Nature, Control, and Sin

P. A. Ritzer, Volume 27 Please see all twelve parts of “The Big Lie of Overpopulation and the Fear that Drives It:” Part One: “One Big Family;” Part Two: “Truth Pierces the Veil of Propaganda;” Part Three: “Elon Musk, Bill Maher, Mark Steyn, Ronald Reagan, and Paul VI on Demography, Life, and Murder;” Part Four: “Nature, Control, and Sin;” Part Five: “Psychology, Communication, Love, Communion, and Sacrament (Not Necessarily in that Order);” Part Six: “Sexual Morality, Hope, and Healing;” Part Seven: “Compelling Observations about Human Procreation from Roseanne Barr, Tucker Carlson, and Calley and Casey Means;” Part Eight: “The Deep, Broad Root of the Culture of Death;” Part Nine: “In Vitro Fertilization and Transhumanism as Illuminated by Nicole Shanahan and Mattias Desmet;” Part Ten: “‘A Truly Human Civilization’ vs. the F-Word Culture;” Part Eleven: “Fear, Control, and Death;” and Part Twelve: “Making Room and the Courage to Love;” and please see also “The War on Women and Population Control.” The Church affirmed that sexual intercourse is right and ordered and good between a man and a woman united in the Sacrament of Matrimony for the unity of the couple and the procreation and education of children. Humanae Vitae: Married love particularly reveals its true nature and nobility when we realize that it takes its origin from God, who “is love,”(6) the Father “from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.”(7) Marriage, then, is far from being the effect of chance or the result of the blind evolution of natural forces. It is in reality the wise and provident institution of God the Creator, whose purpose was to effect in man His loving design. As a consequence, husband and wife, through that mutual gift of themselves, which is specific and exclusive to them alone, develop that union of two persons in which they perfect one another, cooperating with God in the generation and rearing of new lives. . . . And if each of these essential qualities, the unitive and the procreative, is preserved, the use of marriage fully retains its sense of true mutual love and its ordination to the supreme responsibility of parenthood to which man is called. Contracepted sexual intercourse offends the nature of the act by closing it to its natural and supernatural ends of union and procreation. So, the elder Maher apparently objected to the Church’s affirmation that deliberatively contracepted sexual intercourse is wrong, and he left the Church for that. And this rebellion seems to have left a profound mark on his son, who has exhibited real hostility to religion—whether he considers himself atheist, agnostic, or “apathist”—in his rebellious-teenager way that insists on pitting science against religion rather than recognizing their natural harmony. Sexual intercourse is designed to create other humans beings with supernatural destinies to live with God for all eternity and not to be the plaything that our culture has groomed us to believe it is. The use of terms is interesting: contraception and birth control. Contraception, that is against conception, is used to control birth. Control. I have been long struck by the pride of humanity that one should be able to engage in sexual intercourse that is designed by nature and nature’s God for the purpose of reproduction and then expect to control birth by artificial means, playing with the natural order in human sexuality, let alone the spiritual. Humanae Vitae speaks to this: But the most remarkable development of all is to be seen in man's stupendous progress in the domination and rational organization of the forces of nature to the point that he is endeavoring to extend this control over every aspect of his own life—over his body, over his mind and emotions, over his social life, and even over the laws that regulate the transmission of life. How prescient does that sound when we reflect on our present culture? Control. It makes me think of a neighbor asking after we had our second child, if we were now “stopping.” Stopping? I knew what he meant, but I was so overwhelmed by the impropriety of his question—the very idea that we could just shut off, as with a switch, the divinely established procreative power of our marital union; that anything to do with the divinely established procreative power of our marital union was any of his business; that anyone would speak of such profound and private matters so casually; and thus that he would even ask such a question let alone expect an answer—that I almost answered, “Stopping? Do you mean sexual intercourse?” Do people have any idea what they are dealing with, what they are playing with, what they are trivializing, with ramifications cosmic and eternal? Sexual intercourse is designed to create other humans beings with supernatural destinies to live with God for all eternity and not to be the plaything that our culture has groomed us to believe it is. It brings to mind another memorable conversation I had during my year in Italy with a young woman in the program who, like Tom mentioned above, was from California. Let’s call her Sheila. In my imperfect recollection, I believe Sheila was from San Francisco and apparently amiably excused from the cool group of that city, not only because she was of average appearance and means and did not dress in the latest fashions, but because she was an introvert and was considered by the cools to be a thinker. We were not very long into our conversation before it became clear to me that Sheila identified as an intellectual. Nor did it take me long to realize that, given my appearance and Midwest affability, she did not identify me as one. Therefore, when Sheila tried to make her case to me that prostitution should be legal, she did so with a measured though not unkind condescension, that seemed natural to her, coupled with a low expectation of my ability to comprehend her lofty position. When I would question her position, or point out ways in which I believed she was wrong, she would patronizingly restate her position to me in a way consistent with her apparent assessment of my inability to understand her. Of course sexual desire and pleasure—just like the childbirth they are designed to result in—are natural, and therefore, it is no surprise that people want to indulge the one to experience the other. After she had done this several times, I finally said to her, “I understand what you are saying; I just don’t agree with you.” To this she responded with wide-eyed wonder and apprehension that I had apprehended her and, having done so, rejected what she had theretofore assumed to be her superior reasoning. (This made a considerable impression on me that has long lasted, the running headfirst into the hubris of one who assumes that anyone who disagrees with him or her does so not because he or she has reasoned to a different, and perhaps more sound, conclusion but because he or she has just not understood. One may recognize shades of it in the contemporary patronization of asking, after offering an explanation, “Does that make sense?”) That appeared to shake her. She was further shaken when, after she had explained to me that prostitution—and by extension most if not all sexual activity outside the Sacrament of Matrimony as well as abortion—must be acceptable because sex was natural, I responded, “So is childbirth.” To that she really had no response and I repeated, “So is childbirth natural.” And I added that if she was going to argue a natural cause, she must then logically argue for the natural result, and thus her position on abortion was insupportable as was her position on the naturalness of contracepted sexual relations. And so, with a nod to the self-professed lovers of nature and protectors of nature, let us treat of nature. Of course sexual desire and pleasure—just like the childbirth they are designed to result in—are natural, and therefore, it is no surprise that people want to indulge the one to experien… Get full access to P. A. Ritzer at paritzer.substack.com/subscribe