3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Gospel: Matthew 4:12-23
January 23, 2005
St. Thomas Aquinas, Camas, WA
Fr. Derek Lappe
The Gospel of the call of the disciples reminds us that Jesus asks
of all of his disciples a radical surrendering of our own desires and
wants—a surrendering of our plans and ideas—for the sake
of cooperating in his divine plan for the salvation of our souls.
We can imagine the surprise of those first apostles who were busy working
their trade, fishing, cleaning and tending to their nets. Into their
ordinary workaday life enters the Master with a call for them—“Come
after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” All of their business
plans and ideas, everything they had been working toward and hoping
to accomplish is suddenly put into the background, surrendered for the
sake of following that call. It is a message which is relevant not just
to those with the vocation to religious life or to the priesthood but
for every follower of Jesus Christ.
It is easier as a preacher and easier as a hearer if, when we talk about
surrender to Jesus Christ, if we leave that as a sort of abstract, spiritual,
and theoretical sort of surrender. But the fact is that Our Lord does
not ask us to follow him just in our minds and hearts, but in our lives
in the concrete and real circumstances of our daily life.
One of the places where Christ has addressed that call most insistently
is in the area of marital chastity—sadly, it is a message which
has often fallen on deaf ears. Thus, I would like to spend some time
today preaching about contraception and try to explain why the Church
teaches what it does.
In 1968, Pope Paul VI wrote a very brief encyclical entitled Humanae
Vitae—On Human Life. It was a teaching encyclical simply meant
to reaffirm what the Church and what all Christians had always believed
about the moral wrongness of contraception. The Holy Father felt it
necessary to write at that time for a number of reasons. Two of the
most important reasons were these—the first reason was that beginning
in 1930 with the Anglicans (and then followed by nearly all the other
Christian denominations), protestant communities began to abandon the
perennial Christian understanding of the meaning and purpose of marital
love. The second reason was to counter certain claims which were being
made in conjunction with the advent of modern contraceptives especially
the birth control pill and the idea that through contraception and sterilization
many of the world’s problems would be solved or at least greatly
relieved.
Led by people like Margaret
Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, the world was being told
that marriages would be strengthened by relieving the pressure of too
many children and relieving the limitations on couples’ opportunities
to express their love through sexual intimacy. They were also predicting
a dramatic decrease in unwanted and problem pregnancies—abortion,
we were told, would practically disappear, and women would be freed
from the burden of unwanted pregnancies—child abuse would nearly
disappear since every child would be a wanted child—poverty would
be no more or severely curtailed by the curing overpopulation.
Paul VI certainly understood the good intentions and legitimate concerns
for the emotional and physical well-being of married couples, who at
times are overwhelmed by the responsibilities of parenthood—and
also the concerns about the problems of poverty in nations where population
is densest. Yet in the end, he had to reaffirm what the Church had always
taught because contraception was not, and is not the answer to the problems
the world faces.
When Pope Paul VI wrote his encyclical he made a number of predictions
himself, and when you look at what has transpired over the past 36 years,
it is hard to deny the prophetic vision of Paul VI and the wisdom of
his teaching. He predicted that artificial contraception would result
in lower moral standards, an increase in pornography, sexual activity
before marriage, and adultery. He saw the reliance on artificial contraception
bringing about a general weakening of marriage and family life. He saw
a diminished respect for the human person and an increase in reliance
upon abortion as back up for when contraceptive techniques failed. He
even predicted what has actually occurred in China with governmental
polices imposing abortion, contraception and sterilization.
I would like especially women to consider this quote from Pope Paul:
“Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows
accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence
due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium,
reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own
desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround
with care and affection.” (Humanae Vitae #17)
With the higher and higher numbers of single-parent families, the doubling
of the divorce rate to fifty percent, the pornography both on the computer,
cable, and prime time, the consistently high levels of teen pregnancy
and 1.3 million annual abortions one must at least admit that contraception
has not lived up to its great expectations.
Why is that? Or we could ask, what exactly is the problem with contraception
and sterilization? Well it comes down to this—God is the author
and creator of marriage he made it and gave it as a gift to his creation—it
is not ours to recreate or redefine. God is the author and creator of
the marital act, he made it and gave it as a gift to his creation—it
is not ours to recreate or redefine.
