"When my husband & I come together to physically express our love, I am conscious of something sacred happening. For us, sexual intimacy is a sacred rite through which we renew and regenerate the love bond between us. This love is a delicate balance between the nourishment we give each other through our intimacy and the nourishment we provide to other people in our lives including our children." (Sue, aged 36 years)

The gift of married love is the unique and distinctive expression of human intimacy. Through the covenant of marriage, the life of a woman and the life of a man become intertwined in a profound and pervasive way. So total is their self-giving to one another that they live no longer as two individuals but as ‘two in one flesh’.

Furthermore, this intimacy is experienced in a profound way. Not just confined to the physical or genital act of intercourse, the married couple’s intimate loving involves a way of relating that permeates their entire lives. Through countless routine interactions in daily life, a husband is called to respond to his wife as ‘the woman of his life’, and she to her husband as ‘the man of her life’. Their sexual way of relating and the unity and permanency it implies makes their love different to every other man- woman friendship they may encounter. This is the ‘exclusivity’ of married love which sets it apart from all other human relationships.


Loving and Life-Giving:
A Dynamic Unity

Many people ask ‘What’s the difference between avoiding conception through natural means and avoiding it through contraception?’ After all, they say, the result is the same: a pregnancy is avoided. In responding to such questions, the Church highlights the deeper meaning of the act of sexual intimacy rather than just its biological consequences.

The promotion of natural fertility methods by the Church goes hand in hand with the promotion of an attitude to sex, to love, to life itself. Without this attitude it is possible that natural methods will be used with a contraceptive mind-set. The letter of the law will be adhered to, but the spirit could be lost. This is an inadequate expression of the Church’s teaching on responsible family
planning.

Contraception alters the meaning of the sexual act itself. To deliberately and willfully cut off one’s fertility in the very moment that life could begin creates an intrinsic contradiction. On the one hand, a spouse is surrendering his/her whole self. Yet in the midst of that surrender there is a denial experienced by the couple who, in effect, say to each other: ‘No, I will not offer you all of me. No, I will not accept all of you.’ In this way an implicit ‘falsehood’ becomes embedded in an activity which opposes its intrinsic value as a source and expression of total self-giving.

The very act which has the capacity to express the completeness of the couple’s self-surrender instead becomes an act of holding back of one’s deepest self. It is out of respect for this deep communication between a husband and wife in marriage that the Church rejects contraception. By its stance the Church is protecting the precious meaning of the marital covenant and the promotion of life.

‘Watching our three year old son play with his building blocks, at times I am tempted to interfere and help him. Yet somehow this would intrude on his discovery and diminish his accomplishment. Clearly the more loving action is to keep a watchful eye, ready to affirm and appreciate. I think the difference between fertility regulation by natural means and artificial means can be described in similar terms. While contraceptive methods can control fertility, natural methods allow us to manage the gift of fertility which comes from God. Controlling fertility reduces a sense of dependency and ultimately our sexual self-appreciation is diminished. Managing our fertility through natural methods empowers us to responsibly plan our family without undermining our need to be fully present to each other as sexual, fertile beings.’ (Chris, father of 3 children.)


For the full text of GOD’S GIFT OF LIFE & LOVE, go to http://www.cam.org.au/latest-news/god-s-gift-of-life-and-love.html



 

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