Containment Considerations, Part Deux

A faithful interlocutor of mine reached out this morning to ask:

“Two questions.

“One, are you well? I can no longer offer Holy Communion for my priests and am feeling a little worthless.

Two, how am I to stay close to Christ if I cannot be with Him via the Eucharist? I am afraid the connection will be lost or at least weakened.”

The writer didn’t mind waiting for an answer in text or publicly posted, but I described my alacrity below.

You don’t often wait for an answer from me very long. I don’t tend to wait. My mind is a triage center whose supervisor is out back having a smoke during structure fires and vehicle accidents with multiple injuries. I’ve been up for several hours, though I’ve been making good use of the time, the fruits of which I will share at a later date. 

I can take a break from that effort to answer your question. The public posting of such an answer is a good idea, since as you suggest many people are wondering, worrying, downright frustrated about it. Perhaps you read my recent blog post on the subject. I didn’t express my fear of some people’s eventual dereliction of Mass attendance, but it’s present and persistent.

Methods of Natural Family Planning take for granted that couples will not want to or will not be able to achieve fertility at every point in their marriage, even though they are – or marriage and its sexual expressions are, by its very nature – open to it.

We are so to speak in a period of infertility, and certainly not an intentional one. To think that those who habitually or intentionally absent themselves from the sacred assembly for ignoble reasons are also in an infertile period, though theirs happens to their own undoing, perhaps the highest self-abuse or self-neglect.

How do faithful couples achieve intimacy when they are not intending fertile intercourse? They have recourse to many non-genital actions. One priest of my youth preached on romantic/sexual talk as a kind of foreplay to the consummation of the (chiefly-) marital act. It’s a curious but not-for-children appropriate way to consider the Liturgy of the Word.

The weakening of people’s connection has been a concern of mine since the dispensation of the Lord’s Day obligation that preceded the recent ban of public Masses. If so for the first, how much more so for the second!

How are we, then, to stay close? Come to the church if and when it is open (you said yours is not); watch Mass on Internet/television; keep talking to God, voicing every frustration and fear you can think of, whether of your own or others. But don’t let monologue become outright harangue: let supplication be joined by contrition, for whatever deserves it, on your own and others’ behalf; by thanksgiving for what you do have and enjoy, not nearly as it deserves; by adoration of God in Himself and in every tabernacle. 

The Church as such is not neglecting Him by forbidding Mass; we are in some sense, I speculate, experiencing the external ratification of a popular internal disposition. The rain that falls on the just and unjust, the rain that falls on everyone for cleansing.

Marriage: Willing Mutual Submission

Thank you, kind reader, for accompanying me through this trek through the seven sacraments, signs (1) perceptible to the senses, (2) instituted by Christ and (3) entrusted to the Church, (4) that impart the divine life. 

This last one is first in terms of its establishment because it is the relationship by which the Creator got the proverbial ball rolling. Before there was a Church strictly speaking, there was a man and a woman, and there was Love, divine and human. 

This ends up telling us nearly everything about the Church, at least according to Saint Paul: Recall from a recent Sunday second reading (Eph 5:21-32) his meditation on the mutual submission of wife and husband. Jesus’ total Love-Investment took the form of His entire life, especially His passion and death, the paschal oblation from which the Church has grown by yielding to that supreme Gift. Human families grow from the same seed of willing submission of bride and bridegroom.

Marriage is not merely incidental to human society or Catholic life. “The Church passes by way of the family,” said Pope St. John Paul II. The family is the fundamental building block of society, of the Church at large and our parishes at small. The love of husband and wife, expressed and fortified by children, is both our “social security” and our “ecclesial security.” Jesus Himself is our security par excellence, but we can experience His security more…securely…within the context of a vibrant family—for which reason the family is often called “the domestic Church.”

Spouses unite body and soul in the act of conjugal love, expressing and nurturing the total gift of self, holding nothing back. Among the vast variety of life arrangements out there, sacramental marriage alone can sustain a total, faithful, permanent, exclusive union that is open to new life. The Catholic Church is among a shrinking (but no less bold) few who insist despite our own failures that man and woman alone express the total gift of self through conjugal acts that are not closed off to new life by intention, chemicals, or devices. 

Note the comprehensive nature of this affirmation: extending it to “intention” demonstrates the totality of the gift. A “fingers-crossed,” corrupted intention, pleads for a deeper commitment from the spouses. “The struggle is real,” we say nowadays, and this in truly trivial matters; but fidelity to that struggle yields blessings in this life and the next.