I’d like to use an analogy to illustrate the point. When I was
in school in Rome I had the use of an old Ford four-door car. One Christmas
three other seminarians and I decided to drive this car to France for
vacation. We spent Christmas day in the city of Lyons and then were
going to drive north to the city of Ars on pilgrimage to the place where
St. John Vianney had spent his life working as a parish priest. We stopped
for gas and I asked one of the guys to put gas in the car while I went
in and paid, and then we began our trip. But about a mile from the gas
station all of the sudden the car just sort of stopped. It was running,
kind of, but really rough, sort of rattling. It would go about 15 or
20 miles per hour but that was about it. So I pulled over and asked
Jason what he had put in the car—he assured me it was gasoline,
but when we drove back to the station we realized that he had put in,
not gasoline, but rather a sort of gasoline and oil mix that was meant
for motor scooters, not for cars. Our first plan was just to keep driving
until we ran the fuel through. But after a drunken Frenchwoman rear
ended us we decided that wouldn’t work. Then we decided to siphon
the gas oil mix out into containers, but that didn’t work, it
only resulted in Jason Labbe and I swallowing fuel and throwing up for
the next two days. So we finally had to call a mechanic to drain the
tank and then refuel with gas.
The analogy is that when Ford manufactured that car, they made it so
that it runs on gasoline, if you maintain the car, put gasoline in it,
it will function the way that it is supposed to. When you put something
else in, like a gas and oil mix, the car might bang along and kind of
get there but not without great problems and difficulties. And when
God made marriage he created it a certain way. He created marriage to
be an intimate communion between a man and woman held together by promises
of totality (i.e., it is life-long), fidelity, and openness to children.
And he gave them the gift of the marital embrace for the purpose of
renewing those vows in a way which is both unitive and procreative—love
and life go together. When you exercise marriage and conjugal union
in the way that God created them, they work the way that they are supposed
to work; when you put try to run them in any other way, it just doesn’t
work.
God made the sexual act, and it needs to be respected and exercised
in the way He intended. In sharing with us the power to give life, He
joined it to an intimate expression of self-giving love. To interject
a barrier or chemical to separate the act of love from its possible
life-giving effect is to tamper with and seriously violate a sacred
design of God.
And thus anything, whether it’s adultery, pornography, contraception,
sterilization, in-vitro fertilization, artificial insemination that
is not aiming toward those three goods of totality, fidelity and openness
to children, or that separates the loving and life-giving nature of
the sexual act is contrary to the divine plan for marriage and sex,
as communicated by the constant teaching of the Church.
The common response at this point is then, so what is everyone supposed
to do—have twelve children?
Well, no, not necessarily—but, I would say that every couple should
have as many children as God wants them to have. There has to be a desire,
first of all, amongst couples when making decisions about family size
to have the children that God wants them to have, to generously make
themselves available as co-creators with God. There does need to be
a presumption toward generosity.
However, there are also many good reasons that one might postpone pregnancy
as Pope Paul VI points out—physical, economic, psychological factors
which might make it prudent for a couple to decide through prayerful
reflection to avoid pregnancy.
The last 36 years have brought about great scientific advancement and
refinement in Natural Family Planning methods that provide a morally
acceptable means for couple to make responsible decisions, while being
respectful of the natural link between love and life in sexual intimacy.
The scientific effectiveness of Natural Family Planning, when a couple
believes it is best for their marriage and family to make choices to
avoid a pregnancy is impressive. The less than five percent divorce
rate for couples using NFP speaks volumes about how NFP improves a couples
communication, intimacy and mutual respect. The many previously infertile
couples that have been able to conceive a child assisted by the knowledge
of the fertility cycle and hormonal treatments are an important part
of the good new of NFP.
When the encyclical was released there was a well-orchestrated protest
and condemnation of the Church’s teaching by theologians (many
of whom have since left the church) by lay people and even by priests.
The problem is that many of the people who have rejected the Church’s
teaching have never really understood, nor taken the time to understand
what the Church teaches or why. Since the time of Pope Paul VI, God
has also raised up another great prophet in John Paul II who has spent
much of his pontificate teaching on and defending the dignity of the
vocation of marriage and the high call to holiness which is made to
every married couple. He has been asking that all of you rediscover
the great dignity of your vocation to the married life and the sanctity
of the marital act as the expression of that vocation.
As St. Paul talks about in his letter to the Corinthians (see Second
Reading above), the Gospel is not preached through human eloquence,
which I take to mean that it is not my job to convince you of these
truths, as if I can convince anyone of anything. It is your responsibility,
as disciples and followers of Jesus Christ, to be open and faithful
to the teaching of the Church. I’ll admit it is a very difficult
teaching for many, but those who have embraced God’s plan for
marriage and family—it is a source of great joy and peace, even
with the struggles. For those who are hesitant, I would invite you to
very prayerfully and openly begin the process of study and thought about
how Jesus is calling you to change your life—to surrender your
own plans and ideas for his plan for your life.
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