Suffering – Antithesis to the Contraceptive Mentality: Part II

In my first post on this topic, I focused on the suffering-selfishness dichotomy and its effects on marriage and beauty. In this second part, I shift to a discussion of the purgative effects of suffering and why there cannot exist for long a “both…and” relationship between suffering and selfishness.

For the one caring for the suffering loved one and for the one suffering, there exists a dynamic of necessary self-forgetfulness and self-giving. If I had continued to focus only on the way Beth’s condition was affecting me, I never would have been able to enter into service to her, nor would I have been able to appreciate the beauty that she was radiating to everyone in her conformity to the image of Christ. I never would have seen it had I continued to stare at myself. Every minute spent feeding her and wiping her mouth as she spit it back out was one minute not focused on me or my own hunger. Every minute spent bathing her and dressing her became minutes not focused on my own selfish desires. This is what it means to be truly human, because if God as Trinity is a unity of persons totally, freely, and fruitfully opening up to each other, then we as images of this must do the same in order to actualize our full potential. For most people, the experience of suffering is probably the most effective means of reaching this actualization because suffering and caring for the suffering demands such a dynamic as mentioned above.

An advantage of the deepening of married love through suffering over sex is that suffering practically casts out any possibility of the using of one another for personal gain or pleasure. There is no pleasure in suffering, nor is there any apparent, personal gain. What’s left is the choice to give up or to take advantage of such an opportunity by allowing it to purify the relationship of any selfish motives. In fact, depending upon the type of suffering being endured, the very possibility of sex may be completely nil. This forces a couple to examine their marriage and their love for one another through the lens of sacrifice. Because of what Beth was going through, sex was simply not an option for about nine months, and during that time our love for one another grew exponentially. My complete concern for her and forgetfulness of myself could only be brought about through the suffering that we were enduring. Sex, I believe, had become a stumbling block for me due to selfishness until my motives were purified through the fire of suffering. It wasn’t until I learned to love her through the school of suffering that I realized how selfish I had become in the marriage act, and we weren’t even contracepting! The contraceptive mentality can take over even when one is not contracepting, because the mentality is ultimately a mentality of selfishness. “How much pleasure can I derive without having to recognize the value of the other?” It’s not about a pill or a condom. It’s about the refusal to give of oneself without reserve and without the expectation of pleasure. Suffering is very efficient at excluding any possibility of such a refusal. Eventually, my only concern was Beth, but even that took a while to happen. I had to be reminded by a very close friend of mine that this was not about me, and this is something of which I have to remind myself on a daily basis. When I think about the purifying effects that this suffering had on our marriage, I’m simply amazed. Our love for each other eventually began to transcend the fear of death that had become a dark specter always hovering over us.

Even our understanding of suffering was being purified during this time. While there wasn’t a moment and still isn’t a moment where we hope for a complete healing by God, we moved slowly from a deep fear of suffering and the unknown to the more solid foothold of trust in God’s Fatherhood and His faithfulness to His promises. But it still doesn’t come easily. The only possible way to attain this and hold on to it is through constant prayer -- prayers of submission and prayers of trust. Then and only then can one enter more fully into that dynamic of self-giving and self-forgetfulness with another.

There cannot be a dynamic of self-giving and self-forgetfulness within the context of suffering without there existing a corresponding deepening of the relationship in love. Even St. Paul sees the connection between conjugal unity of husband and wife and suffering. In fact, it seems that he suggests that the love between husband and wife is brought about through an experience of suffering in his letter to the Ephesians: “For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church, his body, and is himself its Savior…Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her.” Christ is Savior because of His sacrifice, because of His suffering. Christ loved the Church by giving Himself up for her. The bridegroom establishes unity with and life for the bride through suffering. Even as far back as the creation story in Genesis we can see these same elements at work, the elements of self-giving and self-forgetfulness as the means by which a marriage is established and sustained. In order for Adam to be brought into unity with his bride, he first had to open up, literally, in an act of self-giving. He opened up to give of himself in order to bring about new life, both the life of his bride Eve and the life of the marriage itself. But the opening up required self-forgetfulness, implied by the deep sleep into which he fell. He entered into an ecstasy characterized by self-giving, not self-concern and self-absorption. In this is priesthood. The priesthood of the husband is rooted in his call to sacrifice, but sacrifice is not the only aspect of priesthood. Ministering to his bride is as necessary as the sacrificial part of it.

