The birth control pill’s effectiveness and popularity in the 1960s began
to remove sex from procreation. Couples could engage in physical relationships
with reasonable assurance that it would not lead to pregnancy. This heightened a
public debate on premarital sex and helped set the scene for the Sexual
Revolution. Sex was presented as pleasurable act separate from procreation or
commitment. While touting how wonderful and liberating sex was, the revolution
actually minimized the importance of sex, reducing it to instinct and
hedonistic pleasure.
Couples began to engage in premarital sex or cohabitate before
marriage more frequently. But even with modern birth control methods, there is little
guarantee that sex is completely severed from its intended goal. Birth control
meant to prevent unintended pregnancies actually led to riskier sexual behavior,
which in turn, created unintended pregnancies. For couples not ready or wanting
children, this can mean stress, threats, break-ups, children raised without
both parents, or even abortion. Unplanned children are seen a hindrance—a
problem to solve—for a couple’s circumstance-free life, rather than the
blessing of new life that they are.
While cohabitation mimics a family structure, it still lacks
the level of commitment that marriage takes on. Many believe that cohabitation
is like test-driving marriage—that they can’t decide if they want to marry a
person unless they live with them. But that just shows how the level of
commitment is lacking in a relationship when they decide to cohabitate. It is
mimicking a richer commitment and putting the partner through a test. It’s
saying, “I love you—except I reserve the right to leave at any time.” Studies
have actually proven that that “test drive” often backfires; couples who lived
together before marriage had a higher rate of divorce than couples who did not.
Marriage is more than just attraction or a roommate with
benefits. Marriage is supernatural, that is, it is not found in nature. Even
animals that mate for life do not enter into a sacramental bond. Like other
sacraments, it is reserved for humans, an efficacious expression of God’s love and grace.
And it is the foundation which family and thus society stand
on. Paul VI says in Humanae Vitae, “Marriage,
then, is far from being the effect of chance or the result of the blind
evolution of natural forces. It is in reality the wise and provident
institution of God the Creator, whose purpose was to effect in man His loving
design. As a consequence, husband and wife, through that mutual gift of
themselves, which is specific and exclusive to them alone, develop that union
of two persons in which they perfect one another, cooperating with God in the
generation and rearing of new lives.”
The marital act reflects God: it draws two people into union
with one another, and it generates a new creation. To diminish sex to just
pleasure diminishes marriage and its sacred role in enjoining two people,
bonding them through physical union, and demonstrating virtue and love in the
raising of families. In Humanae Vitae,
Paul VI says, “It fosters in husband and wife thoughtfulness and loving
consideration for one another. It helps them to repel inordinate self-love,
which is the opposite of charity. It arouses in them a consciousness of their
responsibilities.”
With the rise of promiscuity, people looked at monogamy and marriage as outdated institutions. Marriage rates dropped and divorce rates rose. Current divorce rates have lower since peaking in the early 1980s, but more and more people are having children without marriage, often without even living together. The idea of a nuclear family with a father and mother and their children exists as one of many options rather than the norm. Children grow up among different homes, witnessing their parents’ failed relationships. Most parents love their children and want to provide them a stable, loving home. But they’ve never been taught how to build that stability themselves.
Marriage takes a lot of patience, sacrifice, and hard work.
I can only speak from a witness’ experience, but I have been fortunate enough
to have a stable home and friends raised in stable homes. Society feeds us
visions of marriage that are movie happy endings, deep romances, and wedding receptions.
But marriage is a daily sacrifice for the good of the other. It’s best
demonstrated when the couples face financial struggles, illness, or some other
challenge, and help one another through. Any mundane, average day of marriage is
more important than the wedding day.
The union of marriage holds nothing back. It calls people to
love sacrificially as Christ taught. Birth control disrupts that total giving
of one’s self to another. It’s a woman or man saying, “I give all of myself to
you—except my fertility.”
All of us are called to chastity. For non-married people
that means abstinence. For married people that means fidelity and respect for
one’s spouse. Regardless of our vocation or current status, we are called to be
chaste, to practice self-control and use our bodies in the proper manner.
Maintaining a healthy, physical relationship with a spouse
when additional children might pose serious financial or physical burden can be
extremely challenging. The Church recognizes how difficult circumstances make her
teachings on contraception. But as neighbors, we are called to help others in
their difficult circumstances, not use it as an excuse to permit sin. Doing so
only creates more damage.
Paul VI says in Humanae
Vitae, “We have no wish at all to pass over in silence the difficulties, at
times very great, which beset the lives of Christian married couples. For them,
as indeed for every one of us, ‘the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that
leads to life.’ Nevertheless it is precisely the hope of that life which, like
a brightly burning torch, lights up their journey, as, strong in spirit, they
strive to live ‘sober, upright and godly lives in this world,’ knowing for sure that ‘the form of this world
is passing away.’”
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