Editor’s Note: The author’s original title was “The Self-Gift Implicit to the Conjugal Act: Is Not Contraception, at Least Partially, Mutual Reciprocal Repudiation?“
Here is my own speculative TOB-enabled scientific interpretation: the gift of bearing new life belongs uniquely to the woman. In God’s plan for the woman, in particular, to be truly happy in the conjugal relationship she must be able to be fully and unconditionally loved for who she is; that is, accepted fully for the unique person she is, without any compromises.
Because her identity is more mysterious on account of this hidden life-giving power (than, say, the man’s is), she of necessity and without being able to do anything about it must communicate her life-giving identity as part of her person when in the conjugal act she communicates her whole being. This existential nakedness (“apocalypsis”, “unveiling”), though only remotely hinted at by the more obvious, physical nakedness of the conjugal act (remember John Paul II said the body is the sacrament of the inner mystery of the person) is the place for the deep and intimate self-revelation the woman will express in this act.
This is dangerous territory! It is a dangerously intimate self-revelation but also self-exposure. In fact, affirming love and the need for authentic procreative self-actualization appear to be so important that they constitute the only reasons sufficient for nature to permit this intimate and dangerous core self-exposure.
The procreative dimension of woman is therefore a special dilemma in the unfolding of her feminine life, fraught with anxiety; this unique psychosexual integrative challenge presents the “opportunity” or susceptibility to exploitative manipulation because it is especially vulnerable to suggestions capable of exploiting fear.
Contraception introduces the diabolically clever arrangement whereby the woman – more so than the man aware of the anxiety-prone integrative challenge posed by her procreative dimension — is deceived into thinking this core challenge to self-integration need not be faced boldly, indeed can be eliminated altogether. But this is a betrayal by the man, a kind of psychological prostitution, where her deepest self is repudiated, her greatest dignity trampled.
continue reading here
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dominic Pedulla grew up in New York City and the professional inspiration was his father who is a doctor and his mother who is an R.N. His mother was the one who gave him an early respect for women and a keen understanding of their dignity. He started the Edith Stein Foundation because all that keen interest and because of the obvious assault on that dignity that he felt was being practiced within the medical profession.
