What Is Sex All About?
The twins' arrival had meant an abundance of work, had provoked a deluge of generosity from everyone and had given us an intense happiness. Then a cherry topped the cake — by the time Johanne's fifth birthday came by, her godparents were reuniting.
This was Jeannine's triumph, and Ronald's victory. When Ronald had pursued his private happiness by jilting his wife, Jeannine had been crushed and went through despair, anger and bitterness: "At the altar, I gave myself to him," she complained to Danielle. "It seems he did not do the same."
She soon discovered the uselessness of dwelling upon her just cause. She was helpless. Ronald had shut himself into his personal gratification, and she could not reach him. Instead, she buried herself in prayer. She did not run from reality — she ran to Reality. Nothing in nature and art can reach inside a human heart that will not answer a knock. God himself respects the power of human decision. But if the Maker is helpless before willfulness of pride, he can offer love-power to the weak directly inside their heart. This is the help that Jeannine sought. She sought it for the love of her man. There is no fulfilment in infidelity. If Ronald was to find himself, he must meet himself where he had committed himself to be.
This meant that Jeannine must start by forgiving. She did not simply dismiss or forget. She had been terribly hurt and her wounds were real. Yet she found in God the spiritual presence that allowed her to be hurt far more by her husband's distress than by the one he had brought upon her. Within this torture, she had peace. She was able to put Ronald's needs ahead of her own. And when Ronald's fancy weakened, as these things must, when his conscience cleared and suffered, he could visit his wife, complain of his growing unsatisfaction and find comfort in her words, her presence, her care. In this way Ronald was cured of himself and rediscovered his heart in Jeannine's.
Our daughter had also greatly suffered and prayed for her godparents and now had the joy of being united to them in their new apartment when they invited her for a few days' vacation.
We thanked the Lord for having calmed the tempest. In such times, it is evident that love has to be greater than the lovers, has to be Love. Otherwise, death would prevail in the heart and in the world.
* * *
The twins' arrival hastened our preoccupation with a demographic migration — in other words, a new house. Three out of our four children's rooms were now occupied to capacity. The next child would make it two children per room. The challenge was to find or build a house within walking distance of the schools and services in our small city, or to build outside and buy a car. We couldn't very well envisage a double leap in expenses for a larger house and a car. However, there were no lots free to build upon and the houses we visited were not adequate for family expansion. We needed more space and the more spacious houses mainly had larger rooms rather than more numerous rooms. It was proving difficult to find a house with more than five bedrooms, that was not a commercial hotel.
This did not prevent Danielle and me from inviting our next child to live with us. We were now beyond hesitation and reflection. If twins, which should have been a dramatic trial, had proven to be a pure benefit for everyone, what could we fear from a lone baby. The name François had not been used. We kept the name and we decided that we could fall back upon Hél ne in case of a girl.
Then two local businessmen planed to open up a new residential street at five minutes walking distance from our present home. I went to see one. The location was perfect but the lots would be terribly small: about a third less than what we presently owned. We were disappointed and wondered if more inside space could be bought at the expense of a yard to live in. In looking around for the improbable alternative, we approached a constructor of new houses were beyond walking distance for our needs. He told us about the new street being opened. We knew about it. But we didn't know that this man also had two large lots that would become usable just before the new development. In other words, because of the new street, we could buy a large terrain on which to build our home for the coming years.
Building a house allowed us to divide and organise as we wanted it, or rather as we needed it. We chose a prefabricated building with a basement that could be turned into living quarters with windows above ground. The regular model was 24 ft by 40. I ordered two more feet added to its length in order to have a longer kitchen on one side of the house and a longer child's bedroom on the other. The upper floor thus would allow us to have an immense new kitchen in which we would have a table for ten persons; next to the it, we would have the bathroom with the washer and dryer. That would be the end of the noise in the kitchen. Next there would be the master bedroom, which I termed "the workshop" — where we made the children. On the other side of the house, a small living room was next to the kitchen. Thanks to the open staircase and the front door and to a large passageway between kitchen and living-room, that room would allow eye-space and mobility that would make us forget how small it was. Beyond the staircase, there were two children's rooms. For the basement, I used the same plan as the upper level, save that a smaller bedroom than ours, a smaller toilet room and the absence of the kitchen allowed for three bedrooms on that side of the house. The other side had the same two bedrooms as above and a playroom under the living room. All told, our new house would have eight bedrooms. One for the parents and seven for the seven children. This would allow each child to have his own room to start off, and if our imagination were strictly arithmetical we could imagine fourteen children in our new home before needing another demographic migration.
* * *
The twins were born two years after Philippe. Before that, the average interval between births had been sixteen months. The late arrival of the twins' pregnancy had surprised us. Now the presence of Marie and Isabelle left us no time to wonder. Thus, when Baby decided to follow his young sisters' two year pattern, we had hadn't even noticed the time go by. He came into being sometime during the month of May following Marie and Isabelle's first birthday.
In June, Danielle's husband bravely gave her three days "off" (meaning he would be "on" during those days). She visited our two months old godchild Peter and his parents, Hél ne and Fred. Danielle's parents were only too happy to drive her down to Merrimack, New Hampshire, in order to have their daughter all to themselves for a short time. Fred told me what highway they should take to get to Manchester, and then Merrimack. Danielle's mother noted the highway number and gave another one to their driver, Danielle's father. She had found Manchester on the map and concluded that she had been given bad directions. That is, till they couldn't see the turn off for Manchester on the highway. They had passed it unnoticed. A check on the map confirmed that they had bypassed Manchester… Massachusetts. They were quite a way off Manchester, New Hampshire for which they should have taken the highway first suggested.
Gerry commented, later: "It's lucky there wasn't a bridge. You might have gone to Manchester England."
They arrived a few hours late, but happy. Danielle's parents stayed at a motel while Danielle stayed with our friends. There, the girls chatted, compared notes on their thirteen children, recalled past moments together, and Danielle especially admired our godchild. All too soon it was time to come back home.
Upon her return, she felt a back ache that gradually became acute. So much so, that for three days she had to stay in bed. Baby was making his presence felt. The physical changes he imposed upon his mother had weakened her back at this crucial time and the two days in the car had hurt her. It would take a few weeks and chiropractic help for her to regain her health. Her husband was drafted for house and family care. That summer, I got little time off for intellectual ventures.
* * *
It was 1941-42. The overwhelming superiority of the German war machine still did not prevent it from creeping at a snail's pace across the vastness of Russia, towards a rendez-vous with its inevitable doom. The Russian armies would soon reinforce and counter-attack, and neither Leningrad, Moscow, nor Stalingrad would have fallen into my hands. Worse, I was assured of a debacle of my forces. It proved to me that Avalon Hill's game of Stalingrad offered the same historical challenge the Germans had met and failed to overcome. — Of course, I had chosen the German side because I preferred an offensive campaign and had already won with the Germans against inferior wargamers. I figured I could do the same against Ronald's inexperience. But he proved to be a surprisingly apt warrior and a fast learner, and won.
The next time, I suggested we change sides so that I could do onto him as he had done onto me. He complied. And my Russian defence was totally annihilated by a surprisingly powerful German Wehrmacht. There was only one of two conclusions: either I was a rotten player or Ronald was a sheer genius. He was, of course, a genius.
