Inter virum et uxorem maxima amiatia esse videtur; adunantur enim
non solum in actu carnalis copulae, quae etiam inter bestias
quamdam suavem amicitiam facit, sed ad totius domesticae
conversationis consortium.
--ST. THOMAS AQUINAS.
1936, LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
Nihil obstat:
EDOUARDUS CAN. MAHONEY, S.TH.D.
Censor deputatus.
Imprimatur:
JOSEPH BUTT,
Vic. Gen.
Westmonasterii,
die 27a JUNIS, 1936.
First Published, 1936
This edition is produced in full compliance with the Government's
regulations for conserving paper and other essential materials.
CONTENTS
PREFACE, BY A PRIEST
I. INTRODUCTION
II. HUMAN RELATION
III. SACRAMENTAL CONTRACT
IV. MORALITY OF INTERCOURSE
V. OBLIGATION
VI. ABUSE
VII. FRUITFULNESS
VIII. FAITHFULNESS
IX. GRACE
PREFACE
BY A PRIEST
THOSE who are engaged in the work of education, and who thus come
into intimate contact with contemporary family life, are well
aware that interest in sex is a characteristic of the modern
outlook, and that, owing to the complications and false standards
of much of our life as it is lived today, the right conduct of
married life cannot be left to the guidance of unaided instinct.
Undue secrecy about these matters is dangerous, especially to-
day, because the atmosphere of the world in which we live often
leads to the distortion of truth by isolating the idea of sex
from its proper context in married love and all that the true
companionship of marriage implies. Experience shows that many
marriages, which might have been ideal, are damaged by lack of
knowledge and especially by the failure to realize that sex
instincts and powers are an integral part of the wider gift of
that human love which is the true basis of marriage.
It is no longer possible, even if it were desirable, to keep sex
questions shrouded in a veil of mystery; they are openly
discussed and written about, often on no solid foundation of
principle. For this reason alone it is imperative that sound
Christian teaching should be made accessible to those who need
it, whether for their own lives or for the successful guidance of
others.
It is with this object in view that "Morals and Marriage" has
been written by a professor of theology and doctor of Catholic
philosophy. Those who are best acquainted with the many problems
which surround this difficult question will, I think, be in no
doubt as to the success with which they have been tackled. The
book appears under a pseudonym and the preface is anonymous
solely in deference to the judgment of an authority, and not from
fear of any irregularity of doctrine, for these pages have passed
under this head the scrutiny of more than the usual number of
theological revisers.
I. INTRODUCTION
"HAVE you not heard that he who made man from the beginning made
them male and female? For this cause shall a man leave father and
mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be in
one flesh." So our Lord stated the primary force of sex.
This bodily and spiritual power is made by God in all its
processes, expressions, duties, joys: so necessary a part of
human nature that although conventions may complicate,
sentimentality may cheapen and sin may spoil, this relationship
of man and woman must always form, not indeed the whole of life,
yet a principal human interest.
For various reasons, however, there is a natural aversion from
discussing the subject in public, and sometimes custom conspires
to suppress the subject. Undue secrecy enhances curiosity and
allows unhealthy habits to develop and establish themselves
unchecked by proper knowledge. The sex impulse is too deep and
far-reaching and beset by such dangers that reticence should not
be allowed to continue causing the ignorance from which has come
much human suffering. Though premature knowledge is not
desirable, information may come too late, and then the
consequences may be really damaging. Instruction about the
Christian conception of sex and the physical and psychological
outlines is often a grave matter of justice.
The aim of this book is to give some prosaic general principles
of moral theology as a setting for sex. They need to be made
common property in English, and not kept to the Latin pages of
the clerical text-books, since they intimately concern the lives
of so many. In this brief exposition much of the religious
background must to some extent be assumed; it is not a complete
treatise on the sacrament of marriage, but an essay on the
workings of the moral virtues in married life, and chiefly as
regards the special actions of sex. Consequently the moral
virtues, which apply a reasonable standard, are more explicitly
considered than the higher theological virtues and the gifts of
the Holy Ghost, which are more notably supernatural because of
the transcendence of their object and their more than human mode
of action. The infused moral virtues are also part of the
equipment of grace, and provide a supernatural motive and force.
But their field overlaps that of the natural virtues, and the
measure they impose is rather rational than mystical.
So much must be said lest the emphasis of these pages leaves the
impression that human love is an ultimate. It is not. All the
same, it is precisely this plane of human values that must be
understood in order to be supernaturalized, and that is so
treated theologically by St. Thomas in the pages of his "Summa."
Grace goes beyond, but is based on and works in with the action
of nature.
Sex cannot be confined to a special part of the body, nor to the
body alone. Anatomy and physiology deal with essential elements
of the subject, but psychology, which tries to discover and deal
with what lies behind our bodily processes, must also be brought
in, for sex sets up problems of mental health as well as of
bodily health. The two aspects should not be widely separated. It
is necessary to go further still, beyond material science and
psychology, for an adequate knowledge of sex. Medical men may
deal with certain immediate origins, needs and objects, and may
promote present health; complete human welfare, however, is not
for sixty or seventy years, but for eternity. Sex must be seen
against the whole background of human life, as a human, that is,
a religious question. Human beings are placed by God in the
stream of sex he himself has made. "God created man to his own
image, male and female he created them."
Consequently the theological approach to the subject is not less
necessary than the medical and sociological, and it would be an
unscientific to neglect what religion has to say as to pay no
attention to the physical characteristics. Catholicism provides a
map of life, and indicates the place of sex in the scheme of
personal and social happiness: it does not suppress sex, as is
sometimes imagined, but draws the frontiers.
Sex divides average human nature into two halves, male and
female, each relative to the other. There are other sides to
human nature, but in this regard man is made for woman and woman
for man, and both for the race. This relationship is fulfilled
when they join themselves together, not only by physical
communion but in their whole lives, not only in an action but in
a lasting companionship. This companionship when accepted by God
is a true marriage; and when supernaturally blessed by him is the
sacrament of marriage. Normally the family is the completion of
marriage.
II. HUMAN RELATION
HUMAN beings are social by nature, they crave for human contacts,
and live and grow by them. Even those who, following a special
vocation, withdraw into enclosed religious orders, form
themselves into groups and look for the companionship of the
community. One of the deepest and the most common expressions of
this natural sociable impulse is the decision of a man and woman
to come together, share their lives, and form a family. "It is
not good for man to be alone": there is a bodily and spiritual
need in both which only the other can supply. This sex attraction
is the basis of marriage, and is possessed and penetrated by the
grace of the sacrament.
Love is a general word for many kinds of movement and action: the
desire for health, knowledge, sleep, food; pleasure in sailing a
boat, riding a horse, playing a game; attraction for another
person, worship of God, and so on. Every motion of life is
covered, and even as regards the love of another person, specific
sex love is only one of its forms. The attention given to sex
love in these pages must not convey an exaggerated impression of
its importance in human living and loving.
STAGES OF LOVE
Love of another can advance through three stages: desire,
devotion, friendship.
Desire (amor concupiscentiae) is caused by a need in us, the love
of another for our own sake. With sex this springs from a natural
attraction of body and soul lying deeper than deliberate choice;
a desire for the excitement and rest of coming close together,
for the life that only the other can awaken and share; a need to
hold and be held in love. The will must establish control over
this impulse and guard its expression if dissipation into lust
and waste is to be avoided. Passion should not have full control.
Nevertheless, the desires of both will and passion are in
themselves quite healthy and caused by God; the natural hunger of
every creature to strengthen and comfort its life from outside.
The mutual attraction between men and women is certainly not the
result of the Fall.
Unruliness, not ardour, is the effect of original sin, through
which man is deprived of supernatural life and disorganized in
his natural life. Powers which should work in harmony tend to
seek their own satisfaction to the detriment of the whole
personality. This general disorder is not confined to the field
of sex, though here its results are particularly evident.
Maturity consists in establishing a central control over many and
various desires, of being master of oneself: sexual disorders
mark a certain childishness to the theologian as well as to the
psychologist.
