Aspirations of the Heart:
Young Adults and Catholic Teaching on Marriage & Fertility

Diocese of Galveston-Houston, Respect Life Conference, October 1, 1999.

As one who ministers with young adults, I have found myself in many conversations on the topic of sexuality. The issues raised tend to recur, but the ways in which we get to them are many and varied. I may be having a conversation with someone over coffee, and they tell me about a sexual encounter as casually as if they were talking about last night’s Astros game. I’ve had religious studies majors attempt to draw me into debate over particular points of moral theology. Artists, poets and musicians may include graphic portrayals of sexual themes—or angry protests against Catholic thought— and then ask, slightly defiantly, "What do you think?" One incident that I’m not likely to forget happened when I was a chaplain in the Vermont National Guard. I had just been assigned to a tank battalion. The personnel officer, a young captain, took me up to a circle of officers, in the center of which was the Battalion commander, telling an obscene joke. After he said the punch-line, the personnel officer, with a sly grin and perfect timing said, "Sir, I’d like you to meet our new chaplain."

How would you respond in one of these situations?

Young adults tell me some of the responses they’ve received. Some ministers might unleash an angry denunciation of immorality, and argue the truth of Christian teaching. Others might turn red, hem and haw, and quickly change the subject, "So, how ‘bout them Astros?" Others come off sounding like Claude Rains in Casablanca: "I’m shocked, shocked, to see that there is questioning of the Church’s teaching among these students!"

My own way of responding is indebted to the methodology of Isaac Hecker, the founder of the Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle. His approach to evangelization or apologetics began not by building a logical argument, but by listening closely to the objections to discern the "aspirations of the heart." "The deep craving of man’s heart," he said, is "for love and union with God." All the "questions of the soul" are manifestations of this craving. And the task of the evangelist is to uncover it, and to show how the Catholic faith satisfies it.

Questions and protests need not be near occasions of sin, therefore, but may actually be occasions of grace.

Young adults

You have probably heard the term "Generation X" — a generation born from 1961 to 1981. The oldest of this generation, myself included, were the babies of Camelot and Vatican 2. The youngest were born three years into the pontificate of John Paul 2, in the early days of the Reagan era (and could have parents my age). The decades in which the majority of us were born, largely the 60s and 70s, were a period of social, religious, and sexual revolution, and its aftermath. Being born at this time has affected who we are, and what we expect from life.

In his book, Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X, Tom Beaudoin says that the primary question of today’s young adults concerns relationships: "Will you be there for me?"

Why this question? Let me run through some statistics: 40% of today’s young adults are children of divorce, compared with 11% of those born in the 1950s. They were raised as latch-key children, by parents who often placed personal fulfillment ahead of sacrifice for their family. This is an insecure generation that longs for relationships, but does not wish to repeat the mistakes of their parents. In the bibliography, I have given some sources for this portrait.

Today’s young adults are marrying later than any generation in US history. They think that if they get their own act together, and are established in their career, it will lead to a more stable family life. And that is what they want—when they eventually marry, 89% expect to be married for life. They want children, and have a much more positive view of parenthood than was common in the 60s and 70s. And as they delay marriage, so they also delay having children.

And yet, so many things that young adults do to protect themselves from the mistakes of their parents, actually may lead them directly to the same end. Consider cohabitation, which has been the subject of several recent studies (including the National Marriage Project's paper, The State of Our Unions—1999: The Social Health of Marriage in America), as well as a just released USCC report, Marriage Preparation and Cohabiting Couples: An Information Report on New Realities and Pastoral Practices. Fully half of the couples who come for marriage prep in the Catholic Church today are cohabiting. Why? Some of the reasons include a fear of commitment, desire to avoid divorce, economic security, a wish to test the relationship. And yet the risk of divorce is 50% higher for those who cohabit. The more partners one has lived with, the greater the divorce rate. So the very strategy which young adults adopt to help them have a stable marriage, is one of the things most likely to increase the likelihood of divorce.

For today’s young adults, sexual activity is taken for granted. The National Marriage Project report on The State of Our Unions said, "premarital sex has become something of a misnomer. Sex is increasingly detached from the promise or expectation of marriage." Artificial contraception is taken for granted, both for unmarried couples and for those married couples wishing to postpone parenthood: in a study of Catholic young adults conducted by the Center for Ministry Development, 89% said that one can be a good Catholic and disagree with the Church’s position on artificial contraception. And should contraception fail, abortion is seen as an option. 62% felt that one could be a good Catholic and have an abortion.

Separated from both marriage and from procreation, sex has become a means of recreation. And that can get old, and empty, and mechanistic. At the same time, it can be deadly. One book on young adults, 13^th Gen, has a chapter title that puts this double-entendre bluntly: "Sometimes we get sick of sex."

