Sixth Commandment

Sixth Commandment

I. General principles and facts:

A. Chastity, or the virtue by which we make proper and fitting use of our sexual faculties, is a virtue to which every Christian is called. Indeed, it is something to which every human being is called.

1. It is a virtue that most acquire gradually through graced effort which involves not simply actions or behavior but attitudes, mental habits and so forth.

2. It is not a virtue that is valued or promoted by our culture, but it is one which ennobles human nature because through it we govern ourselves by reason, choice and love, and are not governed or enslaved by impulse and physical desire.

3. What the virtue of chastity requires (or consists of) differs according to one’s state in life – that is, chaste love for the married is different from chaste love for the unmarried. And something else is required of those (religious sisters, brothers, and Catholic priests) who commit themselves to living chastely by a vow made to God.

4. Chastity involves an apprenticeship in self-mastery which is a training in human freedom; the alternative is clear – either we dominate our passions are our dominated by them (see and study CCC para #’s 2337-2345).

B. Reproduction vs. Procreation. Our sexual faculties, as many of you recognized in the papers you wrote, are for procreation. They are also for the expression of mutual love within a marriage – that is, within a permanent relationship which can receive, love, support, nurture, a child if one is brought into being.

1. Animal reproduce; human beings procreate. The difference is huge and important.

a. When Fido and Fifi produce Spot, everything that Spot is has come from Fido and Fifi.

b. When Mary and John produce Jake, Jake receives his physical make-up from Mary and John, but his spiritual soul is created directly by God. This is a fact of Catholic Christian faith.

c. In other words, whenever a human being is conceived, God has acted directly in that he has created the immortal soul and willed the existence of that new human being – who is made in God’s own image and called to an everlasting interpersonal relationship of love with the Persons of the Trinity.

(1)That is, even if God does not will the sexual act which results in a new human being, he does will the new person.

(2)Everyone who exists is willed and loved by God.

2. When we say that our sexual faculties are for procreation, we mean that the natural orientation of our sexual faculties is to the production of new life. Naturally speaking, sexual union produces new life and new life comes from sexual union.

3. Reasoning about the nature of things, that is the natural (i.e. divinely ordered) and very intimate connection between the sexual act and procreation, leads very easily to particular conclusions about sexual morality.

4. If the natural bond between sexual union and new life is overlooked, forgotten or ignored for whatever reasons – that is, the reason why human nature has sexual faculties (teleology) falls from conscious awareness – the same conclusions about sexual morality are not so easily reached and different sorts of behaviors entirely appear to be morally justifiable or, at least, morally neutral.

C. Recent science makes sex without conception and conception without sex possible. The present generation of college age students is unique in human history, for this generation has grown up in a world which has become accustomed to a two-fold state of affairs which is completely new to human experience: namely one in which:

1. sexual relations can be entered into without the possibility of reproduction occurring (even with modern developments, there is no guarantee that a child will not be conceived – that is, contraceptive methods of all sorts fail – but they are reliable enough that people have come to organize their sexual behavior around them and are often severely dis-accommodated if conception takes place) and

2. human life can be produced without a man and a woman coming together in sexual union.

D. So the first question is whether the scientific possibility of sexual union without procreation dictates a new morality.

a. The Catholic Christian answer is “no.” Last year, before teaching anything on the subject I posed the question to my 201 classes and they all said no as well. When one thinks about it, it is self evident that a scientific discovery does not effect a change in what constitutes moral human behavior.

b. In part the answer has to be no because human nature has not changed, nor has the finality of our sexual faculties, simply because science is able, as it were, to disable or circumvent the way human nature is programmed to work (in this case, procreate).

(1)A man or woman who, for whatever natural reason, suffers from sterility is not less human nor does the affliction of sterility give him or her moral license to enjoy sexual union with whomever whenever simply because the possibility of engendering or conceiving new life does not exist.

(2)Similarly, the availability of artificial contraceptives does not make it proper to enter into sexual union with whomever whenever simply because one has taken steps to prevent conception. The matter of artificial contraception is addressed below.

E. The second question is whether the possibility of producing a child without sexual union is morally acceptable – this is discussed below in the section on Reproductive technologies.

II. The sixth commandment requires a certain order be observed in our sexual relationships. The order is 1) love, 2) marriage, 3) sex, 4) family. This is a “package deal” if one item is taken out while the others are left in place, or the order of the components is changed, something immoral is going on.

A. In other words, moral sexual activity involves

1. An act of love

2. Between a man and a woman who are united in marriage

3. Which act of love is open – physically open – to procreation. That is, the Catholic Church teaches that the only sexual activity which is morally good is an act of love between spouses that is open to procreation.

B. This is the kind of sexual activity that the nature of our sexual faculties dictates – that is, it is “natural sex.”

1. Not to put too fine a point on it, this kind of sexual union is not the usual in our culture – indeed one might surmise that it is quite rare.