It must be remarked that sex desire is not merely bodily and
animal, a blood-and-muscle movement pointing only to the sensuous
satisfaction of male and female intercourse; a relief of tension;
an effect of glands. Underlying this necessary stream in sex
there should exist a complete love between two human persons
which is more than an attraction between bodies, more than male
and female desire. The chief quality of the union sought is that
it represents the intimacy of two persons who are in love with
one another. It is not just a man-woman relationship, but
essentially the relationship of this man and this woman and no
other.
Devotion (amor benevolentiae) marks a stage past desire. This
disinterested affection wishes and works for and enjoys the
happiness of another without much thought of self. Here is wonder
and reverence and self-sacrifice.
Beyond desire and devotion, yet including them both, comes
friendship (amor amicitiae), the love by which two people belong,
as it were, to one another, sharing in something as equals. The
foundation of friendship may be a common occupation or interest,
but no foundation is so deep and lasting as a whole life shared
in common, the life of marriage that gathers in the everyday joys
and worries and humours as well as the greater concerns of love,
birth, death, grace. Sex love at its best is such a friendship,
including but also surpassing the primary bodily and biological
relationship. Mutual desire, mutual devotion, and penetrating
these the certainty that each is committed to the other. In their
equal dignity as persons made to the image of God, a man and
woman give themselves to one another, not for an incident, not
for a period, but for a whole life; not only that their bodies
may be stirred and satisfied and tended, not only that children
may be born from them and cared for and trained, not only that
they may interest and support one another, but that two persons,
immortal souls animating bodies that will rise again after death,
may draw close to one another and in their joys and sorrows
shared may be alive and strong together in the eternal life of
God. "Two in one flesh"; even more than that.
The purely physical side of sex may be more or less satisfied
outside marriage, at least as regards the main bodily sex act,
but complete and generous sex love demands the promise of a
lasting bond of friendship and an exclusive intimacy; a
companionship that will outlive the first passion of youth. In
this matter the doctrinal teaching of Christianity is in accord
with the instinct for giving oneself uniquely to one person,
recognizing something rather imperfect in sexual promiscuity and
temporary marriage; is in accord, too, with the sound psychology
of organizing sex within a larger system of life.
PLEASURE
Sex pleasure should be human pleasure, more than bodily
gratification. The pleasure proper to human nature is neither
merely animal nor exclusively spiritual. Following the complete
activity of special powers through bodily organs capable of
experiencing great and peculiar pleasure, the satisfaction of sex
would yet be less than human were it restricted to them: not that
these parts are shameful, but that they are only parts, less than
the whole body, less than the person. Preoccupation with them is
not a worthy expression of complete love between two persons; the
happiness they should find in one another deserves to be greater
than a localized excitement and ease. Sex activity moves on the
human not the animal plane, and in its right exercise the entire
person strives to express the strength and happiness of love.
Consequently it is fitting that all the senses should be engaged
and not only a particular part of the sense of touch.
The complete happiness of sex is not obtained merely by the
physical intercourse of man and woman. The Bible speaks of a man
knowing his wife. Indeed it is a close form of knowledge, a human
experience in which the mind and will take part. This is fully
guaranteed only when the man and woman are bound together in a
friendship no power on earth can break, no other person may
enter, and when they know their union is accepted and blessed by
God. The very limitations set by God and applied by the Catholic
Church are not devised for the suppression of joy, but as means
to human happiness. The dearness and comparative rarity of full
sex happiness is one indication of its value. Indulgence cheapens
and even tends to destroy the bodily pleasure itself. Sex is too
good to be an easy joy. Sin is really an attack on the very
happiness it seeks.
LOVE-LIFE
The satisfaction should at the same time spring from and lead to
the healthy activity of the whole person. Sex love, however
ardent and passionate, should not be isolated from the general
scheme of life. It is said that men are more prone to treat it as
an incident than women are, for in women the sex powers are more
deep-seated and their effects more extensive and enduring than in
the case of men. In both, the sex action should be rooted in
their companionship together, not for one kind of action, but for
their lives. They take one another for better and for worse;
their union, which above all depends on the quality of their
characters to help and fit in with one another, makes gracious
and human every physical element in their intercourse.
"The woman has no longer power over her own body, but the man; in
like manner, the man no longer has power over his body, but the
woman has." This must be accepted without evasion or pretence,
without any attempt to frustrate the nature of the complete sex
act for reasons of merely immediate advantage. Sex must be taken
honestly and without reservation. Apart from the sterility which
results from interference, the very fact that the spontaneous
rhythm and devoted giving of the action are hindered provides
grounds for suspicion.
Only through an ungrudging acceptance of its nature can sex love
normally develop from desire to responsibility and maturity,
through self-discipline and unselfish care of the other and the
mutual acceptance of the duties of the marriage state.
These may include the birth and bringing up of children. The
companionship of a man and a woman is completed by the child
which comes from them both and forms their common care. Their
love is not wrapped up in themselves but given to the new life
they have formed. "God created man to his own image: he created
them male and female. And blessed them and said: Be fruitful." It
is not for the sake of the commonwealth alone that children are
born in marriage, the sex love of the couple themselves demands
to be life-giving.
Back in the early stages of desire there is an instinct for
fatherhood and motherhood; their sex love is deepened and widened
when this is fulfilled. In the responsibilities that follow they
learn patience and justice, a love greater than its expression in
the act of intercourse. That the woman is filled with new life by
the man is a blessing on the sex action. This life-giving power
is essential to the nature of the action. When this is thwarted,
the practice tends to undermine the sex happiness of the couple
themselves.
Sex leads to marriage, and in general marriage leads to a family.
In marriage a man and woman engage themselves to something
greater than themselves alone. It may even be said that they risk
their immediate personal happiness by concentrating on it.
Marriage is more than a free contract of association between a
man and woman for their own personal joy; it is a special state
of life instituted by God; it forms a group in society. Though
they enter on marriage of their own free choice, they are not at
liberty to change its nature, but must take it as they find it.
They cannot bargain with the nature of things.
Despite the comfort and happiness given, they would find that
marriage demanded too high an ideal to be lived up to were they
not filled with grace through their sex love and given strength
more than their own. They are so helped because God has taken
this human contract and raised it to the dignity of a Christian
sacrament.
Before considering the special action of sex in married life,
which is the main subject of this essay, it will not be out of
place to indicate in outline the laws which are, as it were, its
frame of social justice.
III. SACRAMENTAL CONTRACT
A SACRAMENT is an outward sign ordained by Jesus Christ to give
us grace and bring us to eternal life. The union of the sexes in
marriage is blessed by God as a sacrament; the granting of
intimate rights between a man and woman is made the sign and
cause of divine grace to both. Thus marriage is a means not only
to a fuller natural life, but to supernatural life as well.
Through it grace acts on sex in every implication; the union of
two in one flesh, the sharing of the happiness and trials of
life, the formation of a family. The grace of the sacrament
strengthens the love on which it is based, drawing man and woman
together so that they symbolize the union of Christ with his
church. The marriage act itself and every human detail of their
life together are charged with grace. The first miracle wrought
by Christ, the changing of water into wine at the marriage-feast,
sets a divine approval on the very gaiety from which it starts.
An outward profession in the celebration of marriage is the sign
of their union, and also the instrument by which God gives them
the strength to master human weakness and inconstancy and to
remain devoted to one another and faithful to the obligations of
their state through all the ups and downs of life. It is strong
love that makes vows.
Because God has chosen to give special grace through this means
it follows that its administrations can be judged and determined
only by his authority, and that the Catholic Church is the only
official power on earth that can issue regulations governing the
sacrament.
Of these regulations some establish the conditions necessary if
marriage is to be a true or valid sacrament, while others
determine whether it is a lawful or licit sacrament. An invalid
sacrament is no sacrament at all, though it may look like one,
for instance a bigamous marriage: an illicit sacrament is a true
sacrament, but an element of illegality is present, for instance
when banns have been omitted without good reason or permission.
