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Ultimate Marriage Buster
A study commissioned by the Marriage Project at Rutgers University found
that 80% of young people say their number-one priority is a lasting marriage.
Surely every marriage should begin with soaring hopes and expectations for a
lifetime of love. Your wedding day should be the day when your dreams come
true. So why are so many marital dreams turning into the nightmare of divorce?
Reasons abound for the multitude of marital breakups occurring all around
us. One particular contributor to divorce stands out above all others. This
ultimate marriage buster is contraception, embraced by 97% of young married
couples even though it threatens the core of their marital relationship.
500% increase in the Divorce Rate
The divorce rate has increased 500% since the ultimate marriage buster
started gaining popular acceptance early in the 20 th century. The ultimate marriage
buster was given a big boost by medical technology in the1960s, and the divorce
rate has doubled since then. In fact, the divorce rate for new marriages hovers at
50%. In stark contrast, those married couples wise enough to keep the marriage
buster out of their bedrooms have a divorce rate fewer than 5%.
Divorce has become a national concern. [Government leaders, social
agencies, university researchers, church leaders and marital counselors are
diligently searching for ways to improve marital stability. Individual Americans
are spending more than a hundred million dollars every year on books, tapes,
seminars and therapy in an attempt to discover the secret glue that will hold
contemporary marriages together.] Strangely absent in our national search for
marital stability is a public recognition and identification of the practice of
artificial birth control as the ultimate buster of modern marriage.
Why does avoiding the ultimate marriage buster cause the probability of
divorce to plummet from 50% to less than 5%? To answer this critical question,
you must know something about the uniqueness of marital love between spouses.
Marital Love Involves the Innermost
Being of Husband and Wife
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If asked, millions of Americans probably couldn’t answer the question,
“What’s the difference between two animals copulating (in heat) and a husband
and wife expressing love in the marital embrace?” Yet the difference is deeply
significant. While animal copulation is something purely biological, marital love
is much, much more. Listen carefully to what the Catechism says:
Sexuality, by means of which man and woman give themselves to one
another through the acts, which are proper and exclusive to spouses, is not
something simply biological, but concerns the innermost being of the human
person as such. It is realized in a truly human way only if it is an integral part of
the love by which a man and woman commit themselves totally to one another
until death (CCC 2361, quoting Familiaris Consortio #11).
Total Giving in Marital Love
Marital love is expressed in the total giving of oneself – body, mind, and
heart – to one’s spouse. This profound union goes beyond just the union of
bodies. It is the complete union of persons joining the innermost cores of their
being.
That’s why the Catechism goes on to say that “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 (CCC 1643 quoting FC #13).
The Berlin Wall Between Spouses
Artificial birth control erects a Berlin Wall between spouses, frustrating the
intimate union of marriage. Artificial birth control speaks in silent language, “I
give you some of myself, maybe even most of myself, but not all of myself.” This
partial giving creates a corrosive selfishness at the core of your marital union.
In contrast, genuine marital love, expressed in a sacred language of the
body, says, “I give you myself – all of myself – without reservation.” What
happens when marital love is expressed in this total, self-giving manner? The
Catechism describes it this way: “The acts in marriage by which the intimate and
chaste union of the spouses takes place are noble and honorable; the truly human
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performance of these acts fosters the self-giving they signify and enriches the
spouses in joy and gratitude” (CCC 2362, quoting GS 49.2).
Breaking Commandments Leads to
Broken Marriages
By practicing artificial birth control, couples not only shut out their love for
each other; they also damage their relationship with God. Breaking God’s
commands in marriage results in a multitude of broken marriages.
Since the first marriage in the Garden of Eden, God has commanded two
purposes for marriage: love making (the unitive: “the two shall become one flesh,”
Gen 2:24) and life giving (the procreative: “be fruitful and multiply,” Gen 1:28).
Just as it is with the damage from cohabitation, when we engage in practices at
odds with our Creator’s design, things break. When we sever the bond of love
making from life giving, marriages break – by the millions.
The Twofold Purpose of Marriage
The Catechism continues this original teaching on marriage:
The spouses’ union achieves the twofold end of marriage: the good of the
spouses themselves and the transmission of life. These two meanings or values of
marriage cannot be separated without altering the couple’s spiritual life and
compromising the goods of marriage and the future of the family.
So the Church … teaches “each and every marriage act must remain open
to the transmission of life.” “This particular doctrine, expounded on numerous
occasions by the Magisterium, is based on the inseparable connection, established
by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive
significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the
marriage act” (CCC 2363 and 2366, quoting Humanae Vitae 11-12).
Christian morality thus forbids sterilization (vasectomies or tubal ligations),
contraceptive devices, and acts consciously intended to interrupt coitus and thwart
procreation.
An Ecumenical Morality – until Recently
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[For nineteen out of the past twenty centuries, all Christian denominations
forbade these practices as gravely sinful. Most people today are surprised to learn
that all the major Protestant leaders such as Martin Luther, John Calvin and John
Wesley taught that artificial contraception and unnatural acts to thwart procreation
destroyed the souls of those engaging in such practices (see Charles Provan, The
Bible and Birth Control, Monongahela, PA: Zimmer Printing, 1989, pp. 69-92).]
Natural Family Planning
The sacredness of the marital union is not violated when couples enjoy their
embrace during infertile times. So if there are serious reasons to limit or space
births, couples can morally practice what is called Natural Family Planning (NFP).
When used for proper reasons, Natural Family Planning does not violate the
twofold ends of marriage (love making and live giving).
The trustworthy teaching of the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae (Of Human
Life) says: “If then, there are serious motives to space out births … it is then licit
to take into account the natural rhythms immanent in the generative functions, for
the use of marriage in the infecund (infertile) periods only, and in this way to
regulate birth without offending the moral principles which have been recalled
earlier (HV 16).
A first-rate premarital training program should regard thorough training in
Natural Family Planning as important as communication, compatibility, and family
finances. Some premarital classes devote only a few minutes to NFP. Other
classes completely ignore the topic. Both of these approaches are huge mistakes.
I encourage every young couple here to make certain that you have NFP training,
even if you have to go outside your premarital classes to get it. NFP classes are
taught throughout the country by competent couples.
Christians during the twentieth century were foolish enough to imagine that
abandoning God’s design for marital love would bring liberation and happiness. I
encourage every young person here considering marriage, to be certain that you
have a solemn agreement with your fiancé to keep the ultimate marriage buster
completely out of your marriage. You don’t want to repeat the last century’s
mistakes.
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[This material comes from Steve Wood’s, The ABCs of Choosing a Good
Husband, and Family Life Center Publications, 2000.]