As a child, I had delighted playing with toy soldiers. As a young adolescent, I had been mesmerised by the valour of the German army who, during World War II, had always won its major victories with inferior numbers of troops and had always lost when crushed by numbers. In my youthful enthusiasm, I had disregarded the politics, racism and brutality or the Nazi regime, concentrating on the abnegation, courage and military genius of the German people. Indeed, later as a teacher I could give the German love of the Fatherland as an example how love must either be boundless or the servant of tyranny. The German soldier gave his all to the egotism of his country and thus defiled his own love.
Yet the games of the past had caught up with the young man of the present as I discovered wargaming. Some teachers at college joined in with me to rewrite history, be it that of World War II, or of Alexander the Great or of Caius Julius Caesar. And Ronald also tried his hand in the new sport, revealing to me the surprising fact that he was brilliant.
We had studied philosophy together in a time when the philosophical consensus had not yet disintegrated. We both obtained good marks. The absence of debate between us and our ordinary conversations had never given me the chance to test his skills. Maybe I should have noticed how rapidly he had written a Master's thesis on Plato, which I read with delight. But my thesis on Chesterton had been written in the same time, and had been well appreciated by Carlos. Wargaming proved something altogether different. We battled each other, and Ronald had an extraordinary ease in drafting and carrying on flawless military strategies. His mental agility was confirmed on another occasion when I presented him with a game made of small pegs — the player had to jump one over another till there was be only one peg left. Michel, Anne-Marie's husband, teacher in physics and a highly practical man, had given up after a few tries. He suggested that the game was unfeasible. I had the proof to the contrary because a solution was given in the game package. When challenged, Ronald played some fifteen moves and stopped as he foresaw defeat. He tested a few short manoeuvres, and then won.
This genius, who had been bored by philosophy, now met success in music. He mastered the harpsichord, passed his exams with flying colours and was invited to teach at the same university.
While he and I dabbled in men's games, the ladies, Danielle and Jeannine, talked of superior matters — divinity. There was no doubt that it was Jeannine's spiritual life that had allowed her to pull their married life out of the horror it had gone through. Now Danielle was happy to be able to lend the complete works of the Spanish mystical writer, Teresa of Avila, to Jeannine and to talk about union with God.
Ronald had never had much interest in religion. Like nearly everyone in Québec, he was a fervourless Catholic. Like the growing majority, he had stopped religious practice. His fling outside the boundaries of Catholic morality had shredded any remnant of religious social habits. He had returned to Jeannine, because of her selfless affection towards him, but he didn't perceive any religious meaning in this. He respected his wife's private feelings, but didn't want her religion to include him.
Jeannine told Danielle that she was out to transform her husband. Their reunion was only the first step in their communion. She wouldn't let him stay out of the most important part of her life. She would work herself into his requirements in order to change him. Thus, when they went sailing each weekend, she didn't insist that her Sunday Mass interfere. She skipped the Mass, in order to save her man. Danielle and I didn't like the idea. We felt that God's influence in a another person's life can hardly follow from lessening his requirements in ours. On the other hand, Jesus had said: "The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath." It could be that Christ would pass through a sacrificed Mass, as long as it wasn't a case of Christ being sacrificed in the name of spiritual conquest.
Ronald and I didn't discuss religious matter. I had urged him one or twice to make the Spiritual Exercises, but he remembered a distasteful experience on a retreat during his college days which deterred him from trying again. He was not hostile; simply indifferent towards religion. So we played wargames and the like.
The nearest he allowed himself to religious experience was a course he took with Jeannine in Transcendental Meditation. He liked its psychological relaxation techniques, and didn't care for its metaphysics. So for a while Ronald and Jeannine would regularly do their half hour meditation exercises, even when they came to visit us. I even envied Ronald a bit because of his relaxation trick since I am naturally tense. Jeannine added that this inner road intensified her spirituality. Danielle agreed that there might certainly be some natural means to dispose oneself to spiritual meditation. But Danielle did not like it when Jeannine suggested that Teresa of Avila had made a mistake on a particular point in spiritual life. It is not given to everyone to have the visions of God that were given to Teresa of Avila. Danielle concluded that Teresa of Avila had the better experience to talk about spiritual life. — When Ronald found that the Transcendental Meditation movement wanted to lead them into a quasi-religious endeavour, he insisted that Jeannine and himself call it quits. Though this distressed Jeannine a bit, she gave in and took up culinary courses instead.
* * *
The Problem of God. Twenty-two students had chosen this complementary course for the autumn term. Some had chosen it because by they liked the subject; some because the courses they preferred were full.
I suggested that "the problem of God" was not God's problem. Either God exists or he doesn't exist. If he exists, as God he is assuredly beyond problems; if he doesn't exist, he cannot have any problems. It is our problem to ascertain whether he does exist and in what manner this can affect us. The only attitude that must be banned from the start is the popular assumption that God's existence depends upon each person's belief. A God that could alternately exist and not exist in accordance with the opinions of various persons was by far too miraculous to be possible. As for likings, they were quite irrelevant in the matter. Just wanting something to exist does not make it exist, nor does not wanting its existence prevent it from being. Thus, the English author, C.S. Lewis was miserable the time he was forced to submit to God's existence while the Oxonian author, Sheldon Vanauken, who was later to write A Severe Mercy, found pleasure in believing in a god of beauty whose nature could not be known by man and could not bother man — a kind of un-god. The misery of the first did not make God vanish nor did the pleasure of the latter diminish God's personality.
I asked everyone to state his belief or disbelief pertaining to God's existence and to state his reasons for such. I played the devil's advocate in order to illustrate the challenge we had to face. I was surprised to notice how an overwhelming majority had no qualms in admitting God's existence. Some were uncertain, but none denied.
When I was told how God's existence is the answer to the human need of personal love and of facing suffering and death, I suggested that human needs explained how some persons invented a God. But other persons face up to these needs without believing in God.
Some said the Bible testified to God's existence. I objected that there are contradicting sacred scriptures (those of Christianity and those of Islam, for instance). Why believe in one rather than an other, as honest believers can be found for all: therefore why believe in any?
Yet, I was told, some persons have experienced the presence of God. Experience cannot be passed on, I said. Why prefer one person's experience of God rather than another's certitude of God's non-existence?
One bright fellow said: nature testifies of God's existence. For instance, it is proven that green is the most refreshing colour for the eyes, and green is the most universal colour in nature. The fitness of green and the eyes proclaims the existence of an intelligent creator. Perhaps, I argued, but what if the eyes had simply appeared in a world that was green and therefore adapted to that colour?
I was surprised to see the keen interest with which these students followed the debate. After six years of teaching in this college, I seemed to have hit it right on the nail. Our hearts and minds were following the same patterns, living off the same vital questions, partaking of the same intellectual pleasure in formulating them and finding living answers to them. I felt the kind of excitement I had in my St. Boniface years.
Each year, I had managed to get one or another person interested in our path of thought and life. Now, there were so many interested that a whole class was being transformed. Then the students of God (The Problem of God) had friends who were not following that course. As I got these in other courses, they were sucked into our common thought and family. Danielle and the family also participated in the change, for we kept the habit of inviting students for a visit: we knew that anyone interesting in class would be interesting at home. He would come to lunch where he was immediately caught up in the swirl of attention and affection from the children, charmed by Danielle’s smile and seduced by her meals.
So it came to pass that this year and the following, some ten students became regular visitors in our home. One of them, a girl who sang and played the guitar, became our baby-sitter: she made the children behave by threatening not to sing another song if they were not nice.