The State may rightly decide as to the civil effects of matrimony
and reasonably require certain conditions to be fulfilled for it
to be regarded as a valid contract in the eyes of the law, but
has no power to govern the inner sacramental reality, on which a
man and woman minister grace to one another. This power belongs
to the Church alone, the official guardian and dispenser of the
sacraments.
CONDITIONS
For two people to be married, some conditions are absolutely
necessary and are matters of natural law that cannot be altered.
They affect everybody, and though taught and applied by the
Church are not instituted by the Church. Three conditions of this
kind are that the parties concerned are not already bound in
marriage, that they know the nature of the contract and freely
undertake it, and that they are capable of having sex
intercourse.
Other conditions are chiefly matters of positive law, enacted by
the Church, and applying in principle and practice only to
baptized persons.
A person belongs officially to the Church by the sacrament of
baptism, which is necessary for the reception of the other six
sacraments. Only people who are baptized, therefore, can receive
the sacrament of marriage. In other cases marriage is a true and
binding contract and a state of life set up by God, but it is not
stamped with the seal of a Christian sacrament.
An outward sign denotes a sacrament. In marriage this is the
mutual promise of a man and woman to give their bodies to one
another in sex-intercourse when this is reasonably required. For
the promise to be valid it must be honestly intended; it must be
free and not forced; it must be mutual and not one-sided; it must
be taken as binding from that time onwards; it must be expressed
in a sufficient legal form; it must not withhold anything that
belongs to the very nature of marriage, but must be an
unconditional acceptance of the essential obligations of the
state.
Because of defect regarding the necessary conditions of marriage,
the Church may make a declaration of nullity. This is not a
dissolution of marriage, for real marriage in such cases has
never existed.
The ministers of this sacrament are the man and woman themselves,
not the priest. Thus each gives divine life to the other. In the
case of Christians in complete communion with the visible Church,
their union requires to be blessed by a priest, save in those
extraordinary cases where his presence is not possible and
sacramental marriage may anticipate the liturgical ceremonies.
According to the Christian ideal, marriage is monogamous and
life-long: these two characteristics of unity and indissolubility
are essential, so that if conditions opposed to them are laid
down at the outset the marriage is null and void.
UNITY
Marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Societies are not
unknown that allow one woman to have more than one husband at the
same time, an undesirable custom because against the proper
begetting and bringing up of children and a profound and
civilized instinct of sex.
The position is not quite the same as regards one husband having
more than one wife at the same time. It runs counter to a human
feeling that sex relations at their best are between two
exclusively. Men have this feeling despite the fact that their
surface sex instincts are supposed to be more promiscuous than
those of a woman. This polygamy, however, while it cannot foster
the welfare of children or promote perfect family life so well as
monogamy, does not theoretically attack the very nature of a
family. It was permitted in Old Testament times.
Jesus Christ restored the original dignity of marriage as a
unique companionship of two only in one flesh, and under the
Christian dispensation polygamy is forbidden.
INDISSOLUBILITY
The companionship of marriage is designed to be life-long. No
earthly power can loose the bond of consummated sacramental
marriage: "whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder."
The Catholic position with regard to divorce is uncompromising.
This is not to deny the existence of real human difficulties and
problems.
The problems are urgent at the present time when there is a
feeling, caused by the fact that people are losing their hold on
many principles yet have real sympathy with the suffering caused
by the growing number of unhappy marriages, that people who
cannot make a success of their married lives together should be
allowed to break completely and try anew without any fuss. This
general kindly feeling is partly responsible for the very evil it
inveighs against; Catholics hold that permission for divorce is
really against the eventual interests of married people
themselves, that legislation should work on the principle that
prevention is better than cure, and that the happiness of the
married state demands an unwavering insistence on the
indissolubility of the bond even to the extent of personal
sacrifice.
To clear up some common confusion on the subject of divorce two
distinctions must be drawn: first, between separation and
divorce; and second, between divorce of marriage considered as a
religious state and of marriage considered as a civil state.
As regards the first distinction. A divorced man and woman are
considered to be no longer married to one another; they are free
to marry again. Separation means that the couple live apart, the
marriage tie itself remaining radically unchanged. The Catholic
Church does not allow divorce in the case of a sacramental
marriage lawfully contracted, performed, and completed by the sex
intercourse of husband and wife. The tie of marriage is
indestructible and ceases only with the death of one of the
parties. Separation, however, is another matter: the marriage
bond is not called in question, though unfortunately the couple
must live apart. They themselves may agree on this course without
reference to a higher authority.
As regards the second distinction. Marriage is both a religious
and a civil engagement. As a religious engagement it is lifted
above all earthly power, beyond the changing moods of husband and
wife and beyond the control of the State. But as a civil
engagement there are civil conditions and effects to be provided
for; the control of the children, property rights, and so on. As
such marriage justly falls partly under the regulation of the
State, and to this extent may be declared by the proper authority
no longer to possess the status of civil marriage previously
accorded to it. Such a decision cannot claim to touch the inner
integrity of sacramental marriage.
That the Christian refusal to admit divorce and consequent re-
marriage sometimes occasions great suffering is undeniable. But
it does not come from a cruel and legalist attitude of
indifference to individual cases, but from the realization that
an inflexible law is necessary for the happiness of the great
majority of families; for the sake of husbands and wives who must
be set an ideal of life-long loyalty and whose love must aspire
to be stronger than passion; for the sake of the children who
must be assured an enduring background of family life; for the
sake of the community, the health of which is based on family
homes.
Merely on temporal grounds the case against divorce is very
strong, and is considered by some to be sufficient. Hard cases
make bad law, it is said. Ultimately the reason for the Church's
attitude is found in the principle that marriage is not an
institution invented by men, but instituted by God. Individuals
are left to embrace it of themselves, but once the choice has
been made, they must take marriage as they find it and not alter
its character to suit their convenience. They can contract
relationships that can be terminated at will, but such
relationships are not real marriages.
Marriage has been made indissoluble by God. That is the fact that
the Church accepts, does not make. On temporal grounds such an
arrangement promotes individual and social welfare on the whole,
despite hard exceptions. If it appears to break down, then the
cause may usually be found in the deficiencies of individuals or
the unjust structure of society. On eternal grounds, it
establishes the dignity of human love and responsibility.
Christian marriage is a grace-giving sacrament. If people set
themselves to fulfil its obligations, the necessary help will not
be wanting. No Christian may permit himself to think that grace
is not sufficient to tackle its own demands and to master the
most difficult problems that arise from the attempt to observe
the divine laws of the universe. Marriage is greater than the two
people who contract it, for God is a party to it. And it is not
empty optimism, but common sense, to be confident that he will
help to make a success of an undertaking that he has blessed, and
that is directed of its nature to well-being now and hereafter.
God makes laws, not to thwart our happiness, but to encourage it.
But it is a happiness not always brought about by easy and
agreeable means.
IV. MORALITY OF INTERCOURSE
AT the outset it must be stressed that the bodily union of sex
intercourse which is called the marriage act is only one part of
marriage. Though it is the central physical event of married
life, there are many other marriage actions in their ways quite
as important. Marriage means a life lived in common, the whole
business of eating, talking, thinking, loving, worrying, praying,
enjoying, caring for the children, building up the home and all
that implies. That the man and woman should go to sleep together
is one of the facts, and a very important one; but marriage calls
into activity not only what are called the primary sexual
characteristics, namely, those powers immediately ordered to the
generative act, but also a whole set of secondary sexual
characteristics, the difference of voice, manner, movement,
approach, general appearance, ways of mind and will; all those
primitive, civilized sociable reasons which make a person seek
the society of the opposite sex.
It is necessary to see things in proportion: considered in terms
of the whole business of life, the so-called secondary sexual
characteristics are probable more predominant than the primary
sexual characteristics. These latter have their moments, but the
others are always present, and a successful marriage chiefly
depends on the character of the whole personality of the man and
the woman.
On this point, goodwill, frankness, common sense, experience, and
a love that seeks understanding are demanded for the successful
living together of two such different creatures. Their
differences make for difficulty, but also for love and happiness.
Love is an art that must make this personal adjustment.
