Manhattan for Beads, Mankind for Condoms

Tradition generally holds that in 1626, Peter Minuit, leader of the Dutch colony in the New World,  purchased the Island of Manhattan for about 24 dollars worth of trinkets.  Today, this is often presented as a classic example of American Indian ill-use at the hands of European colonists.  I do not dwell here on potential errors in this view (1), but am here content to let it stand as an example for purposes of illustration.  Similarly, moderns regret how European colonists would sometimes attempt to cause Indians to become drunk and dependant on alcohol in order to cheat them in trade.  In essence, colonists knew that by causing Indians to become dependent on alcohol, they would abandon their freedom.  Drunk men are easily cheated. 

Modern man is just as drunk as the Indians of Colonial America.  Where the Indians were drunk on alcohol, man today is drunk on something else.  The modern world is drunk on sex.  A man can scarce think otherwise when condoms are widely handed out on college campuses and in high schools, or given the popularity of Playboy (magazine and digital content) and cheap romances.  One might likewise point to the widespread use of sex in advertising, on TV, and in movies, to sell all manner of nonsense to a drunk public.  For a drunk man is a man with little sales resistance. 

Just like colonists wanted the American Indian drunk and dependant on alcohol, so too do modern “colonists” want man drunk on sex.  Advertisers want man drunk in order to sell him trash.  Sex sells cars, tools, soap, perfume, and alcohol (the better to get one doubly drunk).  The reason is simple enough.  As the American Indians gave something up for the alcohol on which they became dependant, so man gives something up by his drunkenness on sex.  He gives up some degree of his freedom and some degree of his humanity.

Advertisers are not the only ones who want man drunk on sex.  The federal government does as well.  The US government has commanded that all employers, even those with religious objections, must provide free contraceptive coverage to their employees.  Desperate for the free contraception, and drunk on the need to gratify his sex instinct, man, like American Indians dependant on alcohol, gives something up.  Among other things, he gives up his conscience.  By declaring that religious entities must provide contraception though it violates their religious beliefs and consciences, the government has claimed authority over man’s conscience.  It has claimed the power to tell man when he may follow his religious beliefs and when he may not.  In exchange, it offers free contraception, the ability to further gratify one’s sex instinct.  Alcohol for trinkets and land, contraception for one’s conscience, both for man’s freedom. 

Man often sells himself too cheaply; the flaw runs deep in human nature.  But when he sells his conscience away for free contraception, when he prizes the gratification of the instinct over his conscience, he gives up himself for too mean a price.  As Fulton Sheen said, "Our hopes and our liberties are sold too cheap when they are bartered away to him who feeds the body and leaves the soul naked." Judas sold God for 30 pieces of silver; when man gives himself to the government for free contraception, he is little better.  Judas thought he sold God, Who really gave himself for man.  When he sells his conscience for 30 shekals, though, man gives himself for nothing. 

(1). This would consist of about $1000 dollars today, that the event is only badly attested in one source, that the claim the Island was sold for beads and trinkets is not in that early source, and that the concept of sale for the Dutch was probably different from modern concepts of sale. 

The Three Divorces II: Love and Responsibility

In the previous post, I observed that what is true of a married couple—what God has joined, man must not put asunder—is true of other things as well.  Just as the divorce between a husband and his wife divides what ought not be divided, so too those today who divide faith and reason either insisting on faith alone or reason alone, wrongly try to rend and tear a seamless garment—to the detriment of both.  In the  same way that modern man has often wrongly parted faith from reason, he has also sought to divide the indivisible in other spheres.  He has sought to divide love from responsibility.

Not long ago, I was engaged in my dissertation research in Rome where I was staying in an apartment in Centocelle with an Italian and two Americans.  When one of those Americans, a Californian, and I were walking to the subway to Rome, he was telling me of his various love interests.  When I suggested in reply that it was only possible to love one women, he objected.  He suggested that it was only possible to love one woman responsibly, but that one might still love other women.   The conversation moved onto other subjects, but I could not help reflecting that my then-roommate had fallen into an error common in the modern world in trying to divorce love from responsibility.  In reality, however, such a “love” is scare worthy of the name.  

Love without responsibility is no more love than a story without plot is a story.  In reality, responsibility is at the center of the story.  It suggests duty, an obligation not to self, but to others.  It means not only something a man might want to do, but something that he ought to do, whether he will or no.  This responsibility causes love to look not to self, but outward.  It is what leads a soldier to fall on a grenade for his friends, a wife to care for a sick or alcoholic husband, a parent to suffer for a child.   