In The Problem of God, we studied ten classical difficulties to admit God's existence formulated by Lucretius a half-century before the birth of Christ. We marvelled in finding how human imagination is definitely limited. The only novelty atheism has dug up since then is the ridiculous assumption that there is no God because man is God. Lucretius had already presented the really serious confusions. But they were serious enough to bewilder and perplex some of the believers in class and tempt others into an anti-rational "leap of faith defence". Whatever their reaction, they were fascinated by the subject. They felt it necessary to defend their hearts with their minds. The few who had started with indecision were definitely knocked out by Lucretius.
Then we walked the road back, noticing along the way how Lucretius mixed perspectives in order to leave us dead in a dead universe. The class was surprised by one distinction. Lucretius says that Time is a master element of evolution that explains the appearance of various natures far better than "the gods" (as he calls God). I had a student read a few paragraphs of Lucretius and asked the rest of the class to time him. Then I asked them: "Was the reading done by Edouard or by your watch?"
In other words, time is a measurement of events and not a cause. Therefore, the answer to the question "what time does it take for something to happen?" does not answer the question "what causes this to happen?".
When Lucretius states that the gods are unreal because they are beyond the reach of the mind, we distinguished between the kind of ignorance that comes from nothing and the kind that comes from something too strong for the mind. There is a great difference between the obscurity of the dunce and that of the teacher of physics. Thus God is unclear to us not because he is nothing, but because he is too bright for our minds. — When Lucretius says men have invented the gods because they feared suffering and death, we noted that this does not account for those men who are willing to suffer and die for God.
At the end of the term, there was so much growth and harmony in class that I could tell them: "We have seen how reason tells us of God's existence. But it is far better to meet God personally, which the Spiritual Exercises allow. Beyond the intellectual exercises we have made, you can do exercises of your spirit."
And within two years, some dared to go first, then then told their friends. More than fifteen students exercised themselves in this way. This is not to say that their lives were forever transformed. They got a taste of God amidst the difficulties of life. Then their lives were their own.
With some of these students and friends, the following term, we made a rigorous analysis of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. The pattern of action in that world seemed inhuman and yet so logical, till we uncovered its logical error. The story applies a technological mind working to make humans happy. But everything rises or falls on this "make". The object of the Brave New World is to construct a man, to make man into something, rather than to educate man into someone. So the child is a subject bred and trained by technicians rather than a person personally loved and educated by his parents. Of course, sex becomes an object of selfish pleasure enslaving the heart to felt-needs rather than an invitation to fix one's heart upon the true needs of the loved one.
This study was an eye-opener upon the world we now live in and the paths we are called to choose. — One student said that in this study she had for the first time seen what it is to reason correctly.
* * *
François was a marvellous baby: just what the doctor ordered. He first gave notice of his coming on the morning of Wednesday, January 18. The winter term had just begun so I had no major disruption of my courses. He was born a 10:16 in the evening so his parents could both have a good night's rest. He weighed 8 lbs, 9 ounces and was 21.5 inches long. He equalised the boy-girl ratio in the family, four to four. But, most important, he had the easy and direct Christine, Claude and Isabelle temperament: easy to live with.
The birth had gone so well that Danielle was fit for the baptism the Sunday after the birth. — François' godparents were Bernard and Margot. They were the last of the Manitoban connection started when Maurice (now Claude's godfather) had come to study at Laval University's Faculty of Philosophy. Margot was Maurice's sister and Bernard had studied at the St. Boniface College under the able professorship of my friend and replacement. After Laval, he went on to teach at the same college as Gerry and Maurice.
Some of my Godstudents came at the baptism. One of them read from Holy Scripture. When it was over, Bernard and I decided to walk back home and let the women go by car. As we left the Church, I said with relief, with Bernard's assent: "We're rid of the ladies."
One of the boys with us was surprised, shocked.
I told him: "Don't worry. Your time will come. For the moment, you can't have enough time with your girl, because you live separately. But when you're married and with her all the time, you'll appreciate a moment's freedom."
When he was married a few years later, he liked it when we left the women at home and went together to the movies in Quebec City. It was the difference between a possessive passion and the tranquillity of love.
François stood up by himself at the age of eight months, a family record. By that time, his teeth were growing and he weaned himself by biting Danielle's breast. He went from breasts to the drinking cup, without having the bottle.
François had one handicap: his twin sisters. As they were his immediate superiors and spoke twin to each other and to him, he found it very difficult to develop a language that older people could understand. He was prevented from an easier and more fruitful intercourse with them. Even when he started school, his speech would sometimes falter and he would occasionally repeat his first word several times before he began conversing, giving the impression of a mild stutter. But this would not affect his mind as he soon would be getting strait eighties in class as Christine had done some years before.
The presence of his twin sisters also made it harder for us to concentrate especially on him. They being two, I could not have enough time to take over their care so that Danielle could be mainly concerned with the newborn. Since Mrs Pelletier now regularly givin a helping hand to Danielle, I did not feel guilty for working in other ways in the family. That Danielle was now the daily mother of three youngsters first appeared to be at François' disadvantage. And yet the equilibrium of the household was simply changing as the older ones grew and left for school and the younger found themselves together all day at home. The attention we could not give to François was had from brothers and sisters. He wasn't a lonely abandoned child: his happy composure assured us that he knew himself to be important to each and every one of the family. — He made us enter into the realm of what is known as large families.
* * *
As Danielle cared for the newborn and the twins, and the rest of us, she didn't have any time for study groups. When the children had been put to bed, she immediately followed suit. So, some of my Godstudents and I began studying S. Paul's "Letter to the Ephesians" at the college. We met one hour on Wednesday afternoons to read a paragraph at the time, then to seek its meaning and implications for us. We finally happened upon Ephesians' 5, 22 and following: "Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband has authority over his wife just as Christ has authority over the Church; and Christ is himself the Saviour of the Church, his body. And so wives must submit themselves completely to their husbands just as the Church submits itself to Christ. — Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the Church and gave his life for it."
Because of Danielle's total commitment, she and I never had any problems with this truth and the practice of its teaching. But a teacher must enter by way of his students in order to help them enter into the way of common wisdom. So we tried to understand this truth in the context of the contemporary fascination for the value of the individual.
It was easy to understand that a person who submits to God does not loose anything: on the contrary, he enters into divine life and become godly. Also, a person who chooses to refuse to be filled by God's life bottles himself into his own misery and nothingness. Because love is free, the submission of love does not entail any loss of nobility. On the contrary, to be content with one's stupidity is the real loss of nobility: like the dunce in class who refuses to learn that 2 and 2 make 4 (or that E = MC2) because he will not accept to under another person's influence. And since this submission is asked by a loving God, his intentions are honest. He wants our good. This is the opposite of slavery. That is the relation Christ has with the Church and the one he would have spouses espouse. The woman is invited to tell her husband: "I am yours", while the husband wishes to lay the world at her feet. Christ wants to rule over our hearts and gave his life for us so that we might enter into the Kingdom of his Father. That is Love.
We thought this out together. Mary, mother of Jesus was asked to give herself to the Lord: she freely accepted and grew into the Mother of God. Then we looked at Jesus in Gethsemani. He had a personal will which did not feel like following his father's mind. Yet, he said: "Not my will, but yours." And against the love of two wills become one, the Divider, the devil, could no longer triumph. He could kill, but Love would be stronger than death.