The following chapters deal with the reasonable activity and
harmonious relation of the primary sexual characteristics, the
specialized physical function of sex in men and women. Between
husband and wife there should be no need too intimate for
delicate and frank expression. Love needs knowledge. Ignorance
can weaken and even destroy love. And where there is no love in
married life there is usually aversion, though other interests
may keep the marriage going fairly happily.
Some general theological principles concerning sex intercourse
must here be considered; first, as regards the morality of the
marriage act; second, its obligation; third, its abuse.
PURITY IMPLIES SEX
The apparent purposes of the physical union of men and women are
to release their energy, to satisfy their mutual desire for the
utmost human closeness and communion, to express their love and
grow in it, to form a family together, and to perpetuate the
human race. All of them are so elemental and ordinary that it is
difficult not to feel that the glamour and secrecy and
fulminations that surround the subject are largely fantastic. The
act, which is accompanied by a peculiar and intense bodily
pleasure, is instinctively guarded from the common gaze, though
between man and woman, in the privacy of their love, there is no
genuinely human desire and movement that should not be shared.
Not infrequently a streak in people makes them think that
pleasure is somehow wrong just because it is pleasure; an
attitude which causes pleasure to be not exactly denied, but
taken guiltily. This puritan sentiment may be innate to human
nature, or it may be the result of tradition and training, but
there it is, with results sometimes stuffy and absurd, sometimes
austere and admirable.
In addition, the ethical ideal of duty for duty's sake, quite
independent of other considerations in human life, of the
categoric command of what is right isolated from all other claims
of human nature, has helped to form the feeling that anything
which is extremely pleasant must be suspected as indicating
selfishness. This uneasiness is increased by a misunderstanding
of the negative commands of religion and its counsels of
mortification.
Furthermore, there is the religious stress on the needs of the
soul, the cultivation of what is called the spiritual life, with
the consequent temptation to detach this from the rest of life,
to treat it as a special cell that thrives best when it is
enclosed from the rest of the world. Anything full-blooded and
high-spirited is looked at askance as a hindrance to the life of
the spirit. The sharp edge of Christian theory and practice of
sacrifice and mortification is sometimes treated as a very blunt
instrument indeed.
Thus a kind of religion shrinking from sex intercourse in itself
is not unknown, because it is both bodily and pleasurable. An
extreme form of this attitude holds that the marriage act is evil
in itself. This view has been condemned by the Catholic Church.
Nevertheless, a feeling remains that there is something rather
shameful and sordid about the action, that it needs to be
excused, and is excused only by the fact that it prevents greater
evils and the human race from dying out.
There is a false theory behind this attitude, a theory that
treats pleasure as somehow immoral, an exaggerated austerity that
identifies the good with the difficult, a programme that lays an
exclusive emphasis on disembodied values.
In point of fact pleasure itself is neither right nor wrong. It
all depends on whether the antecedent action is right or wrong.
That an action is pleasurable is, if anything, an indication that
the action is sound and in accordance with human nature. Pleasure
is congenial to good action. It is true that our nature is ill
and our desires disorganized by original sin, and that
consequently we can enjoy things out of place. Yet pleasure is
not a luxury, but a necessity; the sign and stimulus of healthy
activity.
In theory the good is the pleasant; in practice, pleasant things
in excess are bad for us. Desires must be toned and intensified
by opposition; self-denial and discipline, apart from the
imitation of Christ, are necessary for health, otherwise even the
zest for life will be lost. An Epicurean practises abstinence,
realizing that few things destroy pleasure so surely as
unrestricted indulgence.
Aversion from sex intercourse on the score of the needs of the
spiritual life must be checked by the doctrine that man is not a
spirit, and is not designed by God to be a spirit. Soul and body
fuse in him to form one personality. Perfection implies his
complete development. Spirit should master matter, the soul
dominate the body, but this is no detriment to the body, as is
shown by its state when the soul loses hold.
Bodily high-spirits may indeed flourish at the expense of the
soul; they need to be trained and disciplined by the will, but
not suppressed or enfeebled. The soul must be a hard taskmaster
but not a savage one, and the body is not made abject, but
dignified by its rule. Bodily powers gain grace and strength and
bodily pleasures lose nothing of their intensity.
The attempt to live a purely soul-life is wrongheaded to start
with and can never succeed. It works from the idea that man is an
angel, mistakes the senses for hindrances instead of helps, and
misses the point of the Incarnation. Man must work through the
nature of things, God has composed his nature of body and soul,
and sex is older than original sin.
As a further corrective to the aversion from sex is the
recognition that the marriage act is not merely pleasurable, but
is full of love and implies the highest human responsibilities;
that it is not merely bodily but livened with the noblest
activity of the soul; and that it is filled with the grace of the
sacrament. Furthermore it should be realized that a reasonable
sex action is an act of the virtue of purity, for purity, far
from being the repression, is the right ordering of passionate
love.
The complete pleasure of human sex intercourse is not morally
shady; the action in itself is natural and rational when it fits
in with the divine plan of the world. Taking into account the
great power of the impulse and its profound effects on the
individual and on society and the dangers of its excess and
abuse, it is not surprising that the right exercise of sex is
limited to certain situations. As a matter of fact restricting
conditions surround every desire, for ruin would result if
immediate satisfaction were open and granted to every one of
them.
In the scheme of the universe established by the will of God,
marriage is the appropriate situation for the complete activity
of sex. The only proper complete sex act is the marriage act.
Consequently sex desires must be disciplined to the purpose of
proper sex love, which implies the devotion of husband and wife,
the blessing of family life, and the welfare of society.
The fact that complete sex enjoyment is reserved to the state of
marriage is a sign, not of its worthlessness, but of its dignity.
Dear, not cheap. By complete sex enjoyment is here meant the use
of the primary sexual functions. The pleasure normally taken in
the company and conversation of the opposite sex is clearly not
meant to be restricted to marriage.
Complete sex activity springs from the virtue of purity when it
expresses the devoted love of husband and wife and is done in the
right way, that is, when the inherent direction of the act
towards generation is not tampered with and when it is endowed
with the three blessings of marriage, namely, faithfulness,
fruitfulness, and the sacramental bond (bonum sacramenti).
Faithfulness (bonum fidei) implies a love, ardent and humble,
intimate and reverent, which each reserves for the other, serving
to draw them ever closer to one another, strengthening a tie that
must take the strain of adversity, worry, sickness, unhappy
moods.
Fruitfulness (bonum prolis) implies the natural conjunction of
the bodies of man and woman unhampered by artifice, a family and
social action of its nature since it is of the kind from which a
child can be born. Whether or not birth actually follows depends
on other factors as well, but these do not affect the intrinsic
direction of the act towards generation, its movement to new
life.
A not uncommon difficulty here crops up. Is sex intercourse
lawful according to Catholic morality only when a child may
possibly result from it? And must Christian people use their sex
powers fully only when they intend to have a baby? Most people
will rightly feel that a command or counsel to that effect would
be quite unreal, out of touch with the actual facts and needs and
desires of human love, and anyhow practically impossible of
fulfilment. Should men and women have intercourse with the sense
of a solemn social duty? It is known that the Church has no
objection to people marrying at an age when child-bearing is
impossible or to intercourse under conditions when conception is
impossible. Yet how reconcile all this with the doctrine that the
begetting of a child is the primary and essential purpose of sex-
action?
To arrive at the exact position it must be noted that three
elements must be taken into account in judging the character of a
human action: first, the objective nature of the action
considered in itself, or the deed; second, the personal reasons
for performing it, or the motives; third, the surrounding
situation, or the circumstances. Any deficiency in one of these
factors spoils the action, as when a good deed is done for bad
motives or a well-intentioned action is performed out of place.
All three factors must join to make a morally sound action.
This test applies to the human act of sex intercourse.
Accordingly three aspects must be considered in it, respectively
the general nature of the action, the personal motives inspiring
it, and the attendant circumstances.
DEED
For the action to be sound in its general nature it is required
that the parties to it are a man and woman married to one another
and that their natural bodies are joined in life-giving
intercourse. Here a distinction must be drawn between the human
action considered in itself and the whole set of complicated and
lengthy natural processes which precede and follow it. (See Fig.
