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“Ask a Priest: Was My Husband’s Vasectomy OK?”
Q: My husband had a vasectomy two years ago. He decided that because, despite having a healthy daughter, I was not able to give birth to a second child. I would get pregnant and everything would look fine until the babies suddenly die inside of me. Since the babies were already big every time that happened, I had to go through a C-section surgery. We went through a lot of emotional pain, including our daughter, every time. No medical explanation. The last time the doctor said it was dangerous for me to go through it again and recommended a definitive method. My husband didn’t want me to go through that again, and he decided to get a vasectomy. I didn’t agree at first, but I didn’t stop him either because it was too much pain to see my children die and my daughter suffering. I asked God to stop him if we were offending him. My question is, given the circumstances, is this a sin? He says he doesn’t regret it because that’s what God wanted, based on everything we went through. What do we need to do to be in peace with God and our faith? – K.
Answered by Fr. Edward McIlmail, LC
A: I am sorry to hear about the medical problems you have had, and the babies you lost. Our Lord has allowed a heavy cross in the life of your family.
Ideally you should have resorted to natural family planning, which is highly effective for the avoidance of pregnancy.
NFP does no damage to the integrity of the marriage and is often an opportunity for the love of spouses to deepen. It requires discipline, yes, but it also helps couples to grow in unity since husbands have to be especially attentive to their wives’ bodily cycles.
Certainly it sounds as though your husband is very dedicated to you.
Nonetheless, a vasectomy is a form of mutilation that is motivated by the intention to contracept. As such, it is not morally permissible, whatever the reasons.
A basic norm of moral theology is that we cannot do evil in order to achieve a good ends. If that were the case, anything could be justified.
But what is done is done. Perhaps there is a need for a good confession to be made. The Holy Spirit wouldn’t have sanctioned the vasectomy while at the same time inspiring the Church to teach something different. God simply doesn’t work that way.
Perhaps now the best way forward is to recognize that the procedure wasn’t sanctioned by God. But the task of helping your family get to heaven remains ahead of you. With lots of prayer and sacrifices and recourse to the sacraments and the grace of God, all this is possible. And wouldn’t it be nice to be reunited with your lost babies someday?
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Jesus is the Groom. The Church is the Bride. Jesus, as we know already, has opened the gates of heaven and proven His love for the Bride. Now it is the duty of the Bride to, “Obey your husband” for He is the way, truth, and life, and He is our Lord.
More than anything, as a Traditional Catholic, I find myself greatly distressed by the lack of God in the Church, the lack of obedience by leadership (up to and including the Pope) by the Bride of Christ, to the Lord, the Groom.
Here is what Jesus Christ (the Groom) taught: Matthew, Chapter 5, verse 29 & 30 (Duay and Rheims 1899 approved Catholic Bible):
29 And if thy right eye scandalize thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. For it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, rather than that thy whole body be cast into hell.
30 And if thy right hand scandalize thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, rather than that thy whole body be cast into hell.
The above is what Jesus Christ taught and I do believe in Jesus Christ and I am glad in my heart that Jesus Christ teaches also, “I will have mercy on whom I (God and the Son of God the Father) WILL.” So long as what you intend is to save a life by what you do, and knowledgeable men, with the best information we have, are saying that it is dangerous and leathal to the baby for you to get pregnant again, why would it be a sin by Christ? Isn’t it a husband/grooms duty to, “love your wife as your own flesh”?
While it is important to consider the opinion of the Bride (church leadership), the respectable Priest here is simply incorrect and wrong. If Christ approves of cutting off your hand and plucking out your eye to avoid sin and Christ gave His own life out of love for us, it would seem reasonable that a husband could harm himself for love of his wife and to keep her safe and to prevent death (of babies). The wife/bride Priest is quite correct, if the intent is sex without the generative cause of new life. The wife/bride Priest is correct, if the intent is something asthetic like tattoos or for pleasure without accountability to God. Notice that intent and full effort here are the key. Only your husband knows his own intent and heart and if he has done the work to be sure. If learned men, who know about such things about pregnancy, have said, “you will lose your babies and they will not live” and your husband does what he does for the sake of his wife’s happiness and health and to prevent more death, this would not be any sin of any kind.
Christ gave His life, and as we know, was permanently mutilated, to open the gates of heaven for us because He loved us. I cannot see why Christ would so much as frown on a husband with those intentions. But, it is your husband who must answer truthfully to his intent and effort. If, for example, a husband were to harm himself in this way so as to have pleasure, and to block God’s natural intent and holy purpose, that would be an act of defiance against God and Jesus Christ, an obvious sin. But, I don’t know of a single husband, who loves his wife, and who loves the life of children, who wants to see his wife cry and be in pain because of death, or to hear that another baby has died. It is true that Christ calls us to sacrifice, even the ultimate sacrifice of our own life, yes. It is not true that Christ calls us to watch as babies die and our wives weep to see that death.
