Continence Deepens
Personal Communion
General Audience, November 7, 1984
1. We are continuing the analysis
of the virtue of continence in the light of the doctrine contained
in the Encyclical Humanae Vitae. It is well to recall that the great
classics of ethical (and anthropological) thought, both the
pre-Christian ones and the Christian ones (St. Thomas Aquinas), see
in the virtue of continence not only the capacity to contain bodily
and sensual reactions, but even more the capacity to control and
guide man's whole sensual and emotive sphere. In the case under
discussion, it is a question of the capacity to direct the line of
excitement toward its correct development and also the line of
emotion itself, orienting it toward the deepening and interior
intensification of its pure and, in a certain sense, disinterested
character.
Not an opposition
2. This differentiation between the line of excitement and the line
of emotion is not an opposition. It does not mean that the conjugal
act, as a result of excitement, does not at the same time involve
the deep emotion of the other person. Certainly it does, or at any
rate, it should not be otherwise.
In the conjugal act, the intimate union should involve a particular
intensification of emotion, or rather the deep emotion, of the other
person. This is also contained in Ephesians in the form of an
exhortation directed to married couples: "Defer to one another out
of reverence for Christ" (Eph 5:21).
The distinction between excitement and emotion, noted in this
analysis, proves only the subjective reactive-emotive richness of
the human "I." This richness excludes any unilateral reduction and
enables the virtue of continence to be practiced as a capacity to
direct the manifesting of both the excitement and the emotion,
aroused by the reciprocal reacting of masculinity and femininity.
Natural method
3. The virtue of continence, so understood, has an essential role in
maintaining the interior balance between the two meanings of the
conjugal act, the unitive and the procreative (cf. HV 12) in view of
a truly responsible fatherhood and motherhood.
The Encyclical Humanae Vitae devotes due attention to the biological
aspect of the question, that is to say, to the rhythmic character of
human fertility. In the light of the encyclical, this "periodicalness"
can be called a providential index for a responsible fatherhood and
motherhood. Nevertheless a question such as this one, which has such
a profoundly personalistic and sacramental (theological) meaning, is
not resolved only on this level.
The encyclical teaches responsible fatherhood and motherhood "as a
proof of a mature conjugal love." Therefore it contains not only the
answer to the concrete question that is asked in the sphere of the
ethics of married life but, as already has been stated—it also
indicates a plan of conjugal spirituality, which we wish at least to
outline.
Maintains balance
4. The correct way of intending and practicing periodic continence
as a virtue (that is, according to Humanae Vitae 21, the "mastery of
self") also essentially determines the "naturalness" of the method,
called also the "natural method." This is "naturalness" at the level
of the person. Therefore there can be no thought of a mechanical
application of biological laws. The knowledge itself of the rhythms
of fertility—even though indispensable—still does not create that
interior freedom of the gift, which is by its nature explicitly
spiritual and depends on man's interior maturity. This freedom
presupposes such a capacity to direct the sensual and emotive
reactions as to make possible the giving of self to the other "I" on
the grounds of the mature self-possession of one's own "I" in its
corporeal and emotive subjectivity.
Communion of persons
5. As we know from the biblical and theological analyses we have
previously done, the human body in its masculinity and femininity is
interiorly ordered to the communion of the persons (communio
personarum). Its spousal meaning consists in this. The spousal
meaning of the body has been distorted, almost at its roots, by
concupiscence (especially by the concupiscence of the flesh in the
sphere of the threefold concupiscence). The virtue of continence in
its mature form gradually reveals the pure aspect of the spousal
meaning of the body. In this way, continence develops the personal
communion of the man and the woman, a communion that cannot be
formed and developed in the full truth of its possibilities only on
the level of concupiscence. This is precisely what the Encyclical
Humanae Vitae affirms. This truth has two aspects: the personalistic
and the theological.
Taken from: L'Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English Date 12
November 1984, page 1.
Return to the Theology of the Body Main
Page...
This page is the work of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and
Mary