Conception Concepts

[AlanFromWichita]

This message is starting out All About Me. Sorry if you find that boring. Anyone who wants to change the topic, that’s OK. Kind of like playing Calvinball; the rules can change here.

OK, I’m going to try switching sides. No promises, mind you, but rhetorically I am going to try to articulate my understanding of Church teachings on contraception as if I want to agree with her instead of trying to remain neutral.

When man and wife form a union, they become one. When a man (using the example of man) leaves his parents, he becomes one body with her.

That means that along all the axes of a whole human being, we have to act as an entire functioning being, acting in the greatest possible unity and having the God-given power by proxy to procreate more like ourselves. For this power to work optimally, the surrender for the spice (er, spouses ) to each other has to be complete, or they are denying each other some of their own assets to contribute to the whole being that is possible when the marriage includes the Trinity-reminiscent relationship of two previous human beings merging with God to create a perfect family – open to whatever comes to it in the natural course of complete and total expressions of love.

If you are speaking with your wife, do you feel you need to wear a mask? Is the mask to help communication by translating intio her language, or is it to obfuscate what you really mean?

Humans have these components (listed in no particular order), according to my first-and-only spiritual director:

mental
emotional
physical
spiritual
sexual (tied in with sense of identity)
social

So now that you are one unit, each of you – man, woman, and God – brings a different perspective to this marital triangle.

How secure do you want the bonds to be between husband and wife? Which of these aspects would you be willing to allow to become a problem area? In which do you think you can develop individually, with artificial barries between them?

If one were unable to hear, the other would learn sign language. I would think if one became emotionally needed for a while we could also accomodate with some commitment, OK maybe a whole lot of commitment.

I should think a total sharing could be something like what the Church is talking about procreative and unitive. It should span all the relationship. We always talk about the sexual aspect, but let’s talk about the communion between man and wife as a total communion in all six areas of the person. When we do this we are witnessing to God’s unitive and procreative power by sharing in it.

Alan

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Hmmm. I thought I was putting a whole lot of things together. Maybe I did, but didn’t show how they go together…

Oh well, if this thread dies after this post I’m not going to save it.

 

[p.e.driver]

Bravo. I don’t want it to die, but I don’t disagree Thank you for the perspective. It is more scientific than I’m used to, but you are correct so far!

Pamela

 

[Catholic2003]

Contraception is wrong for the same reason that non-procreative marital acts are wrong, that is, because they abuse our reproductive equipment in ways contrary to how our bodies were designed by God.

That said, if you ignore the immoral aspect, I can see how such non-procreative acts would actually enhance the unitive aspects of marital relations, through the same giving and receiving of pleasure present in marital acts that are apt for procreation.

Thus, I would conclude that although what you’ve written is a very insightful description of what God intended marriage to be, it does not really capture the true rationale behind the immorality of contraception.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Catholic2003:

Contraception is wrong for the same reason that non-procreative marital acts are wrong, that is, because they abuse our reproductive equipment in ways contrary to how our bodies were designed by God.

That said, if you ignore the immoral aspect, I can see how such non-procreative acts would actually enhance the unitive aspects of marital relations, through the same giving and receiving of pleasure present in marital acts that are apt for procreation.

Thus, I would conclude that although what you’ve written is a very insightful description of what God intended marriage to be, it does not really capture the true rationale behind the immorality of contraception.

Thank you for your response. Actually what I wrote was kind of the ground work for my idea.

My idea was that an ideal marriage would take all the resources the two combined have to offer, in a three way marriage with God, and be able to communicate as effectively as we know how along all those axes.

Actually it isn’t original, but just a lot things I picked up along the way. What really is different about what I’m thinking now compared to before, is that I can kind of see where some of the papal documents or whatever they were that talk about contraception as a withholding of truth come from.

Certainly any practical marriage may not have perfect communication along all the axes of personhood, but to intentionally prevent full communion in one or more limits what God can do with you as a procreative resource. That, in my current version of thinking, could apply whether the couple hides from each other emotionally and therefore misses part of the marriage ideal possible, or whether they use contraceptives, intentionally “dumbing down” the union possible in the sexual act. If I stretch it enough I can even imagine the unitive phase as being spiritually violated. I’m not saying I’m comfortable with all this yet, but I’m less against it.

What this is all leading to, is that if I revisit some of the old arguments such as contraception is always wrong while NFP is sometimes wrong, and all that, that hopefully it will begin to make sense.

Alan