Where real love, complete with duty and responsibility, would have a man look outward modern man often prefers to look inward.  He would make himself happy for it is his life to live, he must look out for number one, do what makes him happy, and be true to himself.  An man who looks too much to himself, however, cannot look to anything outside of him.  Such a man can rise to no responsibility nor answer a call to duty.  Those things would require him to look outward, but our modern individualist looks only inward.   Rejecting any real obligation or responsibility, real love becomes impossible and all that remains is a poor shadow where one loves not others, but as Fulton Sheen says, but only one’s own self in others.  One loves another not for their sake, but for one’s own.  

This poor shadow of love has fallen across much of modernity and modern relationships, which only suffer for it.  The divorce between love and responsibility may be seen in the use of contraception where a couple accepts the pleasure associated with sex, but none of the responsibility.  The man rejects both the potential obligation of having to support a woman whose own career may be injured by having a child and the responsibility to raise that child.  Indeed, the tremendous responsibility of having a child and the rejection of responsibility may explain the decreasing birthrate in an individualistic western society.  It may explain the high rate of abortion, for little other explanation of the 4,000 children aborted each day is possible, than that their parents reject their own responsibility towards them.  The burden of a child seems too great only when love is too small.    

Other examples might be multiplied.  There is the high divorce rate, the tendency for couples to live together without marriage, or even the promise of it.  All these show what happens when a modern  world rejects the responsibility associated with love.  A traditional captain might go down with the ship, but a modern captain would be first in the lifeboat.  Such a love scarce deserves the name, but is rather a pale shadow of what it ought to be.   In yet another case, what God has joined, man has put asunder. 

                                                                                                                                  

Sterilizing Africa: The New White Man’s Burden

In 1899 Rudyard Kipling penned, “White Man’s Burden” (1) in which he exhorted the European to conquer and colonize foreign lands like Africa for the good of the inhabitants.  In his opening stanza, he wrote:

            “Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child...”

The non-European people’s were only “half-devil and half child,” who needed to be instructed by their superior civilized betters.  Though the poem has a heroic ring, the phrase has come to mean a justification of conquest and colonialism for the good of native peoples.  Most today would reject—or at least profess to reject—such an attitude, that sees it as the white man’s burden to civilize his heathen, third world brother. 

Recently, however, various groups have called for a new white man’s burden, though they do not use the expression.  Led by people like Melinda Gates, secular foreign aid agencies, and even the government of China (2), have called on first world countries to again take up the White Man’s Burden and spread “civilization” to Africa in the form of contraception and sterilization.   Like European colonizers of old, arriving in Africa, professing the superiority of Western values and culture and the backwardness of African life, western secularists arrive on the dark continent professing to civilize Africans by means of pills, IUDs, and sterilization. 

Propagandists and apologists for the New White Man’s burden suggest that the move to sterilize African women will help promote women’s health, solve the supposed over-population problem, and empower women.   African bishops have protested that this move is “deeply de-humanizing,” and it is not hard to see why (3).  On the face of it one cannot help but think that women’s health might be better served if the 4.6 billion dollars to be spent on contraception and sterilization were spent instead providing clean sources of water, sanitation systems, medical facilities, and doctors.  Indeed, one cannot easily think of Western claims that Africa is over-populated and that Africa would be better off if there were fewer Africans, without thinking of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.  The Ghost of Christmas Present might as well be rebuking the pro-sterilization westerner: “It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. O to hear the insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust” (4).

To the defender of the New White Man’s burden, though, modern Africans are “half-devil and half child,” or worse and here their attitude goes from merely foolish to dehumanizing.  Like a dog that we encourage people to spay or neuter lest there be too many, the pro-contraceptive West (and East) proposes to sterilize Africa lest it should be over-populated.  Worse still, in telling women that to be empowered, they must be sterilized, contraception advocates tell the same women that one thing that is uniquely theirs as women, is a source of weakness. Certainly in rendering herself unable to have children, a woman who contracepts makes herself the equal of a man who also cannot bear children; whether this is empowering, however, is another question. 

If one were to propose a modern updating of Kipling’s poem, suitable to the situation, it might run something like this:

                Take up the New White Man’s burden-

                Allow not Africa to breed—

                Go bind their fertility in exile

                To serve your captives need;

                Sterilize them with pill and device,

                But preach “empowerment” with great guile—

                To your new caught, sullen peoples,

                As yet, unenlightened and wild. 

