Paris, October 4, 2013

Change, but where to go?

From autonomy to the ethics of communion

Livio Melina

If our era had to have a typical characteristic, it would be, it seems, continual change. The values of our era, defined not by chance as a « Liquid modernity », are speed, continuous flows, and instability. It cannot tolerate structures that have the appearance of stability, continuity, and fidelity such as the family, the social class, the parish community: it has to « liquefy » them or « liquidate » them. The model for the relationships is that of communication through « webs », in which anyone may enter and leave with the same ease. Connexions are virtual relationships in which it is always possible to press a « cancel » key[1]. This led Zygmunt Bauman to talk about « liquid love » as if it was a commercial fact, a supermarket: it becomes then normal to consider the relationship within the couple as a commercial relationship with a partner considered by the other partner as a good or a right. One may take the other or get rid of him when tired because there is on the horizon another « «product » that would be more rewarding. Liquid modernity is dominated by envies that are opposed to cultivated desires, an aspect of stability. Thus, the old-style marriage « united until death » -- already made marginal by temporary cohabitation in the style « let us see if it works »-- is replaced by a flexible model: a part time relationship that proposes to « stay together as long as it lasts »[2]

1. The agony of eros in a society of unlucky change

However, as already declared in an essay by the Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz, « love continues to hurt »[3]: indeed, even this continuous change, with the nearly infinite possibilities of choosing between different partners, created by the erosion of morality after 1968 and by the opportunity of becoming the « friend » of hundreds of persons of the other sex on the Internet, did not generate a liberation, but rather an anguish of not having made the perfect choice, especially among women. The change in which we are immersed is not therefore a lucky change; on the contrary, it is the image of an unlucky change in which the desire never finds its object and ends in extinction.

Thus, while sociology is able to expect this agony of eros, it is philosophy that understands its roots. On this, there is an interesting essay by Byung-Chul Han, a thinker of Korean origin teaching in Berlin, Germany, and recently published in Italy.[4] He sees clearly that the crisis of love is not only the result of an excessive offer of partners but rather and mostly the result of a disappearance of the other. The consumerist reduction of love in our society implicates its domestication. Sexuality is conceived in terms of service optimization and satisfactory consumption which are peculiar to the narcissistic subject, unable to leave the meanderings of his depression toward a real encounter of the other. This is what the Korean philosopher calls « the inferno of the equal », a condition in which no change is possible because nothing new can occur. The model of love without transcendence and without transgression is pornography that eliminates totally the eros aspects of event and encounter with the other. In a comment on the best-seller of E.L. James, Fifty shades of Gray, and on the consumerist and contractual logic that it presents, Han claims that the ways of the absolute sexual liberation lead more and more frequently nowadays to sports and the dietician; the law of service culminates in a health obligation.

Why did I choose to begin this brief intervention with these observations? There are two reasons. The first is that, the subject of our reflection being the change, I am convinced that the way to a real change is in the exactly opposite direction to the one that, oriented toward a bad infinity, has led to the current agony of eros; that is, in the direction, today so transgressive, of fidelity that leads to surpass oneself in love. The second reason is that I believe that the issue of contraception, which has been the bend of the sexual revolution in the sixties of the past century, is central, even today, in the fight for an authentic love that should become again an encounter of the Other.[5] Our combat is not retrograde now largely lost.

2. Conversion to welcome a greater life

It is striking to see that the analysis of Han has finally led to identify the severest disease of our era with the same name Pope Francis uses to denounce the risk of implosion of numerous ecclesial structures: « autoreferentiality ». We are so busy talking about ourselves that we have lost the ability to establish real relationships with the others. Han is radical when he denounces the inability to encounter the Other and let oneself be touched and questioned by this Other. Indeed, the real change stems from here, from the ability to let oneself be touched by something or someone who enters into one's life and brings something new, original, amazing, and unexpected. Change stems from the readiness to accept an event that introduces to life a promise of a greater life; that is, a promise of life of communion.

Here is thus the first element to acquire. The real change in life is a not our own project, developed on paper; it is not an effort of our will that programs and organises the reality to lead efficiently to the wanted results. This scheme that relates technically the available means to the desired ends ((Zweckmäßigkeit, rationalisation) is an adequate model to interpret, not human « action » (πράξις), but rather human « production » (ποιήσις), that leads to produce external objects, visible changes in the external state of things.[6]

Action, through free choices, changes not only the external reality but also and primarily the whole subject of the action and has always the character of a response: it is a personal response to an impulse that comes from reality, especially from the personal reality of the Other who, by his presence, invites to an encounter, to a common path and, perhaps, to communion. A true action stems from passion. Saint Thomas Aquinas has caught here the mystery of action of the created being, with its mixture of grace and liberty, a mystery that is a « consensus »[7]: a consent to a previous gift given by grace. Thus, the human action finds its most clear hermeneutics in the fiat by which Blessed Virgin Mary accepted the Annunciation of the angel, received the Holy Spirit, and became the mother of the Son of God.

