Questo articolo è disponibile anche in: Italian English

Question

Dear Father Angelo,

I am writing to you again to ask for your advice about a situation that has been distressing me for many years now. […]

After my third pregnancy, I made the wicked decision to be sterilised by having my tubes closed. 

At that time I was a complete atheist, I would not go to mass, I would never pray. I thought that was a wise decision, given that the pregnancies I had had were “high-risk pregnancies”. For all of them, I had to have cervical cerclage performed at the twelfth week, because the cervix appeared to be shortened and I was running the risk of losing the babies. I lived those situations with a lot of anxiety and any hemorrhage, however negligible, any minor bellyache would make me panic. […]

My gynaecologist, for her part, recommended sterilisation in my case (the operation could be carried out along with cesarean delivery). I did not want to have other babies […]

So I had the sterilisation surgery performed. The decision was mine and I bear the responsibility for having made that. Nobody forced me to. I have not told you the things I have written so far in order to claim I had extenuating circumstances. I just meant to explain to you how I ended up making that decision and what “criteria” I adopted.  

After about five years, my conversion took place. It happened after so many of my husband’s prayers and sufferings. By then, I had already excluded him from life altogether, busy as I was bringing up my children by myself, always nervous, always angry, always whiny. I was teetering on the verge of the abyss. After my husband’s confession of being tempted by a colleague of his who had been flirting with him, after the agony of a marriage that was about to collapse, when I was on the brink of a black hole the Lord granted me the immense grace of being healed of my blindness and to save my marriage. His mercy is inconceivable. 

Slowly, I understood how heinous was what  I had done. I had irremediably disfigured His admirable plan for me; I had ruined the beauty he had thought me with ab aeterno and created me with for eternity. I, who am nothing, had dared to do this. When I think of this, I am left breathless by the horror, I feel my heart leap and I experience a dizziness, as if I was about to fall into hell. I phoney do I sound when I say: “Thy will be done!”. I have been capable of doing nothing but my own, petty will. 

I have confessed this sin several times, thus showing a lack of confidence in His immeasurable mercy, thus chalking up one sin after another.  Confession did not give me peace and serenity. I always had the feeling that I had gone to confession with not enough grieving and repentance. I know that I am supposed to accept this suffering and to offer it to Him, without seeking too much comfort. I ask the Lord to punish only me for what I have done, sparing everybody else. 

I often wish I could live in complete chastity for the rest of my life. Anytime I have a sexual intercourse with my husband, I have the feeling I am sinning again, since for my fault  the marital acts are now deprived of their procreative aim. On the other hand, I think of my husband, and I am aware it would be unfair to force him to renounce sexuality, given that this matter is far more important for him than it is for me.

I am asking for your advice concerning this very delicate matter.

I apologise for the long letter. Thank you so much for your patience. […]

Kind regards, Father Angelo. I will remember you in my prayers.

God bless you always.

The priest’s answer

Dear,

  1. I regret I read your letter only today and I apologise to you. Thank you for describing in earnest how you feel in front of the Lord for the sterilisation surgery you underwent. Before you did not realise that. Now, after your conversion, it distresses you.

Now you are aware that you have “irremediably disfigured His admirable plan for you”; that you have “ruined the beauty he had thought  you with ab aeterno and created you with for eternity”. You say: “ I, who am nothing, had dared to do this. When I think of this, I am left breathless by the horror, I feel my heart leap and I experience a dizziness, as if I was about to fall into hell. I phoney do I sound when I say: ‘Thy will be done!’. I have been capable of doing nothing but my own, petty will”. 

  1. I am glad to publish your reflections, not just in order to pass a moral judgment, however fair and dutiful it may be. As a matter of fact, it is not just a question of acting as referees as for one’s body and the intrinsic meaning of sexuality. It is a question of putting oneself before God, His creative Wisdom, His plans of salvation and sanctification.
  2. You wrote as a title for your email: “a wicked decision”. You do not justify yourself. At that time you were “a atheist”, you “would not go to mass” and you “would never pray”. You thought you were making a “wise decision”. Conversely, now that light has come in, you call it a “wicked decision” and honestly you say, like King David inspired by the Holy Spirit: “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me” (Psalm 51:3). 
  3. Along with David, always under the impetus of the Holy Spirit, you say: “Wash me thouroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin- […] Against you, you alone have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment” (Psalm 51: 2.4).
  4. What a difference there is between the way you judged things when you were an atheist and now! Before, you used to feel in the right, self satisfied.  Since light has come in, you are hubler and you recognise you have done wrong. 
  5. There was no need to have sterilisation surgery. Having recourse to natural methods would have been enough, because the wisdom of God has wonderfully ordered that not every marital act results in the birth of a child. You were supposed to take a path that would have kept you in a situation of true communion with God and of real self-donation to your husband. 
  6. But not all is lost. Because, just as moral virginity can be regained, so your soul can have back the splendour that God wanted to endow you with. And I think I can say that such a splendour had wrapped you in a very bright way.
  7. There is still the issue of marital intimacy. You write: “ I have the feeling I am sinning again, since for my fault the marital acts are now deprived of their procreative aim”. It is true. I suggest you do what Saint Pope Paul VI wrote to Christian spouses in the encyclical letter Humanae Vitae: “if, however, sin still exercises its hold over them, they are not to lose heart. Rather must they, humble and persevering, have recourse to the mercy of God, abundantly bestowed in the Sacrament of Penance” (HV, 25). Humble and persevering, have recourse to the source of God’s mercy. 
  8. This is what you are meant to do: walking in humility. And going towards God witht eh same feelings of Saint Josephine Bakhita (a Sudanese religious sister, abducted and sold five times by slave merchants):  “I am going slowly towards eternity… I’m going with two suitcases: one contains my sins and the other, which is much heavier, contains the infinite merits of Jesus Christ.” 

We appropriate these merits especially in Confession and in Holy Communion.

This is the most beautiful, most useful, most consoling path.

Thank you for your beautiful testimony of light and humility.

Thank you also for the prayers you promised me.

I wish you all the best, I remember you to the Lord and I bless you.

Father Angelo