From this we gathered that the feminine and the masculine can only be united through obedient love. In order that "the two become one flesh", as S. Paul added. In a similar way, Mary had been united to God, the Church was united to Christ, and Christ was united to the Father. The rest followed. We, as the Church, would be feminine, wedded to the living Christ and led by him to the Father. On the other hand, the priest, though chosen from among us, is consecrated in persona Christi (in the person of Christ) to bring God to us. He gives us the Word, the Body and Blood of Christ. He is the husband, therefore masculine. There can be revulsion against this only when egotism instead of love becomes the norm of human sexuality. Neither Mary, nor the Church, nor Christ can lose in obedient love. They could have lost only if they had tried to use the spouse for personal profit. — It made sense.
I went further... too far. I suggested that Jesus could even be the feminine principle within Trinity whereas the Father was the masculine Principle (and the Holy Spirit, their Love). After all, hadn't Genesis told us that "God created man in his image, in the image of God he created him; man and woman he created them." The pattern was perfect. — But life is freer than a pattern. I was shown later how Holy Scripture has never admitted a feminine principle within God. What of Christ obedient love? I remembered Saint Paul writing to the Philippians about Christ: "for he was by nature in the very form of God, yet he did not regard existence in equality with God as something to be snatched at, but he emptied himself, and took the very form of a servant and became like men" (2, 6-7). Thus it was as God-made-man that Christ could oppose and reconcile the two wills by obedient love. In other words, obedient love supposes a principle of privation, by which to receive the lovers' command. That is the case of Christ before the Father at Gethsemani, of Mary before the Lord, of the Church before Christ and of the wife before the husband. The nut cannot receive the bolt without a hole. These two minds are made to be one and reflect the Lord and his Creation.
Could it be that the wife was like the creature before her God, her husband? That would simply be turning the pattern the other way round. In fact, when man refuses to love God, God loses nothing and man loses everything. But the husband does lose his integrity when his wife refuses to love him. Man was created "man and woman" because "it is not good that man (the human in each of the spouses) be alone". God is never alone as he is Father, Son and Holy Spirit; that is why he is Love and not simply in love. And so the masculine bolt needs the firm grip of the feminine nut and she must receive him within her whole self in order to have man. Both husband and wife have a privation in need of the other, though obedient love is their way to unite.
In God, there is an equality between the divine persons and a fusion of the divine Father and Son in the Spirit of Love, as wife and husband are united in love. But there is a difference: no obedience within God. In the relation between men and God, there is a fusion of love through obedient love, because of inequality. And within the couple, there is an equality whose fusion is made possible by obedient love. Thus, man and woman were created equal and in love, in the image of God, yet they wed in obedience in the image of Christ and the Church.
Well, regardless of what these thoughts are worth, our faith is not in our reason but in the Word of God. And Danielle's obedience to me and my commitment to her were mapped upon God's guidelines. This is not to mean that we never failed; but whenever we failed before God, we failed before ourselves. And whenever we succeeded in following the divine order, we found our own gratification.
* * *
"Tell me Georges, would you and your wife accept to talk about your family experience to our adult student nurses?"
"When would that be?"
"At eight thirty on Thursday evening."
I dislike public appearances and I was happy to have an honest reason to refuse: "I'm really sorry but François is still too young. After Danielle has spent the day caring for him, she is too bushed to got out for an evening."
I knew Danielle would be far happier to stay at home.
"Well, then, maybe you could still come alone. Our students would like to hear something of your experience."
I was a flattered; but I also couldn't find another satisfactory excuse, so I accepted.
It turned out to be an oddities night for the student nurses. I was on display with a mother who insisted upon giving birth at home and a husband who was castrated (vasectomied) because he and his wife did not want another child together. Should they divorce, then she might want a child from her new man, while he would still prefer to be childless with another woman. Of course, our oddity was our immense family.
The students were polite and I was having fun: "Er, aren't you contributing to the problem of overpopulation?"
"If there is an overpopulation somewhere, it can hardly be said to be here where the birthrate is now below the zero population growth. We could be seen as part of a solution rather than as part of a problem."
"Aren't you afraid it will cost you too much to care for all these children?"
"Not with public medical insurance, family allowances and public schools."
"Don't you think it's a bit like having others pay for you?"
"Let's look at it this way. With the plummeting birth rate in this country, it will be our children who will be earning your old age pensions."
"Yes, but what about jobs? The young people are having a hard time finding jobs. How will your children fare?"
"Well, everyone expects there will soon be a war, and we'll be in need of soldiers."
The woman gawked at me, fearing I was serious. I reassured her.
"The coming decline in manpower because of the declining birth-rate should make our children's work indispensable in a near future. However, should there be a war, we have a greater probability than most others of having survivors..."
"But, surely, with so many children, you cannot give enough love and attention to each one."
"Love does not divide: it multiplies. Each of our children has nine persons who love him personally. This also multiplies the possibilities of getting personal attention even if it is not always the attention of mother or father. Also, the lesser number of children do not seem to assure them of more parental care if we can judge by the day-care centres popping up everywhere. Our children always have at least one parent on hand."
"Isn't it tremendous work for your wife to take care of EIGHT children? Isn't she ever exhausted?"
"She is sometimes exhausted, as anyone is in a worthwhile job. But each child is far more worth while than many a job."
"That's all very nice, but does your wife say the same thing?"
"She considers herself to be very happy and wouldn't change jobs with anyone. As for her consent, no child ever came without her consent and her wish."
"Er, of course."
I earned my oddman's diploma, and so did the other two. The nurses couldn't understand how a woman could risk her child's health and life simply for the pleasure of giving birth at home. Nor could they understand that a couple could plan for a possible divorce and their life with new partners, while still in love with each other. — Each of us received some time later a charming letter of thanks for our participation in the nursing class.
When I came back home that night, Danielle was fast asleep. The next day, I told her what had been said. We both agreed that the other two were sorrowfully odd and we were happy to be a healthy normal couple.
* * *
We would have liked to enter into our new house when each child had his private room, if only for a few months. But the city constructed the new road too late to build it in autumn. Then François was born. So our house was built in the spring, and we entered it at the beginning of July. François would bunk with Marie, while Isabelle would be in the other child's room upstairs. Downstairs, Christine, Michel, Johanne, Claude and Philippe each had their room.
Our new home was a paradise with space, wide open space. And windows. In our previous home, the kitchen faced North so we hardly had a glimmer of sun in that room. We had a window above the sink, but it had been a small window. Therefore, the electric light was often on. I made sure that the house be built with the kitchen facing West with its side to the South. Spouth, there was a door window and another large window. West, there was a second large window and a small one above the kitchen sink. The sun entered the kitchen with its first rays and left it at the end of the day. Indeed, there was now so much sun that during the hottest summer days, we had to shut the curtains and windows all day in order not to suffocate. And during the winter, we needed tp put the heat on only when the sun had set. — The yard was also immense, bigger than the entire lot we had previously owned.
The house had been conceived in accordance with the Paulinian principle, if we may call it that — the principle of obedient love.
When Danielle and I realised that this was it, that we were really going to have a new house built for us, we started discussing how it would be. We now had the experience of past apartments and of a house. We had noticed what was lacking in the houses we had visited. We wanted to be sure to have the perfect home. So we talked, discussed, and even argued points. And arguments are harassing. Then Danielle made the conscious decision to leave all decision-making to me. She was content to suggest things occasionally but would abide strictly by my decisions. Needless to say that the pressure I had previously felt completely dissolved so I could think about our house without constraint. And I thought about what would be best for Danielle and the children.
