SPECIAL TOPICS ON CHRISTIAN MORALITY

We are often exposed to numerous complaints regarding the Church’s “thou shall not rules” about sex and hear less of the broader reality – the foundation from which the Church’s teaching springs viz. the Church’s view of human sexuality. Sex the act or the biological aspect of being male or female is but one aspect of this broader reality which encompasses a fundamental component of our personality “through which we, as male or female, experience our relatedness to self, others, the world and even God” (Coleman, p. 10). Sexuality touches every aspects of the human person: the physical, the moral, the emotional and the spiritual. It is not peripheral to our nature but is an essential component of who we are and our self-understanding.

The organizing framework of the Church’s teaching on human sexuality is the notion of all things proceeding from and returning to God and the main source of the teaching is Scripture. From the book of Genesis we know that God created human beings in his own image, male and female he created them (Gen 1:27). And that God saw that what he had done was indeed very good (Gen 1:31). This means that sexual differentiation as male or female is part of the original and divine plan of creation. We relate to the world as man or as woman. Since God created both man and woman in his image, man is not superior to woman, and woman is not superior to man. They are equal as human beings but different as man and woman, fulfilling each other through this difference. This relational complementarity is indeed what also fulfills the common vocation of all humanity viz. to be the image of God.

God is love. In himself he lives the mystery of personal loving communion of Creator, Redeemer and life giving-Spirit though which the plenitude of their life is realized. Through the gift of sexuality God intended to mirror this Trinitarian life in our own life. That is why the Catechism says that sexuality “especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others” (CCC 2332). It is a relational power whose purpose is life: a life of love that finds its full expression in Jesus who by totally giving himself up for us as shown us the way the truth and the life.

The life giving characteristics of our sexuality explicitly come to bear in a special way in the sexual act. In this two-in-one flesh encounter of simultaneous unity and distinction two complimentary persons bond in a mutually loving union that is open to life by way of procreation of children. This indeed gives a glimpse of the Trinitarian life and which is the reason as to why Church teaches that the use of the sexual function has its true meaning and moral rectitude only in true marriage. For it is only within this context that sex is open to life and to true love.

Being a gift from God, sexuality is sacred. In itself it is not impure; it’s not dirty, rather it’s precious. But this being so precious also opens up the potential of abusing or misusing it. Hence each of us finds himself or herself with the splendid responsibility that befalls the steward entrusted with any precious gift. Hence we all have the challenge of treasuring, respecting and nurturing the great gift of human sexuality. People might complain much about the Church’s “thou shall not” guidelines about sex. But these guidelines reflect the great importance of sexuality.

Abuse of our sexuality happens by either denying that we are sexual being or by misusing our sexual function. To deny that we are sexual beings is to deny that we are relational beings since it’s our sexuality that enables us to make relationships with others. On the other hand, to misuse our sexual function is to place emphasis on the biological aspect and thereby denying that sexuality concerns the whole person. Each us therefore need to cultivate the strength to enable us order our sexuality towards own greatest good and the good of society. This virtue which is called chastity is the spiritual energy that helps us to break the bonds of selfishness and successful integrate sexuality within the whole person. Only with chastity can we love the whole person and not just the body. And as such we shall use the precious gift of sexuality according to the divine plan.

Dennis Kasule 12.6.05.

Cohabitation: Good Prep for Divorce Not Marriage

It is certainly very important that couples hoping to marry get to know one another before entering into the marriage commitment. Whereas four decades ago this “getting to know each other” did not take the form of “living together,” and in fact that would be scandal, today it seems quite common. Couples want to “first try and see how it works out” before truly committing themselves to one another. Cohabitating or “living together” like husband and wife but without marriage seems is attractive for several reasons. First, individuals who say they “love” each other can conveniently obtain sexual intimacy and gratification without total commitment. Further, in our society where money bears on everything, many people say that, cohabitating leaves some room for financial independence as earned income is often viewed as “his” or “hers.” And in case of separation the implications are apparently less severe. So cohabitating apparently ensures some financial security.

