Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Answer to Sylvia

Sylvia D. Lucas, an advocate of the narcissistic "child-free" lifestyle, has braved the comments in Catholic blogger Mark Shea's post on "Hostility to Children" to defend the sins of the contraceptively childless. My response is below.

Sylvia, in your linked blog post, you write (with my emphasis):

Mr. Shea, I do value my comfort and my appetite over the claims children would make on me. That’s why I don’t have them. You wanted to have children (I assume you have them, and I assume that you wanted them), so you did. Each of us has chosen paths according to what we believed would please us. I am no more selfish for not having children than you are for having them.
The sentence I have emphasized is, from the Catholic viewpoint, false. We are not here to choose what pleases us; we are here to choose to do what is right. There is more to life than a right to pursue pleasure: we have duties. We have duties to God and to our fellow human beings. Choosing to ignore our duties is selfish.

In one of the comment threads above, you write in response to a comment that those who wish not to have children should abstain from sex:

Why would I abstain from marriage and sex? I’m a romantic, we love each other, and my husband is sexy. He had a vasectomy so neither of us would have to worry about me getting pregnant.
This displays the contraceptive mentality. You have divorced the unitive aspects of sex (romance and love) and its pleasures from its procreative aspect. By failing to reverse his vasectomy, your husband has deformed the sex act by rendering it no longer procreative in kind. This is a violation of the natural law: just as eaters must seek a mean between bulimia and gluttony, so a married person should neither be insensitive to the spouse's sexual needs and desires, nor engage in sex divorced from its proper procreative context. The natural law that each of life's pleasures should be indulged moderately, if at all, should be apparent to philosophical reason: no specifically Christian stance is required.

Of contraception, you write:

It prevents unwanted pregnancy. People will not be stopped from having sex, but we can help curb the number of unwanted children who are currently abused and neglected.
Your concern for abused and neglected children is admirable. However, you are wrong on multiple issues here.

First, contraception does not always prevent unwanted pregnancy. Sometimes it merely encourages a culture of promiscuity which, combined with occasional lapses in contraceptive use, leads to both unwanted pregnancy and the transmission of viruses like HIV.

Second, people can stop themselves from having sex, with their own willpower, through God's grace. Previous eras of human history have had norms for chaste behavior that moderns would believe impossible to live by. Yet most people in those eras did.

Third, you seem to assume that only artificial contraception can allow couples to responsibly manage family size. This is false. Natural Family Planning (NFP) is far beyond the "rhythm method" stereotype you may have of it.

Marriage is a vocation, as are the callings of priests, monks, and nuns. For some, the "single life," lived in celibate service to others, can be a vocation of its own.

Within the vocation of marriage, we are called to live chastely. Not a life of celibacy (for most couples, anyway), but a life of chaste sexuality. If a couple has truly grave reasons to limit family size (such as deep poverty, perhaps) then the practice of NFP, which does not divorce the unitive and procreative aspects of the sexual act, can be appropriate. Other married couples, if they truly have a vocation to marriage at all, are called to welcome the gift of children.

If they cannot imagine welcoming children, then a prospective couple may be mistaking a mere desire for sex for a vocation to marriage. Children are indeed a gift that brings great joy. But openness to new life is also a duty: to God the author of our lives, and to our fellow humans, who will benefit from our children's good works.

TL;DR: If you want to have sex, you have a duty to be in a marriage that is not artificially closed to new life. If you refuse to abide by this duty, then you are shirking your responsibilities to God and neighbor--which is selfish.

9 comments:

  1. Why do people have to live via Catholic teachings if they aren't Catholic?

    ReplyDelete
  2. They don't have to do anything. Just as no one is making you eat healthy, no one is forcing you to live in a psychologically wholesome way. But you might want to consider it. Try it. You'll be glad you did. Taste and see.

    ReplyDelete
  3. My family isn't welcome in the Catholic Church. We are gay and raising 3 adopted kids from foster care. We borrow lots from the Church but leave out a bit too.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Your family sounds exemplary in many ways. May God bless you for the love and care you and your partner are providing as adoptive parents. While the Church cannot condone gay sex, the Church must always be a loving home for gay people. That we Catholics have made you feel unwelcome is scandalous. We owe you a deep apology. Although gay sex is a sin, all of us struggle with sin and most of us are probably far worse sinners than you. Joining the Catholic Church cannot mean continuing to express your love for your partner physically, but it should and very much can mean being affirmed as the magnificent, precious child of God that you are.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Very good, especially your first point about our responsibility to do what is right, not just what pleases us. It's the failure to recognize this that troubles me most about how some people live their lives.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thank you for your reply, Marginalia. I enjoy the quote used in the header of your website and think it therefore interesting that you begin your answer to me by calling the child-free "narcissistic." I don't know how that could possibly promote a culture of respect or friendship.

    I understand that your religion dictates that you have children even if you don't want them, but as someone who doesn't follow your religious tradition, I don't have the pressure of God guiding my reproductive choices, and I believe not wanting to have children but doing it anyway is a irresponsible. It does a disservice to both parent and child, in my opinion.

    You are, of course, entitled to your own beliefs and to live your life in the way you see fit, whether that means having zero or ten children (assuming you can afford them all financially, emotionally, and psychologically). I make no judgments about your lifestyle. I'd appreciate the same respect. There's no need for the vitriol between people like you and people like me.

    I'll continue to not judge you and to respect your adherence to your beliefs. I hope you will eventually realize that others deserve the same treatment from you.

    ReplyDelete
  7. "I understand that your religion dictates that you have children even if you don't want them"

    No no no! Nowhere does the Catholic Church insist that everyone must have children!

    ReplyDelete
  8. In fairness, she's probably responding to this:
    *************************************************
    Within the vocation of marriage, we are called to live chastely. Not a life of celibacy (for most couples, anyway), but a life of chaste sexuality. If a couple has truly grave reasons to limit family size (such as deep poverty, perhaps) then the practice of NFP, which does not divorce the unitive and procreative aspects of the sexual act, can be appropriate. Other married couples, if they truly have a vocation to marriage at all, are called to welcome the gift of children.
    *************************************************
    To you and me, it's obvious that doesn't mean "everyone must have children." But I can see how someone from outside the Church could read it that way. So probably my bad.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Yeah, I realized after I posted that there probably was the unspoken caveat of "married people." But even then, it is not entirely accurate. After all, there can be serious reasons to not have children, reasons that do not become manifest until after the marriage has taken place. And there is a (fine) distinction to be made between not actively wanting children, and nonetheless being open to the possibility. Also, there is such a thing as a Josephite Marriage, although I suspect, Sylvia, you would not like that kind of marriage. :>

    ReplyDelete