When we entered into our house, it was exactly what Danielle desired, even better she says. Whereas the previous years, Danielle and I took pleasure looking around at other houses and wondering whether we would like to own one or another, our new house terminated Danielle's participation in that kind of day-dreaming. Her only wish was to remain in the new house always. And one of her greatest moments of pride was when, upon entering it, I told her: "Well, here is the house I have had built for you."
She flushed with joy. — This was an experimental confirmation of the Paulinian principle.
In the following months, a great joy for each member of the family would be show off our new home to friends.
* * *
A new school year had begun. I visited Ronald at the University. After saying hello, I noticed that his old books of philosophy, always at home, were now on his office shelves. I joked: "Has your wife kicked you out?"
"Yes," he answered.
"It's a joke," I said in shocked incredulity.
"It's not a joke. It's a fact."
"It's a joke," I kept mumbling.
Jeannine had found a "purer" love than his. She had forged her own God in Transcendental Meditation. When Ronald had decided that their involvement in that movement was going bad, she had pretended to quit, and had begun lying. She had taken culinary courses, which did not exist. She simply kept following Transcendental Meditation courses and moving nearer to her "divinity". And her infidelity in words became one in fact. There, she found a chap who levitated far better than Ronald...
Danielle and I thought Johanne might once more help reunite her parents-in-God, her godparents. I would keep in touch with Ronald and Danielle with Jeannine, and Johanne could be their common affection. It had worked berfore and it might work again. It didn't.
Ronald's infidelity had been founded on his weakness and he had never indulged in self-justification. Jeannine's madness was made up of a spiritual pride that proved impenetrable. When Danielle phoned her, Jeannine said with irony: "I guess you are shocked and disapproving once more."
"Yes," Danielle answered. "I'm still as I was."
"Well," said Jeannine, "that's a pity. But I have to take care of my own fulfilment."
Danielle suggested that Jeannine could keep in touch with Johanne. Jeannine conceded that point.
Then Jeannine sent Johanne a letter. Johanne was now seven years' old. As it was my responsibility, I first read the letter. In it, Jeannine was explaining to Johanne that she had found a terrific God she wanted Johanne to know. Jeannine' attempt to foster her cult upon Johanne made me brutal. With Danielle's sorrowful agreement, I wrote back to Jeannine and told her that as long as she persevered with her Lord of infidelity, we did not want her to get in touch with our daughter. If she wanted to have God's opinion on her actions, she could read Matthew 19, 3-9: «Some Pharisees came to him and tried to trap him by asking, "Does our Law allow a man to divorce his wife for whatever reason he wishes?"
Jesus answered, "Haven't you read the scripture that says that in the beginning the Creator made them male and female? And God said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and unite with his wife, and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. Man must not separate, then, what God had joined together."
The Pharisees asked him, "Why, then, did Moses give the law for a man to hand his wife a divorce notice and send her away?"
Jesus answered, "Moses gave you permission to divorce your wives because your hearts are hardened. But it was not like that in the beginning. I tell you, then, that any man who divorces his wife, except in the case of an adulterous union, commits adultery if he marries another woman; and a man who marries a repudiated woman also commits adultery."
I went to see Johanne with both her godmother's letter and mine. I read and explained both to Johanne. She cried a lot and we shared her distress. And we promised to pray with her each day in order that God would help her godparents: help her godfather endure and forgive a woman who had done the same to him two years before; help her godmother find the light of the mind and, mainly, the warmth of the heart.
Some friends suggested we had been too harsh to our daughter and should not have told everything to so young a child. We figured that, harsh as reality may be, truth is the best approach to it. Truth best allows our hearts to respond to reality. And Johanne carried her wound with the generous love of a godchild given to a woman now in dear need of her before God. This generosity imposed upon Johanne was her best cure, and we couldn't give her less than the best.
We did not judge Jeannine. It is not given to us to judge inner guilt. But it is our responsibility to give a person every chance for her outer infidelity to be cured by her inner sincerity or for her inner infidelity to be reconciled with the Lord who created her in Love.
* * *
My colleague Anne-Marie, having chosen her man, had also chosen to be a wife and a mother. Any major change in personal habits are difficult. So she found it difficult to leave philosophy and teaching. But it seemed natural to her and her husband that their mutual commitment should be fruitful beyond mutual admiration and complacency. They did not opt against teaching and philosophy, but in favour of their newborn daughter.
A new teacher of philosophy arrived at our college. He was a man of the hand as much as of the mind. During the summer and half of his first term, Jacques had left his family behind and had built their house from a house kit. He loved the countryside and chose a spot outside the city limits overlooking the St. Lawrence River. He was a great admirer of Gandhi and of Gandhi's European disciple, Lanza Del Vasto. His preoccupation for the inner life and love of Nature offered a refreshing contrast with the grosser contemporary issues of economic profiteering or revolutionary action. In a way, he could be said in advance of his time, as intellectual fashions go: he was attuned to the ecological and pacifist message that would arise after the debunking of the Marxist-Leninist ideology by Soljenitsyn and the gruesome revelations made possible by Mao's death, and after the unsavoury shallowness of the conservative economic philosophy. In the college where he had previously taught, he had been in continuous opposition to the Marxist majority of philosophy teachers. But as his own views would now begin to gain social momentum, he himself would be gaining a better understanding both of Nature and of the use of force and would no more profit from the new fashion than he did from the previous one. This illustrated his freedom of mind.
He had of course been astonished when I went trough the tiresome motions of revealing him the family secret that we had SEVEN children. That was before François was born. He had told his wife that there was a strange fellow teaching philosophy at his new college. A young teacher who had SEVEN children. They themselves had the usual girl and boy. They couldn't conceive that some people hardly older than they could be acting the way we did.
Yet, the wives hit it off quite well, while the husbands' interest in the philosophy of nature and nature as philosophy helped them to communicate. We became good friends. Then Jacques and his wife met Anne-Marie and Michel and became friends with them also.
One evening, the three couples were having delicious filet mignon at Anne-Marie's house when I prodded Jacques about his vegetarian inclinations. Jacques was eating his steak while explaining why vegetarianism was a higher form of life though not a moral necessity. Danielle was amused and amazed to see how a man (as opposed to a woman) could put such distance between his palate and his mind.
Jacques read from the book of Genesis where God tells man: "I have provided all kinds of grain and all kinds of fruit for you to eat; but for all the wild animals and for the birds I have provided grass and leafy plants " (Gn. 1, 29-30). No mention is made of either men or animals eating animals. What about Christ eating fish? Well, the Fall transformed our world into a world of violence where animals prey upon animals and men eat flesh. And Christ entered into such a world. But that time will pass as the Lord will make a new kingdom, the New Jerusalem. And Jacques referred us to Isaiah's description of this kingdom where "wolves and sheep will live together in peace, and leopards will lie down with young goats" and when "lions will eat straw as cattle do" (Is. 11, 6-7).
Jacques was freshly conversant in his subject matter whereas Anne-Marie and Michel and Danielle and I were unacquainted with that use of the Bible. We had to tangle with it by using our vague memories of different passages from the Bible.
"What about the time the Lord orders Peter to eat meat that was "ritually unclean or defiled" telling him: "Do not consider anything unclean that God has declared clean" (Acts 10, 11-15)?"
"That's all right. We are in the in between time. But it is far better to abstain from eating flesh, though the lesser life can still eat some."
