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Chapter 3

The Celebration Continues

A Life-Giving Love

In the last chapter, you discovered that as married couples commit to living out the free, total, faithful, and fruitful love that comes from God’s own heart, he gives them two special blessings to celebrate throughout their lives; an incredible Christian union and a life-giving love. So far, we’ve looked at the ways marital grace empowers you to experience an uncommon degree of unity between you and your mate by winning the Battle of the Sexes and creating shared meaning by growing together in your Christian identities.

Don’t Stop the Party

But, as evidenced by our abundance of feast days, Catholics love a party. So naturally, there is still a second celebration to which all Catholic couples are invited: the celebration of a life-giving love. These two goals of marriage — unity and procreativity — are really inseparable from each other and feed into one another. A true, unifying love must also be a life-giving love (and vice versa), not just metaphorically, but literally, in the procreative sense. Children represent the miraculous unity between a husband and wife like nothing else.

In his Letter to Families, St. John Paul the Great told us:

Rather than closing [spouses] up in themselves, [a couple’s unity] opens them towards new life, towards a new person. As parents, they will be capable of giving life to a being like themselves, not only bone of their bones and flesh of their flesh … but an image and likeness of God — a person. (n. 8)

Of course, Jesus himself said that anyone who welcomes a little child welcomes him (Mt 18:5). Spouses who truly love each other and love our Lord will welcome the children he wants to give them.

This is a timely message. Challenging the low birth rates that are causing social problems throughout Europe, Pope Francis asserted, “In a world often marked by egoism, a large family is a school of solidarity and of mission that’s of benefit to the entire society” (comments to the National Association of Large Families, 2014).

Over the years, certain people have taken a lot of swings at what they think is “the Church’s position” on sex and procreation. Unfortunately, these people are often too blinded by their own ignorance to see that what they are swinging at isn’t the Church’s teaching at all, but rather a Monty Pythonized (cf. The Meaning of Life), pop-culture bastardization of Church teaching. Later on, we’ll look at how you can experience a truly joyful, intimate, soulful sexual life with your spouse. For now, we want to simply explore a few brief points about how welcoming children as a gift from the Lord can help you celebrate the fullness of your marriage.

Celebrating the Joy of Creative Love

“Because God is a lover, he is also a creator” (Our Sunday Visitor’s Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine). God is love, so part of his very nature is to create new things to be loved. This is why God seems to be endlessly fascinated with creating new things. It gives him more to love.

God especially loves to create people. As the Church tells us in the Vatican Council II document Gaudium et Spes, the human being is “the only creature on earth which God willed for itself.” Why? Because we are the only creatures he gets to spend an eternity loving. We are the only earthly beings built to last — so to speak. One can only guess that for God it is a joy beyond words to create creatures whom he can love eternally. This same God, who generously longs to share all of his joy with us, gives husbands and wives a taste of the particular joy that encompasses creating and loving the creation by inviting us to bring his children into the world.

Pope Francis noted that “each child is a great miracle … that changes life” (2014)! When a couple conceives a child, they are making a statement. They are saying, “This child is a living witness to the intimacy and love we share.” There is no more real way for two to become one than in the act of creating a child together.

This isn’t just a theological point. In her book The Good Marriage, secular relationship researcher Judith Wallerstein argued that when married couples close their hearts to children, their relationships take on the form of a “romantic anti-marriage” that becomes cold and isolating with time.

Rather than being antithetical to joy and intimacy, being open to life makes lovemaking a powerful, spiritual, earth-shattering, even redemptive, event. All of the books in the popular press about “spiritual sex” and “tantric lovemaking” have nothing on the sheer joy, vulnerability, spirituality, and total self-gift that accompany knowing that “tonight we are making a baby.” Likewise, there are many books that proclaim the virtues of “simultaneous orgasm” — and, to be honest, they speak a truth. But nothing, absolutely nothing, compares to the profound joy that occurs when a husband, a wife, and God climax together — and a life is created. How sad it is that our sexuality has been so perverted by the pagans and misrepresented by the media that such a statement might actually be shocking to many of you reading this book. But the fact remains: sex is a good that God gave to the godly. The pagans stole it from us when we weren’t looking, and it’s time we take it back (see more in Chapter 11). Through the procreative work of marriage, God gives us the grace to do just that. To paraphrase theologian Scott Hahn, God empowers us to experience a love so profound that in nine months it has to be given its own name.

Celebrating Partnership Through Creative Love

But what about those times when a couple isn’t ready to have another child?

Even when a couple has valid reasons for delaying or postponing pregnancy, appreciating the value of “openness to life” can help the couple celebrate a more intimate sexual partnership. In fact, a great help to couples wishing to celebrate this unique sexual partnership is the practice of Natural Family Planning, or NFP.

