Contraception and the Trinity

By Katrina J. Zeno

God is not solitary.

This simple theological statement packs the wallop of 10 nuclear bombs. The idea was so radically new and offensive to the Jews that they crucified the One who said it. And yet, two thousand years later, many Christians seem to have forgotten this truth. Moreover, they fail to see its connection to contraception.

How could God and contraception possibly be related?

For starters, God's favorite thing to do is create new life. But he doesn't create new life alone. In his mercy, he allows husband and wife to share in this divine act of creation. Through the marital union, man and woman become one body and from that unity new life flows.

Why did God ordain the creation of new life in this way? Why doesn't he create new life on his own? Because God never acts on his own. God is not a solitude, but a Trinity. He said, "Let us make man in our image and after our likeness." He called the prophets to deliver his word rather than dropping it from heaven. He established the Church as his instrument of salvation in the world. He invites husband and wife to co-create with Him.

God chooses to work in cooperation with creation because creation reflects Himself. This is what Pope John Paul II calls the sacramentality of creation. The physical order is meant to reflect the spiritual order. What is seen is suppose to teach us about what is unseen. The visible was created to image the invisible.

Marital union is no exception. God designed the union of husband and wife to teach us about the inner life of the Trinity. When we see the love of husband and wife overflowing into the fruitfulness of children, we learn a very important truth about God: God is not a sterile duality, but a fruitful Trinity. In the Trinity, the Two become One and so burst forth in a third Person. So, too, in the world, husband and wife are called to become one and give new life to another person. A family is an historical trinity reflecting the eternal Trinity.

However, since the release of Humanae Vitae in 1968, the Catholic "explanation" against contraception has not been Trinitarian but based on natural law. When a couple engages in marital union, both the unitive (for the upbuilding of the couple) and the procreative (for the generation of new life) meaning of the marital act must be preserved. This honors the integrity of the marital union as God designed it. Contraception separates the unitive from the procreative meaning and therefore violates the integrity of the marital act. This is why contraception is intrinsically evil.

I would take the explanation a step further. Contraception is intrinsically evil not only because it violates the integrity of the marital act, but because it changes the image of God. Contraception says there is no Holy Spirit. Contraception says God is a self-contained, sterile duality. Contraception says there is no connection between marital union and the inner life of the Trinity.

This is the tragedy of our age. Contraception has blinded us to a true image of God. Pope John Paul II says that the sacramentality of marriage and creation reveal the "mystery hidden in God since all eternity." What is that mystery? That God is a union and communion of fruitful, self-giving Love. If we looked at our world today, we might think that God is a capricious couple that indulges in pleasure and stays together as long as it "works." Or, we might think God is a solitude that occasionally seeks an "encounter" with another but is really more interested in his or her own advancement and self-interest. Or, we might think God is only male or only female and the other gender is irrelevant, inferior, or from another planet.

What's happened? We've lost the sacred character of creation and the marital union. Our culture has hit the "delete" key and eliminated the file that said "marital union and God." No longer is the marital bed holy and Trinitarian. Instead, we've contracepted the Holy Spirit out of the bedroom and out of God. We've taken what is holy - what is meant to image God - and reduced it to a sterile human activity.

We're not the first ones to do this. In the old testament, when something was taken out of the temple - out of its place within the holy service of God - and used for casual, human purposes, the object was said to be profane. This is what we have done with the marital union. We have removed it from its holy purpose. We have taken it outside the temple, outside the service of God. We have made it profane.

Does this mean that the only way to return marital union to its sacred purpose is to have as many children as possible, to be as fruitful as possible? What about couples who are infertile or past menopause? Is the marital union no longer holy for them?

Once again, we have to return to God's design. God designed a woman's body to be cyclical, to have fertile and infertile times. This is the beauty of Natural Family Planning (NFP). NFP takes into account God's full design by respecting and accentuating both the fertile and infertile times.

NFP, however, should never be seen as Catholic birth control. It is a means of fertility awareness, not fertility control. With the awareness and tools that NFP give the couple, they can choose to offer God the invitation to create new life or they can choose to postpone marital intimacy until an infertile time for serious reasons. In this vision of fertility awareness, fruitfulness and marital union are never at odds. The Holy Spirit is always welcome. The marital union is holy even if cyclical or biological factors make the generation of children impossible.

For those who are engaged, cohabitating, or contracepting, this then is the vision we must share with them - that in their very bodies and with their human actions, they either portray a true or false image of God to the world. This is true at work, in the classroom, on the basketball court, and in the bedroom. In a world crying out for meaning, love, and truth, we need the Holy Spirit more than ever. Let's resist the temptation to contracept. Let's keep the Holy Spirit in the Trinity.

______________________________________________

Katrina J. Zeno is a retreat and conference speaker from Steubenville, Ohio, specializing in the theology of the body. and a founder of Women for the Tird Millennium.
Her web site is www.wttm.org. This article was originally published in Our Sunday Visitor, May 26, 2002, edition of Our Sunday Visitor under the title of "How Marital Love Reflects the Trinity

Contact

Women of the Third Millennium
http://www.wttm.org CA, US
Katrina J. Zeno - Foundress, 661 869-1000

Email

tangohio@aol.com

Keywords

Pro-Life

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