Fr. Thomas M. Pastorius
October 5, 2014
Spiritual Ponderings
Bonus: Pregnancy is A Gift Not A Flaw

The Church’s teaching on sexuality, I believe is so controversial in the world today for two reasons. The first is that whenever we talk about sexuality we are talking about something that touches us at the core of our being – at our foundation. The second reason is that the Church’s teaching is so simple that it almost has to be lived to discover its true beauty. Recently, I read an article by a Catholic woman explaining why she believes the Church’s teachings to be true. The article was titled “Pregnancy is a Gift Not a Flaw” by Haley Steward. Quotes from her article are in bold and my commentary will be in regular font.

Pregnancy is A Gift Not A Flaw - By Haley Stewart

I think Catholic teaching on contraception is really crucial to understanding the respect for womanhood that the Church affirms.

The Church’s stance on birth control is one of the most controversial issues of our day. Why should women be enslaved to pregnancy and child-rearing instead of pursuing something, anything else? Why should a woman’s right to contraception be taken off the table? Why is the HHS Mandate such a big deal? Does the Church just want all women to be oppressed, barefoot, and pregnant in the kitchen? These questions completely miss the point. Far from wanting to degrade women, the Church always wants to honor womanhood.

*Our parents do not instruct or advise us to avoid illegal drugs so that they can hold us back. Parents instruct and encourage children to avoid drugs so that their children can reach their full potential. The Catholic Church is the same way. The Church desires us to reach our full potential and so when the Church tells us to avoid something like contraception it does so with a true desire to see us grow

Before our conversion, I was on the Pill for a year and a half. We got married young, I was only 20, Daniel was 21, and we were both still in college. At the time we were attending a Baptist church. I can’t tell you how many of our well-meaning friends and members of our faith community asked when they heard of our engagement, “So, Haley, have you started taking birth control, yet? Because you gotta take it a couple months ahead of time for it to be really effective so you don’t end up pregnant!”

Apart from being a really invasive question, what kind of message did that send to me? A. Pregnancy is a disaster that needs serious prevention in order to be avoided. B. There is something flawed in the way your body works. You need a prescription to fix this problem you have so that you’re not the cause of a horrible inconvenience (at best) to yourself and your poor husband.

*Is it funny that people are willing to ask embarrassing or seriously emotional one but we are afraid to ask someone to pray with or for us and

These folks had our best interests at heart. But far from feeling liberated by this push for the Pill, I felt ashamed of my womanhood, embarrassed of my pesky fertility. The way my body was created was clearly flawed. I had a serious problem and it hinged on the unfortunate fact that I was born a woman.

*Fertility is not a disease. When a couple conceives a child that means everything is working properly. I do not need to fix my hot water heater if it is making the water hot for my showers.

Fast forward to when I quit taking the Pill my last semester of college and got pregnant just after graduation. Unplanned, unexpected, but we were indescribably happy about it. Assuming we were disappointed, many of our friends attempted to commiserate with us. “Wow. Your life is really gonna change,” they’d grimace. “Things are gonna be different” was about the most encouraging phrase they could muster. The pastor at our Baptist Church even asked, “This wasn’t planned, was it? I mean, you’d have to be crazy to want to be pregnant right now, in your situation!” Our situation being that we were young and Daniel had another year of school to finish and a thesis to write

That attitude really was a storm cloud over my glowing happiness. I had failed. I had ruined us. There was something wrong with me and because I hadn’t altered the way my body worked with meds, I was supposed to feel embarrassed or stupid or ignorant for “getting us into this situation.”

*Nowhere in Scripture does God describe children but in terms of a blessing. Many of the pregnancies of the Bible came at inopportune times. Isaac was conceived long after Sarah was of childbearing ages. Joseph in the Old Testament was the eleventh of 12 boys in a family. Moses was conceived when there was an order for all male children were to be killed as soon as they were born.

I can’t tell you the striking difference between this mindset and the way Catholics responded to our big news. There was no pity in our Catholic friends and professors faces for this hapless young couple. They were actually excited! “Praise God!” they’d say. “What a blessing! How wonderful!”

Maybe there isn’t anything wrong with me? I wondered. Maybe it’s not insane to be thrilled that we’re expecting before having our careers settled and being financially secure. Maybe this womanhood thing is something to celebrate?

*Jesus broke down many social barriers in His life and He did this not by asking women to change but by respecting who they were. He talked with them as a person, He invited them to be a part of his ministry, and finally He did not hold them to a different moral standard than others.

As we began reading the teachings of the Church on marriage, fertility, and contraception, I started to think about my body differently. There wasn’t anything broken about it. There wasn’t anything to apologize for. By making procreation a central feature of sex, we were honoring each others’ bodies and their Creator. We were fearfully and wonderfully made and we could embrace the womanhood and manhood we brought to the marriage bed. We could be sub-creators, participants in God’s redemptive, creative work and that miraculous creation of a new soul could happen within me.

*Being a co-creator with God has to be a pretty awesome experience. I know that when I hold a baby in my hands, I cannot help but be amazed at the power of God to work in our lives. Each infant’s personality shines forth even when all they can do is grunt, shrug, and smile at us.

Instead of something to be ashamed of, I began to celebrate the unique honor of my womanhood. Because God has given women an opportunity to share in his creation that men will never have. My husband will never know what it is like to grow new life inside himself. Granted, he will also never know what it feels like to throw up everyday for several weeks due to extreme morning sickness. I’m not saying pregnancy is easy or without sacrifice, but it is cosmic and amazing. An eternal soul is entering the world and I have been chosen to participate in this work. I am honored. I am celebrated.

*As I read the above paragraph, I thought of a something I believe Fulton Sheen said in that in the Gospels where ever there is a moment of suffering/passion in Christ’s life there is also a moment of glorification. For example Jesus humbled himself to be born of a virgin and angels announced His coming as man to the shepherds. Another example is Jesus suffered on the cross and therefore He experienced the Resurrection. While a mother suffers through pregnancy the moment of glory (the birth of a new life) is truly amazing.

If we think that by denying our fertility we are being liberated, we have been sadly taken in. By divorcing procreation from sex, women are degraded. We have to apologize for our womanhood, the possibility that we might get pregnant and inconvenience someone. Better to have a surgical procedure render us sterile so that we don’t ruin any poor man’s life by landing him with, of all things, a baby.

One of the lies about contraception is that increased access to the Pill decreases the number of abortions performed. That’s rarely true and misses the big picture which is that when a country turns to a contraceptive mentality, changing it’s view of the purpose of sex, the abortion rate increases:

“Contraception has been shown to decrease abortion rates primarily in countries with already high abortion rates. These represent a minority of countries. Contraception has been shown to increase abortion rates primarily in countries with already low abortion rates. These represent a majority of countries. Contraception has been shown to slightly reduce abortion rates after its initial increase of abortion rates, but has never been shown to reduce abortion rates back to pre-contraception levels.”

*Once a person considers a child an object that is preventing them from reaching happiness. Many will take any step necessary to get rid of the child because the child is now seen as a threat to their way of life they will go a long way in getting rid of the child because the child has come in the mind of the woman an obstacle to the woman’s survival.
When we no longer value the way God created women, and prescribe a medical fix for their natural fertility, are we really respecting womanhood?

Catholic teaching about marriage, sex, fertility, and contraception affirms the value of women and protects us from degradation. As a Catholic woman, I can fully embrace my body. I don’t need to apologize for my womanhood. I am honored and celebrated.