NFP and artificial contraception (the pill, condoms, etc.) exemplify two radically different mind-sets about sexuality. Contraception is isolating. It prevents a husband and wife from giving themselves totally to each other, and it is almost always one spouse’s responsibility (usually the woman’s). Contraception promotes a fear-based approach to sexuality by treating pregnancy as a disease that should be prevented — an optional by-product of pleasure. Various forms of artificial contraception (the pill, for instance) often have harmful side effects (NIH, 2015); increase women’s risk of breast, cervical, and ovarian cancer as well as a 200 percent increased risk of brain tumors (NCI, 2012; Andersen, Fiis, and Hallas, 2014); they poison the environment (Parry, 2012); they are prone to failure (up to 30 percent for condoms — CDC, 2013); they make sex habitual rather than special; and they can present physical barriers to intimacy.

By contrast, NFP promotes the union of the couple by making family planning a shared responsibility of a husband and wife. As the Church’s Letter to Families puts it, NFP makes it so that “Both [spouses] are responsible for their potential and later actual fatherhood and motherhood. The husband cannot fail to acknowledge and accept the result of a decision that has also been his own. He cannot hide behind such expressions as: ‘I don’t know,’ ‘I didn’t want it,’ or ‘You’re the one who wanted it.’ ”

NFP facilitates ongoing, prayerful communication between husbands and wives about their fertility. Studies show that NFP is as effective as hormonal contraception — over 99 percent (Hermann, Heil, and Gnoth, 2007) — and it is becoming both more practical and effective than ever because of simple-to-use electronic fertility monitors and NFP-related apps powered by sophisticated and highly accurate computer algorithms.

Interestingly enough, while many Catholics believe the Church is behind the times, the secular world is beginning to wake up to how cutting edge the Church’s views really are. More and more, secular physicians are promoting Fertility Awareness Methods of family planning — which is really just NFP without the spiritual dimension (Kunang, 2015). Secular feminists are promoting the method. As one woman put it in in an article on FAM on the popular wellness site Well+Good, “How can we consider ourselves to be the feminists we are if we don’t know the cycles of our body?” (Gallagher, 2015). Additionally, many women are beginning to wonder why they are putting so much energy into exercising, eating organic foods, avoiding pesticides, preservatives, and genetically-modified foods, while simultaneously pumping their bodies full of cancer-causing artificial hormones (Grigg-Spall, 2013).

But despite its health benefits and its effectiveness as a method of helping couples to both avoid and achieve pregnancy, NFP’s true benefits come from its constant encouragement for husbands and wives to continually talk and pray about their priorities and becoming or being parents. NFP couples must simply be more intentional — more mindful — about their sexual relationship, which facilitates greater closeness and intimacy. Couples who practice NFP constantly seek after God’s will for their lives in a way that is very difficult, if not impossible, for contracepting couples. They experience a sharing of one another and a level of communication that no contracepting couple ever could. So, even when a couple has a legitimate reason to hold off on becoming pregnant, having a more procreative view of sexuality facilitates the closer union of the husband and wife. In light of this deeper level of sharing facilitated by NFP, it is little wonder that a significant number of NFP couples report that NFP helps them experience a much more satisfying and stable marriage (VandeVusse, Hanson, and Fehring, 2004).

Celebrating Responsible Parenthood

Of course, the true joy of Catholic procreation (and this is the part you’ll never hear about in the media) is that it doesn’t stop at conception. When we Catholics say “yes” to the gift of a child, the Church reminds us that we must also be in a position to say “yes” to the forming of that child’s body, mind, and soul. Doing this requires the couple to work hard on the health and strength of their relationship with each other and with any children they may already have. The communication and partnership required by this effort is another way that a love that is open to life calls couples and families to experience deeper union with each other.

The Church refers to the process of forming persons as integral procreation. In other words, Catholics view procreation as a continuous process of ongoing formation that extends from the moment of conception to the time our children are returned to God. Procreation is the process of cooperating with God to form minds and souls, not just bodies. As St. John Paul II put it, “Fatherhood and motherhood represent a responsibility which is not simply physical but spiritual in nature” (Letter to Families; emphasis in original).

Indeed, Sirach 16:1-3 provides important support for the idea of responsible parenthood, reminding us that the blessing of children is intimately tied to our ability to raise them to love the Lord.

Do not yearn for worthless children,

or rejoice in wicked offspring.

Even if they be many, do not rejoice in them

if they do not have fear of the LORD.

Do not count on long life for them,

or have any hope for their future.

