The “traditionalist” error of claiming that Humanae Vitae and the Theology of the Body are a break with the Church’s “traditional doctrine”.
Neither the Humanae Vitae of the saintly Pope who allowed the disdain for the Holy Mass of the Tridentine rite—which had been celebrated with the Missal of Saint Gregory the Great in hand since around the year 600—and who was also the one in charge of imposing the “new Mass” in 1969, which shifts its essence from the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus on Good Friday on Golgotha to the paschal banquet of Holy Thursday in the upper room; nor the Theology of the Body of Saint John Paul II, which sought to deepen, explain, and demonstrate that what was proposed in Humanae Vitae is true, break with the Church’s traditional doctrine, for they do not deny any of the three ends or goods of marriage. To set about defending the “hierarchy of the ends of marriage,” in the name of being faithful to a “traditional doctrine” that seems as if, with the death of Pope Pius XII, the Church has nothing more to say or teach, does more harm than good, especially in a world shackled by woke culture and the satanic gender ideology, in addition to being permeated by ever more artificial techniques of assisted reproduction, before which the “traditional doctrine” seems to succumb without knowing what else to say, other than repeating the same old things that no one pays attention to.
That the great Pope Pius XII reaffirmed—as we have said—in a document that was not written by him but merely endorsed by his signature, and in a conference of lesser doctrinal weight than any written document, the hierarchy of the ends of marriage and condemned the inversion of said hierarchy, definitely does not close the door to a genuine “development of doctrine.” Certainly, the Church’s Tradition did not pay much attention to this, for, as has already been said, it seemed that the Church considered the ideal of Christian life to be that lived heroically, proper to celibates, virgins, monks, desert hermits, priests, and bishops, while marriages had as their main mission to have children and educate them, subordinating to that the avoidance of divorces and adulteries.
That marriage had as its priority the procreation and education of children, then the so-called mutual help (which would be advisable to explain and deepen with much more detail) and the famous, not at all clear, “remedy for concupiscence,” leads me to ask: what is the great problem with considering the three ends or goods of marriage at the same level of importance? Are these ends or goods not always intrinsically united and does each one not support the other? Does the reality of the sacrament of marriage not imply the strict observance of the three ends, always? Or can one choose to observe one instead of another, which would imply having to choose the one of greater “hierarchy” to the detriment of the other two, or at least one of them? What does this “hierarchy” really mean? It would seem that what most concerned the Holy Office in its document De Finibus Matrimonii is that the ends of marriage be equally primary, but above that, that they be independent; and that is precisely what we have tried to avoid affirming here. We have clearly affirmed that it is impossible for one end or good of marriage to occur without the other: the three depend on each other; they need each other. That the indissolubility of the sacrament and the love and fidelity of the spouses be subordinated to the procreation and education of children does not imply that giving the three goods or ends the same importance is to the detriment of procreation or opens the door to contraception or self-sterilization. Moreover, if the love of spouses anointed with the sacrament of marriage is correctly understood, we realize that, as we will see later, it is the most effective means for the education of children in truth, in love, and in faith.
In addition to what has been said so far, it is striking that, in Gn 2, 23-24, after the fascination proper to “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” God says: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh,” without mentioning anything about procreation. On the other hand, it is striking that, in the account of creation in the first chapter of Genesis, the sexual differentiation of man, as male and female, is the primordial characteristic that identifies the author of said account of creation with respect to the image of God in which man has been created. We must ask ourselves: what implication is there in the fact that the image of God in which man has been created relates, before anything else, to human sexual differentiation? Why does Gn 1, 27 establish as the priority characteristic of man as imago Dei the human sexual differentiation of being male and female, and not intelligence, will, freedom, or some other characteristic also proper to human nature? With this I am not suggesting that man is created in the image of a God who is body. Of course, the meaning of the imago Dei in man, sexually differentiated in the body, has a connotation far beyond human corporeality, for the Most Holy Trinity is Spirit and not body.
And we see how the Lord Jesus unites these two verses from the two different accounts of creation when responding to the Pharisees’ question about divorce. The Lord Jesus says: “Have you not read that the Creator, from the beginning, made them male and female, and said: For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no man separate” (Mt 19, 4-6). The Lord Jesus makes no mention of procreation in this union of male and female into one flesh, and with this I am not denying or even questioning the intrinsic end or good of procreation: I simply mention that it is not referred to in a hierarchical manner.