2. But every sin against the six commandment involves an act which does not meet the criteria indicated in IIA.

a. Acts that are not between couples who are married: fornication, adultery, rape, incest, pederasty, prostitution etc.

(1)The evil and violation of rape and incest is self-evident.

(2)Adultery is wrong because it violates the marriage vow. Also it, along with incest, involves the possibility of bringing a child into existence in a situation which cannot support him.

b. Acts that are not between a man and a woman: masturbation, homosexuality, pornography, etc. Homosexual acts are considered below.

c. Acts that are not open to procreation – hence, the prohibition against artificial birth control. This also is considered below.

3. Another approach, the gift approach, to the same points. Sexual intimacy is mutual self-giving – an act in which spouses give themselves to one another unreservedly. One way to understand the Catholic Church’s teaching on what constitutes moral and immoral sexual behavior is to consider whether particular acts are consistent with and make possible the total mutual self-donation of spouses.

Characteristics of a gift – Giving the Gift:

Characteristic	Offenses against characteristic
Permanent	Fornication; divorces
Exclusive	Adultery; polygamy
Total	Contraception

Characteristics of a gift – Receiving the Gift

Characteristic	Offenses against characteristic
There must be a gift	Solitary use or masturbation
Eligible	Incest
Capable	Homosexual acts

III.Homosexuality versus homosexual acts.

A. The homosexual orientation is not sinful (unless it is willed). A person of homosexual orientation is called by God to be a saint – that is, he or she is willed by God to enjoy everlasting interpersonal communion with him forever.

B. The CCC calls the homosexual orientation “disordered.” Many people take offense at this probably because they do not understand how the Catholic theological tradition uses the expression “objectively disordered” (para. #2358) to describe the homosexual orientation.

1. Every sinful desire is an “objectively disordered” desire. And, because of original sin, every human has disordered sexual desires: desires for the wrong people, in the wrong situation, at the wrong time, in the wrong way.

2. The homosexual inclination is a particular kind of disordered sexual desire and for most who experience it, it is a trial

3. Because of original sin all of us have some things which incline us particularly to an evil of one sort or another – that is, not one of us “works right” – the alcoholic has a disordered relationship with alcohol, the glutton with food, etc. The list of human ills with moral ramifications is endless. Our particular moral ills are sources of temptation and trial. God wills to heal us by his grace, perfect us in Christ, and bring us to eternal life with him in heaven – and both one’s ills and God’s grace map out, so to speak, the way of salvation that God wills for us.

a. For some of us this may be marriage and family

b. For others it may be a life of celibacy in a particular kind of service.

c. The ways to God are as numbers as the persons God has created.

IV. Artificial Contraception and Abortion in the United States.

A. History in the US – legal decisions and what not (material originally found in and adapted from Jane E. Smith, series of CDs entitled Sexual Common Sense).

1. March 3, 1873: Comstock Act: defined contraceptives as obscene and illicit, and made it a federal offense to disseminate birth control devices through the mail or across state lines.

a. New England residents lived under the most restrictive laws in the country. In Massachusetts, anyone disseminating contraceptives -- or information about contraceptives -- faced stiff fines and imprisonment.

b. By far the most restrictive state of all was Connecticut, where the act of using birth control was even prohibited by law.

(1)Married couples could be arrested for using birth control in the privacy of their own bedrooms, and subjected to a one-year prison sentence.

(2)In actuality, law enforcement agents often looked the other way when it came to anti-birth control laws, but the statutes remained on the books.”[1]

2. Griswold vs. State of Connecticut, June 7 1965 was a legal decision that struck down laws forbidding the use of birth control by married couples by establishing a “zone of privacy” which encompasses the marital relationship and, by extension, the bedroom. Thus only in 1965 did birth control devices became legally available for use by married couples.

3. Baird v. Eisenstadt , inaugurated in 1967, decided March 22, 1972, struck down a Massachusetts law which did not accord an equal right to the birth control devices established by Griswold under the “equal protection clause”of the Fourteenth Amendment.

a. In part the majority opinion reads: “If the right of privacy means anything. it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision to whether to bear or beget a child."

b. Thus only in 1972 did birth control devices become legally available everywhere in the US for use by the unmarried.

4. Roe v. Wade, 1973: establishes a constitution right to an abortion building upon the right to privacy described in Griswold and elsewhere.

5. Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1992. In part the decision reads:

a. “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State...

b. ...Abortion is customarily chosen as an unplanned response to the consequence of unplanned activity or to the failure of conventional birth control....But to do this [eliminate reliance on abortion] would be simply to refuse to face the fact that, for two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail.”

c. Two really important points:

(1)#1: the idea that each person “has a right to define one’s own conception of existence, of meaning, of the universe” is an extreme expression of subjectivism that dismisses any notion that God may exist or that human nature is anything at all except a free agent who can define (not discover) the meaning of existence, etc., without reference to anything outside himself. It makes each individual a god in his own right.

