Modern Day Apple

An interesting parallel crossed my mind today that I felt the need to develop.

I recently heard a wise man reflecting on the greater consequences of contraception in our culture. He was not a fanatic shouting that all science was bad, nor was he some chauvinist who felt women needed to be put back in their place.

From a cultural viewpoint, from a societal viewpoint, even from a political viewpoint, and certainly from a human viewpoint, contraception's little tentacles have reached and grown further and deeper than many anticipated. While I was not alive for the era of the "pill" and all of the hype of the sexual revolution, I have both read and heard the testimonies of many who were; whether one felt morally opposed or not, the "pill" and its fellow contraceptive technologies seemed a promise of freedom, and nothing more. Even before the pill, the condom itself and its infiltration of suburbia also carried little more than the idea of protection and safety, and of course, freedom from consequences.

However, there were some forward-thinking men and women who saw into the drama of what "freedom from the consequences of sexual union" would rightfully entail. Some, including Pope Paul VI (author of Humanae Vitae and Shepherd of the Church through the Second Vatican Council), who were willing and ready to ask the harder questions: what, precisely, is it to contra-cept? The term is obvious in that it is against, or contra, conception. Now, this definition therefore depends entirely on one's definition or understanding of conception. Conception is the moment when the sexual cells of the man and woman (the egg and the sperm) come together and fuse into one new cell, where an entirely new set of DNA is formed, and an entirely new person is created. This is the simultaneous moment when two separate persons truly become one person in and through their child that is conceived in their sexual union. So, contra-ception is therefore "against-new-life" or "against-the-creation-of-a-new-person."

I spoke of contraception as something with tentacles that have reached and grown - perhaps the more apt analogy is the roots of a weed or tree. The image of tentacles is usually one that involves the person imagining to see, very overtly, the wrapping and grasping nature of the object. However, roots, or the vines and shoots that can grow below the surface or hidden in with the other plants, are not so visible. These are understated elements that serve absolutely vital purposes (the life of the being whose roots or vines they are), and yet are not considered by most people. We walk around them and over them, and perhaps occasionally trip over them day in and day out, with little notice. This is the imperceptible nature of contraceptives in our culture today. They don't beg any questions (or at least, they were not until the government began to think it could override religious freedom and mandate contraceptives), because they have been generally accepted.

So the next step is to consider why some never blink an eye at the use of something that contravenes life, and why others feel that it is the threshold for many other serious issues that seem to be unraveling the fabric of society around us.

My thoughts turn to our "first parents" as the Catechism calls Adam and Eve. They were given a paradise, and all that they could desire was available to them. The Lord gave them a few commands, and one was that they not eat of a certain tree of knowledge. We know what happens (although Genesis does not refer to the fruit as as "apple," let us assume the tradition for the time being), and the apple was the temptation that led to the downfall of the human race. I have mulled over this story time and again considering what the temptation was really about and what might have been going on in the minds and hearts of Adam and Eve. Various scholars will emphasize different sins, although typically pride and disobedience are the culprits.

While thinking about this today, it struck me how very human it was for food to be the actual item or action at steak. Food, one of the most basic material or bodily needs. Food, without which our mortal bodies perish. Food, while seemingly nourishing only our bodies, clearly also nourishes the soul, the entire organism that is each man and woman. Water or sleep might have been equivalent, but there are few things that are so very basic to our survival that could be considered.

The point here is that, while I am in no way suggesting that this is what was going on in the minds of Adam and Eve (as I live a good many years past their time), I could imagine that food would not seem to be something quite-so-bad. How else do I explain this? Food, water, sleep - we inherently need them to exist. Therefore, if we have any concept of our existence being good (which we can safely assume Adam and Eve did), we would also have to conceive of those things necessary to our survival as also being good, if not objectively, than at least good for us. If this is assumed, then I can understand that it would be hard to remember that some particular food is "bad" or "not-good-for-us" while all other food is good for us. Do you see my point?