1.)
Sex intercourse is the responsible human action of a man and
woman in bodily communion; a moral fact as well as a physical
fact. This action must be of that kind from which generation can
follow, the male seed being left in the proper female organ, the
vagina. If this be done in the natural manner and there be no
attempt to impede or frustrate its consequences, then in itself
the action possesses an inherent direction towards the blessing
of fruitfulness, and is a life-giving, or more precisely a life-
offering action, whether actual generation takes place or not. On
the contrary, if the seed is not sown in the vagina but in a
pseudo-vagina or is sterilized in the vagina or is prevented from
entering the womb within the period of the action, then the
action is altered in its very nature and cannot be called a
generative kind of act.
Actual generation depends on many other factors besides sex
intercourse. The human action is part of a wider and more secret
process, a series of natural activities that are not in
themselves under the power of the mind and will directly to
control. The generative act of human intercourse lasts a
relatively short time, while the process of generation is a
matter of months, if it is confined to the period starting with
the fusion of the male seed and the female ovum and ending with
the birth of the child; or a matter of years, if it is rightly
considered from the gradual preparation of the bodies of the
parents until the time when the child no longer needs their care
and can stand by itself in the world.
The set of natural processes which for nine months prepares the
body of the child in the mother's womb is distinct from the
marriage-act which starts it going. The line must be drawn
somewhere, and the human act must be considered to end when the
couple have rested after the climax of their love, and their
action is sound in itself if during this period nothing has been
done to change its nature. The rest belongs to the workings of
nature, though other human actions may be inserted subsequently
into the process of forming and bearing and feeding and tending
the baby. Yet whether or no conception actually comes about, or
whether or no conception is impossible owing to the state of the
woman, the proper performance of the human deed of intercourse
remains unaffected in its nature. The action is generative of its
kind even though a baby cannot be born from it because of other
conditions, as when the woman is sterile or already pregnant.
MOTIVES
The morality of a human act is not only determined by a
consideration of its general nature. The abstract must be made
concrete. Consequently the personal motives for a particular
action must also be taken into account. In this connection it may
be asked: should husband and wife seriously intend to have a
child whenever they have intercourse and should they try to
restrict intercourse to those times when the conception of a
child is possible?
The answer is negative. There are other valid reasons for
intercourse besides procreation. These are the healthy expression
of passion, the fostering of mutual love, the strengthening of
the sacramental bond of marriage. These are worthy motives,
implying the human love and devotion of marriage, including more
than the mere appetite for pleasure, which is not a sufficient
motive for any action. The intention of trying to have a child is
not necessary as a regular motive.
All healthy married people who are capable of bearing and rearing
children are under some obligation in the matter, but the command
applies more directly to their married state than to each and
every act of intercourse. There may be good reasons for
intercourse, the bodily and spiritual welfare of them both, at
times when conception is impossible or unlikely or undesirable.
Of course they must reserve their impulses, for marriage does not
legitimize sex indulgence in any form, but rather requires the
exercise of purity as much as does a single life. On this
supposition, however, the satisfaction of sex without the
intention of procreating is according to the divinely-appointed
nature of marriage, so long as the act is life-offering, serving
to strengthen the sacramental bond and to assure the stability of
family life on which the welfare of children in general depends.
SOME PRINCIPLES
Before touching on the circumstances surrounding sex intercourse,
the following principles and conclusions of Catholic morals can
be laid down with regard to the action and its motives.
In general, sex intercourse is good and holy when its manner is
natural, when it expresses the marriage love of man and woman,
and when it promotes their bodily and spiritual well-being. That
is the first guiding principle.
With respect to the nature of the act, this is spoilt only when
its character is vitiated by the sin of onanism, which is treated
of in a later chapter. Intercourse is lawful between couples who
are sterile, whether one or both, as is the case with a woman
whose ovaries or womb have been removed by surgical operation: a
child cannot be conceived, but the generative act can be
performed. It is lawful at those periods of the month or at those
times of life when conception is unlikely or even impossible:
thus the incidence of the so-called "safe period" or of old age
does not affect the essential character of the act. It is lawful
during pregnancy, so long as it is not hurtful to the woman or to
the child in her womb.
With respect to the motives, there is evil if they can be reduced
to the mere desire of pleasure; if the action is merely sensual
indulgence; if the attempt is to snatch as much satisfaction
while at the same time evading the care and responsibility that
is implicit in intercourse. Husband and wife will be quick to
discern whether their actions be sub-human, selfish, unworthy of
the love they should bear one another, as when a man uses his
wife as a convenience without regard to her feelings; when, as
St. Thomas says, he treats her just as a woman, not as his wife,
his special and separate friend. The relationship is not merely
between man and woman; this is included, but the dignity of
friendship between equal persons is added. The action must be
taken at this level. Sinful motives are also present in their
state of mind if a couple who are in a position to have a child
selfishly decide to the contrary and avoid intercourse without
the virtue of virginity or deliberately restrict it to certain
times in order to avoid conception.
Intercourse is good when it supports and expresses the blessings
of marriage. In summary the motives may be one, or two, or three
of the following: the making of a family by the birth and
bringing up of children; the intense and intimate friendship of a
man and woman; the healthy and human satisfaction of physical
passion. The special happiness of marriage calls for the presence
of the second, since the chief purpose of every marriage
considered in the particular is the happiness of husband and wife
themselves. Under this aspect its character as a sacramental
companionship is more important than its social function of
propagating the race or its hygienic function of remedying lust.
Children should come from parents who are companions; a bodily
passion should be satisfied not as a principal preoccupation, but
as part of a wider and more human situation, the intimacy of the
greatest human friendship.
CIRCUMSTANCES
The rightness of a human act is coloured by the surrounding in
which it is performed; attendant circumstances must be considered
in addition to the two main determining moral factors of nature
of deed and motive.
Sex intercourse is supposed to be a complete human situation, an
entire expression of love and delight between a man and woman. It
should not be the securing of a local stimulus and satisfaction
or just a physical action to be performed, a duty to be endured,
but should be deeper and wider in its cause and effect, enjoyable
to persons, not pleasurable merely to sexual organs.
Rightly should the man delight in the whole person of the woman,
and the woman likewise in that of the man. Often the climax of
passion is reached and passed more quickly in the man than in the
woman; he should therefore prepare her in ways that their frankly
shared instincts will suggest, so that both may reach their
happiness together and at the same time. He should not turn from
her immediately afterwards, for mere bodily passion should no
more hold sway in the after-effects than in the human action.
Relapse into personal satisfaction brings about the very
loneliness that the impulse seeks to break down. It must be
repeated that the union is human, not physiological, and should
be endowed with the gracious virtues, including art. Love-making
is the proper preparation for intercourse, according to both
medical and theological science. It is right and healthy, serving
to keep the relationship at the human level of mutual and devoted
affection and enjoyment, preventing an undesirable preoccupation
with the merely genital side of the action.
The details of these circumstances need not be entered into;
enough to note that discipline and restraint are not the same as
awkwardness, brusqueness, and coldness, and that they will not
break the rhythm of the action. The warmest and most tender love
need never be beastly or maudlin. The general principle here is
that a couple may seek as much closeness and intimacy as possible
so long as the situation remains human, that is, does not
deteriorate into animality and does not seek the culmination of
pleasure outside the natural act. For the rest, while they know
they are two in one flesh and love one another and do not desire
to use one another for purely selfish and private gratification,
they will come to no harm if they follow their natural promptings
and take the greatest and widest joys together in their love.
Love-making should never grow stale; there is variety and
freshness within the limits of what is right. The art of
courtship, though it may change and develop with the years,
should never die out. What has been said above about the
importance of the secondary sex characteristics may here be
recalled: special sex intercourse is only one part of the general
intercourse of married life.
Some practical principles with regard to the circumstances of the
action may be set down here. Since it may be full of grace, there
is no obligation to forego intercourse on the night before Holy
Communion. If both have been contented in a human manner and
excess has been avoided, there is nothing unworthy in the action
or its after-effects; the mind is left clear and content and
prepared for prayer. We are speaking of an ideal that can be
realized given good-will, good health, and the use of grace.