For one can be better than a thousand;

rather die childless than have impious children! (NABRE)

Because the formation of whole persons is so important, the Church teaches “responsible parenthood” (cf. Humanae Vitae, Familiaris Consortio, Letter to Families). That is, in discerning God’s will for the size of our families, we are obliged to consider the resources (or lack thereof) he has given us to provide for the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of a child. The Church reminds us that in considering whether it is time to have a child, a husband and wife will

thoughtfully take into account both their own welfare and that of their children, those already born and those which the future may bring. For this accounting they need to reckon with both the material and the spiritual conditions of the times as well as of their state in life. Finally, they should consult the interests of the family group, of temporal society, and of the Church herself. The parents themselves and no one else should ultimately make this judgment in the sight of God. (Gaudium et Spes, n. 50)

Again, all of this requires a degree of constant prayer and communication that can’t help but strengthen the closeness a couple has with each other.

Celebrating the Selflessness of Creative Love

Even if couples decide that they aren’t able to have another child in the short or longer term, by respecting the procreative dimension of marital love they will continue to grow closer to each other because of their willingness to put each other first over even their own desires. How can they do this? Again, by practicing Natural Family Planning.

There are about a million ways we can use our sexuality to abuse ourselves and others, and married couples are not immune to this. Most commonly, we treat our sexuality as if it were a street drug we take to make us happy. Or we use it to inflate a pathetic self-image (“Hey! I can’t be all bad. I got some!”). This attitude hurts the unity we can have with our spouse because it turns our mate into a thing to be used (or a thing to be resented when he or she refuses to be used) instead of a person to be loved, cherished, and respected.

Any abuse of self or others decreases our ability to be happy either in marriage or with God in heaven. That’s why husbands and wives are encouraged by the Church to make use of periodic abstinence (the time — usually about a week or so each month, during the fertile phase of a woman’s cycle — when the couple will refrain from having sex, if they have determined that they have godly reasons to avoid pregnancy) as a spiritual exercise to help each other master, purify, and perfect their sexuality, so that they can love each other more honestly, more generously, and more respectfully. By the way, although the forms of this vary, periodic abstinence is not just a Catholic phenomenon. Hinduism, Buddhism, and several popular Eastern texts on spiritual sexuality all speak of the benefits of sexual abstinence in various forms. Virtually every major spiritual system on earth values some form of abstinence as a means of purifying both sexuality and the human person. Aristotle, who lived some four centuries before Christ, tells us: “The man who abstains from bodily pleasures and delights in this very fact is temperate, while the man who is annoyed at it is self-indulgent” (Nicomachean Ethics).

In over 20 years of marriage ministry and counseling, we have never met a couple who loves each other more because they drink too much, eat too much, play too much, sleep too much, or otherwise abuse themselves. Caving in to every whim of our bodies is one of the quickest ways to destroy both self-esteem and mutual respect. That’s why people who eat, drink, play, and sleep in moderation are happier and healthier than people who don’t do enough of those things, or do them too much. The same is true about sex. When couples are willing to make the sacrifices necessary to learn to put each other’s good before their own immediate pleasure, they dedicate themselves to cultivating the sacrificial attitude that lies at the heart of the Christian vision of love. They learn to trust each other on a deeper level, a level that says, “You can count on me to always put you and what’s good for our marriage first. I will never pressure you, guilt you, or manipulate you into doing something just because I feel like it.”

It isn’t always easy to live this kind of love. Sometimes it can be a real challenge. But from both personal experience and the witness of thousands of couples we’ve worked with over the years, we know it’s a challenge worth accepting. The couple that is willing to take up this challenge for the good of each other and their marriage fosters an incredible Christian union. Clearly, in the hands of someone who knows what he or she is doing, marriage is an awe-inspiring thing. It is one of the best tools we have for perfecting each other in love.

Get the Party Started

The last two chapters have explored the two major blessings God wants to gift your marriage with; an uncommon union and life-giving love. Celebrating these blessings throughout your life together will help you become the people God is calling you to be and help each of you prepare the other to participate in the Eternal Wedding Feast of Heaven. Additionally, celebrating these blessings will enable you to call the world to Christ through the uniquely close, intimate, grace-filled intimacy you and your spouse share.

We know, both from our personal and professional experience, that living out the call to Catholic marriage isn’t always easy, but it is amazing. In good times and bad, sickness and health, for richer or poorer, God will use the lives you are building together to open your hearts to a love you couldn’t even begin to imagine: a love that has the power to make every day of your life a celebration of God’s providence and passion. God wants to teach you how to have an uncommonly amazing marriage, both by sharing his vision for married love with you and then giving you the grace you need to fulfill it. Will you let him? Let your lives be your “yes” to his invitation to love.