Action introduces novelty into life in that it is a welcoming answer, an openness to welcome the Other, a greater other, to generate with the Other a new life. Welcoming the Other opens a future story that cannot be expected through a project but that, at the moment of the encounter, announces a promise to wait for and let ripen. The nature of love is perfectly compatible with such a structure of human action characterised by an answer. In his first encyclical, Pope Benedict XVI reminds us: « Being Christian is not the result of an ethical decision or lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a Person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction »[8]

All this, that applies to any human action, finds its full realisation and paradigm, quite rightly, in the encounter of love between a man and a woman, and more specifically in the act of sexual donation by which the two become a single thing and, in that unity of body and soul, open themselves to the possibility of producing a new human being. This is why the issue of contraception that intervenes in the sex act by manipulating the meanings is not simply a matter of sexual ethics that can be neglected to avoid being inopportune and boring moralists. This issue is prophetically decisive, as felt by Popes Paul VI and John-Paul II, because it seizes a crucial part of the truth of love in our culture. We may express the question as follows: can we restrict sexuality to the narcissism of autoreferentiality, and thus privatise it or, on the contrary, the battle for trueness of man requires that he be opened to the experience of welcoming the Other and to the generosity of life transmission from generation to generation? The great teachings of John-Paul II on the Theology of the Body and of Benedict XVI on the Theology of Love have taught us to consider the issues of human sexuality and openness to life from a much wider perspective than that of casuistic legalism. The issues of the vocation for love, the ability to procreate, and the transmission of life, are not minor issues for rigid moralists. They are central issues for the destiny of the individuals, for the future of humanity, and for the Church. This is why the teaching of Humanae Vitae is prophetical and seeks an immediate change that we do not see yet. The change is to go from autonomy to the ethics of communion, from the meanderings of autoreferentiality to the generosity of welcoming and giving, and from the inferno of equality to the openness to the Other.

We may say that contraception, with its intention to manipulate the conjugal sex act of which it pretends to accept the value of union while refusing that of procreation, represents in fact the prototype of an action in which the Other is not welcome in his full trueness, but « domesticated » and restricted to what we want him to be: an equal. Corporeity, through which human sex materializes, is the place where the encounters between persons does not really occur without an opening to the full trueness of the other who never belongs to us entirely, who is always gift and surprise, who is « Other » through the quality of giving and the possibility of fecundity through the gift of life.

3. The conditions for change

The initiative of introducing change into our existence stems always from the encounter of another greater and nicer life that we would like to make ours. In our context, it may come from an intuition, backed by experience and testimony, that conjugal sexuality between a man and a woman is much more than a search for an individual satisfaction in a routine practice. It is a tale about an encounter, destined for a better welcome of the other for a communion of life open to future fecundity. But, to become a real path, this tale requires a few conditions. Let me mention three of them that qualify fundamentally the practice of the natural regulation of fertility in conjugal life.

a) To recognize oneself as a gift before giving oneself

The first condition is to never loose the ability of astonishment at the encounter with the other. This is possible only if I do not forget that the other is a gift for me, that I am a gift for him, but that I am also a gift for myself. The gift comes before me, before my freedom and my initiative, and gives it a meaning. This is why I cannot welcome the other and give myself to him but in the horizon the other, with a majuscule O, the horizon of the original Gift that configures the body, orientates the dynamics, and prepares the encounters. It is in this fundamental attitude that we can find the rationale of the research for a better knowledge of the rhythms and conditions of feminine fertility and that this knowledge should progress in view of indicator simplicity and accuracy of the final diagnosis.

The first issue is to welcome the other for me: to acknowledge with gratitude the gift that I am for myself, that my corporality is for me, with its dynamics, its possibilities, its rhythms, and its limits. The second issue is to welcome the other for himself, learning to hear as a non-fortuitous speech the reality of his body, with his physiology and seasons, with the more or less severe events that pave a human past. The third issue is to welcome the other for a common experience made of moments of grace but also of unexpected events, opportunities, limitations, and perhaps unwellness and diseases. It is only when everything is welcome in the horizon of the original gift of the Donator that we can find the light and sufficient energy to make oneself and one's sexual life a generous gift open to the transmission of the received gift.

b) Listening and exchanging

At a second level, the possibility of a real change of conjugal sexuality requires, within the couple, a genuine ability to listen, exchange, and understand. One of the most frequent objections to periodic continence is that it is demanding: practicing it efficiently requires not only learning some accurate knowledge about corporeity and fecundity rhythms, but also a monitoring of the instinctive and emotive impulses of human sexuality and a permanent and genuine dialogue within the couple.