(2)#2: the unfettered right to abortion is upheld in Casey because birth control fails and people have become accustomed to relying upon abortion when it happens that birth control fails.

V. Artificial Contraception and the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has always taught that artificial contraception is morally wrong – that is, the use of barrier or chemical methods to prevent the conception of a human child.

A. Unlike the teaching on capital punishment, Catholic teaching on contraception has not been modified over the years.

B. Using contraception devices to keep animals from conceiving is another matter entirely. It is not immoral, and has no place in this discussion.

C. Until the 1960's the Church’s teaching on artificial contraception was accepted by most Catholics and surveys showed that the more well-educated the Catholic, the more likely he or she was to live by this teaching.

VI. The 1960's

A. The Comstock Laws were being repealed.

B. The birth control pill was formulated by Dr. John Rock – the pill works by putting the woman’s body into a state of pseudo-pregnancy though the ingestion of synthetic hormones. If this works properly, the woman will not ovulate, and if she does not ovulate she cannot become pregnant. The first response of Catholic moral theologians was that any drug that suppressed ovulation violated the natural law.

C. Soon, though, there was much popular speculation that the Catholic Church might change its teaching on artificial contraception. Two the reasons are the following:

1. A chemical method was thought by some to be essentially different from the barrier methods.

2. Some began reasoning about the question in proportionalist way.

D. In 1968 Pope Paul VI issued the encyclical Humanae Vitae which upheld the traditional teaching on artificial contraception.

1. Within 28 hours after the encyclical was published, Rev. Charles Curran at the Catholic University of American called a press conference in which he “dissented.” And, moreover, stated that in his opinion Catholics were free to dissent from the teaching of Humane Vitae because its findings were based on an inadequate view of natural law. Eventually Curran lost his position because he was found to be teaching as “Catholic” what is not, in fact, Catholic. He continued his teaching career at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. .

2. But dissent was in the air. Priests and moral theology teachers tended to shy away from explaining the Church’s position. Rather, the matter tended to be left “to the consciences of Catholic couples.”

a. But these consciences – especially as the years rolled on – were not educated consciences.

b. For the Church’s teaching on artificial contraception was rarely explained or taught. In my view, it has become a large area of “invincible ignorance” – not really invincible, but practically so, because those who are responsible for educating the Catholic faithful on this matter have failed to do so.

VII. Artificial Contraceptives are abortifacients. The brochure which comes with the pills explains how they work. The “working” has three levels.

A. First, chemical contraceptives introduce synthetic forms of the hormones present when a woman is pregnant. These trick the body into thinking it is pregnant. Since women do not ovulate when they are pregnant, these hormones keep the woman from ovulating (chemical contraceptives are anovulants). If a woman does not ovulate, she cannot conceive.

B. Second, artificial contraceptives change the viscosity of the woman’s mucus. The same natural hormones which cause a woman to ovulate also produce a certain kind of mucus, called fertile mucus, which serves to carry the sperm to meet the egg. A second effect of artificial contraceptives is to change the viscosity of the mucus so it will not carry the sperm to meet the egg. This is a safety feature - so to speak – for the body is inclined by nature to ovulate and the chemical contraceptives do not always prevent ovulation. A woman taking the pill may ovulate from 2 to 10% of the time. It is even higher with things like Norplant – ovulation occurring perhaps 40% of the time or more. Women using such methods ovulate, but do not become pregnant because the lack of fertile mucus prevents sperm from meeting the eggs.

C. Third, artificial contraceptives prevent nidation – a term which means “nesting.” Sometimes a woman using artificial contraceptives does ovulate and does conceive – that is, she does become pregnant. An embryo is created. Now the embryo is meant to travel down the fallopian tube to the womb and implant in the uterine wall. The same cluster of hormones which cause ovulation and produce fertile mucus also build up an endometrium in which the new little human being can implants itself. In the woman taking artificial contraceptive this endometrium is not rich enough to support life and so the embryo is sloughed off. In the language of literature accompanying the pills or patch, it says the contraceptive “prevents nidation.” Nidation, as I said, means nesting. Specifically these chemical contraceptives act as an abortifacients.

D. Most women do not know this – that is, a woman taking artificial contraceptives year after year has no idea that she may be conceiving time and time again – but not gestating the child.

VIII. Natural Family planning.

A. Artificial contraception is a chemical solution to a human problem. Catholic teaching is clear on two points: Christian marriage is to be open to new life and Catholics are to enter into parenthood responsibly.

B. There is a method, called “Natural Family Planning,” for couples to ascertain when they are fertile (about 8 or so days per month). They can use this information to choose to conceive or choose not to conceive.