We man, reasoners and thinkers that we are, are guilty of what we have come to refer to as "rationalizing" experiences and decisions in life. This is nothing more than maintaining a form of structure or hierarchy within our minds to enable us to properly sort and organize all of the information we encounter day to day. However, the issue is that our structure or hierarchy can be poorly informed, ignorant, lazy or simply ignored all together. This leads us to misunderstand, misdirect, poorly organize, confuse or lose experiences and information so that we make poor choices or even dramatically wrong choices in life. In the example of food being a basic need, what rationale is employed is one that elevates the general "food is a good" above the warning that had been given "do not eat." The warm fuzzy around "food is a good" kept the alarms at bay that should have been triggered at the temptation to eat what had been forbidden. We do this all the time! We are hungry, our food is too hot, but we are hungry, so we take a bite anyway and suffer the consequences of a burned mouth. Was the food bad? No. Should we have eaten the food at that time, even though it was good? No. Was the fruit of the "tree of knowledge of good and evil" really bad fruit? Not as we understand it. Should Adam and Eve have eaten what seemed to be perfectly good fruit? Nope.

Here is the analogy (in case you didn't already put it together): contraception seems like a good to some, in fact, to many. Sexuality, and specifically, sexual intercourse, is "up there" on the list of basic-human-needs. Definitely not equatable to food/water/sleep, but it is certainly one that is intrinsic to our long-term survival as a race. Therefore, a mentality has sunk in (and it is pervasive, throughout most societies and cultures) that understands sexual union as a good that can be had, without qualifications. This, however, is not the proper organization or hierarchy for our minds. Sexual union has to have qualifications, because the consequences of that union are real and profound. The qualifications are not made up to meet the consequences - they exist prior to the consequences because they are innate to the nature of the act. The qualifications include the awareness and preparedness for the possibility of a new life being created in any sexual union. Now, it is not our nature to always be fertile and to reproduce in every union, but it is in our nature to have that potential in every union. This means that people understand sexual intercourse as "just food," and forget that this mysterious and beautiful experience is quite a bit more. What were the consequences for Adam and Eve's failure to understand the nature of the fruit, or more specifically, the nature of the requirement to obey the law God gave them? Pretty significant. Besides incurring a sinful nature for the rest of every human person ever created (that you God for Baptism), they were also thrown out of Paradise and experienced a bit of a laundry list of negative effects.

The crux is as follows: God's law then and God's law (concerning sexuality) now were and are not arbitrary - they are logical. They are logical because God (Jesus, the Word) is Logos (logic) and the Creator of all things (nature) and his Law and Logos are inscribed in the fabric of creation (Natural Law) so that to deny them is to be il-logical - to attempt to deny what is the nature of a thing, its very being. This cannot be done, although it is often attempted. Yet, even those who would seek to control the beginning of life through to the end of life are powerless before the Creator of life. While we can (and so often do) break these laws, mock them and ignore them, we cannot undo them nor can we erase them. We are born into their logic and we cannot be anything else.

So for men and women to misunderstand the nature of sexual intercourse (to therefore misunderstand their own nature), or to willfully ignore the natural consequences of sexual union, or to willfully attempt to undo, impede, cease or destroy those consequences... well, there can be no question of the seriousness of such sin. Morally speaking, contraception is what is found lying in the undergrowth of the sin we all have creeping in our hearts. It is a springboard, actually, a funnel - one that turns upside down the filters and structures that allow us to comprehend the natural law (and therefore, God's law), and allows them to fall like sand at random through the wrong side of the tube. If we have lost the meaning of sexuality, what is left? Food, water, sleep... life itself. We are developing the habits necessary to be so inverted in our rationale that when men say "let us kill the innocent" we will have no objections. We are maintaining a mentality that is so disordered that when men tell us "these must die, for their own good," we do not argue. We are living with the distortion of natural law that is so significant, so at the heart of life, that we will no longer recognize death when it comes. Where life is supposed to happen, we are purposefully placing death. Since we do not have the science and technology to place life where death comes naturally, we just have to live with more death. And so death becomes the reigning king of culture and society, because we forgot that not all "food" is good for us.

Contraception is the bad apple that we need to throw away, because we cannot continue to cast ourselves (and our children) into the darkness.

Lord, lead us ever in your Truth.