Still, there is a sound Catholic tradition of sacrifice and the
best things make the best sacrifices. As offering a blessing to
God, not avoiding an evil, married people on occasion abstain
from intercourse for religious reasons. Generosity and common
sense are here necessary, to prevent religiosity and spiritual
finickiness interfering with the proper relations of husband and
wife.
Circumstance may spoil the action when it is so frequent that it
saps the strength of body and soul. Hard and fast rules cannot be
laid down on this point; how often the act may take place depends
entirely on the reasonable judgment of the couple themselves.
Sinfulness may also be present through selfishness, levity,
roughness, cruelty, meanness, indecency, lack of control and
consideration, and if the act, supposed to be mutual, is forced
by one and suffered by the other. It is wrong, also, when it is
harmful to the health of one or both or a child not yet born or
weaned, and when it would be a cause of reasonable distress.
Spiritual adultery is committed if one indulges in private
imaginings that the action is taking place with somebody other
than the married partner.
V. OBLIGATION
BY marriage a man and woman grant to one another certain rights
over their bodies for the begetting of children, the increasing
of love, the healthy ordering of passion. The fulfilment of this
concession is a matter of justice, its denial an injustice,
though a couple who are still newly in love may smile at such
terms. Justice, however, is a living virtue and not confined to
cold legal forms.
The principle is this: whenever either the husband or the wife
seriously and reasonably asks for the marriage due the other is
bound to render it. Reasonably asks: no one in marriage engages
to become a convenience for another's passion; neither must force
their every wish on the other; they are equal and, particularly
as regards the marriage act, have the same rights. It is most
desirable that the action should be mutual. This will not be too
difficult if the two love one another in a human way and are
ready to be considerate and make sacrifices, if each tries to
serve the other, and if it is realized that for their happiness
together the act should be the comfort and content of both.
There are exceptions to the obligation of rendering the marriage
due. A married person is not strictly bound to grant it if the
other has been unfaithful to the extent of adultery. Normal
relations are only re-established by the generous forgiveness of
the injured party. There is no obligation if there is a danger of
the infection of disease. Or if the request is unreasonable, if
it be under conditions that are genuinely harmful and
distressing, then it may be refused. This particularly affects
the woman; she has not promised to be the man's slave, but the
sharer of his human life, of his control as well as of his ease.
It is commonly held that a woman to whom pregnancy would be fatal
or highly dangerous is not bound to render the due; the request
for it would be unreasonable. Finally, there is no obligation of
granting it, rather the reverse, if it is going to be abused by
the sin of onanism.
There is no obligation of asking for the due except when harm
would be done by abstinence, a weakening of love, a risk of
impurity. In this connection, husband and wife will learn to
interpret and anticipate the wishes of each other.
By mutual consent married couples may abstain from intercourse
either for a time or for ever, not as evading the obligations of
their state, but as an offering and sacrifice to God. They must
not deny the existence of the right, but may forgo the exercise
of it.
VI. ABUSE
A MAN and woman should enjoy one another's bodies in an action of
purity, the virtue governing the desires of sex. Purity does not
destroy sex love but depends on it, controlling the impulse for
the sake of the whole welfare of the person and society.
Purity extends to thoughts as well as to deeds. Impurity
committed by married people is made worse by the fact that it
lowers the sacramental dignity of their state. If the impure
action be mutual, then the man and woman, instead of causing
grace to one another, are the occasions of sin to the person they
should most care for and protect from harm.
The principal sin of impurity in married people is called
onanism, after Onan, an Old Testament character who spilt his
seed rather than risk having a child. The sin is very old, though
in recent years scientific men have developed its technique and
commercial firms have pushed its appeal. This sin covers all
methods of contraception that affect the actual act of
intercourse. It would be out of place to describe the various
methods here, some are less harmful than others, but all are
wrong, and for the same reason.
Contraception is commonly called birth-control; an unfortunate
term, since birth-control as such obviously is a reasonable and
necessary thing. Catholics would be the last to deny that the
human reason should control as far as possible such an important
matter as the coming of new life into the world, with its added
responsibilities to the parents. In point of fact, the very
institution of marriage is a method of birth-control, since it
limits procreation to those conditions in which a child will be
cared for.
Married people are called upon to be unselfish and generous,
sometimes even heroic. A child must be regarded as more important
than the refinements and luxuries of a social class. But they are
not bound to have a child, or children, if reasonable chances of
proper education and upbringing are lacking. The health and
reasonable comfort of the mother require the spacing of births at
intervals to be sanely and sensibly decided, though for the sake
of the children themselves there should not be too great a
difference between their ages. Clearly procreation cannot be
undertaken without thought and control; trust in Providence does
not mean banking on a very doubtful future.
Let this be made quite clear. The Catholic Church is not opposed
to rational birth-control as an end. Catholics, of course, do not
agree with the propaganda for birth-control based on the
difficulties of present social and economic conditions. Blessings
should not be surrendered when the causes making them difficult
can be changed. It should be intolerable that in a world of
plenty many parents are unable to have as many children as they
would like and could have, were the social structure not so
unjust. Nor can Catholics admit the disinclination to have
children because they are tiresome and worrying. Marriage is not
a perpetual honeymoon, but a serious responsibility, and none the
less happy for that.
The Catholic Church's condemnation is directed at the means
employed for birth-control. What is opposed is not birth-control
or the regulation of births, but certain methods of ensuring
this. They are generally without qualification called birth
control, but more accurately they should be classed under the
term of contraception. They consist in altering or interfering
with the natural character of sex-intercourse, or its antecedent
or consequent processes. They are species of injustice or of
impurity: of injustice when the family and social quality of sex
is affected; of impurity when the sex impulse itself is
disorganized. All wrongful methods of birth-control fall under
these heads. Unjust methods may be reduced to sterilization and
abortion, impure methods to onanism. (See Fig. 2.)
UNJUST MEANS
Our bodies are not our own to do with just as we will, they
belong completely to God alone who made them; we must take
reasonable care of them and administer them according to their
nature. As we may not destroy our bodies by suicide, so we may
not mutilate them or deprive them of an essential function,
unless it be for the health of the body itself, when the part
must be removed for the sake of the whole. Leaving aside the
question of punitive and curative operations, the Catholic Church
teaches that it is unlawful directly to deprive oneself of a
bodily power. Thus all methods of eugenic sterilization are ruled
out. They include surgical operations on the male or female
designed primarily to prevent their having fruitful intercourse;
also all mechanical or chemical methods of sterilizing the female
for a period.
Birth may be prevented after conception by chemical or mechanical
or surgical methods, all of which come under the head of
injustice when the taking of life is directly intended. Either
they go so far as to murder the child in the womb (and without
baptism) or they destroy a living thing that is becoming a human
being. The unlawfulness of the operation is intensified by the
fact that, for all we know, an immortal soul may be present from
the moment of conception or soon after. The direct destruction of
a fetus is the sin of abortion.
IMPURE MEANS
Impure methods of birth-control, or those that alter the nature
of the sex act itself, are classed under the sin of onanism.
Before considering this attempt to secure sex satisfaction
without proper intercourse, let us return to the distinction of
deed and motive.
Two aspects must be separately considered, sex intercourse
itself, which is the means, and the generation of a child, which
is an end. Two aspects in the action of the married couple
correspond to this distinction, namely their deed and their
motives respectively.
First as regards motives. If a couple decide against the birth of
a child at a given time, the rightness or wrongness of their
decision must be tested by the question: ought they to try to
have a child then? If their decision springs from timidity,
selfishness, love of ease and so on, then it is wrong, whatever
the means they adopt in carrying it into effect. If the reasons
against the birth of a child outweigh those in favour, if they
are prudent in a Christian sense, then their decision is just.
Up to the present it all hinges on the motives of the man and
woman. In the first case, the motives are unworthy; in the second
case, they are worthy. The question now narrows down to the
nature of the means adopted.