I apologize for the abuses of our Church. I apologize for the Bride not being obedient to the Groom. This is wrong. Wives are to, “Obey your husband as unto the Lord.” So, it is that a Bride is to obey her husband. The Church of God on earth, the Holy Catholic Church (the Bride) should seek to hear God speak, for God is the Groom. If Christ can teach these things, that we should pluck out our own eye or cut off our own hand, to avoid hell and sin, then that is what God is teaching us. If Christ died for love of us then sacrifices of our bodies for love and to prevent death is no crime either. The lies of Church Leadership seems to find it all too easy to judge and condemn where no judgment or condemnation is warranted. Equally true is the Bride’s willingness to excuse grave sins such as homosexuality, the mutilation of the Holy Mass, the violation of God’s intent (the Second Vatican Council), as if such things are fine and not sinful. What they do permits them to engage in sins of the flesh, dictate as if they are not accountable to God (which they absolutely are and will be), and have power and control, while teaching wives, “well, you don’t really have to obey your husband as unto the Lord.” I have seen videos on YouTube, by well known and respected Priest’s, teach such lies. And they remain just that, lies.
God (the Groom) tells us how to live, by the life of Christ. The Catholic Church (the Bride) is to obey. So it is at home, the Groom commands and the Bride obeys. Love is within this dynamic also for God has commanded every Groom of men to, “Love your wives as your own flesh.” These things go hand in hand and belong together. Lastly, it is not up to the Bride to manipulate, skew, judge, twist, or dictate to the Groom what the Groom intends or what is in his heart. This means, Brides don’t get to tell the Groom what he, himself, intends and means by what he does. A loving husband has every right to tell his wife, “no” without his wife throwing accusations out of, “you don’t love me!” For example, a husband can and should tell his wife, “no” if she wants to get a tattoo. Neither should he go and get a tattoo either. Another example is that a husband can and should tell hus wife, “no” if she wants to get on birth control. Why? God very much rejects anything that would take a human life and all birth-control can take a human life.
Please, understand, the same thing that excuses your husband of any sin for good intent and effort to protect you and the life of an unborn child, also flatly condemns the exact same actions for selfishness and unaccountable pleasure and self gratification. If a man gives his life in war, running into what will surely be his death, this is the essence of love. If a man is sad and depressed and takes his own life because he feels bad, the same sacrifice turns to hell and is an act of hate. So, who decides which one of these similar sacrifices is good, and and act of love, or bad, and an act of hate? Simply speaking, God does. He makes it clear that serving Him and loving Him above all things, ourselves and our will included, that is to be our guide. Is what you do selfish, serving yourself? Or are you doing what God ask? Or are you doing what other men ask? So, answer those questions. Are you serving God above all men (yourself included) by your thoughts, words, and actions? Or are you serving men (yourself included) above God? Or are you serving men (yourself included) as Christ would serve them? Did Christ not heal the woman with the issue of blood, just because she touched his clothing? Christ felt the grace leave Him, even though God didn’t tell Christ to heal that woman and, she didn’t bother to ask Him to heal her either, yet she was healed by her faith in Christ. The answer here, by this Priest, is judgment and a condemnation, and it should not be. What He should do is what all men should do, speak when it is clearly wrong and kick it up to God when things are not clear. The Priest here has no more power to read the heart of a man, than any other man. Is there spiritual dicernment? Of course. However, the presumption should be that there is a good-will, not a bad-will, and that you both prayed hard, and that you asked to be certain that your babies would die. There is no such presumption here in the above answer. Tell that same Priest to go and stare into the eyes of a woman, after she has just be told, “I’m so sorry, your baby is dead.” and then ask him to answer for forcing you, by the use of God, to endure that over and over, again and again, and I’ll show you a very evil man. God is the God of life, not death. What man is to blame for not causing more death, especially of the innocent? No man, that’s who. And what is more, God, through the life of Christ, shows us over and over that God can read the hearts of men, and so judges in ways we do not and cannot judge. Your husband and maybe even you, will know if there is a lie at heart. So will God. The Bride (a Priest), by means of what you have writen here, won’t and can’t. I have writen what I have writen here because, you will have to answer to God yourself, and only your husband knows what was in his heart when he made his choice. Are there other holy choices? Absolutely, there are! Does that make your husbands choice evil or sinful? No man will know that, at heart, but your husband. Not me. Not any Priest. Not unless your husband tells them. Your husband can answer and can tell a Priest what was in his heart. If his answer is one of love for you and to avoid more death, there is no sin in it. If, on the other hand, he did so for the freedom to have all the reckless sex and pleasure that he could get, and this just gave him an excuse to do what he wanted, God will know that too! But, only he, your husband, can give his own answer, in truth. Selfless or selfish, your husband has to give his own reasons. That is the answer that should have been given to you and I am sorry that it was not.
Go with God, first and always!