Then I remembered Saint Paul writing somewhere about food. I leafed through his letters and found this in his first letter to the Corinthians, where he speaks about food offered to idols: "Some people have been so used to idols that to this day when they eat such food they still think of it as food that belongs to an idol; their conscience is weak, and they feel they are defiled by the food. Food, however, will not improve our relation with God; we shall not lose anything if we do not eat, nor shall we gain anything if we do eat.
"Be careful, however, not to let your freedom of action make those who are weak in the faith fall into sin. Suppose a person whose conscience is weak in this matter sees you, who have so-called ‘knowledge,’ eating in the temple of an idol; will not this encourage him to eat food offered to idols? And so this weak person, your brother for whom Christ died, will perish because of your ‘knowledge’! And in this way you will be sinning against Christ by sinning against your Christian brothers and wounding their weak conscience. So then, if food makes my brother sin, I will never eat meat again, so as not to make my brother fall into sin" (Cor. 8, 7-13).
"That's it," Jacques said. "There is no obligation to be a vegetarian. Weaker persons don't have to be, and we can respect their taste for meat."
"Hold on," Michel and I insisted. "The weak mind, here, would be the vegetarian. For Saint Paul, the matter of food is not a matter of faith. It is the weak mind that makes such differences between foods."
Jacques was sorely troubled. He read and reread Saint Paul. For Michel and I, this was just a sporting event. For him, it was the battering of his Masters' teaching. Was Lanza Del Vasto's Gandhian teaching a stronger form of Christianity, as he had been led to believe, or a weaker one as this interpretation would imply? This was terribly important for him, because he had never doubted Christ was greater than Gandhi. He spent a sleepless night trying to sort things out.
His final encounter with the Gandhian jumble came out of our reflection upon pacifism. I objected that the soldiers who had liberated the prisoners in the German concentration camps were ethically correct in their forceful enterprise. To have refused to help these prisoners — when they could — on the ground that the use of force is always immoral would have made them accomplices of the Nazi violence.
"There is no problem there," Jacques answered. "Violence is always an evil. But there are times when a lesser evil can be done in order to prevent a greater evil. Gandhi himself said that he would have struck down an aggressor who attempted to kill his child. But that is the exception that illustrates the rule."
"I'm sorry, but the moral principle is not that we may do a lesser evil in order to prevent a greater evil. It is that we may endure a lesser evil rather than provoke a greater evil. At least, that is the Christian version of it. A Christian may never sin. The end never justifies the means. For a Christian, it is never evil to use force against violence. Force is simply the use of strength in favour of human rights. What is evil is the misuse of force, which becomes violence. However, there are cases when a legitimate use of force would provoke a greater violence: such as a hopeless rebellion that must provoke a horrible repression. Then it is better to endure the lesser evil of tyranny rather than provoke the greater evil of repression and tyranny."
Jacques worked this out and noticed how immoral his theory of ethics had been, even if its Masters were undoubtedly very moral men. Here again, he sided with Christianity and finally discarded, not without pain, the oriental philosophy that had helped him to go part of the way.
* * *
"Have you heard the news on the radio?"
Edouard, a God-student, had caught up with me as I was walking to work after lunch that autumn day.
"What news?"
"The new Pope has been chosen. He's an Italian and I don't remember his name. The radio spokesman says he will be called John Paul, John Paul I."
"What an absurd name," I retorted gruffly. "He can't have chosen that kind of a name. There has never been a Pope with a double name."
"Maybe I misunderstood, then," the student said.
But it was John Paul I. We got our first glimpse of him on the six o'clock news. And like millions of other spectators around the world, we immediately fell in love with him, with his smile. The smiling Pope, as he was dubbed. We had been shocked that a Pope could smile. In the last years of his life, Paul VI has persistently showed a gloomy face to his public. While speaking to a group of visitors, he had even once suggested that something might be true in the Apocryphal gospel that said Christ had never laughed. Of course this was not divine revelation nor an article of the Faith. But it reflected his own state of mind. His state of mind was not a psychological disorder. It fitted the ordeal he went through. Thousands of the Church's priests and members of the religious orders throughout the world had abandoned their vows of exclusive commitment to Christ. The catechetical and liturgical adaptations asked for by Council Vatican II were in many places becoming excuses for half-baked crack-pot experimentations. Authorisations for limited experimentations became occasions for sweeping changes. And his pronouncement on contraception met opposition from vast groups of laity, priests and bishops, so much so that his letter on the subject, Humanae Vitae, was the last formal letter (or encyclical) he wrote. Yet that was only five years after his election to the papacy and ten years before his death. Paul VI lived through the Passion of Christ's Church and bore the air of suffering. Suddenly, here was Pope John Paul I, smiling, and joking and telling stories... and ordering an end to the automatic lifting of priestly vows, as each case would now be decided by him.
We were still full of gratitude and amazement when, a few weeks later, I turned on the radio while preparing breakfast. The spokesman began the news with: "This morning, at the Vatican, Pope John Paul I ..."
I half-humorously wondered what kind of stunt he had done to make the first headline in the news.
"... was found dead in his bed."
I was stunned. Then goose bumps came all over me as I felt a cold grip upon my heart. I told Danielle and the children. We were distressed, as were friends and millions around the world.
* * *
The television announcer said the new Pope was XZUYSXSZZZA, or something like that. We would wait to read it somewhere. The new Pope chose the name John Paul II. The announcer was sorry that he couldn't tell us much about him, except that he was a Pole, the Bishop of Krakow. The press service had been taken by surprise. They had over seventy biographies of papable cardinals ready, but they had overlooked this one.
John Paul II also smiled. But there was a profound gravity in his smile, and in his voice, that bespoke of spiritual density, of mystical life. He told us "Do not be afraid", like the angel of the Lord had said on the day of resurrection in announcing that the Lord had risen from the dead. And we felt that John Paul II was a man full of the resurrected Christ, out to conquer the world for God. And he maintained John Paul I's new policy on priestly vows. Could it be that the Lord had acted upon his Church as he had done upon Paul the Apostle? He had let the ills in us debilitate us in order that his power was better manifested in our weakness (see II Corinthians 12, 1-10). And now was the time for his power to start working.
* * *
At the time of Danielle's pregnancy of François, Jacques's wife was pregnant of their second girl and third child, Anne-Marie became pregnant of Christiane, who would become our godchild, and another friend's wife was also pregnant with David, her fourth child. All told, our combined families would have seventeen children. The simultaneousness of these pregnancies brought the women close together. A year after François' birth, the mothers had recuperated from the physical, mental and spiritual investment of these births. So we decided to organise a study group.
Our study group was built upon the division of sexes and the unity of the couples: one evening per month, the boys would meet at my office at college while the girls met at our home. Those meetings were for discussion purposes. Whereas the boys had biblical texts on love and family to talk about, the ladies would compare notes on particular difficulties of marital life. Anne-Marie wrote a summary of her group's discussions while I wrote the one of the men's discussions. Two weeks later after that meeting, the four couples would dine together at one or another's home. That meeting was purely for friendship purposes, and we chatted at random about anything. These meetings lasted a few months and we derived pleasure and mutual comfort from the experience, though the other ladies were more prudent than Danielle on the subject of future pregnancies: they deemed her to be rather reckless. The men had lesser difficulties to be unanimous as they spoke abstractly, the same way Jacques had managed to eat his filet mignon while speaking out against it.
At our second supper, the devil's advocate — who else but me — came up with a new subject: trial marriages. All the participants recoiled before such a suggestion. That did not deter its advocate: "In order for the couple and the child to make a success of marriage, a trial period of living together should be mandatory for the lovers."
