Christian Fatherhood

Little baby Beyer at 13 weeks, 1 day

I'm happy to be able to say that my wife and I are expecting our first child. It's a strange thing, being an expectant father--to know that one has produced a new life and, at the same time, to have that life remain hidden from view. That is to say, I know I have a child, but, not having met him/her, it's a very abstract and theoretical kind of knowledge.

Expectant mothers, on the other hand, begin being affected in very tangible ways very early on. It's kind of amazing how quickly and to what degree a new mother begins to be affected in every way possible. Of course, the new baby has affected me too, but only in a sort of indirect, "I'd be happy to run to the store at 4am to get you a cinnabon," kind of way. In other words, it seems like my role as an expectant father has little to do with the child, except in an indirect way, insofar as I am responsible for caring for its mother.

All of this makes me wonder whether there's something to the fact that motherhood seems to come along gradually, as the baby grows, growing and affecting its mother more and more over time, while fatherhood hits you all of a sudden in the delivery room.

In some ways, I think it's true that my wife has been a mother since we conceived, but I won't really be a father until the baby is born. This turns out to be more than just a feeling of mine, too. Apparently, when the baby is born, it will already recognize its mothers voice, but won't recognize mine over anyone else's for quite some time. I think this speaks to the fact that real fatherhood has to be earned.

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." This is the beginning of all faith, the foundation on which all religion lies. Everything that is receives its being, more or less directly, from the first cause of all things, God. This makes him our Lord. But Christ teaches us to call him "Abba, Father." Could we rightly do that if, in good Deist fashion, he had simply created a machine that would run its course while he observed from afar?

It is true that God is the Other, infinitely transcendent. Scripture tells us, "His greatness is unsearchable," (Ps. 145:3). Yet, because all being proceeds from him, everything that is bears his mark, as it were--participates, shares in his ultimate Being, otherwise it would not be. This is the sense in which God is "all in all," for "in him we live and move and have our being," (Acts 17:28). "In the words of Saint Augustine, God is 'higher than my highest and more inward that my innermost self.' With creation, God does not abandon his creatures to themselves. He not only gives them being and existence, but also, and at every moment, upholds and sustains them in being, enables them to act and brings them to their final end," (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 300-301).

The reality, then, looks something like this:

God creating ex nihilo and of his own free will, yet eternally, even though that Creation happens in time.

It is God's act of Creation which makes him our Lord and God. It his continual act of sustaining that Creation from within, that makes him our Father. Our God interacts with his children on a daily basis, sustaining us moment-by-moment, giving us everything we need to succeed. For that matter, giving us everything he is, in Christ, allowing his entire existence to revolve around his beloved children.

Human fatherhood, then, imitating the Divine Fatherhood, sticks around. True Fatherhood lasts a lifetime. It is a gift of self to one's wife and children, a gift of self without reservation, a gift "unto death, even death on a  cross," (Phil. 2:8). This gift is given, not primarily out of a sense of moral responsibility, though this is necessary, but out of love, a love which is action in the family and in the world, day in and day out.

The Top Ten Creatures I Can't Buy A Good God Created, Part Two

The world isn't the way it's supposed to be. Let's look at childbirth by way of example. The first commandment God gave us, way back in Gen. 1:22 was to "be fruitful and multiply." We should remember that God's commandments are not arbitrary. That is to say, moral imperatives are not dictated down from on high for no reason. On the contrary, morality stems from Nature and Being itself. In other words, when Scripture tells us God has commanded us to do something, it is not because that's what God wants, it's because that's what God is, or because that's what we are.

It is of God's very essence (and therefore ours as well) to bring forth life. This is why doing so is an explicit commandment in Scripture. This idea is perfectly consonant with what modern science tells us. Procreation is the earliest and most fundamental aim of evolutionary development, the most basic reason for our existence. The pagan philosopher Aristotle said the same thing almost 2400 years ago when he named the propagation of the species as the ultimate telos (end, goal) toward which all life tends. All of this is to say that, if the world were the way it was supposed to be, childbirth would be the easiest, most natural thing in the world. Unfortunately, like so many other things, it's one of the biggest struggles in life: "in pain you shall bring forth children," (Gen. 3:16).

But it wasn't just humanity that was harmed by our sin: "cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life," (Gen. 3:17). For example:

the star-nosed mole,

this mutant dog thing,

possums,

and cat lady. Messed up as they are, as mammals (and marsupials), this group of horrifying creatures (along with those we saw in Part One) are actually the least horrifying of all.

