+Henryk Hoser SAC
Warsaw, Poland
Threat to the identity of the person Role of the AFLF in the construction of the person
The AFLF has adopted, since the beginning, an ethic and deontological map. This map, the « Guiding Principles », summarizes and expresses the bases of its orientation in an increasingly disorientated world.
The map presents its deep convictions and holds responses to the three fundamental questions on action anthropology.
What are these questions?
Who is man and who are the man and the woman? (Being)
How does he live? (Behaviour)
What does he live for? (Objective)
The AFLF, who supports human love and protects marital intimacy against all reducing distortions, perceives the need to formulate the principles of identity and action. Its Guiding Principles say:
Human self-fulfilment cannot be but slow and gradual, never totally achieved; it concerns all the dimensions of the person, including sexuality. (PD 2).
This conviction is reinforced by the following principle:
A comprehensive approach to the human person can be expected if a true knowledge of the physical, psychological, and spiritual components of human love is encouraged. (PD 3).
Two conclusions may be drawn from the ethical approach of the AFLF:
First, it confirms the choice of a personalistic ethic that considers the human phenomenon as a person, a self-conscient being, spiritual and physical, that holds his own rights and responsibilities.
Second, the physical, psychological, and spiritual components define the structure of the person; they are inseparable and, together, form the integrity of the human person.
The integrity of the human person will be the focus of our thinking herein.
Familiaris Consortio (FC 32) insists on the urgent and irreplaceable features of the mission of presenting sexuality as a value and a commitment of the whole person, created man and woman, at the image of God.
In the field of human love, the behaviour cannot be limited to merely the sincerity of the intention and merely the evaluation of the motives but should take into account objective criteria, taken out of the very nature of the person and of its acts in a full mutual self-giving between the man and the woman, a self-giftedness that constitutes true love.
The unity of a human being is built at several levels.
In a broader sense, the integral anthropology assumes the unity of nature and grace: natural and supernatural life. It results from parallel analyses of philosophical and theological anthropology seen together. These complete and reinforce each other in a vision of an existential unity to be lived as experience by all those who believe, and probably also by those who do not believe. The conscience and the ability of being the subject of one's own acts demonstrate the experience of transcendence and the religious fact.
This unity is close to another one: the unity of the wholeness of life; in other words, the existential continuity between temporary and eternal lives. Such a unity strengthens our hope and Hope and allows engaging into life and the succession of generations. Quality of life is, to a certain extent, in the ability of seeing perspectives. The more remote are our objectives, the more interesting is our life (even our ideals).
Physical and spiritual (i.e., psychosomatic, psyche and soma) unity. The human body expresses the person and makes it recognisable through its verbal and non-verbal expressions. Psychology and medicine confirm this unity through the changing symptomatology in life and health states. Culture and arts are also psychosomatic.
The complementary unity of the man and the woman is confirmed by the millenary experience of humanity. Complementarity is strictly linked to the sexual constitution of the human being. It indicates the complementary difference between sexes which holds the deep sense of sexual alterity.
« The human being – man and woman – is the author of the meanings of body language ».
« The human being – man and woman – gives to his behaviour a meaning that is in line with the fundamental truth of body language, he is thus also <in the truth> [1].
The inner unity of a human being does not exclude other unitary dimensions at the level of the external relationships. We may consider the unity between the person and the community. Man is a relational being; he maintains and cultivates interpersonal relationships that build him in a process of socialisation. Two pitfalls should be avoided: collectivism, on the one hand, that reduces persons to « popular masses » and makes them lose their individuation; and excessive individualism, in the other hand, that underestimates the role and the importance of mature and responsible interpersonal relationships.
The post-modern paradigm
We have seen, two centuries ago, the fading of the ontological and metaphysical criteria in modern anthropology and the switch from a conscience of the specific human nature to a sociological and behaviouristic description of human behaviour.
There is a progressive fragmentation of collective and individual identities. Abandoning the idea of a human nature common to all has led to a kaleidoscopic, mosaic, and fragmented culture. We may now search for the « schizoid » agents of conscience, identity, and surrounding culture.
We are going to follow this phenomenon regarding what interests us: fertility and human fecundity.
