The Paradox Surrounding Conception

“This is the paradox of America’s unborn. No life is so desperately sought after, so hungrily desired, so carefully nurtured. And yet no life is so legally unprotected, and so frequently destroyed.”

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat 1/3/11 (1)
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This quotation is a pretty concise observation of what is so very disturbing about the attitude of mainstream culture toward the conception of human life. In mainstream society we observe not only a rejection of the sanctity of human life, but also a rejection of the sanctity of the covenant of marriage (which in turn causes a distortion of sexuality’s proper context as well as a degradation of the value of the family) and most of all, a rejection of God.
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Rejecting God inherently becomes a rejection of at least some aspect of human dignity. Fulton Sheen has said, “…a person is a person only when seen in an image of God” (2). If God does not exist, then man cannot possess His image. The connection between sexuality and the sanctity of life exists because of that image of God, the imago Dei, which we all not only possess but are also called to uphold in our own lives (3). The revelation of the imago Dei, as Anderson and Granados explain in Called to Love, begins in the family (4). The basis of the family is the covenant of marriage, which itself is the vocation to having a family. What has been happening in recent decades though, has been the separation of sexuality from marriage, and the rejection of God from human love.
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Mainstream culture has become a culture of using our bodies to suit personal desire, especially where sexuality and conception are concerned. The way conception is viewed in society is often very distorted by personal desire, and that desire is usually toward one of two extremes. The more obvious extreme is the view of the conception of children as a burden to be avoided, in favor of engaging in non-marital and contracepted sex (A previous topic of mine). At the other extreme, the mindset seems quite the opposite. Once a couple has decided that they want to conceive children, they may develop a sense of entitlement that they believe allows them to pursue conception as an instrinsic right and by any means necessary (or desired). The general attitude seems to view the conception (or contraception) of children as some sort commodity, which can merely be either acquired or rejected upon desire. It is insisted that children are something that can be avoided at will through an abuse of sexuality, and also insisted that children may also be produced at will by an imitation of sexual function. Thus, medical science has developed a myriad of technologies that offer us both the ability to falsify the correct reproductive aspects of our bodies, and to imitate the biological function of sexuality.
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I have been casually following a series of articles on NPR entitled “Making Babies: 21^st Century Families” (Found here). The articles are about various situations surrounding the use of IVF. These articles show a human sexuality that is becoming increasingly consumerized, an attitude partly permitted by advances in technology. The scenarios show the mindset that conception is primarily something for parents to procure for themselves. These behaviors are not symbolic of how God calls us to love, but are a sign of the misunderstanding of His call, which results in a distortion of the means of following it. Marriage is the vocation to family, and it is right that married couples should wish to become parents. The problem arises when the means by which they try to fulfill that vocation becomes an inappropriate one. IVF is immoral is not just because it is something artificial, but because of what it is specifically an artificial simulation of. It is an artificial simulation of the very means by which a husband and wife are called within their love to be co-creators with God of the human person (which bears the imago Dei).
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The "cafeteria style" set of sexual ethics that has developed is based upon want, desire, gratification, selfishness, use, and most of all, subjectivity. People are quick to take from sexuality whichever of its single aspects that suits their purposes at the moment, but are strikingly hesitant to recognize sexuality as the whole of all its facets and to accept it in its proper context: as a physical expression of the vows of matrimony, being together “free, total, faithful and fruitful” (5).

Notes:

(1) A good quotation printed in one of the parish bulletins for "Respect Life Month." I tried, but can’t find the actual article.

(2) Fulton Sheen. Three to Get Married. (New York: Scepter Publishers, 1996), 7

(3) Cf. The explanation of the imago Dei: the imago Dei includes not only the image of God, but also the likeness. The “likeness” is the dynamic part of the imago Dei, which man is called to continuously perfect: “man is born as God’s image, but he has to complete the imago Dei through his free yes to God.”

Carl Anderson and Jose Granados. Called to Love: Approaching John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. (New York: Doubleday, 2009), 85.

