In Chapter IV of his book Love and Responsibility, in a section titled "Procreation and Parenthood," Karol Wojtyla develops an argument against the use of contraception. His argument here is ultimately based in a line of thought which is developed throughout the book, emphasizing love as the only appropriate response to the human person. More specifically, the argument focuses heavily upon parenthood. At first glance, this argument appears to approach the moral question of contraception in a way that is quite different from the argument against contraception as anti-life. Wojtyla's argument here also appears somewhat different from the argument against contraception as anti-love which Wojtyla himself, as Pope John Paul II, advanced a little over twenty years later in the apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio. The purpose of this essay will be to analyze this argument from Wojtyla in Love and Responsibility, and then comment on some possible strengths or weaknesses of the argument.

The basic point made by Wojtyla in his argument is that "when a man and woman capable of procreation have intercourse their union must be accompanied by awareness and willing acceptance of the possibility that 'I may become a father' or 'I may become mother.'"[1] Clearly, if this point is granted, then it will follow almost immediately that contraception cannot be morally justified, because contraception by definition precisely indicates an unwillingness to accept the possibility that the man and woman may become parents. However, the premise stated by Wojtyla here is obviously not self-evident, and some further development is necessary in order to show what is wrong with a man and woman engaging in sexual intercourse without a willing acceptance of the possibility of parenthood. This is the burden of much of this section, although Wojtyla is not always explicit about the connection of his points with this central question.

The willing acceptance of parenthood mentioned by Wojtyla obviously indicates something about the attitude of the man and the woman toward the possibility of a person who may enter their relationship through sexual intercourse. To the extent that this acceptance reveals a disposition on the part of the couple to allow the existence of this possible new person in relation to themselves, the acceptance is an affirmation of the person. It seems that it is only in the context of such acceptance that the couple can be said to be prepared to love the a third person who may become involved in their union. As Wojtyla emphasizes, love is the only adequate attitude and response to the person.[2]

Wojtyla, although he is conscious of the issue of the value of the potential person (the child), directs more of his attention at the effect of rejecting the value of the potential person on the man and woman themselves. "Neither in the man nor in the woman can affirmation of the value of the person be divorced from awareness and willing acceptance that he may become a father and she may become a mother."[3] Therefore, if the man and woman reject the possibility of parenthood, and thus the value of the person, and yet engage in the sexual act, the association between them "rests only on affirmation of the value 'sex', not on affirmation of the value of the person."[4]

When the value of the person is no longer adequately expressed in the relationship, Wojtyla indicates that the logic of the relationship will descend into utilitarianism, a problem discussed more fully by Wojtyla elsewhere in this work. In this context, this means that the focus in the relationship, including the sexual act, will not be on the person but rather on pleasure. There is a change "away from unification in love and in the direction of mutual, or rather, bilateral, 'enjoyment.'"[5] Wojtyla describes this possibility with some depth:

When a man and a woman who have marital intercourse decisively preclude the possibility of paternity and maternity, their intentions are thereby diverted from the person and directed to mere enjoyment: 'the person as co-creator of love' disappears and there remains only the 'partner in an erotic experience'. Nothing could be more incompatible with the proper ends of the act of love. The intentions, and attention, of each party to the act should be directed to the other person, as a person, the will should be wholly concerned with that person's good, the heart filled with affirmation of that person's specific value. By definitively precluding the possibility of procreation in the marital act a man and a woman inevitably shift the whole focus of the experience in the direction of sexual pleasure as such. The whole content of the experience is then 'enjoyment', whereas it should be an expression of love with pleasure as an incidental accompaniment of the sexual act.[6]

In such a situation, each person can be considered by the other as an object of use, in that each is utilized by the other for the sake of pleasure. This, as Wojtyla points out, is in direct contradiction to the negative aspect of the personalistic norm as he previously articulated it: "The person is the kind of good which does not admit of use and cannot be treated as an object of use and as such the means to an end."[7]

In this section, Wojtyla also discusses the distinction between two orders: the order of nature and the personal order. It is important to note that for him this is a distinction, not a separation properly speaking, and certainly not some type of radical separation in reality, as dualists might perceive between that which is personal and that which is natural. After pointing out this distinction, Wojtyla quickly moves to cut off any supposition that he may be moving in such a dualist direction: "We cannot separate the two orders, for each depends on the other."[8] This is especially the case in the realm of sexual relationships between men and women, in which Wojtyla says that these two orders meet. Thus, it seems that Wojtyla here fundamentally is distinguishing in order to unify rather than divide. Furthermore, the order of nature is not the same as the biological order, although they are related.[9] (It is worth noting in passing that footnote number sixty-three, which purports to clarify Wojtyla's thought in this regard and relate it to the thought of Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae, in fact is not necessarily as helpful as it might be. It does not show as clearly as one might hope that for Wojtyla these orders are not to be separated, and thus that, contrary to what might be implied by the footnote, procreation of itself is involved in the personal, and not just the natural, order. It is in the attitude of the persons, not in the structure of reality, that procreation must be assumed into the personal order. More detailed discussion of the analysis in this note will be omitted because it is obviously not written by Wojtyla himself.)[10]