(1) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/kipling.asp

(2) http://www.cisanewsafrica.com/?p=6475

(3) http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/dehumanizing-and-insulting-kenya-bishops-slam-melinda-gates-contraception-p/

(4). http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Carol_%28Dickens%29/Stave_3?match=it

HHS, Contraception, and Religious Liberty

Some friends and my wife and I wrote this several months ago with the intention of publishing it as an op-ed in a newspaper.  The two newspapers to which we submitted it declined it, so I post it here for the Fortnight for Freedom.

The Obama administration has recently decided to force Catholics to violate their consciences and religious beliefs by requiring that they provide coverage for contraception and sterilization procedures.  An outcry has rightfully arisen against a powerful and highly secular government that has targeted the unpopular beliefs of a religious minority.  Equally disturbing, however, and more overlooked, is the fact that this government has now claimed the final authority over the human conscience.  

 States have claimed authority over the human conscience before, when an equally secular and hostile to Christianity Roman empire required Christians to burn incense to Caesar, when Henry VIII tried to force Thomas More to approve his divorce and remarriage, or when Stalin sought to purge religious freedom from his empire.  There was no room for individual freedom of conscience; the only freedom was the freedom to act and think as the state commanded, the only conscience the state conscience.  

The human right to religious freedom, however, and a person’s right to follow his religion and conscience is undeniable.  One could only ever hope to justify trampling this right by claiming that contraception is so absolute and necessary a right as to overrule the right of freedom of religion and conscience. Consequently, the government and its defenders argue that contraception is a matter of necessary medical care as well as a matter of women’s rights and health. Yet, it is very clearly none of these things. 

At least three problems exist with the claim that contraception is a right.  First, the claim that contraception is necessary medical care is highly doubtful.  The purpose of medical care is to correct diseases or disorders and promote the proper and healthy functioning of the human body.  Contraception certainly does not do this.  Fertility is not a disorder and pregnancy not a disease.  In this way, contraception actually interferes with the natural and healthy functioning of a woman’s body, causing her reproductive system to become disordered. 

Second, there is no argument from necessity, only personal desire.  A person may strongly want to have sex and strongly want to avoid pregnancy while doing so, but there is no logical inference from this to the claim that contraception is necessary.  Two “wants,” however strong, do not equal a need and personal desires, however strong, do not make a right.  Though it may be necessary to avoid pregnancy for serious medical reasons (though such situations are rare), it does not follow that there exists a right to contraception.  In this case one may either practice abstinence or a sophisticated fertility awareness method such as the Creighton, Marquette, or sympto-thermal models.  

 Third, there is no right to enjoyment of a thing (sex) and avoidance of its natural consequences (pregnancy).  The natural end of sexuality is reproduction, whether a person may wish to acknowledge it or not.  To say that one has a right to have sex and avoid pregnancy is like saying one has a right to overeat and not gain weight.  

Nonetheless, Catholics do not seek to impose their beliefs on anyone.  We simply object to being forced to pay for or provide coverage for something we consider to be immoral. It is gravely insulting to suggest  that our consciences can be assuaged by the cheap accounting trick that the current administration has styled as an “accommodation.”

Under the guise of science and women’s rights, the government has launched a short-sighted attack on religious liberty and freedom of conscience.  It has begun by attacking an unpopular Catholic doctrine, but it will not end there.  By the same logic, it may force Christians to pay for or provide abortions, attack the Jewish practice of circumcision, require burning incense to Caesar, and end with either state control of religion, or its ban from both public and private life.

The government now decrees that one must render to Caesar that which decidedly does not belong to Caesar at all, one’s conscience.  Bribery by the state of those governed in exchange for political power is an old and hallowed political tradition.  Roman emperors appeased the populace with bread and circuses; modern politicians seek political power through the offer of government grants, earmarks, and other inducements to individuals and groups.  Today, the state turns to a new prize.  Offering “free” contraception, it seeks not only political power, but authority over the human conscience.  If the American conscience can be bought for so mean a price, the end of American liberty may be at hand.

Obstacles to Understanding NFP

NFP part 2

(Thoughts continued from NFP Part 1)

One main obstacle to understanding NFP is that it is constantly compared to and considered as an alternative to contraception. NFP is not contraception, nor is it an alternative to it. Contraception is contrary to Natural Law, and is against the sacrament of marriage itself. Morally, it is simply not even relevant in a discussion on NFP. It would be as if during a discussion on hospital vs. home care for the terminally ill, someone was to chime in and say, "Well, what's wrong with euthanasia?" NFP is not "Catholic contraception," any more than annulment is "Catholic divorce." Approaching it with a contraceptive mindset is an obstacle to properly understanding both marital sexuality and Natural Family Planning.