In addition to this, in the Letter to the Ephesians, Saint Paul establishes that the great mystery of union between Christ and the Church is of a nuptial or spousal character, whichever you prefer to call it. Why is it that this great mystery of Christ and the Church is explained in the Letter to the Ephesians when speaking of the relationship of husbands with their wives? Why does the Letter to the Ephesians, in verse 31 of chapter 5, quote Gn 2, 24 and not cite another passage from Sacred Scripture? It does not even mention procreation, although we know it is always implicit. The Church is the Mother of the children of God: she gives birth to the children of God through Baptism and nourishes, sanctifies, and educates them through the other sacraments, whose grace flows from the cross of the Lord Jesus. We can see that the emphasis of this great mystery between Christ and the Church is the love that the husband must have for his wife, as Christ loved his Church and gave himself up for her, while the wife must be submissive to her husband as to the Lord, just as the Church must be submissive to Christ. We return to the question: why is the great mystery of union between Christ and the Church understood in nuptial terms and not in another way? Why is procreation not spoken of explicitly in Eph 5, 21-33?
Now then, if Pius XII rejects the theory that “the mutual love and union of spouses should be developed and perfected by bodily and spiritual self-giving” in the document De Finibus Matrimonii promulgated by the Holy Office, then what does marriage mean for the pre-conciliar Church? What do the passages from the two accounts in the book of Genesis mentioned here mean, and which the Lord Jesus unites in the Gospel of Saint Matthew? How does the great Pope Pius XII interpret the great mystery between Christ and the Church mentioned in the Letter to the Ephesians? If the primary end of marriage is procreation and the education of children, then I ask:
If there is talk of the risk of venial or even mortal sin in not considering offspring as the first end and good of marriage, which could cause the reduction of the intimate conjugal encounter of spouses to a moment of instrumentalist pleasure, would there not also be a risk that, if offspring is considered hierarchically priority over any of the ends of marriage, if children do not arrive, spouses might feel the temptation to separate and seek another fertile partner, or to resort to in vitro fertilization, or to any of the artificial techniques of assisted reproduction?
By the way, Saint John Paul II, explicitly and in several catecheses, firmly and without ambiguities affirmed that the venial sin of adultery could occur in marriage when, particularly and more frequently, the husband reduced his wife to an instrument of pleasure, which goes hand in hand, very surely, although not necessarily, with the sinful use of contraception. That is why Saint John Paul spoke, even before being pope and also in his Theology of the Body, about the difference in the gaze and the bodily dynamics proper to the sexuality of man and woman, which, if not well understood, would open the door to the possibility that the husband use his wife to satisfy himself alone, without taking into account—due to not understanding—that the way his wife lives her sexuality is very different from how he lives it.
At no time does the Theology of the Body put at risk the affirmation that marriages must always be open to life in every conjugal encounter of spouses in intimacy and, obviously, there is the great, very great, almost certain possibility of receiving from God the highest gift and vocation of fatherhood and motherhood. In matrimonial consent, one accepts the constant availability to receive that gift, with or without the desire to receive it, for it is not always desired, certainly. That is why we speak today of responsible parenthood, a term that now also turns out to be condemned by traditionalists and/or recalcitrant Thomists.
But, I reiterate, from there to establishing marriages “to have children yes or yes” as the primary good or end seems fragmentary to me. Couples marry to help each other reach eternal life and very possibly the path includes living as spouses being parents of a family. Will children arrive and the consequent call to the vocation of motherhood and fatherhood? Very surely yes, and I reiterate that we must always, always, always be open to receiving that gift; but what if a woman marries at an age when her years of fertility have already passed? What is the primary end for her in marriage, then? Has the Church’s Tradition prevented the sacrament of marriage for an adult couple whose woman’s years of fertility have ended? If it has been so, please instruct me someone, because I don’t know if I missed something.
Now that the fertile and infertile periods of the woman’s cycle have been discovered and responsible parenthood consists in opening generously to receive the gift of a large family or, for serious reasons (which the Church should catechize about), seeking to avoid births for a time or permanently using methods that respect the law inscribed in the woman’s body mentioned here, teaching that the intimate embrace of spouses must be consummated with his ejaculation inside her womb and, therefore, leaving the decision to God Our Lord to create or not a new human life in the woman’s womb, I ask: what will traditionalists propose now? Would they propose that there be conjugal intimacy only on the days when it is discovered that the wife is fertile and ready to conceive? Would that be the current traditionalist proposal, taking advantage of the fact that the days of the month when the woman is ovulating can now be discovered with a very high level of certainty? Saint Paul said in 1 Cor 7, 5: “Do not deprive one another except by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.” Did Saint Paul say: “Come together again so that you may continue to have children”?
