible with an
authentic Christian understanding of marriage and human
sexuality.
Pius XI said two things are necessary for marriages to
be renewed: Christian spouses must meditate on God’s
plan for marriage and they must seek to shape all their
ways of thinking and acting according to this plan.
"The world is trying the experiment of attempting
to form a civilized, but non-Christian, mentality,"
wrote Anglican poet T.S. Elliot, shortly after the 1930
conference. "The experiment will fail, but we must
be very patient in waiting its collapse. Meanwhile, we
must redeem the time so that the faith may be
preserved alive through the dark ages before us, to renew
and rebuild civilization and save the world from
suicide."
It is prudent to assess the state of society as we
approach the 70th anniversary of the Lambeth
Conference and the 30th anniversary of Pope
Paul VI’s encyclical "Humanae Vitae"
("On Human Life"). Denver Archbishop Charles J.
Chaput gave a powerful address on this subject during the
recent Couple to Couple League (CCL) gathering in
Colorado Springs. CCL is the nation’s largest
teacher of natural family planning.
"The family will survive into the third
millennium only if there is a radical return to
God’s plan for what, and who, the family is,"
said Archbishop Chaput. "The rejection of the truth
about human sexuality and conjugal love — brought
on, at least in part, by the widespread acceptance of
contraception — has played a major role in the
breakdown of the family in this century."
The archbishop said 30 years of debate has shown us
that the contraception dispute is not primarily about the
regulation of family size. "What’s ultimately
at stake," he said, "is the truth of the human
person, created as male and female in the image and
likeness of God."
The archbishop said contraception is the choice to
impede the procreative potential of a given act of
intercourse through artificial devices, hormones or
sterilization. "The contracepting couple chooses to
engage in intercourse and, foreseeing that their act may
result in new life, they intentionally and willfully
suppress their fertility."
There is a moral difference between artificial
contraception and natural family planning, he said.
"The distinction lies in the fact that abstaining
from intercourse when a couple is fertile is in no way
contraceptive. Such a couple is not choosing to impede
the procreative potential of intercourse. Instead, they
are choosing not to engage in intercourse.
"While their acts are naturally non-procreative,
they are never anti-procreative. This is a crucial
distinction."
Archbishop Chaput said it is morally permissible for
couples to space children or avoid them indefinitely if
their decision is based on prudent reflection, taking
into consideration their own good, the good of the
children already born, and properly assessing their own
situation on a material and spiritual level.
"The task now at hand to ‘redeem the
time’ and renew the family is a critical one,"
he said. Although the Church’s teaching on conjugal
love and marital chastity presents difficult challenges,
"it is the challenge of the Gospel, the challenge of
the Cross, the challenge for husbands and wives to love
one another as Christ has loved us."—
M.F.F.
Copyright ©1998 Arlington
Catholic Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
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