Control Over One's Body

(p. 30) The prevailing assumption that our own body, even when it is healthy and properly functioning, can rise up against us, suggests that, like a wild beast, it needs to be controlled. We get a strong sense of this negative image of the procreative potential of the human body in the following statement which one frequently finds in reading through the feminist literature of liberation: "I just could not a low myself to feel so much at the mercy of my biology. I was dammed if I was going to let my body dictate the rest of my life."
Control over one's body, mind in charge of matter, seems to be plausible path to freedom. The contradiction it represents, however, (p.31) lies in the fact that part of one's own being is first disparaged and then enslaved…

It is a tragic illusion to think that we can have and avoid offspring through acts of choice. It is not choice, an act of the will, but sexual intercourse, that invokes new life. We cannot command our body to be or not be fruitful. Contraception provides a perfect example of how we cannot yoke our body by a technology and then demand that it do our biding. As millions of people know through their own incontrovertible experience, a contraceptive does not always prevent a conception, and intercourse aimed at conception does not always result in new life. We cannot control our body. We cannot prevent its inevitable downward spiral toward death. We cannot control the aging process, nor can we immunize ourselves against all diseases and disabilities. We cannot control our body because our body is an inseparable part of who we are.

Control is indeed an essential part of human freedom and human dignity. Enslavement and degradation contradict the nature of the human person. But control is better directed not against our bodies but toward maintaining wholeness and ordering our lives so that they are in harmony with God's Plan and our own destiny. When we try to control our biology (and contraception is a good illustration of this), we turn against our selves. But when we try to control our actions in the interest of respecting and maintaining our wholeness as (p. 32) human beings, we are acting consistently and unambiguously for our own good. We may not succeed in getting what we want, but we can succeed in not dividing ourselves into two mutually antagonistic parts. …

Our liberty, precious and desirable as it is, is conditioned by our reality. We are embodied creatures. This is our reality. We cannot achieve freedom if we reject our truth. It is our truth, then, that is the basis for our freedom. We become free through our body, not when we are separated from it. …

It is important, needless to say, to control our urges and impulses. But control does not imply a devaluation of that which is (p.33) controlled. In the case of moral self-control, it implies integration. We control our urges and impulses not because they are inferior, but so that they can function properly within the context of our human wholeness. The moral purpose of control is not conquest but sublimation.

The career world is hardly a bed of roses or a fount of liberty. It is, quite often, a world of intense rivalry, venomous back-stabbing, and endless grievances. Its stresses, pressures, and tensions are so unremitting that survivors of the work week thank God it is Friday (TGIF). It is a world that literally cries out for a more peaceful and humane environment. Is it not the family, as Christopher Lasch has pointed out, that offers the only real haven in an otherwise heartless world? …