The Catholic Teaching

Where then might we begin in presenting the Catholic teaching, not in a way that scolds, but in a way that inspires, that opens the eyes of men and women to its beauty and depth?

Remember what I quoted from Tom Beaudoin, that the main question of young adults today is relationships, "Will you be there for me?" Or, we might ask it another way—Will you love me?

What is love?

This is the starting point for one key Church document for our subject today, Humanae Vitae:

"…Love is … fully human, … of the senses and of the spirit at the same time. It is not … a simple transport of instinct and sentiment, but also, and principally, an act of the free will, intended to endure and to grow by means of the joys and sorrows of daily life, in such a way that husband and wife become one only heart and one only soul, and together attain their human perfection. … This love is total … it is a very special form of personal friendship, in which husband and wife generously share everything, without undue reservations or selfish calculations. Whoever truly loves his marriage partner loves not only for what he receives, but for the partner’s self, rejoicing that he can enrich his partner with the gift of himself. … This love is faithful and exclusive until death."

Karol Wojtyla, in his book, Love and Responsibility, written in 1960, frames his discussion of sexuality with two references: one is the proper understanding of love, the other is the understanding of personhood. For love is a relationship between persons. "Personalism," as understood by Wojtyla, is not individualism. Rather,

"The term ‘person’ has been coined to signify that a man cannot be wholly contained within the concept ‘individual member of the species’, but that there is something more to him, a particular richness and perfection in the manner of his being, which can only be brought out by the use of the word ‘person.’"

What distinguishes a person is not merely our separateness from other individuals, but our inner self, our inner life, our spiritual life—our capacity for truth and goodness. We relate to one another not simply on the sensory level, as objects, but as full persons, acting with freedom, and possessing inherent and inalienable dignity.

Love brings together two such persons in a relationship of total self-giving. It is this total self-giving that is at the heart of that experience that we sometimes glibly refer to as "making love." In his chapter, "Sexology and Ethics," Wojtyla illustrates the nature of this gift of self by refering to studies of human sexual response. This mutual self-giving requires

"that intercourse must not serve merely as a means of allowing sexual excitement to reach its climax in one of the partners, i.e. the man alone, but that climax must be reached in harmony, not at the expense of one partner, but with both partners fully involved."

Love excludes using another person for one’s own ends, or exploiting that person.

"In the present case love demands that the reactions of the other person, the sexual ‘partner’ be fully taken into account."

Here we see the very positive attitude towards sexual love that is at the core of Catholic teaching. The Church, and Pope John Paul II, have a reputation for being anti-sex, anti-body. But that is far from the truth.

One of the things which distinguishes the Catholic tradition (and I include Eastern Orthodoxy in this) from Protestantism is our belief that matrimony is a sacrament. And sexual expression is an essential element of its sacramentality. Matrimony is a covenantal relationship that transforms two into one, in an encounter which "signifies and communicates grace."

Catholic moral theology refers to the "unitive dimension" of sex—I wonder if we have really mined that idea fully. One of the books I’ve been recommending this year is called Kosher Sex, by Shmuley Boteach, a Hasidic rabbi who is the Jewish chaplain at Oxford University. The Jewish mystical tradition teaches say that the primordial Adam was an androgynous being, including both male and female. When he fell asleep, an entire side—not just a rib—was removed. "The result," says Boteach, "was that each side was no longer complete and now depended on rejoining and reuniting with their lost half in order to achieve wholeness." Sexuality then always is religious, always is spiritual, always is more than simply acting and feeling, but is a uniting of two persons into one, to become the full and complete person God intended. It is a sign of the relationship God intends between himself and his Bride.  And because of this, Judaism considers that the most appropriate time for celebrating this union is on the Sabbath.

Such a relationship cannot be temporary. It cannot be something that lasts only as long as the partners feel satisfied. It is a relationship that is directed toward the other, and toward the good and the fulfillment of the other. It is a covenant that cannot be revoked, and which is called to endure through the changing circumstances of life. Recall that question, "Will you be there for me?"—a question asked by young adults who are the children of divorce. The other night I watched the film, ‘The Jeweler’s Shop," based on the story of that name by Karol Wojtyla. A girl has seen her parents fighting one morning, as she has every morning for as long as she remembers. She confronts her father, a doctor, at work, and says she wants to talk to him about marriage. He says he supposes her intended is a good guy. She says, "No. You don’t understand. That’s not what I want to talk about. Before I say yes to him, I want to know if every marriage ends up like yours. Is that what’s in store for me? Is that what’s going to come after years of raising children, and coping with the stress of life? Or is there hope that we can make it different?"