The couple may decide to abstain from intercourse. This means is
not bad in itself; the moral colouring comes from the motives;
bad in the first case, good in the second case.
But complete abstinence from intercourse is not easy, nor is it
honestly desirable in some cases from a Christian point of view.
It is natural that a man and woman living together should
strongly desire one another's bodies, and though grace is always
sufficient for proper self-control it does not blanket lawful
desire, and the marriage act may be necessary for the real
happiness of their lives together.
Here is the real problem of contraception. How is it possible to
combine the reasonable avoidance of pregnancy with the reasonable
exercise of sex relations? The case of really selfish married
people may be dismissed. We are concerned with those who decided
against a child, not for unworthy motives, but because they feel
they are not in a position to have one, for such reasons as ill-
health or poverty. Quite decently they feel the need of
intercourse. The rightness or wrongness of what they do turns on
the means they adopt.
If they commit onanism, then the Church judges that they do
something wrong in itself, a bad kind of action, leaving aside
the question of motives. It may be an act of self-indulgence, it
may be an attempt to express human love. In either case, the
means is wrong. The noblest end does not justify a bad means.
Onanism is that action between the bodies of a man and woman
which goes as closely as it can to proper sex union while at the
same time attempting to prevent the joining of the male seed and
the female ovum from which new human life begins. In old-
fashioned onanism the act starts properly, but the man withdraws
before his seed can enter the woman's body. Modern research has
invented methods by which the man can remain united to the woman,
but his seed is either sterilized or prevented from joining the
ovum.
By this fact, the natural union of man and woman is not secured,
and the climax of sex pleasure is reached without the appropriate
act. They do not delight in one another as they really are, they
do not commit themselves in confidence and happiness to sex as
God has made it. The intercourse is bogus. They are not joined
together immediately as man and woman, for an instrument or
chemical interposes and destroys the life-giving character of the
action. They have contrived to alter the situation and so use
their sex powers in an act which is not the generative act of sex
intercourse, but the reverse.
The attempt to secure sex satisfaction without the complete sex
act disorganizes the rational and natural arrangement of powers
to their proper ends, the proper purpose of sex powers being the
life-offering action of intercourse. With respect to the deed,
there is little essential difference between contraceptive
intercourse and mutual masturbation, though admittedly the
surrounding psychological circumstances make for a different
situation.
Married people who use contraceptives may love one another
decently and humanly apart from this, but whether they use them
with an easy or uneasy conscience, the nature of the action in
itself is not altered. According to Catholic teaching, moral
standards do not entirely depend on individual judgement, and
motives need not be considered for a kind of action to be
condemned. Contraception is wrong in itself, and no motive can
justify it; and it is gravely wrong, because of the importance of
the action which is spoilt.
It is worth noting that this attitude is not based principally on
Revelation or on the supernatural authority of the Church. It is
a matter of natural law. An instinctive repugnance to
contraception which still exists is an echo of the case against
it which can be worked out on purely rational grounds without
appealing to doctrinal authority.
There are also secondary, though considerable, arguments against
contraception. It offers the occasion of sexual indiscipline; it
can be responsible for serious bodily and mental disorders; it
makes acquiescence easier in unjust social conditions; it is
prejudicial to national life.
Yet the problem remains unsolved of what is to be done when at
the same time there are true and good reasons both against
pregnancy and for sex-intercourse.
We must go back and stress the necessity of making marriage a
relationship of human friendship depending chiefly on the
characters of the two persons, who enter the state to share their
human lives together, to strengthen one another, to build up
their characters together. Their lore is supported by the
sacrament, which gives grace to all who try to live up to the
ideal it sets. The couple, whether they are in a position to have
a numerous family or whether they are not, must love one another
with a love stronger and deeper than passion.
But it is easier to preach than to practise. There are not a few
cases when children cannot be welcomed and at the same time
mutual love must be expressed through intercourse. It is possible
that recent research has discovered a partial remedy, a
providential arrangement existing for the benefit of such cases.
THE SAFE PERIOD
The writer is not qualified to judge medical matters, he is
concerned only with the moral aspect of intercourse during the
sterile period of a woman's life.
It has long been known that conception is less likely to occur at
certain times than at others. A woman's body goes through a
monthly process in her organs of generation, and for a period in
the month, it is said, is less ready to conceive than at other
times. Some scientific men now say that she cannot conceive at
such times. Though it is impossible to lay down hard and fast
rules governing each and every case, they claim to be able to
determine this monthly period of sterility with a fair amount of
precision. It may be mentioned that this period lasts more than a
few days, that during it a woman is not physically averse from
intercourse and that it differs importantly as regards dates from
the idea previously held that a woman is less likely to conceive
about midway between two menstruations. The reader must be
referred elsewhere for an account of these investigations. The
present question turns only on the point of morals: may a married
couple restrict intercourse to such periods?
The answer is affirmative, with two qualifications. First, there
must be no desire of evading an obligation to have children, when
such exists; in other words, the reasons against pregnancy at
that time must be valid. Secondly, intercourse must be really and
genuinely desirable for good reasons at such times (though
clearly the need may not be so solemn as this language suggests)
and must serve to express and strengthen the sacramental love of
the man and woman. The habit of restricting intercourse to such
periods may become mixed with meanness and impurity, a selfish
prudence on one hand, mere indulgence on the other. But given
healthy motives, the action itself is sound and life-offering in
the sense described above, and intercourse at such periods is not
wrong.
From what has been said in the course of the foregoing chapters
it will be realized that sex-passion is the field of the virtue
of purity, and that such questions as the childless marriage or
the numerous family are more directly the concern of the virtue
of justice. A healthy sex life and the family, though bound
together, are two issues that should not be confused.
VII: FRUITFULNESS
THE life-long relation of a man and woman in marriage is profound
and complex. The sex-union of their bodies has more in it than
the temporary satisfaction of sense-needs or the beginning of new
life; the whole organism is modified, and stresses and processes
are set up in the soul. The action, too, is a social one, serving
to preserve and propagate the race. We must guard against
oversimplification of a relationship that includes the intimate
and extensive rights and privileges of a life shared by a man and
woman, each of whom is an unique person, bringing to it a whole
set of particular needs and powers.
Nevertheless, in broad outline, a threefold blessing in marriage
may be indicated under the headings of fruitfulness (bonum
prolis), devotion or faithfulness (bonum fidei), and the
sacramental bond (bonum sacramenti). These three blessings,
appreciated by the theologians of the Church since the days of
St. Augustine, are present in every perfect marriage. They
contain the three purposes of marriage commonly enumerated,
namely, procreation, solace, and the remedy against sin. The
blessing of fruitfulness includes what is called the primary end
of marriage, the begetting of children; whilst the blessing of
faithfulness includes what are called the secondary ends, the
increase of love and the remedying of lust.
In one respect men or women living by themselves are incomplete;
they are made for the society of one another. Even if they love
and live together, a fuller life still awaits them, for together
may they make children and form a family. Their mutual love is
fruitful in new life. A happy family is among the greatest
achievements of human love.
One of the greatnesses of men and women is to be good fathers and
mothers; in their desire there is an instinct for fatherhood and
motherhood. The coming of children, quite apart from the needs of
the nation, brings a new value to the personal love of the couple
and establishes it with fresh strength. Their love is blessed
when God's creative action works with it, and may still spend
itself generously in tending and forming the new life they have
made.
But for this fruitfulness of human love the race would die out.
Hence children are said to be the primary purpose of marriage
considered from the social point of view. The birth of a child
cannot be regarded as a by-product of sex love; but as, in this
sense, its culmination.
This purpose of marriage is not just the birth, but also the
proper up-bringing of a child; not procreation alone, but
education. Both processes are part of the same situation. In
preaching the value of the numerous family, the Church by no
means favours the idea of unrestricted propagation, without
regard for the welfare of the children. The act from which they
are born is a human act, and should not be done irresponsibly and
without some preceding consideration of its consequences.