The very demanding character of the natural methods should not be hidden or underestimated: it has been experienced by many husbands. The practice of the natural methods requires patience; asceticism is needed to overcome the difficulties. Paul VI said: « This discipline, which is proper to the purity of married couples, far from harming conjugal love, rather confers on it a higher human value. It demands continual efforts, yet, thanks to its beneficent influence, husband and wife fully develop their personalities, being enriched with spiritual values. Such discipline bestows upon family life fruits of serenity and peace, and facilitates the solution of other problems; it fosters attention for one's partner, helps both parties drive out selfishness, the enemy of true love, and deepens their sense of responsibility »[9]

This is how what was at first considered as an objection can be transformed into an element of positive appreciation. The value of the natural regulation of fertility consists precisely in offering only an instrument of knowledge that does not replace what is proper to the person. In not replacing, through technical expedients, the personal action, it requires a maturation of virtues, promotes responsibility, and induces the development of the persons in their vocation for love. It is especially through their limits and by presupposing and stimulating personal maturation that the so-called « natural » methods take indirectly a moral value. They do not artificially manipulate the meanings of the conjugal sex act but respect the personalistic value. By requiring and encouraging the development of necessary personal aptitudes, the natural methods are at the humble service of love.

c) Owning oneself to offer oneself

Let us now deepen the third level that has already emerged in the previous level. In one of his catecheses on human love, John-Paul II stated: « the knowledge of 'fecundity rhythms' by itself does not create the interior freedom of giving which is explicitly of spiritual nature and depends on the internal maturity. This freedom presupposes such a capacity to direct one’s sensual and emotive reactions as to make possible the giving of self to the other 'I' on the grounds of a mature possession of one’s own 'I' in its corporeal and emotive subjectivity »[10] In other words, a natural regulation of fertility is difficult to practice without marital chastity.[11] Like any other virtue, chastity stems also from love and tends toward love. It builds interior subjective aptitudes so that instinctive and emotive impulses stop being forces of disintegration or obstacles to spouse gifts but integrate into that gift with reference to the person of the other and to his eminent value.

Within the context of marital chastity, the periodic continence required for the practice of natural regulation of fertility is better valued. In preventing immediate sexual satisfaction, periodic continence helps the emergence of the value of the other as a person. Periodic continence requires listening, exchanging, and waiting for the other who might not be always and each moment ready for the embrace. This is why it favours a new attention to the personal character of the sex act through an overall increase of the quality of the relationship. By practicing abstinence, marital chastity directs the attention toward what is essential to the relationship and, in the same time, widens the horizon of love. It does not deny the value of genital sexuality but gives it the meaning of expressive gift of personal love, unique and fertile. While valuing the precious nature of conjugal sex act, it does not idolise it and does not consider it as the single possible interpersonal love: it invites to the discovery of other lovely gestures of attention and tenderness where the gratuitousness of the personal encounter is renewed.

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Practicing the natural regulation of fertility implies certainly an important change in the attitude toward sexuality, toward one’s own body, but mostly toward the other, and, in fine, toward God Himself. This change is much more radical than one may imagine at first; it may even appear as subversive. In fact, in a society where capitalism has limited sexuality to a consumer good, eliminating alterity and imposing a life in the prison of the Equal, natural regulation of fertility is a promise of an erotic practice open to the encounter with the other and to the transcending and transfiguring force of eros.

[1] Cf. Z. Bauman, Amore liquido, Laterza, Bari 2004, XI-XII.

[3] Cf. E. Illouz, Perché l’amore fa soffrire, Il Mulino, Bologne 2013.

[4] Cf. Byung-Chul Han, Eros in agonia, Nottetempo, Rome 2013.

[5] A ce sujet, sur des positions diamétralement opposées : P. Simon, De la vie avant toute chose, Mazarine, Paris 1979; M. Eberstadt, Adam and Eve After the Pill. Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, CA, 2012.

[6] Cf. R. Bubner, Handlung, Sprache und Vernunft. Grundbegriffe praktischer Philosophie, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1982.

[7] Cf. Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 9, a. 4, ad Ium; I-II, q. 111, a. 2, ad 2um.

[10] Jean-Paul II, Uomo e donna lo creò. Catechesi sull’amore umano, Città nuova, Roma 1985, CXXX, 488.