From the moment of conception until he takes his last breath man is designed to be bonded with other persons. Human beings are not created to be “atomized”, isolated, disconnected individualists with no close, intimate human relationships. From birth, man is formed to be a member of a family, a citizen in a society, a potential mother or father, a son or daughter of the Church, and a part of a large design and great purpose—something more than one isolated existence separated from others and alienated from all the human associations that bind human hearts. A happy human life is a bonded life with many enduring relationships and strong attachments.
To rupture, sever, or subvert these personal bonds that define and enrich a human life destroys happiness and inflicts enormous suffering that tears apart relationships designed to nurture life and provide joy. So much of the misery of modern life follows from the dissolution of these natural bonds that form the abiding sentiments of the heart. The destruction of these basic human ties creates the great void that fills many lives with loneliness and sadness—a suffering that has its roots in the need for bonding natural to the human heart. At every turn in contemporary life these primary bonds undergo attack and violation as if they do not matter or have any effect. For example, the act of abortion violently destroys the intimate bond of life that joins mother and child in the womb. The memories of many women who have aborted their children recall this profound loss with a broken heart that sadly remembers the birthday of the lost child, bone of her bone and flesh or her flesh. Fathers too grieve and agonize over the loss of their children because they underestimated the power and depth of the deep-seated sentiments that bind them to their children—the natural law written on their hearts.
Likewise, the act of contraception spoils a natural bond. It prevents the total giving and unconditional marital exchange of love between husband and wife that requires total surrender and generosity. The rise of the contraceptive mentality and the widespread use of birth control in the 1960s and 1970s impose obstacles and barriers in the mutual giving and receiving of spouses. Love does not grow unless it is freely given and gladly received, and the bond of love atrophies when spouses deliberately reject fertility and the children that unite and bond the couple profoundly. With the increase in contraception comes the dissolution of the bond of marriage as a rapid increase in the rate of divorce accompanies the use of birth control—a situation foreseen in Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae that forewarns of the temptation for spouses to regard one another “as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment.” The bond of marriage that suffers dissolution then inflicts another form of division, one that destroys the bond of an extended family and wounds the lives of parents, children, and grandparents who no longer live in the peace and harmony of united love.
Because of rampant divorce and the trend of cohabitation, many never form the permanent ties designed to unify persons in indissoluble bonds of devotion and loyalty in the course of an entire lifetime. All relationships, then, tend to assume the nature of temporary, fleeting moments that do not persist beyond a short duration or withstand the hardships of an entire lifetime. Just as man is made to be bonded, the human heart is formed to be joined, close-knit, or intimate in relationships that deepen and grow in oneness. From such bonds people give and receive the virtues of the heart to one another, whether it is fidelity in marriage, loyalty to family members, devotion to friends, or kindness to strangers.
Because the human heart—created in the image of God—enjoys the capacity for the inexhaustible growth of love’s generosity, it seeks lasting relationships that allow a person to love and to be loved more, to be true and constant always, and to be committed with vows that remain resolute throughout all the vicissitudes of life. With such ideals a person enters into the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony because it satisfies these deepest longings: for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, and till death do us part. Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “Brothers” captures this image of the human heart’s capacity for closeness, intimacy, and oneness in his description of two brothers’ affection: “How lovely the elder brother’s / Life all laced in the other’s, /Love laced!”
Human hearts are designed to be “love-laced,” that is, intertwined and intimately bound with the joys and sorrows of others who share a common life. The older brother’s joy is the other brother’s happiness. When the two become one in marriage or in family bonds (“love-laced” or bonded by the many threads of shared life experiences), one person’s joy or sorrow becomes the other person’s identical feelings. The two have become one. The human heart is created for the depths of love’s experience, not the ephemeral pleasures and sensations that come and go with no bonds, promises, or commitments.
Modernity’s many insidious attacks upon the family and marriage inevitably undo all the deep bonds and intimate relationships that give meaning to life and fulfill the deepest desires of the heart. They rend asunder everything that God has joined together. They reduce all the human relationships designed to be “forever” that rest on the commitment and dedication of a lifetime to brief interludes of pleasure that come and go in a world of perpetual change. Modernity makes marriage superficial or tentative, a trial and error experiment that can begin in cohabitation or become a marriage easily terminated at the initiative of either party in a “no –fault” divorce culture. It turns conception—the lifelong obligation and vocation of parenthood—into a termination of pregnancy. By destroying the lives of the unborn abortion hardens the human heart so that mothers and fathers do not bond with their children—the very children whose spared lives would awaken their hearts to love, cherish, and protect them in the intimacy of love. Without the bonding of love, all sense of the eternal, sacred, spiritual, and indissoluble nature of human relationships is debased to the hedonistic pleasure of the moment.
It is as if the human heart did not exist, as if it were not modeled upon the image of God; as if it had no capacity for love beyond a moment’s infatuation and thrill; as if it were powerless to keep promises and to be faithful, constant, and true; as if it had no potential for growth or multiplication, for what the poet John Donne called “Lovers’ Infiniteness”; as if man were only a body without a heart or soul; and as if love, marriage, families, and children were nothing but words whose definitions and meanings could be changed to satisfy the popular culture and fashionable ideas of the day rather than the most permanent and abiding sources of human happiness.
Mitchell Kalpakgian, Ph.D. has completed fifty years of teaching beginning as a teaching assistant at the University of Kansas, continuing as a professor of English at Simpson College in Iowa for thirty-one years, and recently teaching part-time at various schools and college in New Hampshire. As well as contributing to a number of publications, he has published seven books: The Marvelous in Fielding’s Novels, The Mysteries of Life in Children’s Literature, The Lost Arts of Modern Civilization, An Armenian Family Reunion (a collection of short stories), Modern Manners: The Poetry of Conduct and The Virtue of Civility, and The Virtues We Need Again. He has designed homeschooling literature courses for Seton Home School, and he also teaches online courses for Fisher More College and Fisher More Academy.