(4) ibid., 86.

(5) Christopher West. Theology of the Body for Beginners. (West Chester, PA: Ascension Press, 2009), 89.

The Light of the “Dark” Ages, the Dark of the “Enlightened” Age

William Manchester’s book, A World Lit only by Fire, well exemplifies the general modern attitude to the “Dark” Middle Ages. The Dark Ages represented only a brief and regrettable period in the world’s inevitable march to change, progress, and the Enlightenment of the modern world. Under influence of the light of reason, modern man learned, or at least believed he learned, that God was dead, that man was only a cosmic accident (or according to Loren Eiseley, a cosmic orphan) in a random universe. Enlightened as he became, he cast off the chains of traditional morality and his silly, quaint ideas of good and evil. He learned to be tolerant, that truth and ethics were relative, and that what was true for him need not be true for someone else. The history of his most enlightened century, the twentieth, showed the effects of these beliefs, with two world wars, several genocides, rampant abortion, and its use in culling the weak from society by killing unborn children likely to be handicapped later in life. If this is the world lit by the sun of science and progress, one cannot but wonder at the darkness of a world “lit only by fire.”

When one asks why the Middle Ages were dark, one is typically told of their dreariness, of the fasts and vigils, the fire and brimstone, the intolerance, oppression of the human spirit all combined with narrow dogmatism of a faith unenlightened by science and reason.

Yet, when I look at the Medieval Christian world, I find that this picture is simply not true. As Chesterton said, the modern world was right to go by the facts, it was simply not considering the facts. Turning to the Middle Ages, I found a world lit, maybe by fire, but it was fire of a certain kind. I found a world of epic and romance, troubadours, tales, religion and ritual, chivalry, soaring cathedrals, faith, and reason. In brief, I find the world of Sts. Francis and Thomas Aquinas. In Francis, one had the fasts and vigils, but also a joy and gaiety almost too big for the world to hold. But the world could hold it, because it was a bigger world. Moderns, little understanding Francis, will insist on seeing him as a proto nature worshiper, and his Christianity as little more than an unfortunate and unnecessary tag-on. But in reality he loved the world because to him it was a sign-book of the love of its Maker. It was a larger world. A tree was not only a tree, but something that showed the spiritual value of suffering (since when pruned, it grew back even better the next year). Likewise to St. Patrick, a clover was not just a cover, but a sign of the Trinity, while to thousands of medieval preachers, sex was not only sex, but a sign of Christ’s union with His Church.

In Thomas Aquinas too, one sees the fasts and vigils, but also a mind thoroughly willing to consider the most modern science and philosophy. Willing to tell the conservatives that they need not fear reason, to tell the liberals that they need not fear faith, and to tell them both with a courtesy and reason with which they could hardly argue.

The modern secular humanist boasts of his love of humanity, but St. Francis really loved humanity. He embraced both the poor and the leper and all men who came to him. The modern secular humanist boasts of being on the side of science and reason (at least until science and reason are no longer on his side ). Thomas really was on the side of science and reason, but he was on the side of something else too. Like Francis, Bonaventure, Dominic, and others he saw the world as lit by a kind of fire, the same fire that lit him. That was the love of his divine master, for love of whom Francis was permitted to receive his wounds, and for love of whom, Aquinas, when offered by his Lord a reward for his writings, replied only, “I will have Thyself.” That was the world of medieval Christianity; it is the world Christianity today offers, if only we are enough “lit by fire” to see it.

Marriage (or just Weddings) in Mainstream Culture

My husband’s recent post, “materialism, materialism and marriage,” and my own experience shopping for a wedding dress, make me think back to our general experience in planning for the wedding. I have contemplated all of the effort and money that is too commonly put into the wedding itself, and how typically disproportionate it is to the time and preparation put into the marriage. I think many people forget that there is a distinct difference between planning a wedding and preparing to be married, and it frequently looks like too many people put too much emphasis on the former and not enough on the latter.

