Procreation (Episode 8)

Marriage, we discover, either through a discursive reflection on the Natural Law or through the promulgation of divine law, has two ends or purposes: the procreative and the unitive. St. Augustine admits of a third although it is contingent upon our lapsarian state, namely, the ordered channeling of lustful desires. Leaving this tertiary matter aside for a later season of this production, the present focus is on the first end procreation and only tangentially on the effect of procreativity toward genuine unity, which is also deserving of its own treatment in the future.

In short, procreation is misinterpreted as creation. Before we consider the prefix “pro,” let us turn to the root or main verb creo, creare, meaning “to create” as distinct from facio, facere, meaning “to do or make” or fabrico, fabricare, similarly meaning “to make” from preexisting matter or materials. To create is to bring into being “from nothing,” expressed in Latin as “ex nihilo.” This exciting addition of the letter “o” to the otherwise indeclinable word “nihil” stands out in Latin parlance as an extra reminder to us that only God properly creates. The metaphysical principle operating here is that an effect cannot be greater than its cause. Humans as creatures, that is, created beings, cannot exert the creative power that we ourselves do not possess. We cannot cause our own being. We can only improve or corrupt the existence bestowed upon us by our creator. Similarly, at our best we only reform, restructure, or relocated previously created things. This applies to material realities and immaterial, intellectual realities such as thoughts or sensations illumining a mental landscape that we did not ourselves create.

A simpler demonstration of this point comes to us through the third person imperative, sometimes called the divine imperative. In the Book of Genesis, God speaks forth creation, for example, “Let there be light.” The creative difference is the efficacy of God’s words, His divine command becoming manifest out of nothing.

The origin of this post was a long held resentment toward the developers of Microsoft productivity products during the years of my formal studies, in which the command for making a new document, presentation, or spreadsheet was signified by the menu phrase, “Create New Somesuchthing.” Perhaps, the teams at Microsoft were finally infiltrated by sleeper cell metaphysicians who convinced the user interface developers to truncate the aforementioned command to simply “New,” either as matter of calculated efficiency or an act of solidarity with our spelunkarious ancestors.

With creation liberated from the range of human action, that is, since parents do not properly create their children, what then is procreation? Procreation can be understood as the disposition of matter, which as it turns out is a common human occupation. Teachers dispose matter in the form of sound waves and light waves before unformed and uninformed students. Plato’s Socrates compares the philosophic teacher to the midwife who disposes mothers to meet their children. Farmers dispose the soil to receive crops. Craftsmen dispose raw materials into beautiful and useful forms. Beyond this material disposition is the exhortation for God’s intervention. The hortation remains in horticulture because only God opens the seed to bring forth produce, which leads us back to the prefix “pro.”

“Pro” bears the meaning of intention, hence “on behalf of” or “for the sake of.” Intention is not to be conflated with outcome or result. In 52 B.C., the Roman orator Cicero gave a speech in defense of his friend Milo who had been accused of murdering the Tribune Clodius. Although Cicero’s defense Pro Milone was unsuccessful in acquitting his friend, it is considered one of Cicero’s best rhetorical speeches. Cicero did the best he could toward the intended acquittal. Similarly, procreation and procreative acts are those which fulfill the necessary disposition of matter for the creation of a new human being by God. Procreative acts do not frustrate the fertilization of gametes through barriers, chemicals, or the disruption of the act once initiated. In short, the potential father and potential mother lay their fertility upon the altar of God just as a legal team rests its case before a jury or magistrate. The fruit resulting from this offering, the child in the womb, is a created gift, a singular and unrepeatable soul animating a body received from his or her parents but a body united irreversibly to this soul that will itself outlast mountains and the ocean deep.

The agents of a procreative act intend, desire, leave unhindered, that is, unleash the creativity of the creator to create something both new and everlasting in an old and ephemeral world. By maintaining the distinction between creation and procreation, we do not profane the former in an effort to elevate the latter, that is, making humans to be creators. Demographers have been working to help us with this truth concerning creation, procreation, and fertility. The de-population bombs now ticking for all developed nations, the epidemic of unplanned childlessness, and the infertility resulting from prior hormonal interventions recall for us the gift of fertility, its fragility, and the procreative purpose for marriage.