With what has been said here, it is not being ignored that resorting to the infertile periods of the woman to have conjugal intimacy could have a contraceptive mentality and intention. Of course that is a very possible scenario and, if they are not adequately taught and if the “serious reasons” for avoiding births are not catechized, responsible parenthood could become a form of “natural contraception” in many marriages, who would feel that they live authentic conjugal spirituality by not using artificial means or taking any kind of pills or medications. That is why both Saint Paul VI, in Humanae Vitae n. 16, and Saint John Paul II, in Familiaris Consortio n. 32, affirm that it is lawful to renounce the use of marriage in fertile periods to avoid procreation, for a time or permanently, but only for serious and plausible reasons. The great problem—which it would be dishonest not to recognize—is that those reasons may not be so serious or plausible, and the Church should catechize about them, although it does not seem to be a priority topic by any means in the insignificant pre-marital catecheses offered in most of the current Church’s parishes.
The Catholic Lady, formerly Perplexed, says that it has been condemned by traditional doctrine that the good of spouses be superior to the good of children. Without affirming any end or good of marriage as superior to any of the other two, I ask: is it not the case that what has the greatest impact on the education of children is that they see and feel that dad and mom love each other very much? Do they not realize the immense damage in the children of the vast majority of broken marriages and dysfunctional families? Does it not constitute, in addition to immense pain, seeing dad’s mistreatment of mom—or vice versa—and the deep mark it leaves on the memory and psyche of the children? If dad and mom love each other very much, will they not be the best educators of their children, even out of love for one another? Does the husband’s love for his wife not lead him to try to be a better dad to her children, and vice versa? Why go about hierarchizing the ends of marriage when one cannot exist without the other? I insist: the fact that the love and fidelity of spouses, united by the grace of the indissoluble sacrament of marriage, constitute the best context for an adequate education of children, hierarchizing these goods confuses more than it helps and it would seem as if the hierarchization fragments more than it unites.
The Encyclical Letter Humanae Vitae of Pope Saint Paul VI clearly established that “the Church… in demanding that men observe the norms of the natural law interpreted by its constant doctrine, teaches that any matrimonial act must remain open to the transmission of life. This doctrine, often expounded by the Magisterium, is based on the inseparable connection, willed by God and which man cannot break on his own initiative, between the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning. Indeed, the conjugal act, by its intimate structure, while it deeply unites the spouses, makes them capable of generating new lives, according to the laws inscribed in the very being of man and woman. Safeguarding both essential aspects, unitive and procreative, the conjugal act preserves intact the sense of true mutual love and its ordering to man’s highest vocation to fatherhood.” Tell me, please, traditionalists: what does this teaching have of a break with the “traditional doctrine”? What is the obsession with the “hierarchy” of the ends of marriage? Is it because only the great Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas said it and because it was mentioned in the Roman Catechism and, therefore, one must be faithful to it to the letter yes or yes, without considering further reflection and deepening in that doctrine as possible, without denying or contradicting what has been said? Was there not an authentic “development of doctrine” regarding the Church’s understanding of the eternal destiny of fetuses or babies who, contracting original sin, never committed a sin freely, not even venial? From Saint Augustine thinking that every baby or fetus who died without being baptized would have their soul condemned to eternal fire in hell, and passing through the rest of the Patristics, then Saint Thomas Aquinas and all the medieval Scholasticism, until reaching the document of the International Theological Commission, which published in January 2007 concluding that there are “powerful reasons to hope that God will save these children when we have not been able to do for them what we would have desired, that is, baptize them in the faith and in the life of the Church,” would this not be a clear and compelling example of a genuine “development of doctrine”? Could not the Theology of the Body according to Saint John Paul II also be an authentic “development of doctrine” with respect to the so-called “traditional doctrine” on marriage? What would prevent this from being so?
Saint John Paul II established with all clarity and without ambiguity that “according to the criterion of this truth, which must be expressed with the ‘language of the body,’ the conjugal encounter not only ‘signifies’ love, but also potential fecundity, and therefore cannot be deprived of its full and adequate meaning through artificial interventions… [When the conjugal encounter is] deprived of its interior truth, by being artificially deprived of its procreative capacity, it also ceases to be an act of love” (General Audience of August 22, 1984). What does this teaching have of a break with the “traditional doctrine”?
To be continued in Part IV
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