But it is within this very attractiveness that the venom of cohabitation is hidden. From different researches conducted in Canada and the USA, it has been found out that less than 63 % of cohabitating unions fail to turn into marriage and even when they have successful turned into marriages the risk of divorce is 50% higher compared to non-cohabitators (Catholic Update June 2003). There are various reasons as to why. In her article entitled: Cohabitation: A Recipe for Marital Ruin, Anne Marie-Ambert writes that, “Evidence indicates that the experience of less committed cohabitation shapes subsequent marital behavior.” Although the sacrament of marriage brings numerous graces, miracles are rare. After the honey moon is over, lack of trust, inadequate pooling of resources, sexual infidelity, marital violence, and marital instability all seem to endure as prior to marriage. The main reason being that, “the movement from dating to preparing meals together, to sleeping together, to staying over more often to eventual cohabitation is more of a developmental process rather than a conscious decision.” The decision to live together often does not arise from reflection but is rather as the result of developing a strong sexual dependency (Bishops of Kansas Cohabitation before Marriage, 1998).

Thus confusion often arises between true love and sex. This confusion throttles the couple’s discovery of the things that are more essential for a strong marital relationship such as for instance, the attitudes, hopes and desires of the other person. Thus in the long run “living together” often fails to lead to “knowing each other.” And from a moral point of view, due to lack of total commitment and the fear of getting children out of wedlock, cohabitating unions shut the sexual act from life which is its original purpose and as such render it sinful.

As St. Paul says, our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. “Do not be deceived; neither fornicators nor idolaters … will inherit the Kingdom of God” (1 Cor 6:9). Cohabitation and all sexual unions between the unmarried are sinful (CCC 2350 – 2400), because they undermine the very holiness of life which one seeks in the sacrament of marriage. The love sought in the sacrament of marriage requires a trust established in chastity and self-control which can only nourished in the period of courtship. Love survives on trust and commitment. Cohabitation never allows these to mature.

Finally, children suffer immensely when they happen to be born in cohabitating unions. During the ministry seminar that was held here recently, Mr. Andrew Lyke while speaking about devastation of black families to us that, “the greatest gift a mother can give a child is to love his or her dad and the greatest gift a dad can give a child is to love his or her mother.” Commitment and stability are at the core of their needs yet in a great proportion of cohabitation, these two requirements are absent. Happy children come from strong and stable families, bonded and graced by the sacrament of marriage.

In light of all these issues, God’s people who at this moment live in cohabitation unions should work hastily towards marriage. If marriage is not clearly coming, then separate to get out the sinful condition. The Church does not condemn the cohabitating persons. She is ready and willing to welcome, and to help those who want to get out of cohabitation and receive the sacrament of marriage. The bottom line is that, it’s a myth that cohabitating lays foundation for a strong marriage. It requires the effort of the whole community to restore authentic courtship but most importantly the loving care of parents who are the original “mentors” of their children.

Dennis Kasule 12.13.2005

In recent years, a few countries and states in Europe and North America have “legalized” same sex unions and some have also called them marriage. In spite of that, the Church has consistently taught that such unions are false, disordered and as Pope Benedict XVI has put it, are an expression of “anarchic freedom.” One may then question as to whether the Church is discriminating against people with homosexual tendencies, is uncompassionate to them, or does not want them to enjoy their lives with people for whom they have strong affectionate feelings. At any rate, that is not the case. Instead the Church urges that: “Men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies … must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in this regard should be avoided” (CCC 2358).

We read in Genesis that God created humanity in his image, male and female he created them and blessed them saying “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:27-28). “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24). These and various other biblical testimonies affirm that marriage is not merely a human convention or any relationship between human beings; rather it is an essential aspect of the Creator’s original plan for us. It is also evident that marital union can only be realized by the communion of a man and a woman, for only then can sexual complementarity and fruitfulness be realized. From this perspective, gay unions cannot be envisaged as a true development of our understanding of marriage but rather as detraction from the original order intended by God.