Let us not become lax in praying for the men of today, that they will recognize the great calling that comes with masculinity. It is a calling to service that leads us out of ourselves and into a proper understanding of masculinity. We pray for this in the name of Jesus Christ, through the intercession of Pope John Paul II. Amen.

Suffering – Antithesis to the Contraceptive Mentality

In previous posts, I’ve hinted at the discovery of both ecstasy and beauty through suffering. In keeping with this line of thought, I would like to share a few thoughts in two parts on the purgative effect of suffering on the contraceptive mentality. I say “purgative” because of the fact that the authentically Christian experience of suffering and the contraceptive mentality are so antithetical in nature that there cannot be a “both…and” relationship. It must be an “either…or” dichotomy, for the two cannot coexist for long. Many may already be aware that these thoughts are the fruit of experience as I myself had to experience this purgation in dealing with my wife’s illness. In this first part, the nature of the contraceptive mentality will be reviewed along with the utilitarianism it engenders.

Why is the contraceptive mentality a danger to one’s marriage? It becomes like an empty glass to the one who is thirsty. One dying of thirst may hallucinate because of the fact that he’s dying of thirst and believe that he is drinking water from the objectively empty glass in order to slake his thirst, yet it is nothing more than a hallucination. This hallucination will be the death of him, for as long as he continues to believe that he is actually drinking water, he continues to die of thirst. The same goes for the marriage act. To empty the act of that for which it is made will lead to the slow but sure exsanguination of the marriage, and the belief that a husband and wife can safely sexually express their marriage with the goal of excluding unity and new life is nothing more than a hallucination.

Keeping all of this in mind, one should naturally begin to question the place of artificial contraception within marriage. Artificial contraception and the reasons for the use of it reflect a desire to obtain pleasure without the primary goals of unity and new life. In fact, the primary goals are actively battled against, as though they are a hindrance to the expression of the marriage, when in fact, unity and new life are the very reasons for being for the sexual act, a fact made clear from both a biological and natural law standpoint. The use of artificial contraception, therefore, hinges upon selfishness and creates a situation in which unity and new life are impossibilities. Yet the contraceptive mentality directs one to believe that the marriage is safe even though it has been emptied of its vitality.

I would suggest that a contraceptive mentality even causes adverse effects upon our view of suffering and the proper way to deal with it. Because the contraceptive mentality fosters selfishness and feeds the obsession for pleasure at the exclusion of self-giving, suffering becomes a thing to be avoided at all costs, for suffering seems to be the exact opposite of pleasure. Within such a context, suffering cannot be seen as an opportunity to empty oneself for love of another. I clearly remember thinking many times after Beth’s condition began causing extreme problems, “What am I going to do? How am I supposed to deal with this?” What I should have been thinking was, “What can I do for Beth? How are we going to deal with this?” This insight would come after having been through the fire and learning from my mistakes, mainly by having them pointed out by trusted friends. The suffering involved in caring for a suffering loved one is profound, and it demands the denial of one’s own desires and necessitates a “standing outside of oneself”. This concept of “standing outside of oneself” is necessary to understand if we wish to correct our views of sex and suffering which for the most part are formed by cultural viruses like MTV, Sex and the City, Paris Hilton, and other such misfits. Please refer to my other post entitled An Ecstatic Suffering.

There was a point during my wife’s illness at which she was capable of doing nothing other than talking, and even that was labored. To make matters more dreadful, there seemed to be no end in sight except for that end that everyone must undergo at some point. This was a time of spiritual and emotional freefall. It was as though there was nothing to hold on to. The bottom had dropped out and everything was getting worse at an alarming rate. Nothing seemed to make sense anymore. I would often ask God why he would allow us to marry and then snatch everything away from us. “How could You bless our union, and then make it impossible to live it out? What purpose could You possibly serve by ruining our marriage and our life together?” This revealed the utilitarian mindset that I had fallen to, which seems to naturally spawn from the contraceptive mentality. In my mind, since we weren’t being “productive”, then we weren’t being successful, and God was the reason for this failure. What I couldn’t seem to wrap my mind around was the possibility that maybe, just maybe, what we were actually doing was living out our marriage in exactly the way God wanted us to: true to our vows, self-sacrificial, and totally dependent upon Him. Although I couldn’t see it at the time, we were on the road to success within our marriage by learning how to be submissive to God’s will, by offering up our sufferings to God, and through self-sacrifice.

Stay tuned for the second part which will recount a personal experience of the actual purgative effect that suffering has on this contraceptive mentality.