The relevance of the connection between the order of nature and the personal order to the discussion of contraception is Wojtyla's concern that contraception effectively separates the two orders in a sexual relationship between a man and a woman, and particularly violates the order of nature. He sees contraception, understood as the deliberate exclusion, meaning prevention by artificial means, of the possibility of procreation, as "contrary to the order and the laws of nature."[11] Criticizing contraception on this basis does not make man, who is meant to have dominion over nature, a slave to nature. Man exercises his dominion over nature by adapting himself more and more fully and precisely to the laws of nature[12]. Nor is Wojtyla advocating a biologism and physicalism, but rather it is clear from his entire argument that he sees all of what he is saying as intimately involved in the personhood of human beings. Moreover, his points about the order of nature are very much interconnected with his points about the value of the person, so that the violation of the order of nature inevitably involves a violation of the personal order, of the order of love.[13] In his view, by understanding the matter in this way, he is only acknowledging that the person is involved in the natural order, and that "it is especially when he enters so deeply into the natural order, immerses himself so to speak in its elemental processes, that he must not forget that he is a person."[14]

Having considered the basic case made against contraception by Karol Wojtyla here, some points of possible improvement may occur to one's mind. It has already been said that Wojtyla's discussion of the "order of nature" does not make his case either dualistic or physicalistic. One can, after all, speak quite legitimately about the order of nature. However, the very fact that this point requires clarification might cause one to wonder if there might be better ways of expressing the valid insights which are present in Wojtyla's articulation of these matters. However, perhaps this is an unfair criticism, since the present writer, at least, is unsure of exactly how these points should be expressed in order to avoid possible misunderstanding.

A more definite point on which greater precision might be helpful is the distinction between artifical and natural means of regulating births. This naturally arises more fully in Wojtyla's discussion of periodic continence, which was not considered here. However, it has already been mentioned that Wojtyla understands the deliberate exclusion of the possibility of procreation as the prevention of the possibility of procreation through artificial means. He contrasts this to periodic continence, through which "procreation is excluded in the natural way."[15] He repeats this language of artifical and natural means at length in his discussion of the differences between contraception and periodic continence.[16] However, while it is certainly true that periodic continence conforms itself to the laws of nature in a way that other methods do not, heavy concentration on this distinction seems to distract from a point which is as important, if not more important, given the rest of Wojtyla's argument. According to the thought of Wojtyla himself, the governing principle in this context seems to be one that was mentioned here earlier, namely the principle that "when a man and woman capable of procreation have intercourse their union must be accompanied by awareness and willing acceptance of the possibility that 'I may become a father' or 'I may become a mother.'"[17] He also notes later that this willing acceptance must also be present in those who practice periodic continence, and that if it is not then this is against nature and love, and is thus immoral.[18] In view of these points, it would seem that willing acceptance of parenthood, and thus eventually of the child as the third person who potentially may result from in the marital act, is really the deciding factor in this case from the standpoint of ethical analysis. Even though parenthood may be physically impossible, or at least extraordinarily unlikely, in many instances of the marital act, there still seems to be a hypothetical question implicit in the act, so to speak, which the man and woman must answer: if somehow this act did result in a child, are you willing to become parents? The answer to this question must be in the affirmative if the act is to be morally acceptable according to Wojtyla's principles. The difference between contraception and periodic continence, then, is primarily the difference between acting in order to prevent a consequence which one does not desire and which one reasonably believes may result from another action, and refraining from an action which one reasonably believes may lead to a consequence which one does not desire. In the first case, one has acted directly against the consequence in question, in this case the child as a possibly existing person, and thus one cannot truly answer the hypothetical question posed above in the affirmative. In the second case, although one admittedly does not desire the consequence, one has not directly acted against it, and it is thus possible that one might honestly answer the question affirmatively. This would seem to be the real reason that natural means may be used in a morally upright way while artificial means cannot. Thus, the difference ultimately lies in the nature of action and of the will. This seems to be logically indicated by some of the principles set forth by Wojtyla, but he does not explain the distinctions here clearly, and his use of the contrast between artificial and natural does not necessarily throw more light on this area.

In his argument against contraception in Love and Responsibility, Wojtyla emphasizes the way in which the denial of the value of the person through a denial of the possibility of parenthood distorts the relationship between the man and the woman, and this is very true. However, he might have strengthened his case if he had developed its personalism in another direction as well, to make his argument a more two-pronged argument, so to speak, although still unified in its personalism. The person, or to be precise the potential person, whose value is most directly denied in contraception is not the man or the woman, but the potential child. It is not so much that Wojtyla does not recognize this as it is that he does not seem to develop his thought in that direction. It is interesting to note here that Saint Thomas Aquinas, like Karol Wojtyla, concerns himself with the issue of parenthood. While Wojtyla wishes to emphasize that those who are not willing to become parents should refrain from the sexual act, Saint Thomas emphasizes that those who are not capable of raising the child properly, in this case meaning those who are not married, should not engage in the sexual act. However, Saint Thomas raises the issue of parenthood in the context of his argument against simple fornication, not contraception.[19] Wojtyla seems to have a valid insight here in raising the issue of parenthood in the area of contraception as well, and saying that a lack of willingness for parenthood in the sexual act violates the respect due to persons. Saint Thomas would probably agree, considering the moral evaluation of contraception which he gives: "After the sin of homicide, whereby a human nature already in existence is destroyed, this type of sin appears to take next place, for by it the generation of human nature is precluded."[20] Something so akin to homicide would, one presumes, constitute a denial of the value of the human person. However, Thomas' direct emphasis on contraception as an attack on the child seems, with all due respect for Karol Wojtyla, to get at the nature of the wrong in contraception more precisely than an argument which, while acknowledging the attack on the personal value of the child, focuses primarily on the attack in contraception on the personal value of the man and woman involved. This is not to say that the latter argument is not very true, and does not have valuable insights not contained in the former argument. Nevertheless, it seems that the latter argument, unless presented along with some version of the former argument, is not as precise as it could be about the nature of contraception. After all, the very word "contraception" indicates what the act is most intrinsically directed against: conception of a child. Within the context of his personalism, it seems that Wojtyla could have emphasized more effectively the obvious denial of the value of the person contained in the decision to act against the possible existence of a human person.

Leaving aside possible improvements to the case of Karol Wojtyla against contraception in Love and Responsibility, an evaluation of the argument on its own merits must, as with any argument, rest on the questions of whether it is true, and whether it is persuasive. A position on the truth of the argument has just been expressed: the argument is true, and contains valuable insights, although it is not perhaps as precise as possible about what is most fundamentally wrong with contraception. As to the persuasiveness of the argument, which although secondary is important, there are two interesting points about this argument. First of all, since the argument involves the relationship between the man and the woman, it probably has a certain persuasive value. As a practical matter, it simply may be easier for many people to understand an offense against an already existing person than an offense against a child who has not yet come into existence, and might never come into existence in any case. From this perspective Wojtyla's argument has an advantage. On the other hand, it is not clear that many contracepting couples will perceive in themselves an example of the kind of mutual use of the other and denial of the value of the person which Wojtyla describes, and in this sense his argument may not be widely persuasive. This should not lead anyone to immediately reject the value of his argument, because perhaps the greatest problem in persuading people of the immorality of their own actions is that people often do not even understand the full reality of their own actions, and even the best moral argument may not be able to overcome such radical misunderstandings. However, it still seems at least possible that the most effective way of leading people to an understanding of the full reality of their own actions would be to begin with a heavy emphasis on the most basic nature of their actions. As has been indicated, it is somewhat questionable whether this argument by Karol Wojtyla takes this approach.

Bibliography

Wojtyla, Karol. Love and Responsibility. Translated by Willetts, H.T. Revised 1981 ed. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993.

Thomas Aquinas, Saint. Summa Contra Gentiles. Translated by Bourke, Vernon J. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975.

Notes

[1] Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, trans. H.T. Willetts (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 227-228.

[2] Wojtyla, 41, 226-227.

[3] Ibid., 228.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., 225, 228.

[6] Ibid., 234.

[7] Ibid., 41, 228.

[8] Ibid., 226.

[9] Ibid., 56, 226.

[10] Ibid., 226, 307-308; fn. 63.

[11] Ibid., 234-235.

[12] Ibid., 229.

[13] Ibid., 235-236.

[14] Ibid., 236.

[15] Ibid., 234-235.

[16] Ibid., 240-242.

[17] Ibid., 228.

[18] Ibid., 242-243.

[19] Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, trans. Vernon J. Bourke (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), bk. 3, ch. 122:6-8.

[20] Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, bk. 3, ch.122:9.