The sixties were marked by an important mutation in medically assisted procreation. This new contraceptive method is more radical, systematic and systemic at the global scale than the previous ones. Up to that time, contraception has been limited, « single use », and interfered relatively little with the human physiology of fertility. It had a short activity and could make sterile a single sex act rather than the whole organism.
Hormonal contraception changes a whole endocrine system, modifies a woman’s metabolism and has a permanent or long-term activity. It is thus systemic and systematic. Its immediate effects are, certainly, to make sterile the feminine organism, but its delayed effects change progressively not only the complementary man-women roles, but also the human society and its intern relationships.
« To the language that expresses in a natural manner the mutual and total donation of the spouses, contraception opposes a language objectively contradictory, by which one is no longer totally given to the other; from this one gets not only a positive refusal towards the openness to life, but also a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love which should be a gift of the whole person »[2].
When contraception becomes restrictive regarding total mutual self-giving, the conjugal act becomes conditioned and relative and, in a certain sense, « reserved ». Love between spouses seems thus diminished and incomplete. A major component of the person –fertility– is eliminated if not rejected. Systematic contraception may last for years, leading to sterility and to a radical distinction between two phylogenetic functions: sexuality and fertility/fecundity. These two functions have, however, the same anatomical and physiological bases. Here, we see again the « truth of the body ».
Man's psychophysical unity makes the displacement of the systemic barrier from body to soul contribute to the building of an individualistic mentality. In the present case, it may be called « contraceptive mentality » and is characterised by the disappearance of the conscience of being fertile. Subsequently, it leads to an atrophy of the sense of responsibility regarding fertility and its consequences.
Radicalism in contraception leads to a phenomenon yet unknown in the history of the increase in the abortive practices: it elevates it to the level of « human rights ». According to the WHO, yearly abortions reach 60 millions. This is another « crack » between fertility and its consequences, between effective fecundity (conceived children) and the number of born children.
Concerning sexuality, it ceases of being complementary. Separated from fertility/fecundity, it takes another purpose and perspective. It becomes easily homosexual and non-objectal, immediate, and temporary.
Besides, the separation between sexuality and fecundity, in its radical aspect, appears under the form of extracorporeal fecundation. One cannot exclude that eugenistic tendencies will open the perspective of in vivo fecundation to obtaining children with specific characteristics.
The egocentrism of the contemporary culture, the atomisation of society, and self-promotional individualism lead to reduce fecundity too. They lead to a cracking of the unity of the person and of the community with important impacts on psychic and social levels.
The above-enumerated situations are supported by social and political programs to obtain favourable effects for governments and the global market. They serve to promote consumption, on the one hand, and to weaken solidarity and the social resistance to some styles of life and behaviour. Deconstruction rarely serves to build a world of harmony and sense. It leaves, as bitter fruits, sadness and solitude. It decomposes « the basic cell of society » that, in past times, was respected: the traditional family with complementary roles, tasks, and duties.
The ideology and the political program of the « gender » seem to be a cracking of the person's psychophysical unity and sexual complementarity. It despises body's value as a gift, a challenge, and a duty. It considers the body as a « commodity » of unknown destiny and unlimitedly free.
Let us cite here, once more, a masterful text by John-Paul II:
« In the light of the experience of many couples and of the data provided by the different human sciences, theological reflection is able to perceive and is called to study further the difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle: it is a difference which is much wider and deeper than is usually thought, one which involves, in the final analysis, two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality. The choice of the natural rhythms involves accepting the cycle of the person, that is the woman, and thereby accepting dialogue, reciprocal respect, shared responsibility and self- control. To accept the cycle and to enter into dialogue means to recognize both the spiritual and corporal character of conjugal communion and to live personal love with its requirement of fidelity. In this context, the couple comes to experience how conjugal communion is enriched with those values of tenderness and affection which constitute the inner soul of human sexuality, in its physical dimension also. In this way sexuality is respected and promoted in its truly and fully human dimension, and is never "used" as an "object" that, by breaking the personal unity of soul and body, strikes at God's creation itself at the level of the deepest interaction of nature and person. »[3].
The successive increasingly radical phases of the schizoid culture bring neither happiness nor future. A very worrying demographic decrease in Europe is confirming the concerns about a future world devoid of hope and Hope, of temporal and eternal life unity, of natural and supernatural life, of engagement in life. We cannot remain silent because we live by the Gospel. « But take heart; I have overcome the world! » – says the Lord.