"But, isn't true love a total commitment that flows over in fecundity? A trial marriage has no commitment and cannot be fetrile. Therefore it destroys the meaning of love."
"Your definition of love is perfect," the advocate purred. "It is in order to give such a total and fertile love the best chances of success that a trial period is desirable: the couple will be better prepared to make a definitive and knowledgeable choice."
"But concubinage is all false: the couple is obliged to please in order to keep the partner satisfied and faithful. Marriage is a permanent status notwithstanding disagreements and discomforts."
"Come now," said the devil, " if marriage is opposed to love, that is opposed to making the other happy and satisfied, you can hardly take its defence in the name of love."
"But the Church of Christ is opposed to trial marriages."
"Is that your best you can do? I thought that Christ and his Church were in favour of love. If trial marriages can insure a better love, surely Christ and the Church had better change policies. That is what we say in our Kingdom down below."
Trial marriage seemed to offer to the lovers the security of mutual knowledge and of experience, in order to help them make a true loving commitment. And yet it went against the grain of our marital feelings and the teachings we held to be divine. Why was this?
Mutual knowledge. No amount of knowing each other can insure a couple's future. How is it otherwise that some couples divorce after five years, ten years, twenty years of living together? It can't come from a lack of knowledge. Indeed, the fundamental element of love remains commitment. Commitment is an act of the will: I'll stick by you through thick and thin. In other words, I'll stick by you when my feelings are pulling me in the other direction. Otherwise marriage becomes a silly matter of feeling good: something we don't need when we're feeling in love and something we don't want when we're no longer feeling in love. But God knows that love is what we need most when the feeling had gone rotten. That is when we need someone to stick by our side. Therefore courtship gives enough knowledge of the other to commit oneself, and no amount of living together could add anything useful to the knowledge, as the deficiency in marriages stems from a misdirection or lack of will-power, that is love-power.
Yes, but couldn't the trial experience tell us if we have enough will-power to go through life together? How can lovers expect to be faithful to a kind of life of which they have no experimental knowledge? — What tears couples apart? Well, there is the post-marriage boredom, followed by diverging interests. He likes his sport better than his girl, whereas she likes dabbling in this or that or even caring for the children rather than caring for her hunk of growing blubber. In other words, they are being torn apart because they get to feel good, even better, with something (or someone else). Their mutual passion strikes out while a new one is on base. Isn't that it?
Yes, that was it. We had all experienced it.
And to pull through, we've got to fight this new passion, we got to keep it in line with our commitment. Isn't that it?
Yes, that was it. There's not a couple sticking together any given length of time that did not stay together through times when there were evident reasons to seek personal fulfilment elsewhere. We could all vouch for that.
Well, was it tough to wait till wedding day before making it together?
Was it ever.
Wasn't this the experience of fighting a passion in order to keep it in line with a coming commitment?
It was.
And that was the answer to the proposal of trial marriages. Those "trial" periods only try the easy thing in marriage: the fulfilment of desire. Their equivalent within married life would consist in giving in to a passion that distracts from the spouse. On the contrary, a courtship that refuses the passionate fulfilment till it receives its full meaning in the mutual commitment of marriage experiences the hard fact of marriage: sticking to someone against the tyranny of misguided feelings.
Dessert was over. Each couple exited to its family, refreshed by friendship, a good meal and a pleasant evening.
* * *
"Should we cry?" Christine asked her mother.
At the end of February, a new baby that should have been born in October bluntly parted company from us. For the children, who were full of joy at the thought of having a new brother or sister, a miscarriage was a distressing novelty. Even though Danielle and I had gone through that experience before, it remained distressing for us. Birth and death may be repetitive events, but they happen only once to each person.
Danielle had suddenly had a loss of blood that spilled on the bathroom floor as she hurried to sit on the toilet and then fit herself with pads to stop the flow of blood. I was at college. She ordered Christine (now ten years old), to keep the children into the kitchen while she then cleaned the floor. I arrived as she was calling the taxi. She rushed to the hospital where a doctor took a small round ball out of her.
To our surprise, there was no one in the amniotic sac. This turned out to be an aborted (natural) abortion. It would seem that the fertilised egg, if there had been one, had disintegrated from the start while Nature kept on working till it received a vacancy report three months later.
"Should we cry?" Christine had asked her mother.
Had there ever been a baby? We did not know. Maybe yes. Maybe not.
"It is a hard experience to go through," Danielle answered. "However, if there was a baby, we can be confident that he is now in God's tender care and far better off than we can be on earth. If there was no baby, we can thank God for giving us some moments of joyful expectancy and get down to making a new baby as soon as possible."
Danielle took care to recuperate. When she visited her doctor a month later he was surprised to see how thoroughly well she was. Thus, when she asked him when she should be ready to become pregnant again, he answered: "Usually I would say after a three month rest period, but you are so rested up that I can only say you may become pregnant whenever you wish."
Now was when we wanted to, and Jean-Paul (for John Paul II, of course) or Hél ne was made in May… a present for François' second birthday in next January.
Danielle said: "I know we'll once again miss the tax rebate for this year, but I tried my best. It's not my fault if the Lord cheated on us. So, take it up with him, this time."
* * *
At the end of that school year, the God-students left college, most of them for university. Edouard went off to philosophy at Laval. Three boys and one girl opted for theology at the same university. Of these, two went on to priesthood and the girl became a nun.
As our children grew, one by one they would be ready to receive the Holy Spirit in Confirmation. Hélène, who was a Theology student, would accept the challenge of being Christine's sponsor. Edouard would become Michel's. Guy, one of the future priests, would be Claude's.
When Hélène was asked, as a student in theology and as a woman, what she thought about the idea of woman priesthood, she answered: "It would be foolish for me to imagine a calling from my Lord for a task which he tells me through his Church is not to be mine."
* * *
With a growing family, it was more imperative for Danielle and me to ensure moments of relaxed private intimacy. We went to the restaurant once every month, then once every two weeks. Once a year, then twice, we also slipped away to our Québec motel for a new honeymoon.
It was during the month of July. We had nestled into our motel. In the middle of the night, I was awakened by a sting in my throat. I swore against the air conditioning in the store where I had shopped two days before. I was coming down with a cold. Danielle was asleep, the room was small, our personal pharmacy was eighty-five miles away and the public pharmacies nearby were probably closed. There was nothing to do but to endure. At least I would go outside and walk a bit. Maybe, just maybe, a pharmacy wouldn't have closed. A half hour later, I walked back, disgusted by this insomnia and the persistent itch in my throat.
There was a soft drink vending machine near the motel. I took a Pepsi. It felt good as it washed down my throat. Then I walked around the motel. Coming back towards my room, which was at the end a long row of doors, I noticed a man in the company of a gorgeous blonde. I could only see her head above the row of cars. Then her head disappeared as she must have entered the car. A moment later, there was a flash of light. I was coming nearer when they both rushed across the sidewalk and then entered their room. He carried a flash camera. Venus had trotted rapidly in the apparel of Eve, before the Sin. But mine eyes were faster than then her feet.
When I came into our room, I woke Danielle: "There was a naked woman outside, a while ago."
"What?", Danielle answered drowsily.
"There's a guy who took a photograph of a nude woman in his car."
"It that all?", Danielle said.
She simply reflected how lucky she was, herself, to be on a holiday with her husband and that they were in love. And she went back to sleep.
