Open to life

THIS was never put into question before. Even without studying, people in general, especially during our parents’ and grandparents’ time, took it for granted that every conjugal act should be open to life. They understood that such act is meant for that.

Now there’s need to be reminded about the objective nature and purpose of the conjugal act. This is what the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church says about it:

“Conjugal love is by its nature open to the acceptance of life...The dignity of the human being, called to proclaim the goodness and fruitfulness that come from God, is eminently revealed in the task of procreation.” (230)

The Compendium goes further, explaining how procreation resembles us with God, whose image and likeness we are:

“Human fatherhood and motherhood, while remaining biologically similar to that of other living beings in nature, contain in an essential and unique way a ‘likeness’ to God which is the basis of the family as a community of persons united in love.”

But with the intrusion of the contraceptive mentality that has gone viral and, worse, left unchecked and allowed to fester, this pristine mindset and culture was changed. The wreckage and the devastation it caused are all over the place.

People were told many things and seduced to abandon their natural attitude toward the conjugal act. Difficult circumstances favoring this criminal contraceptive mentality were put in bold relief to distort people’s reasoning.

There was even that no-brainer, begging-the-question type of argument that to have better and faster development, we should decrease our population, because with less people, then more resources can one have. What a brilliant nonsense!

Later on, sophisticated philosophical and even theological and moral rationalizations were cleverly formulated to undergird the disturbing phenomenon. With this anomalous thinking prevailing in many centers of influence, the slippery slope to abortion and other moral aberrations started to take place.

This is how Pope John Paul II analyzed the situation in his encyclical Veritatis splendor that tried to overhaul the current sad state of moral theology:

“Today, it seems necessary to reflect on the whole of the Church’s moral teaching…It is no longer a matter of limited and occasional dissent, but of an overall and systematic calling into question of traditional moral doctrine, on the basis of certain anthropological and ethical presuppositions.” (4)

The Pope then identified some troubling trends:

- rejection of traditional doctrine regarding the natural law, and the universality and the permanent validity of its precepts;
- currents of thought that detach human freedom from its essential and constitutive relationship to truth. Freedom is made to be self-created and self-defining;
- the questioning of the capacity of the Church Magisterium to intervene in matters of morality, limiting it only to ‘exhorting consciences’ and ‘proposing values’ while allowing the individual to decide on his case independently; etc.

It’s thinking like this that has produced the reasoning that the conjugal act is not necessarily meant for procreation. It may be resorted only for its recreational, not procreational purpose. It’s just an act. It doesn’t have to affect our nature and dignity. Morality has no connection to the kind of person we are.

Pope John Paul II in Veritatis splendor explains that people are detaching freedom from the nature of the body, leaving man in a divided and fractured form, his spiritual component separated from his material and bodily dimension, with no way for the two to become a single living entity.

Many people nowadays do not anymore know how to properly determine and assess the morality of their actions. For them, morality is just a matter of what is merely practical, popular, and in some bizarre cases, what gives money.

This is the reasoning, sad to say, of many public officials. I have asked some mayors why they were coming out with laws and decrees that clearly are not pro-life, and their usual answer is: “Don’t take it seriously, Father. We are there just for the money.” Unbelievable!

I know that there are many NGOs heavily funded by foreign sources that stop at nothing to push the family planning and population control agenda. Even the Church-approved natural family planning efforts are not exempted from this contamination.

Thus, the global pro-life struggle is still very alive!