Contraception and Human Dignity

This excerpt from the May 26 Editorial in the St. Louis Review is offered for your consideration. 

Given the very clear teaching on the matter and the almost universal use of contraceptives, particularly the pill, over the last 50 years, the Church in the United States is faced with a chronic and pervasive pastoral problem. It would be a mistake, however, to think that this problem is one that is only practical — only a failure of priests to teach or in the failure of the faithful to adhere to this teaching. What is missing is the Christian concept of the human person.

The loss of human dignity associated with the rise to dominance of the pill and other forms of contraceptives in the place of human love provokes a profound sense of sadness. Men and women united in the state of Holy Matrimony have received the gift and responsibility of showing the world a reflection of the mystery of "God in himself." From that perspective, the sadness of the matter comes not so much from the sin committed, which God forgives and heals, as from the good that is lost.

Within the Church many of us, priests and lay faithful, are living with a woefully impoverished concept of the human person. We have all but replaced the concept of the human person modeled upon the Most Holy Trinity with a false concept that leaves little room for vigorous faith and authentic human love, something we need to work to rediscover. When we rediscover the truth of the Most Holy Trinity as the divine pattern for love and believe again in who we are, Catholics will, again, see the pill for the awful curse upon the human family that it is.