Sometimes the two seem to become connected in rather inappropriate ways. One example of such a connection is exhibited in the NPR article, “Why are Wedding Dresses So Expensive” (1). I showed it to Matthias who mentioned it in his previous post, before I posted it on facebook with sarcastic remarks on how our priest failed to properly assess my fittingness and disposition to marry by inquiring the amount I spent on the wedding gown. My husband should probably know about this, since the gown was on clearance and the veil bought off ebay. Joking aside now. The things that are pointed out in that article point to a societal separation between weddings and sacramental marriage, and a focus on weddings as events of great (monetary) value in their own right. Christine, in her comment on Matthias’s post, puts it pretty well. Weddings have become a ritual in “self-realization” and “adulthood,” and mark an entrance into another stage of life (but not necessarily the rest of your life together).

The term, “wedding” unfortunately, seems automatically to mean the reception in many people’s minds, not the ceremony in which you actually become married. A number of the people who asked me where the wedding was going to be, after my response indicating the particular church, indicated that what they meant by “wedding” was actually where the reception was going to be held. As if where we were actually getting married to begin with hardly mattered. As if the sacrament were only a brief prelude to the “real” wedding. Likewise, the questions about how the wedding planning was going also revolved around things related to the reception or other extra things. Did we choose the menu, the cake (we did cupcakes, actually), get a photographer, get a DJ, is the dress done? No one (except our priest and music director) in these “wedding-planning” conversations asked if we had chosen the readings for the Mass, or the music for the Mass, or anything about the Mass.

The popular ideal for a wedding seems to be about making it a perfectly designed and choreographed production that will amaze your guests. One of the biggest wow-factors of a wedding is the gown, so we end up with articles like the one mentioned above, and we observe a culture of glamour, rather than sanctity, surrounding weddings and their preparation in mainstream culture.

(1) http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/08/05/138760908/why-are-wedding-dresses-so-expensive?sc=fb&cc=fp

Materialism, Materialism, and Marriage

When my wife was searching for a wedding dress, she spent some time shopping before finding a discontinued dress on clearance. The dress looked lovely and the saleswoman told my then fianceé, "and you don't even have to tell anyone it was on clearance!" As if spending an insufficient amount on a wedding dress were a piece of moral turpitude best hidden from friend and foe alike. To some people, it is. Today wedding dresses not uncommonly cost thousands of dollars. Salespeople and friends ask if a bride is certain she has found “the” dress. Each bride a special snowflake to be matched only to the perfect dress.

What is true of the search for the modern wedding dress is true of modern weddings in general. . Flowers, bridesmaids’ dresses, photography, music, the reception all combine to make the average spectacle of a wedding today cost about $22,000. A recent article suggested various reasons for this particularly: showing of social status and, showing off how seriously a bride takes her marriage.

And yet as the costs of the wedding get higher and higher, the length of the marriages get shorter and shorter and the divorce rates ever higher. How is a society that values marriage so much more than it ever has (at least by the measure of mammon) unable to prevent marriages shorter from when they ever have been? Might the measure have gone wrong?

In the Christian tradition and the Christian ages, marriage stood as a channel of divine grace and a symbol of the union between Christ and his Church. The spouses were to mirror the self-giving, self-sacrificing, love of God. As God’s love was creative and led to the creation of the world (as well as the Incarnation and crucifixion), so a husband and wife are called to a procreative love in children. As the love of Father and Son eternally binds them together and leads to the Holy Spirit, so human love is to be open to the third in children. Fulton Sheen says that love is always triune. When the entire world can be a symbol of the divine, as it was to St. Francis, Augustine, and the entire Christian tradition, the world is a larger and richer place. When marriage can be a symbol of God, marriage is better off for it.

The modern world, however, is a material world. God is dead, or at least widely proclaimed to be so. Life, as life without God must be, is devoid of any real purpose, meaning, or objective value (2). In such a world, marriage can hardly be a symbol of the divine. It can be little more than (as it has become) a temporary contract entered into and broken at the whim of either party. NT Wright wrote, “sex used to be a sacrament, but in the modern world, it has become a toy” (3).

