I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me, you will bear much fruit.
It was I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear much fruit, fruit that will last. John 15
In what follows, "fertility" and "sterility" mean more than the biological capacity to give life. They refer to a way of life, an interior, personal direction that is moral, spiritual and psychological.
Before you are two worlds, cultures, societies, ways of life: the fruitful and the sterile. The two are incompatible, contradictory and have been at war for half a century since the Sexual Revolution and the eruption of Cultural Liberalism. They will be at war long after you are dead. It is for you to choose: one or the other. Many try to straddle the two, accepting aspects of both, picking and choosing. That leads to a split personality: one side of the person at war with the other. Better to be one or the other.
The fruitful life is: abiding in God's love; receptive and responsive; masculine and feminine; organic and natural; incorporated into a family, a larger family, a community, a Church, a nation; generous and generative; differentiated and yet equal in dignity; open to new life.
The sterile life is: individualistic; autonomous; detached from God; androgynous and rejecting of gender as binary and fertile; contraceptive in tearing sexual intercourse from procreation; technocratic in reconfiguring the fertile as the "reproductive."
"The Pill," "contra-ception" ("against birth") changed our world, in the 1960s, more catastrophically than has any other technological change: more than gunpowder, printing, the computer and internet, more than all the air pollution in our atmosphere. Contraception deconstructed the human person as fertile, gendered, life-giving...as an image of the Trinity.
"Diabolical" means demonic or Satanic, but etymologically it means "to tear apart." It is the opposite of "symbolic" which means to "join together." In that sense, marriage is symbolic, divorce is diabolic. Contraception was diabolic in that it tore sexuality from fertility, it tore them both from love as faithful-exclusive-free-generative, and it tore all three from spousal communion. It thus eviscerated the heart of the family; it detached the person from past and future, from tradition and authority, from the natural purposes of sexuality and from God's very Self.
Contraception destroyed the bonds of union between man and woman; between the current and past as well as future generations; between the Church as virgin, bride and mother and Christ as chaste bridegroom and father. It did this by isolating the individual as alone, lonely, autonomous, uprooted, self-determining, defensive and suspicious...incapable of trust, reception and surrender.
Gender, generous, generative...all draw from the Latin root (gen) that refers to birth, to create, to give life. So the core meaning of gender, masculine and feminine, is generosity or generativity...the giving of birth, biologically and psychologically and spiritually and every such way. So: woman is the human person, related to the masculine (conjugally), who is capable of gestating life within herself. Man (masculine) is the human person, related to the feminine (conjugally), who generates life outside of himself. They complement each other as maternal and paternal...biologically, psychologically spiritually and in every domain of life.
In the gendered, generating, generous world, all of Creation images the Creator in his extravagant, explosive, infinite Goodness, Beauty and Truth...in His Love. Such is a symbolic or sacramental universe: everything is connected together, and everything in its inherent worth and relationships points beyond to Infinite Value. Life radiates a luminous Mystery and promises an infinite destiny.
The contracepted (against life) universe is sterile and futile; it isolates; it sets every will against the other in an endless conflict of oppressor/oppressed. It is disenchanted: empty of mystery, of grace, of destiny, of charm, of miracle and magic.
Abortion should disappear in a thoroughly contracepted society: but the opposite occurred. By the 1970s over 90 % of women of child-bearing age were contracepting; abortion became legal; the abortion rate increased to over one million little ones per year in the USA. This is because abortion is the inevitable and necessary consequence of contraception. Contraception frequently fails. Often this is user failure. The woman on the pill for a long time forgets about her natural fertility and defaults to an understanding of herself as sterile. She forgets to contracept. She conceives. With her partner she had already decided against life. She must abort.
Sterile has two meanings: unable to give birth; clean, hygienic and free of bacteria or other microcosms. In a surgery, of course, such cleanliness is healthy and protective (against disease) of life. However this limited, appropriate concern has exploded beyond itself in our technocratic society so that we have today an inordinate fear of germs, disease, of natural/organic life. There is an exaggerated fragility of the self as vulnerable and endangered by a Nature now seen as predatory. There is a forgetfulness of Nature as our home, of our companionship with her, of our immune-capability and our anti-fragility (what attacks us makes us stronger.)
Fruitfulness contrasts with productivity, and especially with reproductivity. The former is organic, biological, natural. It flows fluidly from the harmonious interaction of living elements: for plants it is the seed, water soil, sunshine. For humans it is masculine/feminine love, tenderness, protectiveness, loyalty, stability, connection with larger communities and abiding in God. But productivity is impersonal, unnatural, artificial, technological and mechanical. Our society overvalues productivity and undervalues fruitfulness. The later is more interpersonal, fluid, mysterious, non-measurable, sacramental and enchanted.
Contraception, as a technological assault on the fertile body, deconstructed procreation as the enchanted masculine/feminine participation in God's creation of a new person and reconfigured it as "reproduction" (This might be the ugliest word in the English language!) It is entirely void of grace, splendor and mystery; it is technological, mechanical and with sterile as deadly. And so we hear of "reproductive rights." (Surely the ugliest phrase in the English language.)
Technology has displaced spousal (married) love as the genesis of life: contraception prevents life, abortion kills the mistaken life, artificial technologies in the laboratory "reproduce" human life for those who suffer biological infertility.
In the sterile universe, active homosexuality is privileged and prideful as it is essentially, not just technologically and deliberately, sterile. In the fruitful universe it is sad, futile and tragic.
Likewise, transgenderism is, in the sterile universe, an expression of freedom and self-expression in the best sense. In the fruitful universe, it is a violation of the sexed-body in its preciousness, fragility and sacredness.
The Democratic Party is the political arm of the Culture of Sterility, of contraception and abortion. The Republican Party is more complicated as it is at least four things: the political arm of traditional, fertile Christianity; a "libertarian" view that protects the liberty of the individual and even defends the right to abortion as well as legalization of drugs; an institution that protects the wealth of the very rich; and a populism that is furious but incoherent in its rage at the powerful liberal elites. We see here one good reason for a Catholic to support it and three reasons for a Catholic to resist it. There are no good reasons for a Catholic to support the Party of Sterility and Death.
You and your parents were born into a world at war. I was more fortunate: born 2 years after World War II and 20 years before the Culture War erupted, I entered a world at peace. You will not be able to detach yourself from this war! Neutrality is not an option!
Let us give thanks to God for your fertility, for your masculinity or femininity, for your incorporation within a family and a Church and a nation; for your connection with generations past and future (your own children and legacy); for your fruitfulness as a branch in the vine that is Christ!
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