Here’s the rub: Do we honestly believe in the next life and its impact on our decisions in this life? As they say, “Click here to find out.” When the “link”—i.e. the marital covenant—seemed never to be truly made, that’s the stuff of declarations of marital nullity. We celebrate the proper functioning of the marital relationship, properly situated within the divine-human relationship of which it is an analogue.

Just as in medicine, we can learn more about the proper function of a tissue or organ by way of the improper function. Learn now, and do everything in your power with God’s grace and others’ help to move forward in the best direction. Learn from your mistakes and repent of your sins: that’s the human way along the Divine Way!

Rabbit? Run!

The latest papal obiter dictum (read: leaving on a jet plane) concerned his contention that good Catholics do not have to "be...like rabbits" when it comes to family size.

It may be accurate, though picayune, to insist that Pope Francis did not say, *breed* like rabbits, as the phrase typically is attested. Be...breed...whatever.

This post of Dr. Gregory Popčak is informative, especially his reference to paragraph 50 of the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes.

One segment of the citation clears up this breeding problem (emphases mine):

...in their manner of acting, spouses should be aware that they cannot proceed arbitrarily, but must always be governed according to a conscience dutifully conformed to the divine law itself, and should be submissive toward the Church’s teaching office, which authentically interprets that law in the light of the Gospel.

Before reading the Popčak piece, I recalled a phrase that I picked up at some point in the seminary: humano modo. Context? Glad you asked:

Can. 1061 §1. A valid marriage between the baptized is called ratum tantum if it has not been consummated; it is called ratum et consummatum if the spouses have performed between themselves in a human fashion [humano modo] a conjugal act which is suitable in itself for the procreation of offspring, to which marriage is ordered by its nature and by which the spouses become one flesh. {source}

A "human manner"--a manner suitable to free and rational creatures who are "now called children of God, for that is what we are" (1 Jn 3:1). A human manner presumes a total investment of self that is permanent, exclusive, and open to new life. A human manner is not "arbitrary" and casual, fit for public display and risible observation.

Can rabbits marry each other--or dogs, cats, gerbils, or even the most intelligent orangutans? Does a total investment of self that is permanent, exclusive, and open to new life ("openness" being a uniquely human possibility) even occur to rabbits, or any of the other animals? The sexual expression of rabbits and other animals is instinctual, not free and rational.

Now maybe scientists and others have observed in animals some approximation to human love. Every concern for the other as other certainly participates in, derives from, divine love--and cannot  otherwise exist. But we are not animals; and Pope Francis is reminding us that the Catholic Church wants responsible parents who must decide wisely and generously how they will cooperate with God's gift of generation. Indiscriminate copulation, devoid of devotion, will not suffice.

Maybe I'm a "speciesist" by insisting that, however tender we may deem it to be, the procreation and rearing of animals is different from human love both in degree and in kind. Maybe my take doesn't catch the spirit of the Holy Father's words any more than the rereading by any author in the mainstream media (or even this article), but I offer it nonetheless.

Daring Conversation on the Delicate Condition

My friend Fr. Joseph Faulkner was a couple of years behind me at Saint Charles Seminary. The title of his blog, "Father Talks Too Fast," cleverly and self-effacingly points to the cadence of his homilies. Although fast talking was not among my recollections of him from seminary days, intelligence and wit certainly were.

His diocesan bishop, the Most Rev. James D. Conley of Lincoln, recently published a pastoral letter on contraception (available here). While people might not expect a Catholic cleric to speak about the topic in an encouraging and compassionate manner--if at all!--Bishop Conley does. He exhorts married couples to be open to life. Alongside fidelity, permanence, exclusivity, and totality of investment of self, openness to life is a constitutive dimension of the Sacrament of Matrimony. When any of these dimensions is absent and the offending spouses do not repent, marriages tend to fail, if they happen at all. Thanks to the chemical, mechanical, or otherwise intentional separation of babies from bonding, the sexual expression ideally reserved for sacramental marriage happens more easily outside of sacramental marriage. Even in a sacramental marriage, contraceptive sex is a reservation of self contrary to the covenant context that demands "all of me."

Father Faulkner has published (and I include here) the recent homily that develops his Ordinary's viewpoint. He provides insightful background to the current landscape, detailing not only the widespread abandonment of the established teaching among non-Catholic denominations, but also the provenance of Pope Paul VI's watershed encyclical Humanae Vitae, in which the Holy Father courageously reaffirmed Church teaching against the suggestion of most of his chosen advisors. Father also discusses the effects of contraception on marriages--on the erosion of trust and sacrifice and every other aspect of Christian Love.