Still, by a basic and wild instinct, man still knows that sex and marriage ought to be something more than mere contract or animal instinct. Unable to value marriage as a sign of God’s love for His Church, however, (since God is dead), he shows his appreciation for marriage the only way a material world can, through money. A philosophically materialist world inevitably becomes materialist in another sense and so the cost of weddings goes ever higher. But so do the divorce rates.

Fulton Sheen wrote that two empty cups cannot fill each other; two sticks cannot be tied together save by something outside themselves, and the modern world has found materialism (in both senses of the word) a poor cord. The Christian Ages of the world had an answer, and to them we turn for ours. There, love could be love because it could be triune. Spouses could love each other because Love Himself was involved. Chesterton called Christianity the answer to a long riddle. If only the modern world cares to see it.

(1) http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/08/05/138760908/why-are-wedding-dresses-so-expensive?sc=fb&cc=fp

(2) For one assessment of this see, William Lane Craig’s essay, “The Absurdity of Life Without God.”

(3) from Simply Christian.

Modern Individualism, Modern Narcissism

One young college woman, on being asked why she liked to consider herself "spiritual but not religious," replied that she began to consider herself so when she realized, "I bow to no one." Unfortunately, this sort of stomach-turning nonsense is simple part and parcel of a whole range of cliches that are based in a outlook common in the modern world. That outlook is a radical individualism typically supported by little rational thought but many irrational cliches. The individualist will speak how he "bows to no one," how it is "my body and my choice," or "my life," or his need to "look out for number one," or "believe in himself," or, perhaps worst of all, "be true to himself."

All harmless and even positive sounding on the surface, one could write an article on the sinister meaning each one takes when understood. The person who believes himself typically believes in little else; the person being true to himself is typically being true to little else, and the person concerned with his own choice is often little concerned with anyone else's. But of these various phrases generated by an individualistic culture, the one that concerns us the most here is the idea of bowing to no one.

Sounding wonderfully, and even heroically, individualistic this nonsense, carried to its logical conclusion, leads to a place, I think no sensible person ought wish to go. What is more, a real refusal to bow to others even deprives one of one of the greatest pleasures in this life, the pleasure of admiration. CS Lewis, I think, said that a world where I could not look up to and admire others as better than myself, and honor them for it, would be an insufferable world. Not only would it be an insufferable world, it would be a lie. For if we really imagine that "I am just as good as you are" then we delude ourselves. I have ordinary human vanity (indeed, as an academic, more than ordinary), and typically fancy myself a rather wonderful person. But when forced to think seriously on the issue, we know better.

Even worse, a world where we really refused to bow to no one would be an ugly world, full of conflict. For it is only by making the little bows to each other on a daily basis that we are able to get along at all. Two people who reach for the same last item on a store shelf, or who reach a door simultaneously only big enough for one to pass at a time. If one does not bow to the other, nothing is left than to fight like animals. Some occasions may require a greater bow. Fulton Sheen may have had this in mind when he spoke of crises in marriage that could only be solved by a willingness to crush the ego. A refusal to do so, and the marriage, or life, becomes hell.

Hell, if we are not careful, if precisely what it will be. Where might makes right and we bow to no one save when by necessity we bow to one stronger than we. The conflict, resentment, and bitterness occasioned by a real refusal to bow to anyone will in the end be precisely hell. Milton's Satan declared that it is "better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." Not demons in red leotards with pitchforks poking the well-roasted damned, who rotate on fiery barbecues, but every unrepentant individualist and narcissist shut up for all eternity refusing to bow to each other will be hell.

Fulton Sheen suggested the solution to such a problem. He suggested that we should simply assume that everyone else was better than we. We know, he said, the worst about ourselves. We know it only too well. We can only guess at the worst in others. With this assumption we can hold no hesitation or concern about bowing to others and will, I suspect, find, that Chesterton was right when he remarked, "we become taller when we bow."