NFP exists as an effective, scientifically-based alternative to complete abstinence. It is not an alternative to contraception. NFP allows a married couple to still have sex in their marriage, because sex is part of marriage. This brings us to the second obstacle to understanding:

The second obstacle is to forget that sex is an integral part of marriage. Sex is not just something that is only allowed once you're married. (You can't even validly get married if you can't physically consummate- that's how intrinsically important it is.) It is literally part of living the sacrament of marriage, which was given to us by God, not designed by man. It is unitive, and procreative, and also, of course, pleasurable. However, if all three of these characteristics are not present, it falls to an act of lust, rather than love. Lust is defined as "self-seeking sexual desire," or the use of another for self-gratification.[1] One should not want sex only for the pleasure, nor only for unity, nor only for procreation. Contraception is against natural law and Church teaching because it intentionally severs the connection between sexuality and one of its major purposes.

A third obstacle to understanding NFP is that is it too often confused with the "rhythm method" or some other out-dated or ineffective means of spacing pregnancies. This confusion always calls into question the actual effectiveness of NFP. I would like to think that this obstacle may be the easiest to clear up, since use of NFP is not necessary in order to simply understand and acknowledge the facts about it. The fact is that NFP is based on science. It is based upon knowing how the female body properly works, and using that knowledge prudently. If NFP users follow the rules of their method diligently, it can be highly effective in avoiding pregnancy if necessary. The highly convenient corollary is that it is also very helpful when a couple begins trying to conceive.

Additionally, the information that NFP helps its users to establish can be useful to everyone, not only Catholics. For instance, many contraceptive users also employ fertility awareness as a means of knowing when they will "need" to use contraception in order not to conceive. This is the difference between Natural Family Planning (NFP) and the Fertility Awareness Method (FAM). The book we used to learn NFP was actually a book on FAM. I had seen it recommended numerous times on the Catholic Answers Forum before I bought it (FAM simply becomes NFP by abstinence). It is a highly informative book about women's bodies and fertility cycles. The fact that this book is written for a primarily secular audience is a testament to how useful the benefits of fertility awareness really are for all women, not only Catholics who are using NFP. [2]

Along with a few other bloggers who have recently expressed their opinions, I think that NFP does need to be evangelized. It needs to be evangelized effectively. In order for it to be effective, information about NFP needs to cover all of its facets, though, not only the ones most relevant to us Catholics. There must be an appropriate balance between Natural Law, and Catholic teaching and morality, and facts about the female body and fertility awareness that are informed by medical science. If the scientific information is spread as well as the Catholic information, perhaps it could correct some of the misinformation that is out there. I think that more people will be open to at least hearing facts based on science, especially people who are completely engrossed in secular culture. NFP is like many other moral issues that can be supported both by theological and secular arguments. We need to be well-versed in both in order to get our information across.

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[1] Christopher West, Theology of the Body for Beginners (West Chester, PA: Ascension Press, 2009), 26, 131.

[2] Toni Weschler, Taking Charge of Your Fertility (New York: Collins, 2006)

The method Weschler teaches is essentially sympto-thermal NFP. While her FAM method allows for use of barrier methods, she does say that abstinence is most effective. She also lists a number of Catholic NFP resources in the back of the book.

Natural Law and Family Planning

NFP part 1

                                                             

When we hear or look at the phrase "Natural Family Planning" what comes to mind first? With the first word of the phrase being "natural," some people may, unfortunately, think that the only thing NFP has going for it is that it is not artificial. Sometimes this may even feed into the common misconception that the Church's main disagreement with contraception is that it is artificial. Other obstacles to understanding NFP come from mainstream culture's inherently contraceptive mindset.

To explain the above misconception, I think it is important to point out that "Natural" is not the main event of the phrase, "Natural Family Planning." In fact, "natural" is not an event at all-- it's a descriptor. Remember when learning grammar, being told to find the verb of the sentence to figure out what's going on with the subject? Well, in Natural Family Planning, both grammatically and ideologically, the subject here is a family and the action is planning. NFP is most importantly about planning a family. Planning is intended to mean anticipation of something actually happening eventually, not an act of indefinite postponement.  Included in the planning are the important aspects of knowing how to do the planning and commitment to carrying out the plans. "Natural" is the adjective describing the means of carrying out the plans.

