As we celebrate National Family Planning Awareness Week beginning July 23, I remember back a few years ago, when I had the opportunity to spend time with some married friends as they awaited the birth of their baby boy. As the mother went into labor, I was struck by the shared sense of awe that permeated the moment.
We were waiting to meet a new person, a new member of the family. Each person in this family would be transformed by the gift of gaining a new son, brother, nephew or grandson.
It struck me that in an especially profound way, the lives of this husband and wife would be tied together more deeply by the experience of becoming a mother and father once again. This child was a fruit of the love they pledged when they first gave themselves to one another in marriage at the altar.
During the celebration of a wedding, before the vows, the priest or deacon asks the couple if they will “accept children lovingly from God and bring them up according to the law of Christ and His Church.” The couple must answer “yes” to celebrate a valid marriage.
To truly give oneself to one’s spouse is to offer the gift of making the other a mother or father. To fully accept one’s spouse means to accept their capacity to make you a mother or father through the gift of self.
This openness to having children unites the couple in new and profound ways. Being a mother or father is forever, and ties the lives of a man and woman together forever.
The deeper bond created by an openness to new life allows the couple’s love to grow. It allows them to discover their love is not only for themselves but is meant to be shared with new persons who are the fruit of their union.
St. John Paul II wrote “the fundamental task of the family is to serve life” and that through bearing children, mother and father have the privilege of passing on “God’s original blessing,” the divine image, to future generations. This blessing is passed on when the husband and wife come together in sexual union, which serves as a renewal of the “yes” they spoke in their marriage vows.
Any action that deliberately separates a couple from their vows of unity and openness to life – such as the use of artificial contraception – turns their “yes” into a “no,” and contradicts their marriage vows.
The use of artificial contraception is directly opposed to the call to husband and wife to be “at the service of life” in their marriage. Withholding the openness to life also profoundly alters their personal relationship.
Contraception rejects a spouse’s potential to become a mother or father. It withholds rather than offers this gift to the other. To reject an openness to life not only modifies the act of sexual bonding, but rejects a profound part of the other person.
It is to protect both the unity and the fruitfulness of married love that the Church has always opposed the use of artificial contraception, instead favoring the use of Natural Family Planning (NFP) methods to aid married couples as they discern the decision to have more children or to pause for a certain or indefinite period of time.
The “yes” to life vowed by husband and wife embraces procreation and the education of children that follows. As the Catechism notes, “The fruitfulness of [married] love extends to the fruits of the moral, spiritual, and supernatural life that parents hand on to their children” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1653).
Sharing with one’s children the blessings of life, sharing the wisdom one has gained in how to live well, sharing the faith in Jesus Christ that saves us is a continuation of the service of life that began with wedding vows and goes on throughout their life together.
Husband and wife see their “yes” to life continue to bear fruit as their children flourish and come into their own. Through marriage placed at the service of life, spouses discover the truth of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council that “Children are the supreme gift of marriage and contribute greatly to the good of the parents themselves.”
Spouses who are not able to have children of their own are called to put their marriage at the service of life in other ways. The Catechism speaks of “a fruitfulness of charity, of hospitality, and of sacrifice” that is available to all married couples, including those who bear the cross of infertility. Spouses in this situation will find ways to share the blessings of their love with others.
In every marriage open to life, the fruitfulness of love is an adventure that grows, surprises, and shares itself. All of this is contained in the “yes” the couple gives at that moment on the altar – a yes to one another, a yes to God, a yes to life.
Father Peter Ascik is director of the Diocese of Charlotte’s Office of Family Life and pastor of St. Mary Help of Christians Parish in Shelby.