The truths affirmed by revelation are further confirmed by right reason in as far as they are infused upon our very nature as human beings. Our sexual faculties are designed for the primary end of begetting children and various secondary ends such as satisfying our cravings for sexual pleasure, human love and companionship. Thus even from the point of view of natural reason, homosexual acts and unions are not in a remote sense analogous to marriage.

Human society owes its continued survival and its future to the family, founded on marriage. A redefinition of marriage that includes same sex unions not only devalues the holy covenant of marriage but also threatens it. From this point of view, gay unions threaten the survival of society and from its very roots. In the event of the legal recognition of gay unions and of elevating them to a status similar to marriage, it is therefore the survival of the whole of society at stake.

Not even the principles of respect and non-discrimination can be invoked to support the legalization of gay unions. Whereas these values are not at all violated when gay unions are not legalized, since not a single principle of justice violated, it would be both unjust and unreasonable to sacrifice the common good in order to protect the personal interests of some individuals. Accepting or encouraging sexual relations for pleasure or personal satisfaction alone is ultimately harmful to individuals and to society. If the goal of civil government is enhancing the common good, legalization of gay unions acts against that goal.

So then do people with homosexual tendencies have a place in society and in God’s plan? Yes, they surely do. Like all Christians, “homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection” (CCC 2359). While recognizing that all people are created in God’s image and deserve to be treated as such, the Church calls upon all of us to go beyond hating the sin and loving the sinner by providing an environment that encourages people with homosexual tendencies live truly human lives. The worst contribution we can offer them is to encourage them act upon any disordered tendencies on the pretext of a false notion of charity or freedom. Love separated from life is hatred in a mask.

Dennis Kasule, January 10, 2006.

Debates concerning artificial birth control may simply be regarded as issues of the modern world but that does not seem to be the case. As early as the 3^rd century, St. Hippolytus argued that there could be no reconciliation for “reputed believers, who began to resort to drugs for producing sterility, and to gird themselves round so as to expel what was being conceived” (Philosophoumena 9,12). This was his reaction directed to the pope then, St. Callistus, who had pronounced that even those who committed grave sins would be forgiven and re-admitted to community after doing the prescribed penance.

Sexual intercourse has a two fold purpose or meaning: giving of life and sharing of love. Artificial birth control is precisely the deliberate attempt to use non-natural means (mechanical, physical or chemical) to interfere with the natural course of the marriage act in view of closing its natural openness to generate new life. The process of sexual intercourse is primarily designed to secure fertilization of the ovum by the sperm. While some methods of artificial birth control are designed to prevent fertilization or conception itself, other methods are designed to prevent implantation of the fertilized ovum in a woman’s womb. The former is contraception proper while the later is a form of abortion. This distinction shows that, artificial birth control is not exactly synonymous to contraception. A more exact term for artificial birth control would be birth prevention. The distinction is also very important when it comes to moral evaluation of the various methods from of artificial birth control.

Birth prevention does not mean control over births by abstinence or continence or limitation of intercourse to periods when conception is less likely to occur. The later is what is generally known as natural family planning (NFP). Given valid reasons a married couple might not desire another child at a particular time. Under such circumstances, a decision to completely refrain or abstain from intercourse does not frustrate the natural power of the act to generate life. No immoral means are used and the sacredness of the act is preserved. But to enter marriage with a deliberate intention of avoiding any children under any circumstances is immoral because then marriage is robbed of it primary purpose. Such an attempt corrupts family planning into family prevention.

NFP is based upon physiology i.e. direct observation of the various signs that occur in a woman’s body (changes in the cervix, cervical mucus, and temperature) which tell her when ovulation occurs. These observations do not require a specialist as they are relatively easy to make. Most importantly however, NFP requires virtue. It is based on self-control, mutual understanding and co-operation of couples, which enable them to give and accept each other’s love beyond sexual pleasure. Paradoxically, in the long run this communication and trust can eventually strength a couple’s sexual life.