Various preachers around the country have begun once again to promote an integrated vision and practice of marital love. Fear undoubtedly inhibits some preachers, but at this point we may wonder what more there is to lose by keeping silent.

Human respect is one of the last strongholds. No priest or deacon longs to hear the usual barrage:

"Where do celibates get off preaching about such things, when some of them can't keep themselves in check?"

"How do they know what it's like to try to raise children? Maybe they'd change their tune if they tried just for a day."

"They don't know all the situations that have led me/us to my/our decision. How dare they judge?"

There are other objections, too. I won't answer any of them here. It's enough for me to wonder how the Catholic Church could possibly maintain her comprehensive reverence for human life for so long, amid so many objections, if the Church herself weren't true and her teachings weren't true. I don't propose that thought as a solid, discussion-ending argument, but it ends the discussion for me. From there I can listen with an open mind and heart to good presentations such as Fr. Faulkner's, or from Dr. Janet Smith, or others.

I wonder aloud whether the contraceptive tendency betrays a lack of gratitude, if not latent disdain, for the gift of our own existence. In any case, fear lies at the root of directly-willed infertility; and "perfect love casts out all fear" (1 Jn 4:18).

By month's end, the Church will be canonizing Popes John XXIII and John Paul II. The latter was a fearless force behind Humanae Vitae. In the early 1980s, John Paul developed his "Theology of the Body" out of earlier reflections that had supported his predecessor's 1968 encyclical. An entire generation of priests and religious, the present blogger included, has claimed JPII as a chief inspiration behind their calling. Without having sired a child, Pope Wojtyła has given birth to thousands of vibrant Catholics. His successors continue, in their own ways, to breathe new life into the dry bones of this post-Christian century.

I have great respect for Catholics and other people of good will who "struggle" with the Church's teaching, if by "struggle" they mean "try to understand and live it, who occasionally or often fail, but repent and try again." As for those who do not "struggle" by the above definition--those who reject it or casually ignore it, or who might even be unaware of it--I desire their salvation and every other blessing I would desire for myself. Foremost among those blessings are knowledge and love for the truth. If I were a married man, or a permanently or provisionally unmarried man, I would also "struggle," by the above definition. I'd hope, however, that my wife and I, or prospective wife and I, would want to do everything possible to live according to the Church teaching.

In the upcoming Bishops' Synod on the Family in 2015, we can be assured that openness to life within the marital embrace will continue to be a matter for conversation. I do not know the exhaustive list of synodal topics, but I would venture to include the increased divorce rate, the decrease in children, the increase in artificial means of conception (as well as contraception), and the increasing legitimization of same-sex marriage. Like the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, these issues are synoptic (i.e. they can be considered side by side and are "related" to each other).

Following Pope Francis' example, we begin always with the basic Gospel: Jesus Christ has saved us! In light of that message we then can talk about controversial matters. Catholic clergy can relate the motives and benefits of ongoing openness to life; joyful Catholic couples can share their struggles (trials and triumphs) in the practical realm. But it will require boldness, both in terms of the willingness to face objections and the willingness to field questions. Like the Greeks who gathered to hear Paul at the Areopagus (cf. Acts 17), people may want to hear more about this Good News, and as they accept it they slowly will attempt to live it. The Church's compassion (manifested most clearly in the Sacrament of Penance) can bolster those who find themselves unable and unwilling to walk this challenging way.

Of Hamburger and Filet Mignon

A recent RCIA subject was the Sacrament of Marriage.  While I was the presenter ("A bald-headed barber can cut hair," said a venerable deceased priest of our diocese), there are two Catholic couples who have joined us this year for a refresher course.   I could rely upon them for insights into authentic Catholic marriage, for refutation or support.

On the whiteboard I wrote down Canon 1055.1 as the point of departure:

The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring, has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.

I hardly began to unpack that rich definition before a vibrant discussion ensued.  Looking back, I think the catalyst was an early digression on the distinction between celibate (properly defined as "non-marriage") and chaste (sexuality expressed appropriately in one's "state in life," whether married or not).  I do this to myself.  

