"The Pill made same-sex nuptials inevitable."*

Are we too late to save marriage?  Did we lose the battle fifty years ago when the pill became accepted?  Today society views sex as a sterile act intended for pleasure that only occasionally should be used to allow life to come into the world. When sex is viewed as sterile and its only purpose pleasure, why should gender matter? 


The Catholic Church's teaching on sex and marriage is completely consistent.  

Sex is to unite the couple and to create new life. 

As Dr. Janet Smith wisely summarizes: SEX is for BABIES AND BONDING.  (Contraception: Why Not?")


The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, 

The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward (1) the good of the spouses AND (2) the procreation and education of offspring;  (CCC 1601 Emphasis and numbers mine!)

Contraception is wrong because it separates the unitive and procreative functions of sex, of which God is the author.  With contraception, man becomes the deciding fact on if and when a child is to be created.  "Contraception violates the natural law because contraception acts against the natural end, or goal, of sexual intercourse, which is the coming to be of a new human life" (Sex au Naturel, pg. 70).   Consider the natural ends of eating.  One both enjoys the taste of the food as well as benefits from the nutrition.  But what if one ate only to enjoy the taste.  What if one either spit out the food after chewing, or induced vomiting, so as to not receive the nutrition and calories?  In a similar fashion, contraception enjoys the sensual pleasure, while rejecting the ultimate purpose of the act.  


In Christianity, we see two Godly demonstrations of total, faithful, fruitful love.  The first is the Blessed Trinity.  God the Father loves the Son so totally, completely and personally that this Love itself IS a person: the Holy Spirit.  The Father holds NOTHING back from the Son, and the Son likewise holds NOTHING back from the Father.   Imagine, if you can, Christ thinking, "yes, Father, I love you- but let's just keep this between the two of us.  Who needs a third wheel?  I'm keeping a part of myself to myself."   No!  They hold nothing back and exist in an eternal exchange of love.  In an amazing way, we are allowed to participate in Trinity in the marriage act!  When a man and woman love each other totally, giving all that they have to one another, they have to give that love a name nine months later!  


Secondly, we see Christ's example on the cross.  Jesus loves His bride, the Church, so totally, faithfully and fruitfully, that He held NOTHING back.  He gave us His life.  He gives us His body.   He gives us His blood.  He went to the cross willing to die for His bride, that she might be sanctified and cleansed through His blood, so He would be able to present us to the Father. (Ephesians 5:26-27) "This is my body, which will be given up for you" (Luke 22:19).  At the Holy Mass, bread and wine become the actual, literal body and blood of Jesus Christ.  As we receive His body and become one with the Lord, He "impregnates" us with His divine life so that we can bare forth His love to the world.   Again we see this reflected in married love.  


But contraception nullifies the ultimate fruitful purpose of the sexual act.  It says, "I will give you myself- but not all of myself.  I'm holding something back.  I don't want all of you, either.  I'll take all of you except your fertility."    This is not total love.   Contraception and homosexual sex are both closed to life.  They render the act sterile and refuse the possibility of children.  


In 2004, Pastor Donald Sensing of Trinity United Methodist Church in Franklin, Tennessee, published an article in the Wall Street Journal, essentially saying, 'Want to save marriage?  YOU'RE TOO LATE!  You lost marriage when you accepted contraception fifty years ago.'  

Today, though, sexual intercourse is delinked from procreation. Since the invention of the Pill some 40 years ago, human beings have for the first time been able to control reproduction with a very high degree of assurance. That led to what our grandparents would have called rampant promiscuity. The causal relationships between sex, pregnancy and marriage were severed in a fundamental way. The impulse toward premarital chastity for women was always the fear of bearing a child alone. The Pill removed this fear. Along with it went the need of men to commit themselves exclusively to one woman in order to enjoy sexual relations at all. Over the past four decades, women have trained men that marriage is no longer necessary for sex. But women have also sadly discovered that they can't reliably gain men's sexual and emotional commitment to them by giving them sex before marriage.

Nationwide, the marriage rate has plunged 43% since 1960. Instead of getting married, men and women are just living together, cohabitation having increased tenfold in the same period. According to a University of Chicago study, cohabitation has become the norm. More than half the men and women who do get married have already lived together.

The widespread social acceptance of these changes is impelling the move toward homosexual marriage. Men and women living together and having sexual relations "without benefit of clergy," as the old phrasing goes, became not merely an accepted lifestyle, but the dominant lifestyle in the under-30 demographic within the past few years. Because they are able to control their reproductive abilities--that is, have sex without sex's results--the arguments against homosexual consanguinity began to wilt.

When society decided--and we have decided, this fight is over--that society would no longer decide the legitimacy of sexual relations between particular men and women, weddings became basically symbolic rather than substantive, and have come for most couples the shortcut way to make the legal compact regarding property rights, inheritance and certain other regulatory benefits. But what weddings do not do any longer is give to a man and a woman society's permission to have sex and procreate.

Sex, childbearing and marriage now have no necessary connection to one another, because the biological connection between sex and childbearing is controllable. The fundamental basis for marriage has thus been technologically obviated. Pair that development with rampant, easy divorce without social stigma, and talk in 2004 of "saving marriage" is pretty specious. There's little there left to save. Men and women today who have successful, enduring marriages till death do them part do so in spite of society, not because of it.

If society has abandoned regulating heterosexual conduct of men and women, what right does it have to regulate homosexual conduct, including the regulation of their legal and property relationship with one another to mirror exactly that of hetero, married couples?   

Sense of Events: Save Marriage? It's Too Late. (emphasis mine)  

Want to save marriage?  Consider the truth, beauty and glory of the Catholic Church on sex.  Society reduces sex to biology- you get an urge and relieve it- but our Church sees sex as a “profound mystery” that participates in the blessed Trinity!  The Church is accused of thinking sex is something "dirty".  Far from it!  The unity and pleasure of sex are but a foretaste of the ecstasy of complete union with God in Heaven!  The sexual relationship between a man and woman in marriage is one of the greatest witnesses to the Lord Himself.  One would never carelessly throw away a diamond ring or sling mud at a great painting.   In the same way, we are to recognize the marriage act for the great masterpiece that it is and therefore treasure and respect it.  To read more on the Church's teaching, consider:

• The Good News about Sex & Marriage by Christopher West
• Theology of the Body for Beginners by Christopher West
• Sex au Naturel by Patrick Coffin
• Holy Sex!  A Catholic Guide to Toe-Curling, Mind-Blowing Infallible Loving! by Gregory K. Popcak, PhD.  
• Various cds available at OneMoreSoul.com
• Contraception, Why Not? by Dr. Janet E. Smith

*The title of this blog post is quoted from the above article by Donald Sensing.