In applying the test of the children's welfare, undue importance
must not be attached to their chances of being brought up with
the same social amenities that their parents have enjoyed. The
main thing is their chance of having a decent human existence,
and of being fitted to love and serve God in this life and to be
happy with him for ever. If economic conditions make it well nigh
impossible for healthy husbands and wives to have children, then
the social organizations supporting such a state of affairs is
gravely unjust, for there is wealth enough in the world for them,
and they must be given the opportunity of obtaining it.
The character and religious training of the children is a matter
for the parents in the first place, the office of the State is to
assist and implement their education.
Sex love of its nature is directed to children, not as to its
only purpose, but as to its main purpose if sex is seen as part
of the social scheme. This fruitfulness is essential to the very
nature of marriage, so much so that if a man and woman come
together and go through the ceremony of marriage yet at the same
time intend positively to prevent the blessing of children by
denying their right to the proper sex act then they are not
married.
Two difficulties occur here. First it may be asked: are marriages
perfect and complete only when they are fruitful? And secondly:
must people actually intend to have children when they come to be
married? What if they are too old, or poor, or prevented either
permanently by reason of some physical disability or for the time
being because of economy or health?
Two distinctions must be drawn. First, between marriage in
general and marriage in each particular case. Second, between
actually having children and doing nothing to prevent their
coming.
As regards the first distinction, children are the primary
purpose of marriage, the happiness of the man and woman is the
principal object of marriages. These two reasons are distinct,
and should not conflict in thought, for the former belong
directly to the institution of marriage, while the latter belongs
directly to the two lives shared as one in marriage.
The double purpose is given in the Book of Genesis. First: God
created man to his own image. Male and female he created them.
And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the
earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and
the birds of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the
earth. Second: "And the Lord God said: It is not good for man to
be alone; let us make him a help like unto himself. And he
brought her to Adam. And Adam said: This is now bone of my bones,
and flesh of my flesh. Wherefore shall a man leave father and
mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in
one flesh."
Considering, therefore, the biological nature of sex and the
divine command of fruitfulness, there is a general obligation on
married people to have as many children as they reasonably can.
Few married couples will want to deny themselves the blessing of
children when they are in a position to have them, except for
what they will admit to be unworthy or selfish reasons. As we
have already noted, the real problem is when there are serious
objections to a child, either on the score of health or of
financial means. Must every married couple in this case still try
to have children if their marriage is to keep its direction to
the primary end?
When it is said that the birth and education of children is the
primary end of marriage, marriage is taken in general, as the
natural means and divine institution for increasing the human
race. Considered so, the formation of a family is the main object
of marriage. But it is one thing to consider marriages
collectively and "en bloc" in this way, another thing to consider
them in each particular case.
Here the second distinction must be introduced, in order to
safeguard the fruitfulness of intercourse and marriage in cases
where children do not come.
Sometimes conception may not be possible, because of age, or
physical disability, either permanent or temporary. Sometimes a
child, though really wanted for its own sake, is yet regretfully
decided against, at least for the time being, because of adverse
health or economic position. In all these cases the essential
blessing of marriage which is fruitfulness and the essential
direction of marriage towards procreation is not opposed, so long
as the couple do nothing to exclude them positively. They are so
excluded in the latter case when intercourse loses its
fruitfulness and generative nature by being abused in the ways
touched on in a preceding chapter.
Proper intercourse is that kind of mutual action from which,
considered in itself, a new life may be born; that living act in
which a man and woman know one another without concealment. If
this action can be performed and is not denied, then the
direction of marriage towards children is not opposed at its
beginning, and in those cases where the birth of a child is
physically or morally impossible and intercourse is sterile,
marriage is intact as regards the blessing of fruitfulness and
its order to the primary end of procreation.
In point of fact, no couple can entirely determine whether they
shall be parents or not. All that immediately falls under their
control is the human act of sex-union, the generative act.
Processes of nature follow this act, and though they be
interrupted they are outside the positive control of the couple.
These processes may or may not lead to the birth of a child, but
in themselves they do not affect the fruitfulness of the human
act.
To parents able to bear and support and train them, children are
blessings difficult to prize too highly, bestowed by God, working
through processes that are still very mysterious to us. Their
actual arrival is a completion of marriage love, but not a
necessary condition.
Yet though they carefully define the essential fruitfulness of
sex intercourse and credit it to cases where the consequences are
barren, Catholics cannot share in the feeling that marriage is
almost entirely for the private happiness of the couple
concerned; that children may be a consequence, but are scarcely a
purpose; a charge rather than a joy; whose education is more the
affair of the State than of the parents. On the contrary, the
begetting of children should not be separated from the union of
man and woman, for in children is their love perpetuated and
blessed.
VIII: FAITHFULNESS
THE instinct for private possession, for an exclusive and unique
relationship, is deeply engrained in human nature. The desire to
be devoted to one person above all and for that person to be so
devoted in return is human and healthy. It is promised in
marriage. Husband and wife are called to share a love and life
that surpasses other earthly relationships and may on occasion
exclude them. "For this reason shall a man leave father and
mother and shall cleave to his wife."
The intimate giving of their bodies to one another should be a
sign of the union of their souls. Mutual knowledge and confidence
and support, an exclusive regard that is good unless spoilt by
jealousy or vanity.
This relationship of body and soul is an object of justice, vowed
in marriage, and any breach of it is a violation; is an
injustice. "Thou hast heard what was said of old: thou shalt not
commit adultery. And I say to you, that anyone who looks at a
woman with lust, has already committed adultery in his heart."
The positive side of the companionship of husband and wife
covered by the blessing of faithfulness is that they should love
and grow together in mutual love, serving each other with their
bodies and souls, for comfort and happiness and strength. The
negative side is that through marriage both may avoid sins of
impurity.
The sex impulse is one of the strongest passions in human nature.
Though quite healthy in origin, it may develop in a way that is
unhealthy, dangerous for body and soul. It is important to
realize that the passion is not just tolerated in marriage,
condoned as rather unworthy yet all the same necessary. It leads
up to and is present in sacramental marriage, and there finds its
complete and gracious expression. Sex intercourse enjoyed rightly
and in a human way is an act of the virtue of purity. It is none
the colder for that. Purity is not the absence or denial of
passion, but is passion justly ordered. In this matter a married
couple will help one another. Their bodies are granted, their
passions satisfied, not by indulgence, for that defeats its own
end, but by a human act full of grace, that does not diminish but
rather increases the ardour, even the passion, of love.
IX. GRACE
THE marriage vows, the bodily closeness, the human life lived
together in friendship, these things signify a deeper reality
than themselves alone. They are grace-giving symbols of a
supernatural union what looks beyond time to eternity. This
joining of two in one flesh is a sign of "the Word made flesh,"
who "dwelt among us," a sign of the union of Christ with his
Church.
Love through marriage becomes more than an incident, an action,
it becomes a life, and an enduring life. Emotion is included, but
transcended. For this love to persist through the varieties of
experience and hold and possess them, it must be strengthened
from a source outside the will and affections of the individual.
Divine strength is given in the grace of the sacrament, which the
man ministers to the woman and the woman to the man in the
offering of their bodies and lives to one another. "Heirs
together of the grace of life."
This is the blessing of the sacrament which can and should infuse
every detail of their life and actions together. Perhaps we think
of it chiefly in connection with the trials of marriage. Yet the
joys too deserve this supernatural quality, and all of them,
without priggishness or lack of spontaneity, can be quickened by
it. "The Song of Songs" is quite naturally taken by Christian
tradition to illustrate the devotion of marriage love. A
sacrament of grace, that is of life, of the true life of men and
women, bodies and souls, made by God to be completely happy. For
sufferings now are preparations for that perfect joy, and present
joys anticipations of it. Creation is one of a piece and the
earth is the threshold of heaven.
"Husbands love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church and
delivered himself up for it: that he might sanctify it, cleansing
it by the laver of water in the word of life: that he might
present it to himself, a glorious church, not having spot or
wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without
blemish. So also ought men to love their wives as their own
bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever
hateth his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, as also
Christ doth the Church; because we are members of his body, of
his flesh and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave
father and mother: and shall cleave to his wife. And they shall
be two in one flesh. This is a great sacrament: but I speak in
Christ and in the Church."
