Unconditional Love is a High Calling and a Greater Joy
In writing about Theology of the Body, John Paul the Great often wrote that the procreative act is the second most sacred action undertaken by humankind after only the consecration of the Eucharist. John Paul’s Theology of the Body is not merely Theology. Much of his understanding of human intimacy and love stemmed from Natural Law philosophy. It built upon the Natural Law foundations that the Pope shares with Aristotle to climax with unique insights into the Trinitarian theology bound up with the sexual act.
Natural Law gives man a profound directive with far-reaching implications:
Treat every human being as an end in himself or herself.
The sexual act is a powerful and beautiful gift. In order for it to be celebrated fully, five criteria have to be met:
1) It must be a full and exclusive self-gift (Monogamous)
2) It must entail a choice of the will (Free)
3) It must be based on knowledge of the dignity of the spouse (Understood)
4) It must be be under the auspices of a life-long commitment (Permanent)
5) It must be open to life (Generative)
The deprivation of each one of these actions out of the Natural Order strips the act of sex of its full meaning thereby denigrating the second-greatest power we have on this Earth.
1) Polygamy deprives each person of the full and unconditional love that creates a unique bond between the lovers that they share with no other person, allowing the partner with multiple spouses to withhold their full affection from one or both spouses.
2) Shotgun marriages and their historical precedents set the will of another person in between the spouses as the cause of their union, depriving them of the complete surrender that is only possible by the relinquishment of someone’s own will to the good of another.
3) Undervaluing the dignity of the other person creates a darkness that blinds each person to the truth in a way that makes path to unconditional love shrouded in darkness.
4) Non-commitment means that one person is merely using the other person to fulfill the needs of the moment rather than a full gift to the other person.
5) Contraception or some other closed-off attitude towards life causes one spouse to withhold their fertility from the other, creating a barrier that seals off the natural fruit of love, and using the act of sex for pleasure to the exclusion of surrendering love.
The entire purpose of sex is to give of oneself utterly unconditionally. Holding back commitment, fertility, exclusivity, appreciation, or full consent violates the integrity of the act. Any such action cheapens and minimizes the gift of sex itself.
The only place to find all these blessings is marriage between one man and one woman.
The entire purpose of sex is to an unconditional love — not to seek some other end. Even an end as noble as the creation of new life is not to be sought, according to Natural Law.
The spouse should be loved for their own sake and should never be viewed as a baby-making machine. This view of the spouse were it to be adopted dehumanizes the spouse. The wonder of the Natural Order is that sexual love for a spouse can result in the creation of a new life. But this is the result of the sexual love not the purpose of the sexual love.
On the other hand, the spouse is also never to be viewed as a pleasure-seeking device. That is also dehumanizing. This sort of mentality develops with the use of contraception. By eliminating the full meaning of sex and holding back fertility, the spouse reduces the act of sex to a pleasure-stimulation exercise with the other spouse doing the honors.
Natural Family Planning, however, does not violate the Natural Order. NFP teaches spouses to give fully of themselves including their fertility. The female fertility is cyclical so there are times when that fertility will result in a child and times when it will not. Spouses within NFP are able to exercise prudence when to fully give themselves to each other.
However, even NFP must always be within the context of unconditional love. If a couple has a grave reason not to conceive a child (perhaps serious financial or medical issues), then avoidance-oriented NFP is a gift to the spouse. The spouses deny themselves for the sake of the other — to prevent an imprudent exercise of sex. However, if there is no grave reason to avoid conception, the spouses should be generous and unconditional with their exercise of sex, come what may.
Additionally, it is never okay to view the spouse as merely a money-generating machine, a status symbol, an ego boost, a personal chef, or any other lesser good.
A spouse is an end unto themselves.
An end to love unconditionally.
Nothing captures the beauty of it better than the wedding vows:
“I take you for my lawful [spouse], to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”
Amen!