This post is not original to me – a friend
shared his thoughts following our participation in a long email discussion with proponents and opponents of NFP. Much of that discussion
boiled down to a disagreement about Church teaching that reflected what each
side preferred to read, in terms of papal documents and the writings of doctors
of the Church. (See also my post "Butting Heads over NFP" which briefly examines Fr. Chad Ripperger's thoughts on "operative points of view" of traditionalist vs. neo-conservative Catholics.)
Reading the Saints
When
you open the writings of real saints, you can compare it to reaching into a bag
to pull out a ping pong ball for a lottery prize. Now most of the ping pong
balls are worth only the cost of the plastic ball itself, which is no more than
pennies – just like most publications are worth no more than the value of the
paper on which they're printed. But one of the balls in the bag is worth a
million dollars. On the outside it looks exactly like the other balls, but on
the inside it is marked with a special number that means that you are the
winner of fabulous wealth.
What is
it like when you reach into the bag and pull out the million-dollar ball?
Imagine yourself closing your eyes, and you reach into a deep, black bag, and
you grab hold of something spiritual, something supernatural, something not of
this world. Or perhaps it is not you
who grab hold of it, but it that grabs hold of you…
…which
could be said just as well of the allegorical lottery ball. Do you win it, or
does it win you? Or the same metaphor could also be used not just for good
books, but also for bad ones. Do you grab hold of them, or do they grab hold of
you? Yet even these bad books, for all their faults, including the fact that
they are intrinsically evil, nevertheless have something real about them,
something alive, something that is capable of dragging your soul to hell. Other
works, in comparison, are dead, lifeless, meaningless, idle thoughts that will
soon dissipate and leave no trace.
The
question is, when you take one particular document, whether it is a letter or a
book or an encyclical, what do you experience? Does it speak directly to your
soul with the words of God? Does it sound like a message from a supernatural
world? Or is it the thoughts and imaginations of men, no matter how smart or
learned or even devout they might be? If it's the work of man, then it's one of
the losing lottery balls.
But if
it's the work of God, then it's like you've pulled out the million dollar
prize. And you feel it. Who could
pull out a winning lottery ball and not feel the excitement of suddenly from
one moment to the next to go from being a pauper to being a millionaire? And
who could open the pages of works by real saints without feeling like the poet
Keats when he first opened Chapman's Homer:
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific — and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
I don't
want to muddy the waters of the metaphor by getting into a discussion of
individual titles, but it’s clear that the difference in the arguments of
proponents vs. opponents of NFP comes down to what they are reading. Some are
reading St. Augustine and the pre-conciliar popes, while others are reading
Vatican II and John Paul II. How many thousands of men throughout the many
centuries have opened, for example, St. Augustine's “Confessions” and
felt very much like Keats when he opened Chapman's Homer? But can it really
honestly be said by anyone that they felt the same way upon reading “Love
and Responsibility” or any of the post-conciliar encyclicals? Can anyone
even make heads or tails of what is being said? Aren't we often told that we
need interpreters to explain to us what the personalist language is supposed to
mean, since it doesn't convey any meaning at all directly to our minds upon
first reading it? In contrast, I recall vividly the feeling I had when I first
read “Casti Connubii” about 25 years ago. There was that same sense of
having grabbed hold of a live electric wire. And it changes your life in the
same radical sorts of ways.
What
applies to these writings on marriage, applies even more so to genuine works on
the spiritual life. Who can read St. Teresa of Avila without feeling that you have
come to know her personally as an intimate friend, and without having a sense
that the spiritual life is close and within your reach and available to you if
only you will stretch out your hand to grasp it?
The
unfortunate reality, however, is that most people – even among those who
consider themselves devout – are not reading St. Teresa, but instead are
reading derivative works with no supernatural value. They have reached into the
bag and pulled out losing lottery balls whose only purpose is to fill up the
measure of the bag and hide the genuine article in a sea of ersatz replicas,
like the slave girl Morgiana who hides the X placed by the captain of the 40
thieves upon the door of her master Ali Baba by placing similar X's on the
doors of all the other houses in the neighborhood.