After God finished his work of creation, he entrusted all of it to Man: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth," (Gen. 1:26).

Much has been made of the word "dominion." What the Hebrew writers of this passage would have meant, and what Western Christians would have understood it to mean until relatively recently, was not a "master/slave" relationship but something more like a "husband/wife" relationship. St. Paul explains Christian marriage in a similar fashion, saying, "Wives, be subject to your husbands," (Eph. 5:22). Of course, he balances this verse with the complementary commandment to husbands, "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her," (Eph. 5:25). The relationship is one of self-gift, each living for the other. In the same way, Man is lord of creation in the same way Christ is Lord of us, by sacrificing himself for it. It is a lordship of love and self-gift, our "dominion" is that of the servant, the caretaker, the Lover.

As Man fell, so fell the World. Our sin could not help but affect our most intimate companion, Nature itself. Scripture confirms this when it prophesies that the New Creation will be quite different from the one we currently inhabit:

"The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall feed; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The sucking child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord," (Isa. 11:6-9).

If the recreated order after the Parousia is perfect, and in it lions don't eat antelope, it must not be perfect for lions to eat antelope. We saw last post that all this ugliness can't have come from God. Where, then, did it come from? Us. By our sin, evil entered the world and corrupted the operation of Nature. Suddenly only the fittest can survive and things with fangs and claws and venom start popping up. But wait, the fossil record teaches us that fangs, claws, and venom predate Man. It turns out, then, that we just complicated matters and death and destruction entered into the world another way.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Part Three to be found here.

Why Natural Family Planning Isn't Contraception

There are those who would suggest that Natural Family Planning (NFP) is really just Catholic contraception. A loophole by which the Popes can avoid the ridiculous number of babies without having to embarrass themselves and admit they were wrong.

Yes, that is the Pope in a Santa hat.

One of the most common points of misunderstanding when it comes to Catholic doctrine is that of Papal Infallibility. Contrary to popular belief Papal Infallibility does not mean that whatever the Pope says might as well issue from the mouth of God. In fact, the Pope is only infallible when he solemnly proclaims something which the Church has always believed to be true. That is to say, it is primarily the Church (as present in Scripture and Tradition) which is infallible, the Pope is only infallible insofar as he operates as the Church's spokesman, which he is empowered to do by virtue of his office. In other words, the Church has always believed and taught that contraception is objectively evil. The Pope can no more overturn this teaching than he could proclaim that Jesus is no longer the Second Person of the Trinity.

Why, then, does NFP not qualify as contraception? After all, used correctly, it's just as effective in preventing pregnancy as the pill (99%) and more effective than condoms. In order to answer this question it will be necessary to examine the Church's rationale for outlawing contraception in the first place.

Holy Matrimony, the sacramental union of a man and woman with one another, is one of the most sacred institutions there is. Scripture itself teaches us that this is so because Christian Marriage symbolizes "the union that is betwixt Christ and his Church," to quote the English Prayer Book. Like the union of Christ with his Church, the marital union is always in effect. There are, however, regular occasions of special solemnity at which the union is consummated in a special way. For the Church it is the Holy Eucharist, which the Book of Revelation refers to as the Marriage Supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19:9). It is at the Eucharist that Christ and the Church come together in love. This is one of the reasons why in many churches there is a canopy over the altar:

The baldacchino at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.

It is the canopy over the marriage bed upon which Christ and his Beloved consummate their union.

Contraception hinders the completeness of the union between husband and wife. Certain types of contraception put up a physical barrier between their union. Others put up a chemical barrier. When contraception is used, it is as if the husband and wife are saying to one another, "I love you. I want to be one with you, just, not completely. I'm gonna hold this piece of myself back from you, because it's inconvenient."

The loving union between husband and wife is meant to result in a new life (cf. Gen. 1:22). If you think about it, this makes all the sense in the world. It is the union of Christ with his Church that brings new life to the world, for that is what grace is, new life: "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation," (2 Cor. 5:17). Due to the natural cycles of fertility and infertility the marital embrace will not always result in conception. This is really beside the point. The Church doesn't say that marriage should only be consummated with the express intent to conceive. It does say that the couple must be open to life, which is to say, marriage shouldn't be done halfway. You've gotta mean it.

The substantive difference between NFP and contraception is NFP doesn't throw up a barrier between husband and wife. While capitalizing on the natural cycles of fertility and infertility in order to run the family responsibly, it still allows for the complete union, body and soul, of man and woman to be enacted.