Well, I peeked outside, through the window. The man opened the door, looked around, then stepped outside. Miss (or Mrs or Ms) Venus followed. She got upon the hood of the car, posed, and once again the camera flashed. Then they went back into their room, and I went back to bed.
Next morning, they were gone.
When we talked it over, we were surprised to notice how the incident had seemed so trivial for
Danielle and had not left me unmoved. After that we began telling the story to our friends in order to notice their reactions. Invariably, the woman would be unappreciative while her husband would sheepishly make a nervous joke of the kind: "Why didn't you call me?" To which I added my own: "My only regret is that I forgot to ask them if they wanted me to take their picture together."
The husband's eyes struggled to stave away a look of envy, while his wife discarded the whole thing as silly. A girl friend of ours added: "It's disgusting. What could that woman have gained by this."
Danielle and I thought it out, then I wrote our friend: "If she was for rent, she got some money. But if she was really his wife, then she found joy in her man's eyes."
Evidently, the divergence of mental structure between a man and a woman cannot survive on feeling alone, that is without commitment.
* * *
As the children were getting older, they were drafted in the program of family chores. However, Danielle held as a principle never to treat her eldest daughter as a second mother for the other children. She had known girl friends, when she was young, who were the eldest daughter in their family and who complained of always being responsible for much house work and for the care of their younger brothers and sisters. Danielle and I cared for all of our family, but each child of age to help had his daily work set up for him.
Six thirty a.m.: rise and shine. Philippe dresses with medium speed, then comes up to prepare the table for breakfast: ten plates, nine cups and a glass (for François), seven knives, the toaster, an assortment of jars of jams, peanut butter and honey, two milk jugs and two margarine containers (one of each for each end of the table), a container of real butter for mother, vitamins (from Autumn till Spring), napkins, etc. After breakfast, Johanne puts the dirty dishes in the dish-washer, cleans the jars with a damp cloth, puts them in the cupboard, then washes the table. During that time, Claude is vacuum-cleaning the bathroom, living room and kitchen floors. Michel has washed the toilet and sink counter downstairs before breakfast in order to practice his flute afterwards. Oh, I was forgetting: Marie and Isabelle have picked up all the toys on the floors before Claude vacuumed. And after a long day when everybody is tired, it is Christine who clears the table after supper. — But already, in the morning, Christine, Michel, Johanne and Claude must have done their bed and put their room in order to be allowed to have toasts for breakfast. Otherwise they'll have their bread plain, that is straight from the bag. Of course, Philippe does his bed and room after breakfast as he has to prepare breakfast. — Then, every two weeks, the five elders vacuum their own room and share in vacuuming the rest of the basement, whereas mother does the children's rooms upstairs and father does the workshop, that is the parents room.
Changes in the chores are discussed approximately once a year by mother and father, usually when they are on the bus heading for a honeymoon in Québec City. When they come back, they give everyone his new task. This is a time of rejoicing as the preceding year's task has become tedious and envy is running high for a task done by someone else. But the enthusiasm soon runs out, and patience, persuasion and constraint must be used to insure the success of the enterprise.
We once heard a person on television who summed that matter up quite well: "How can a parent make chores interesting for his child? No way. Who likes paying taxes? No one. Its just something that must be done, and imposed."
* * *
On Wednesdays, when he happened to be in Rome, John Paul II kept up the tradition started by Paul VI of speaking his mind on particular subjects. He soon began a series of reflections on the subject of conjugal love. It started where a Pope must start, with the Bible, as Jesus answered: "Haven't you read the scripture that says that in the beginning the Creator made them male and female? And God said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and unite with his wife, and the two will become one flesh." (Mt. 19, 4-5)
And John Paul II followed Christ's lead, going back to "the beginning", to Genesis where it is written that "God created man in his image, in the image of God he created him; man and woman he created them". Then he explained how man was different from the animal world and the rest of creation by the spirit, made in the image and likeness of God. He then added that man and woman, by their communion, by their union, were the image of God's communion of divine Persons.
The Godstudents and I had already reflected upon that in our study group, but it was nice to hear the Successor of Peter saying it. Some time later, Gerry, who is the scholar among my friends, told me: "John Paul II's teaching on this matter is something new in the Church."
"What do you mean?"
"It is the first time a Pope has given this interpretation of Genesis. S. Augustine even said that this was a bad interpretation of Genesis. According to Augustine, one should pause after reading: "God created man in his image, in the image of God he created him." According to Augustine (according to Gerry), man is the image of God solely because he is a spiritual being. After the pause, one could then read: "man and woman he created them". This meant God gave a special function to man which needed the division of sexes. That division of sexes was made only for the purpose of reproduction and would disappear after the resurrection of the dead."
I had to admit that the Augustinian version had something familiar. It had the smell of old theology and resembled the sexless view of spirituality in which traditionalists and modernists meet. Yet Augustine was only a theologian, a doctor of the Church, a magisterium only inasmuch as he had been a local bishop, not of our diocese. We now had an authorised version, albeit unusual, of Genesis right from the horse's mouth, that is from the Supreme Magisterium of the successor to Peter, the Rock upon which the Church is built.
I do not imply that this teaching was dogmatic. It was an ordinary teaching. It was new, yet not different from the constant teaching of the Church on human love. The Church has always stood firmly in favour of this love. It was new like an adolescent who grows a few inches more: different, yet the same person. Were we witnessing the practice of Cardinal Newman's teaching On the Development of Christian Doctrine?
It could be logical that in a time when the commitment of the spouses and their generosity towards life seems to be under pressure, God would give us a deeper insight of his own personality: the divine image within the love of the spouses. What a challenge, a comfort, a vindication of marriage. And this would bring the fight for life in the centre of a fight for God. To defile the love of a man and a woman would mean to defile Love himself. To misconstrue the love of a man and a woman would be to misunderstand the mystery of God himself.
In this light, our admiration for John Paul II grew by leaps and bounds. And we were extremely happy to be able to name our new boy Jean-Paul (III, we added jokingly yet with the pride of the parents of a newborn).
* * *
On January 15, two years less three days after the birth of François, Jean-Paul saw the light of day. Rather, he saw the lights of the delivery room's ceiling. There were no windows, nor, if there had been some, was there any sunlight left, as the sun goes down during the afternoon at this time of the year. Yet, it was still early: 6:55 p.m. At seven thirty, Danielle was back in her room and could phone the good news to the children at home under the care of Mrs Pelletier. I phoned Danielle's parents and my mother when I returned home.
Jean-Paul was 21 inches long, but he was an especially heavy baby: 9 pounds and 9 ounces. As he was the ninth of the family, I said this was logical. He was a 999 (the Scotland Yard emergency number). But I got more pleasure in telling Jean-Paul's godparents, Jacques and his wife, that 999 turned around became 666, the number of the Beast in the Book of Revelation. As Jacques had previously dabbled in prophetic speculation, his understanding of the joke was more acute than for others.
Jean-Paul was of the Christine psychological pattern but unhampered by dual elders as François had been. Though they both had the same basic temperament, Jean-Paul would soon be challenging his brother and speaking his own mind with more assurance than he. François needed his two year head-start to cope with this onslaught.
Five days before the end of his first nine months, our niner boy took his first two steps. The family champion. François had got up at eight months, but it had taken some time before he learned to walk.
With Jean-Paul, the boys were a majority for the first time: five boys to four girls. But it was still as even as we could get. In class, I was still able to joke about our family planning, showing how the 16 month pattern had simply been followed by a two year pattern since the birth of the twins. If all went well, we should be having our TEN in two years' time.