Being natural is important to the context of the family planning, but not in the way many may think. The "N" in NFP does not merely mean "not-artificial." This important descriptor not only signifies a lack of man-made intervention, but it conveys a context of God-established law.  Natural law dictates that procreation results from sexuality. For this reason, the main purpose and intent of Natural Family Planning is to plan a family, and to do so in cooperation (not contradiction) with Natural Law. This is what it means to be "open to life."[1] Being open to life does not mean that a woman ought to become pregnant as often as possible. It does mean that a couple ought not to take actions that directly interfere with the natural result of sexuality.

To most people, NFP (aided by the mistaken idea that it is meant solely to serve as Catholic contraception) is only a mindset that comes into play during the "let's not have a(nother) child yet" stage. However, the principle of abiding by natural law continues to apply once conception is being actively sought. The statement that procreation results from sexuality as a principle of natural law deserves more elaboration on this. As we know, artificial contraception is against natural law, not only because it is artificial, but because it intentionally severs sexuality from its natural (law) result. Just as sexuality ought not to be severed from its natural result, so too must sexuality's result not be severed from its natural source. Thus, the principles employed in Natural Family Planning, as an ideology based upon natural law, are applied to both ends of the family planning spectrum. When these concepts are ignored, there is a two-fold result. The result is a culture that is both contraceptive in seeing children as a burden to be avoided but also, paradoxically, one that has a view of human life so consumerized that children are also seen as things to be procured according to desire.[2]

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[1] For further explanation on being open to life, there is really good post explaining openness to life at Conversion Diary, by Jennifer Fulwiler

[2] Two previous topics of mine: Contraceptive Culture and The Paradox Surrounding Conception

Thoughts continued in NFP part 2, Obstacles to Understanding NFP 

Contraceptive Culture-- Commercialized

I was recently very bothered by a TV commercial for a certain contraceptive device.  Now, really, it bothers me as a Catholic whenever I see a commercial for contraception.  When I see another commercial for yet another pill, I tend to roll my eyes and shake my head and perhaps mock the snazzy name given to it.  This was one for an IUD.  That is, an Intra-uterine device.  Similar to the pill, it is abortifacient.  These things can and will cause an abortion by preventing an embryo from being able to attach inside the uterus.

What appalled me about this commercial was not only the fact that it was for an abortifacient device, but that it was a representation and commercialization of contraceptive culture as a whole.  When I say "contraceptive culture," I don't just mean a culture in which methods of artificial birth control (ABC) are used.  That's just on the surface.  I mean also all of the concurrent characteristics of such a culture.  A few examples: A general lack of respect for the sanctity of human life and failure to recognize and value human life in its most vulnerable stage; a lack of reverence for the dignity of the person –that is, the image and likeness of God; a lack of esteem both for one's own body and the body of another, when one's own body becomes a tool to be controlled and used, or worse, a threat to be fought.  Finally, there is a lack of reverence for the sacrament of marriage and sexuality itself. 

The main purpose of contraception is to allow a "carefree" sexual (and likely non-marital) relationship, free from any potential "burden" (ie. "children").  And their commercials serve to convey how that can be made possible.  But this commercial conveys much more below the surface; unfortunately, something much more sinister about the culture in which we live. Here is a link to the commercial on YouTube.

The woman in this commercial is meant to be relatable to other women; in this case she is specifically meant to be relatable to mothers.  She is meant to represent the "typical" mother, and her children, "typical" children.  This "typical" mother's inner monologue is "Did I take my pill this morning? I can't even think of having another child," as she runs over to where her (unsupervised) children have accidentally dropped fruit on the store's floor.  The commercial's representatives of "typical" children, who result without the usage of their device, are shown to be inherently unruly and burdensome in order to convey society's general view of children.  There is also the brief but noteworthy presence of her apathetic and disinterested husband in the commercial.  He is intentionally portrayed as completely disconnected from her.  They don't even have a scene together.  To further stress society's view on children, her inner monologue concludes with "Ooooh, I think two's plenty."  OK, she adds "maybe," but who are they kidding? 

Lastly, there is the product's tagline: "Keep life simple."  Is that really all that it's about though? Simplicity?  We know already that life is not simple.  The gift that is life really is quite complex.  It is likely the most complex gift we can ever receive, and is from the most divine Source we can only try to fully imagine.  He calls us to accept His greatest gift, with all its complexities, to have faith that He will guide us through them, and not to let a desire for simplicity become a temptation to reject Sanctity.