Artificial birth control tends to turn persons into objects through manipulation of people’s natural faculties for the sake of sexual pleasure. Sexual satisfaction becomes the paramount thing, even at the expense of the life of one’s spouse since almost all artificial birth prevention methods eventually bring side effects. NFP has no side effects and enhances human dignity.

As John Paul II has put it, couples who use artificial birth control, “act as "arbiters" of the divine plan and they "manipulate" and degrade human sexuality-and with it themselves and their married partner-by altering its value of "total" self-giving.” (Familiaris Consortio, 32). NFP does not separate sex from responsibility. In a word, the basic difference between NFP and artificial birth control rests upon a person’s answers to very basic questions such as: What is marriage? What is sex? What is the human body? What is love? Artificial birth control distorts the meaning of all these things while NFP enhances their true meaning as manifest in the divine plan.

Dennis Kasule 12.15.05

Children are such a great gift and blessing to a marriage. As such infertility, the failure to have children of ones own causes great pain and distress for married couples of any time and place. Scripture presents us with numerous accounts of people who suffered infertility: Sarah, wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac; Rachel, wife of Jacob and mother of Joseph and Benjamin; Hannah, wife of Elkanah and mother of prophet of Samuel; Elizabeth, wife of Zechariah and mother of John the Baptist, to mention but a few. Despite the great love their husbands had for them, failure to have children still brought them immense pain and sorrow.

In our own time, infertility seems to be a growing problem. As such it is so wonderful to try to find means to overcome infertility. But indeed not any means can be used to achieve pregnancy or to have children. Some of the techniques in use have profound moral implications. Therefore couples ought to first assess a particular technique to see if it is truly moral, i.e. promotes the human good, before making a decision to use it.

The use of technology to overcome infertility is of itself not a wrong thing. But science and technology ought to be ordered to the human being who develops them; to the service of her dignity and of his true and integral good envisioned in the divine plan. If a scientific or technological fertility procedure violates the dignity of the human person and/or the institution of marriage, such a method is morally illicit. A given method of medical intervention can be considered moral if it helps or assists the marriage act to achieve pregnancy. On the other, a method of intervention is immoral if to engender human life the technique of intervention replaces the marriage act (Donum Vitae, 1987). For then it is no longer ordered to assisting the processes of procreation but dominates them.

You and I have to ask ourselves the question: If science is left to decide on people’s origins, what will become of their destiny, what will become of our destiny? Reflecting upon this question we can realize that although something may be technically possible that reason of itself alone does not render it morally admissible.

Artificial human reproduction is usually directed towards obtaining a human conception in a manner other than sexual union between a man and a woman. One method in use today is known as in vitro fertilization (IVF). In this procedure a large number of egg cells of a woman obtained through induced hyper-ovulation are fertilized by using sperm cells of a man collected through masturbation, and then the zygotes are cultivated in test tubes for some days. Afterwards, a few embryos are selected and transferred into the genital tract of a woman and implanted in her uterus for growth. The rest are frozen as spare embryos while others are destroyed. On occasions even the some implanted embryos are eventually destroyed. At the end of the process over 90% of embryos created perish at some point.

Human life begins at the moment of conception. The new person thereby coming into existence ought to receive the unconditional respect morally due a human person in her totality. Even though one baby may be born if the process is so successful, other lives are massacred in the process. IVF involves a terrible offence to human life. Furthermore, IVF eliminates the marriage act instead of assisting it. Hence the generation of a new person becomes an act of experimenting scientists rather than the fruit of a conjugal act of two persons co-operating with God.