Former high school students can recall how class discussions often went (imagine the last glug glug glug of the toilet bowl), but we have something greater than high schoolers here.  The average age of the group is, give or take a couple of years, 40.  By this point our good people have had some experience in the gamut of human relationships, certainly once as children, but now as co-workers, spouses, and parents.  They can testify to the blessings of marriage amid some considerable wounds.

By evening's end we basically treated the subject, though not without diversions aplenty.  "We will revisit this topic next week"...and perhaps a few more times, because the marital analogy pervades Catholic theology.  As we adjourned one candidate noted, "When it came to everything else we've learned so far, it was easier to just accept what was being discussed.  But when it came to marriage..."  Yes--marriage and family life are one big fat sensitive nerve that runs through the person and society.  It is akin to the "Bread of Life Discourse" (cf. Jn 6) in terms of its effects on the confounded crowd.   It is the foremost point of departure between All-In Catholics and Cafeteria Catholics.

"Lord, to whom shall we go? The Kardashians aren't even around yet!"

As much as I trembled at the sound of contention, in my heart I rejoiced.  There is no other way for understanding and healing to begin, except in the encounter of truth, undertaken in an atmosphere of brutal honesty and tender acceptance.  "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off" (Gloria Steinem, whom I never ever expected to quote in a post on the Catholic vision of human sexuality).

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A priest I know likes to say, "Why settle for hamburger when you can have Filet Mignon?"  This, chiefly, in regard to Filet Mignon; but also--and, I believe, more pointedly--with respect to the Catholic Church, which still, even in Vatican II, claims to be blessed with the fullness of the means of salvation.

Matthew 25:21

Catholic speakers on the topic of human sexuality (the likes of Christopher West come to mind) might find this metaphor "meat and just" for their purposes.  The contraceptive mentality, whether it is expressed as concubinage, same-sex relations, ipsation (from the Latin ipse, "self"), or the restriction of fertility for egregiously selfish motives, is, no matter how you garnish it, hamburger.

Actually, it is hamburger laced with "mad cow disease": vitiated, unable to fulfill its intended purpose.

For many people sexual activity has no other purpose than to satisfy partners who mutually engage in it, in whatever manner suits them.  The Catholic Church maintains both a proper purpose and a proper manner for sexual expression.  Unlike many of our Protestant brethren--and to the consternation of some Catholics--the Church will neither retract nor qualify this positive Word on the One-Flesh Union.

I constantly witness the noxious effects of self-spoiled sexuality on many penitents and their families.  And Confession isn't the only forum that people don't tend to visit while on a winning streak!  (Whining, maybe.)

We are talking about the deliberate, mechanical and/or chemical separation of the procreative and the unitive purposes of the sexual act.  (I was about to call it the "marital" act, as it once was known; but why must we call it "marital," or why limit its use to that context?)  Last year a secular publication ably described the consequences of the great divorce of openness to new life and reinforcement of the nuptial bond.  Various writers, including a blogger from the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), have repeated John Paul II's famous verity: The problem of pornography is not that it shows too much, but that it shows too little.

Everyone has composed his or her own variations of this danse macabre, whether from a more theoretical standpoint or from their own painful experiences.

God knows that people who have made or are preparing to make the solemn promise of chaste celibacy share concupiscence with the laity.  We have our own ill-set, including misplaced resentment and indulgence in "more socially acceptable" vices.  Moreover, our overt violations of commandments six and nine have garnered much publicity in recent years, proving old and prompting new speculation on covert violations.

I may be sounding like a critic of my own kind here, but it's more of an anticipatory volley against expected objections; besides, through working with others I've gotten to recognize and address many things over the years--a lifelong endeavor that gives much joy and saves much trouble.  There's no harm in preemptive honesty that is both accurate and charitable, made by one who knows and who wants to be part of the solution instead of the precipitate!

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With any "adult" audience, inside or outside of the liturgy, I cannot presume that they have heard it all before, or heard it right.  Fulton Sheen, I believe, said that people often hate not the Catholic Church as she really is, but what they suppose the Catholic Church to be.  Even so, they may very well understand what she teaches with regard to certain matters--sexual or otherwise--but their system just isn't accustomed to filet mignon.

Nowadays, whether I'm talking to the 4th graders or to 40 year olds in RCIA, I am plugging character formation--the gentle and determined subjection of the passions to the intellect and will.  "Emotions make an excellent servant, but a poor master."  I try to be consistent with this because, I figure, it's always appropriate to exhort my brothers and sisters in Christ to become more conscious of God's presence in their daily choices.  And I never hesitate to remind them that I am speaking as if to a mirror.