Mission of the Family: Serving Life

PART III

The second role of the Christian Family,according to Familiaris Consortio, is “servinglife”. This mission should be studied in itstwo aspects:- Transmission of life- Education

We will develop the “transmission of life”from the following viewpoints:Human procreationResponsible ParenthoodContraception and AbortionNatural regulation of fertilityArtificial fertilization

HUMAN

PROCREATION

The Dignity of Human Procreation

• Man is “the only creature on earth that God has wanted for its own sake.

• God “willed” man from the very beginning, and God “wills” him in every act o conception and every human birth.

• God “wills” man as a being similar to himself, as a person; he called to a life “in truth and love”.

• Children are a living image of the couple’s love, a permanent sign of their conjugal unity, and a manifestation of their being father and mother. Inscribed in the personal constitution of every child is the will of God, who wills that man should share his own divine life.

A. Love and Human Sexuality• Occupying a central part in the dignity of

the person is the dignity of his human sexuality, a reflection of the love of God.

• Human sexuality is a good, part of that created gift that God saw as being “very good” (Gn 1:31) when “male and female he created them” (Gn 1:27) in his image and likeness.

• Man is called to love and to self-giving in the unity of body and spirit.

• Sexuality is a fundamental component of personality, one of its modes of being, of manifestation, of communicating with others, of feeling, of expressing and of living human love.

• The human body, with its sex, and its masculinity and femininity, is not only source of fruitfulness and procreation but includes right “from the beginning” the “nuptial” attribute, that is, the capacity of expressing love: that love precisely in which the man-person becomes a gift and- and by means of this gift- fulfills the very meaning of his being and existence.

• Marriage is the wise constitution of the Creator to accomplish in mankind His design of love. By means of the reciprocal person gift of self, proper and exclusive to them, husband and wife tend toward the communion of their beings in view of mutual personal perfection, to collaborate with God in the generation and education of new lives.

• The fundamental task of the family is to serve life, to actualioze in history the original blessing of the creator- that of transmitting by procreation the divine images from person to person.

B. Life, a Gift of God• We see that life is a good, a gift that God

has given us. Here, we refer to the right that God has given us in calling us to life, to exist man or woman in an unrepeatable existence, full of endless possibilities for growing spiritually and morally: Human life is a gift received in order then to be given as a gift”.

•Why life is a good? •Why is it always a good?

• The answer is simple and clear: because the human person is an image of God.

• Human life comes from God and is destined to God. While sin darkens life by threatening it with death & throwing into doubt its nature as gift, Redemption frees human life, lifting it up in the expectation of the gift of eternal life.

Attacks on the Dignity of Human Procreation

• When the life of the conceived human being is not respected, it no longer makes sense to speak of human dignity.

• The main theological point is not about birth or contraception; it is about the nature of human sexuality.

• Humanae Vitae (Latin Of Human Life) is an encyclical written by Pope Paul VI and issued on 25 July 1968. Subtitled On the Regulation of Birth, it re-affirms the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church regarding married love, responsible parenthood, and the continued rejection of most forms of birth control.

• Source of the problem about human sexuality today is often a flawed concept of man.

• Man is precisely a person because he is master of himself and can exercise Self control.

The Church Stands for Life

• “Love Between husband & wife must be fully human, exclusive, and open to new life.

• FECUNDITY is the fruit and sign of conjugal love, the living testimony of the full reciprocal self-giving of the spouses”

Modern situation lead to a misunderstandingof the doctrine of the church and give rise tocontemporary difficulties:

– A certain panic that is deprived from some ecological and futuristic studies on population growth, which sometimes exaggerate the danger of demographic increase to the quality of life, to the point that they create an anti-life mentality.

– A consumer mentality, which makes some incapable of understanding the spiritual rightness of a new life.

To counteract this misunderstanding, it isnecessary to build a doctrinal and formativework that is based on the following pivotalTruths:

– There can be no true contradiction between the divine law on transmitting life and that on fostering authentic married love.

– The church must act as teacher and mother for couples in difficulty.

– All spouses are called to live the fullness of the divine law.

Harmony between Transmission of Life and Married Love

• The sign of the Authentic married love is openness to life. This is the doctrine that is established by the Second Vatican Council, and the papal documents Humanae Vitae & Familiaris Consortio.

• The two elements of morality (the object of the chosen act, and the intention of the agent) are mentioned in Familiaris Consortio. But this exhortation is, above all, attentive to the object of the moral act, to the question of its intrinsic evil.

• The Catechism affirms that contraception (as a moral object) is intrinsically evil. This is so because man cannot, on his own initiative, break “inseparable connection, willed by God … between the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning of the conjugal act.