Other methods include: surrogate motherhood in which another woman carries a pregnancy on behalf of a couple, and artificial insemination in which sperm either of the husband or of a surrogate “husband” usually obtained by masturbation is injected into the genital tract of the wife or another woman to obtain a child for the couple. The former is morally illicit because it is obviously contrary to the unity of marriage and to the dignity of the procreation of the human person. The later can only be moral if it involves husband and wife, and the technical means used do not substitute the conjugal act but serve to assist it attain its natural purpose. Finally there is cloning; scientifically guided development of a new organism from a single skin cell extracted from another organism. Though not yet used to engender new human life, some people are advocating its usage. No sound reasoning can make it morally legitimate. For it is in opposition both to the dignity of human procreation and the conjugal union.

Aware of the pain of couples that suffer from infertility, the Church compassionately intercedes for them to God to give them children. Similarly, out of love for all human life and respect for the integrity of marital relations she teaches against morally illicit ways of human reproduction. Engendering children is an act of co-operation between wife and husband, and God. As such it is procreation not manufacturing.

Dennis Kasule 1/25/06

We desire to do what is good and to avoid involvement in what is evil. In many circumstances however it is impossible for the individual to do good without being involved to some extent in evil. Take for instance: it is not rare that an action that is good in itself has two effects, a higher good effect that we intend and a lesser evil effect that we do not intended and yet foresee. More still, prudence often dictates that we tolerate some lesser evil action without which a greater good would be lost or greater evils would occur were the original evil not tolerated. Even concerning our personal health, some times maladies and injuries dictate that we have to sacrifice certain parts of our bodies for our well being as whole persons. Such being our life, we always need to discern how to pursue the good in a world where evil often seems inevitable.
Concerning the particular case of Varivax, the chickenpox vaccine, it is clearly evident that the actions involved in the development of this vaccine which our children are required to be vaccinated with included an action (abortion) that is intrinsically evil. To accept that our children be vaccinated with this vaccine would therefore be in a remote sense cooperating with the principal agents of the evil action of abortion.

Although cooperation with any evil action should be avoided as best as possible, under given circumstances it can be morally permissible. And for this to happen, the following conditions have been taken into consideration:

a) The cooperator does not participate in any circumstance that is essential to commission of an action, so much so that the action would still occur even without his or her cooperation.

b) There is a serious reason for cooperation: to protect a greater good or to avoid a worse evil.

c) The action of the cooperator is far removed from the action of the principle agent.

d) That cooperation does not lead others into doing evil or into error, and confusion.

Applying these considerations to our case, conditions a, and c seem well satisfied but questions remain regarding conditions b and d.

In the past some deaths have been associated with the chickenpox virus, but scientific research today has brought to our knowledge that it is not the chickenpox virus itself that causes death. Death is caused by a preexisting immunodefiency that is aggravated by the onset of the disease. Chickenpox of itself is not a fatal illness. In fact even Merck, the sole company that manufactures Varivax indicates that chickenpox is “generally a benign, self-limiting disease” (Merck & Co., Inc.). It is for this reason that many of us who caught the disease managed to survive even before the discovery of Varivax.

Further, scientific research indicates that the long term effects of vaccination with Varivax can turn out to be worse than chickenpox itself. Merck clearly acknowledges that, “Viravax has not been evaluated for its carcinogenic or mutagenic potential or its potential to impair fertility” (Merck & Co., Inc).

It is therefore absurd that any law would mandate vaccination for chickenpox considering the gravity of the evil involved in the production of the vaccine and the effects it can engender. So then what are we to do? We have to take the proper channels to ensure that this absurd law or requirement is nullified. The purpose of human laws and regulations is to promote the good of society. Nonetheless given our limited capacity to discern all things and judge all of them rightly often the laws that we make prove to go against their very purpose. For that matter human laws and regulations should always be open to change and can even be suspended until better discernment is done and subsequently better judgments reached. Therefore, while keeping up our vigilance let us at the same time remain calm. We are all striving after what is best for our children and our community. Let us keep that spirit. May the peace of the Lord abide with all of us always!

Dennis Kasule, January 31, 2006.