Archbishop Dolan's Thought for the Week

July 8, 2008 - Year of St. Paul

Dear Friends united in love and service of Jesus Christ and His Church:

Over the past Fourth of July weekend I got to baby-sit my wonderful eleven-month old nephew, Patrick Robert Dolan. What a bundle! Not only did I frequently praise God for the gift of life so evident in this beautiful baby-boy, but also often thanked the Lord for my priestly celibacy! You moms and dads are saints! 

I could not get enough of little Patrick. I pushed him on walks in his stroller, fed him his bottle and cereal, snuck him a popsicle, changed his diapers, gave him baths and got him out of bed at 5:30 am. He’s a handful!

As they left yesterday to go back to St. Louis, I must admit I sighed some relief as “normalcy” returned. But, I already miss him and can’t wait ‘till I see him again.

It’s clear to me that it’s tough to be selfish when you have a baby on your hands. No longer is it all about me, but all about the baby. I’m not the center of the world anymore -- baby Patrick is. My schedule, my calendar, my clock -- forget it. My life was now controlled by the baby’s naps, his bottle and his diapers. No longer could I be self-absorbed but baby-absorbed.

So, babies become an invitation from the Lord of Life to love, to give, to care, to nurture, to share, to put ourselves and our needs second to somebody else’s. Yep, babies teach us to love. Babies keep us from becoming selfish, narcissistic bores.

Pope John Paul II often spoke about what he termed The Law of the Gift. We human beings are at our best -- this law goes -- when we give ourselves away in love to another.

This happens dramatically in marriage, when a man and woman pledge themselves to each other unreservedly, for all time, committed to making their married love faithful, forever, loving and life-giving.

The Law of the Gift naturally results in the new life of a baby. When a husband and wife express their selfless love most passionately in the very marital act, they give themselves to one another without holding anything back. This love is an act of trust in each other and in God. That’s what sex is all about. And, when the baby comes, their love literally is personified, it has a name.

Baby Patrick, the Law of the Gift and marriage all come to mind as an anniversary nears in the Church.

On July 25, 1968, Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical letter Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life). As many of you recall, “all hell broke loose.”

All most people can recall is that Pope Paul said no to artificial, chemical birth control. How oppressive! How insensitive! How authoritarian! How “out of it!” The dissent was vast and non-stop, remember?

A reflective reading of the teaching shows, of course, that the Holy Father said yes to love, to life and to the Law of the Gift. All he really taught was that the intimacy between a man and woman in marriage was love at its best, as a couple gave themselves to each other unreservedly, completely, holding nothing back, eager to see that their love was procreative, as they had the privilege of cooperating with the Lord in the creation of new life, a baby.

All the Pope was doing was reaffirming the Church’s timeless wisdom, mined from nature and reason, that to block the procreative aspect of sexual love was to risk robbing it of its selfless, generous, trusting, sharing character, reducing it to an act of selfish pleasure only, no longer a divine act bringing about new life.

All Paul VI did was call us back to the divine intention that links love and new life. He worried that, if we only viewed sex as a momentary thrill, not as an act flowing from faithful, lifelong, life-giving love, we and our world would be in big trouble.

Forty years later, we see that he wasn’t “out of it” at all. He was downright prophetic. If he were alive today, he might consider issuing a sequel entitled, “I told you so!”

Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan

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