All of the stuff going on in the Carlos/Gabrielle/John story line involves sin and selfishness. Carlos wanted a baby with his wife. That’s not a sin. He was dishonest with her in replacing the pills with placebos, but that isn’t really a sin, and certainly not a mortal sin. One post described it as forcing Gabrielle to do the right thing and compared it to forcing a spouse to go to Mass at gunpoint. I think that is not an appropriate comparison. Because the marriage act involves two people, it is wrong for one person to force their contraceptive mentality on their spouse (which is what Gabrielle was doing). Carlos was not obligated to go along with it, and he decided not to contracept anymore. Hopefully he knew Gabrielle would never get an abortion, and so he figured he would do what he did and deal with the consequences later. I’ve heard of wives skipping their pills on purpose for the same reason. I don’t think it is moral to force your spouse to contracept. And if anyone dares to say he forced her to get pregnant, I will think they are muddled in their thinking. The marriage act naturally leads to pregnancy. Only a contraceptive mentality sees pregnancy as an error or malfunction. Anyone who wishes to avoid pregancy morally must abstain from the marriage act. To be shocked that the marriage act leads to pregnancy is to think like a contraceptor. Even people using Church approved spacing methods must be open to life. So nobody engaging in the marriage act has any right to feel like they were tricked into their preganancy or forced into it. All that happened is that nature took its course (perhaps despite many obstacles to life deliberately willed by the couple).
Objectively speaking, Carlos and Gabrielle were sinning in using contraceptives at all. Carlos was also doing wrong by pretending to still approve of their use even after tampering with the pills. However, Gabrielle can’t get on any high horses here. She was sleeping with the gardener (recently 18) again and that’s why she’s afraid he’s the father. We could make a laundry list of all their sins and I suppose we could then make two lists, one for those sins that involve serious matter, and then one for those that don’t. Then we could figure out which of the ones involving serious matter fulfilled the requirements for mortal sin in Carlos and Gabrielle’s case; meaning those objectively serious sins that were done with sufficient reflection and full consent. But why bother? It’s just a TV show, and it doesn’t give us full insight into the hearts and minds of Carlos and Gabrielle (or anyone else on the show). All we can see is that they are doing things the Church teaches are objectively serious sins. Gabrielle seems to be aware of Church teaching (at least her conversations with the priest indicate this). I am not sure how ignorant she or Carlos are (objectively speaking). All I can judge are the actions themselves, not the agents performing the actions. But we already knew that what was being done was wrong, so it seems a bit silly to dig deeper.
I kind of think the moral question of the original post is a moot point. These two have been leading messy immoral selfish lives. (And I haven’t even gotten into Carlos’ embezzlement and illegal banking activities.)
What I like seeing is that Gabrielle still goes to the priest for help and she seems to want some connection to God and her faith, however tenuous, and however much she still gives in to sin. That is a ray of hope. Hopefully she will get better and be more open to God. Hopefully, her baby will be God’s way of making her more selfless. Hopefully she will also want her baby to be raised Catholic and take her own faith more seriously.
I doubt it though. All the drama in these shows comes through conflict and scandalous behavior. If all the characters were saints, there wouldn’t be as much drama.
Maybe they could do a show about how saints are persecuted for being holy and d by the world and that would involve conflict too, but it would still be depicting sin since the persecutors would be sinning in persecuting the saints.
