FAQ's
------------------------------
Why NFP:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
What is SPOUSAL LOVE?
This is a big topic, and one of great interest
to all of us. If a couple succeeds in finding spousal love, and remains in it, then they will have a strong
marriage and a healthy, happy family. Contraception seriously interferes with
the flourishing of spousal love. It leads to the 50% divorce rate and
broken families.
To understand this, we must first acquire a true anthropology, a true
understanding of what it means to be a bodied-person, male or female, fertile
and sexual.
This NFP Q&A points to reader in the direction of the Theology of the Body
and its rich insights into spousal love.
NFP Q&A 39: WHAT IS SPOUSAL LOVE?
Word Count: 759
Every couple wants a deeply committed marriage and a
happy family. All of us want to reverse current trends in no-fault easy
divorce, broken families, single moms, and fatherless families. But how?
We can rediscover God’s plan for spousal love. If we do this, and use all
the helps He provides to make this plan possible, then there will be a return
to successful marriages, committed relationships, and healthy-happy families.
That is why Karol Wojtyla wrote the Theology of the
Body in the early 1970s, and then used it for the content of 128 Wednesday
audiences during the first four years of his pontificate. He wanted to
probe into what Jesus taught us about spousal love in divine revelation.
To this, he added his own insights gleaned from his studies in philosophical
ethics and moral theology, especially using Christian Personalism
and phenomenology. John Paul wanted to provide us with a “total picture”
of marriage and spousal love, using divine revelation, teachings of the Magisterium, and good reasoning.
In many ways, the Theology of the Body (TOB) can be seen as providing a massive
background for understanding the key teaching of Humanae
Vitae, that every act of spousal love must be open to the unitive (love-giving) dimension and to the procreative (life-giving)
dimension of the act. And this is highly important because spousal love
is expressed most concretely and poignantly by the spousal act.
The TOB concentrates upon the significance of the fact that we are bodied-
persons, either male or female, endowed with fertility and sexuality. But
there are many ways to be confused about this, and to miss the true meaning of
spousal love.
If we are bodied-persons, then how close to our core identity is our
body? Modern trends, since Francis Bacon, Descartes and Kant, regard the
human body as something sub-personal, not part of my real self. My real
self, they think, is my self-awareness, consciousness, and the ability to think
and communicate. My body is simply part of the material world, over which
we have greater and greater control. Thus we see the trend to accept all
sorts of interventions and controls over our bodies: contraception,
sterilization, abortion, artificial procreation, cloning, eugenics and
euthanasia. Michael Waldstein provides a good
treatment of this in his extensive introduction to a new and more complete
translation of the TOB. See pp. 34-77 of his Man and Woman He Created
Them (Pauline Press,
A true anthropology views the human person as a composite of an immaterial (and
eternal) spirit united with a material body. My body is an integral part
of my identity. I do not have a body; I am my body.
What you do to my body, you do to me. We are bodied-persons, not
disembodied spirits. We are incarnate spirits, and spirit-filled bodies.
Thus we cannot view, or treat, our bodies as something extraneous to our very
selves. We should not redefine sex as a mutual search for pleasure in
intimacy while sterilizing its life-giving dimension. We should not
reject the meaning God has written into spousal love and its most
characteristic act, which is a language of total self-giving and
fruitfulness. True human fulfillment in the sexual sphere can only be
found by following this divine plan for human love. Authentic growth in
learning how to love comes not by way of technology, but by way of personal
gift and total surrender.
In his Wednesday audience of 22 Aug 84 (TOB 123:7), Pope John Paul explains the
essential evil of contracepted sex. “In the case
of an artificial separation of these two meanings in the conjugal act, a real bodily
union is brought about, but it does not correspond to the inner truth and
dignity of personal communion, ‘communio
personarum.’ This communion demands, in
fact, that the ‘language of the body’ be expressed reciprocally in the integral
truth of its meaning. If this truth is lacking, one can speak neither of
the truth of the reciprocal gift of self nor of the reciprocal acceptance of
oneself by the other person. Such a violation of the inner order of
conjugal communion, a communion that plunges its roots into the very order of
the person, constitutes the essential evil of the contraceptive act.”
If we do not understand what the spousal act was designed to express and
accomplish, then we will never arrive at a true understanding of spousal love,
marriage, or a family.
Cordially yours,
Fr. Matthew Habiger
OSB
www.nfpoutreach.org
mhabiger@kansasmonks.org
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -