Fraudulent Fertilisation

Sigh­ing, the girl an­swered:

“A school­mate, fa­ther, a boy in my year who asked me over to his house to study one af­ter­noon. Al­most with­out re­al­is­ing, we found our­selves play­ing at boyfriend and girl­friend. It was the first time for me. I didn’t feel any­thing, just a bit of pain and quite ashamed. It didn’t last long, he hard­ly en­tered me; al­most noth­ing I’d say. But as you can see, I got preg­nant all the same. It might be hard to be­lieve, Fa­ther, but I swear that’s how it hap­pened!”

“And the boy, what does he say about all this?”

“He doesn’t know any­thing, Fa­ther, I can’t face telling him. He’d be ter­ri­fied. Be­sides, after we did it, we both felt un­com­fort­able, we had a fight. I don’t want to see him again or con­fide in him.”

“How flip­pant, my child, how flip­pant!” the man of the cloth said an­gri­ly, “How could you be­have so ir­re­spon­si­bly?”

She thought the priest was crit­i­cis­ing her for not using con­tra­cep­tives.

“I never imag­ined that I could get preg­nant, Fa­ther,” she said, “I didn’t know what pre­cau­tions to take; I’ve only re­cent­ly found out about some of them. I knew a bit about con­doms, but I thought it was the man’s busi­ness, it never crossed my mind that I could buy one. Be­sides, when I went to my friend’s house I didn’t even dream of hav­ing sex with him. Every­thing was un­ex­pect­ed, right now I don’t know how it came about... It was like a game. I en­joyed the ca­ress­es, Fa­ther, I lost my head, I didn’t re­alise. I didn’t think. It was new to me, I liked it, it made me feel so good... I didn’t think there was any­thing wrong with it, I en­joyed being touched, I don’t know why no one told me what could hap­pen!”

Sobs shook her, she couldn’t go on speak­ing. The priest stroked her head and said,

“Cry, my child, cry, tears pu­ri­fy the soul and God will for­give you. Don’t feel guilty about the des­tiny that the Cre­ator has fixed for you. This life that is ger­mi­nat­ing today in your belly will be a cause for im­mense hap­pi­ness to­mor­row. Be thank­ful for feel­ing this pain, it will be a bless­ing for the fu­ture. Nei­ther should you feel sorry about not hav­ing used any­thing to avoid get­ting preg­nant. God pro­hibits them, the human being should not use an­ti-nat­ur­al pro­ce­dures to pre­vent life being gen­er­at­ed. It’s nec­es­sary to avoid and fight against ma­te­ri­al­ism. Man must un­der­stand that life should be com­mu­ni­cat­ed and prop­a­gat­ed ex­clu­sive­ly by means of the fam­i­ly, through the one in­dis­sol­u­ble mat­ri­mo­ny. You’ll have to start again, it es­sen­tial that you chan­nel your life by the side of a hus­band who loves you and will for­give your er­rors. Con­tra­cep­tive meth­ods are a plague, an epi­dem­ic. In­stead of in­creas­ing the bread sup­ply, they limit births. It’s ab­surd and against what God has stip­u­lat­ed. We have no right to alter the Cre­ator’s Plan. We are not al­lowed to leave the gift of gen­er­at­ing life to our ar­bi­tra­tion. To allow man to freely reg­u­late pro­cre­ation means ig­nor­ing his weak­ness, pro­mot­ing in­fi­deli­ty and moral degra­da­tion. Be­lieve me, my girl, thanks to these evil prac­tices, women are often treat­ed as they were things, mere sex ob­jects. Our or­gan­ism has been mag­nif­i­cent­ly equipped by God. We can’t alter its func­tions nor cease to re­spect its in­tegri­ty.”

Mabel could not un­der­stand every­thing the priest was say­ing to her with such em­pha­sis; her ju­ve­nile mind was not equipped to as­sim­i­late so many ax­ioms at once. What lit­tle she un­der­stood was painful, be­cause it meant a moral con­dem­na­tion of her con­di­tion, her acts and as­pi­ra­tions. She couldn’t help ac­knowl­edg­ing that the priest was right when he ex­alt­ed the in­hu­man­i­ty and cru­el­ty of abor­tions. She thought that was ir­refutable, but she still felt the im­pe­ri­ous need to get rid of her in­no­cent bur­den. This was re­al­i­ty for her, no mat­ter how ab­hor­rent it was, even though it meant her com­plete degra­da­tion. Any­thing was prefer­able to giv­ing birth to a child; the mere pos­si­bil­i­ty made her feel sick. How­ev­er, faced with so much en­er­gy from the priest, it be­came ev­i­dent to her that con­tra­cep­tives were pro­hib­it­ed by the Church, and that was some­thing she couldn’t un­der­stand. Anx­ious to find some con­tra­dic­tion in the priest’s ar­gu­ments, she asked:

“But, Fa­ther, I don’t un­der­stand, does this mean that I was con­demned be­fore­hand? That I had no chance of pre­vent­ing what was going to hap­pen to me?”

“Young lady, it’s not like that, your sug­ges­tion is very sim­plis­tic. The trou­ble is, you’re leav­ing aside the prin­ci­ples of Catholi­cism. You took a wrong turn­ing, but you can still get back on the right track. Love can only be fully achieved in mat­ri­mo­ny, only be­tween spous­es can a cou­ple com­mu­ni­cate sex­u­al­ly. Al­ready this shows us the first big mis­take on your part. You should have avoid­ed ex­tra-con­ju­gal re­la­tions. I’m not say­ing you’re guilty, be­cause it’s clear that Christ’s teach­ings haven’t been fully in­stilled in you. But now you must be­come aware and re­deem your­self. Spous­es can reach max­i­mum in­ti­ma­cy and God bless­es it. But they have no con­trol over the power to give life which they were grant­ed. Nei­ther is it per­mit­ted, even with­in mat­ri­mo­ny, to carry out vol­un­tar­i­ly in­fer­tile cop­u­la­tions. This is dis­hon­est, be­cause it stands in the way of God’s Plan, you can’t do bad to avoid good. Young peo­ple like you, my child, need strength not to com­mit de­vi­a­tions. God oblig­es you to fol­low the straight and nar­row. This also ap­plies to gov­ern­ments. Who knows what would hap­pen if a per­mis­sive au­thor­i­ty au­tho­rised lim­it­less con­tra­cep­tion!”

Mabel want­ed to find some basis for her self-jus­ti­fi­ca­tion; the di­alec­tics of the priest seemed ir­refutable, she felt more and more lost, more of a sin­ner. In spite of every­thing, the phi­los­o­phy preached by Tomás seemed to be too strict to her.