A paper by the National Marriage Project, "Should We Live Together?" ends its discussion of the date by calling for a revitalization of marriage. "Particularly helpful in this regard would be educating young people about marriage from the early school years onward, getting them to make the wisest choices in their lifetime mates, and stressing the importance of long-term commitment to marriages. Such an educational venture could build on the fact that a huge majority of our nation’s young people still express the strong desire to be in a long-term monogamous marriage."

Catholic teaching on the indissolubility of marriage is not as far removed from the hopes of men and women as we are led to believe.

But probably the area of Catholic teaching which most rubs against the grain of society is the belief that each act of love within marriage must be open to life. Here even an otherwise ally like Rabbi Boteach is reduced to scorn: he begins a chapter by quoting Earl Butz’s quip regarding the pope: "He no play-a da game, he no make-a da rules," and says "Judaism rejects Catholicism’s extreme position that contraception is always morally wrong."

On this point we part company with all other Christians, as well. Catholicism cannot speak of marriage apart from fruitfulness. This is not a legal decree, but a positive statement of the nature of sexuality. Fertility is a hope, an expectation, that permeates even the marriage rite. The couple is charged: "Will you accept children lovingly from God?" The nuptial blessing can include the petition, "Bless them with children and help them to be good parents." The final blessing says, "May your children bring you happiness, and may your generous love for them be returned to you, many times over."

Let’s contrast this with changes in the marriage service of another church. The 1958 Lutheran Service Book and Hymnal included one prayer for children, "if it be thy will." The Lutheran Book of Worship of 1978, went further—its marriage rite makes no mention of this couple expecting children.

Other Christians—and non-Christians—approach the subject of procreation in the context of what the couple wishes. Catholicism includes fertility within the context of the essential nature of marital love. It is open, it is self-giving, it is other oriented, it is full of power and promise. Humanae Vitae speaks of "the inseparable connection … between … the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning of the conjugal act." That terminology can be off-putting. It is not how we usually speak. In a negative way, it means there are things we aren’t supposed to do. That’s the message that the world hears.

But what is its positive content? It says that in the union of husband and wife, there should be no barriers, either physical or emotional. This is not the place for masks or for walls. It is a sacred moment of complete self-surrender and self-revelation. Shame, false modesty, selfishness, fear and pretence are all out of place.

Pope John Paul II summarized the essence of Catholic teaching in a paragraph in Familiaris Consortio which is also paragraph 1643 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

"Conjugal love involves a totality, in which all the elements of the person enter—appeal of the body and instinct, power of feeling and affectivity, aspiration of the spirit and of will. It aims at a deeply personal unity, a unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul; it demands indissolubility and faithfulness in definitive mutual giving; and it is open to fertility. In a word it is a question of the normal characteristics of all natural conjugal love, but with a new significance which not only purifies and strengthens them, but raises them to the extent of making them the expression of specifically Christian values."

The Catholic teaching on marriage and fertility does not diminish individual rights, but rather aims at our complete fulfillment as truly human persons, equals in a covenantal relationship of total self-giving, freely chosen. In such a relationship, lived as God intends, we need not ask in fear and anxiety, "Will you be there for me?" but rather we will say, "I will be there for you." In such a relationship our hopes and aspirations, our deepest cravings are satisfied, in a sacramental union which is a sign to the world of the love and faithfulness of our Creator and Redeemer.

Bibliography

Beaudoin, Tom. Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1998.

Boteach, Shmuley. Kosher Sex. New York: Doubleday, 1999.

Holtz, Geoffrey T. Welcome to the Jungle: The Why Behind "Generation X." New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995.

Howe, Neil & Bill Strauss. 13^th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail? New York: Vintage Books, 1993.

Marriage Preparation and Cohabiting Couples: An Information Report on New Realities and Pastoral Practices. Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1999. 

National Marriage Project. The State of Our Unions—1999: The Social Health of Marriage in America. Rutgers, NJ: The National Marriage Project, 1999.

Paul VI. Humanae Vitae. Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1968.

Pontifical Council for the Family, The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality: Guidelines for Education within the Family. Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1996.

"Research on Young Adults Today." Young Adult Works. Naugatuck, CT: Center for Ministry Development, 1997. 1.1-1.48.

"Rite of Marriage." The Rites of the Catholic Church. Study Ed. New York: Pueblo Publishing Co., 1990. I:715—758.

Urbine, William & William Seifert. On Life and Love: A Guide to Catholic Teaching on Marriage and Family. Rev. ed. Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1996.

Wojtyla, Karol. Love & Responsibility. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993.