Contraception / Birth Control
State of the
Question
Alternately: condom use, spermicide use,
Contraception is "any action which,
either in anticipation of the conjugal act [sexual intercourse], or in its
accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes,
whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" (Humanae
Vitae 14). This includes sterilization, condoms and other barrier methods,
spermicides, coitus interruptus (withdrawal method), the Pill, and all
other such methods.
Birth
control generally refers to any plan or method used to alter or avoid the
body's natural state of fertility, thereby preventing or reducing the
probability of pregnancy without abstaining from sexual intercourse; the term
is also sometimes used to include abortion and natural family planning. The
term family planning is normally considered a synonym for the term birth control.
Practices
employed by couples that permit sexual intercourse with reduced likelihood of
conception and birth. The term birth control is often used synonymously with
such terms as contraception, fertility control, and family planning. But birth
control includes abortion to prevent a birth, whereas family planning methods
explicitly do not include abortion.
Divine Revelation
The
Bible mentions at least one form of contraception specifically and condemns it.
Coitus interruptus, was used by Onan to avoid fulfilling his duty
according to the ancient Jewish law of fathering children for one’s dead
brother. "
The
biblical penalty for not giving your brother’s widow children was public
humiliation, not death (Deuteronomy 25:7–10). But Onan received death as
punishment for his crime. This means his crime was more than simply not
fulfilling the duty of a brother-in-law. He lost his life because he violated
natural law, as Jewish and Christian commentators have always understood. For
this reason, certain forms of contraception have historically been known as
"Onanism," after the man who practiced it, just as homosexuality has
historically been known as "Sodomy," after the men of Sodom, who
practiced that vice (cf. Genesis 19).
In the New Testament, it is possible that the Greek "pharmakeia" refers to the birth control issue. "Pharmakeia" in general was the mixing of various potions for secret purposes, and it is known that potions were mixed in the first century A.D. to prevent or stop a pregnancy. The typical translation as "sorcery" may not reveal all of the specific practices condemned by the New Testament. In all three of the passages in which it appears, it is in a context condemning sexual immorality; two of the three passages also condemn murder. (Galatians 5:19-26; Revelation 9:21, 21:8). Thus it is very possible that there are three New Testament passages condemning the use of the products of "pharmakeia" for birth control purposes.
Catechism of the Catholic Church
2399 The
regulation of births represents one of the aspects of responsible fatherhood
and motherhood. Legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify
recourse to morally unacceptable means (for example, direct sterilization or
contraception).
2370 Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth
regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in
conformity with the objective criteria of morality. These methods respect the
bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the
education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, "every action which,
whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in
the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as
a means, to render procreation impossible" is intrinsically evil: Thus the
innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and
wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory
language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads
not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification
of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in
personal totality. . . . The difference, both anthropological and
moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle
. . . involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of
the human person and of human sexuality.
The Magisterium of the Church
The Church also, fulfilling the role
given it by Christ as the identifier and interpreter of apostolic Scripture and
apostolic tradition, has constantly condemned contraception as gravely sinful.
In Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI
stated,
"[W]e must once again declare
that the direct interruption of the generative process already begun, and,
above all, directly willed and procured abortion, even if for therapeutic
reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as licit means of regulating birth.
Equally to be excluded, as the teaching authority of the Church has frequently
declared, is direct sterilization, whether perpetual or temporary, whether of
the man or of the woman. Similarly excluded is every action which, either in
anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the
development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a
means, to render procreation impossible" (HV 14).
The Church also has affirmed that the
illicitness of contraception is an infallible doctrine:
"The Church has always taught the
intrinsic evil of contraception, that is, of every marital act intentionally
rendered unfruitful. This teaching is to be held as definitive and
irreformable. Contraception is gravely opposed to marital chastity, it is
contrary to the good of the transmission of life (the procreative aspect of
matrimony), and to the reciprocal self-giving of the spouses (the unitive
aspect of matrimony); it harms true love and denies the sovereign role of God
in the transmission of human life" (Vademecum for Confessors 2:4,
Feb. 12, 1997).
"When there is a question of harmonizing conjugal love with the responsible transmission of life, the moral aspect of any procedure does not depend solely on sincere intentions or on an evaluation of motives. It must be determined by objective standards. These, based on the nature of the human person and his acts, preserve the full sense of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love. Such a goal cannot be achieved unless the virtue of conjugal chastity is sincerely practiced. Relying on these principles, sons of the Church may not undertake methods of regulating procreation which are found blameworthy by the teaching authority of the Church in its unfolding of the divine law" (Gaudium et Spes, 51).
Ecclesiastical Tradition
The biblical teaching that birth
control is wrong is found even more explicitly among the Church Fathers, who
recognized the biblical and natural law principles underlying the condemnation.
Hippolytus of Rome
wrote in 255 that "on account of their prominent ancestry and great
property, the so-called faithful [certain Christian women who had affairs with
male servants] want no children from slaves or lowborn commoners, [so] they use
drugs of sterility or bind themselves tightly in order to expel a fetus which
has already been engendered" (Refutation of All Heresies 9:12).
Around 307 Lactantius explained that some "complain of the scantiness of
their means, and allege that they have not enough for bringing up more
children, as though, in truth, their means were in [their] power . . . or God
did not daily make the rich poor and the poor rich. Wherefore, if any one on
any account of poverty shall be unable to bring up children, it is better to
abstain from relations with his wife" (Divine Institutes 6:20).
The First Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical council and the one
that defined Christ’s divinity, declared in 325, "If anyone in sound
health has castrated himself, it behooves that such a one, if enrolled among
the clergy, should cease [from his ministry], and that from henceforth no such
person should be promoted. But, as it is evident that this is said of those who
willfully do the thing and presume to castrate themselves, so if any have been
made eunuchs by barbarians, or by their masters, and should otherwise be found
worthy, such men this canon admits to the clergy" (Canon 1).
Augustine wrote in
419, "I am supposing, then, although you are not lying [with your wife]
for the sake of procreating offspring, you are not for the sake of lust
obstructing their procreation by an evil prayer or an evil deed. Those who do
this, although they are called husband and wife, are not; nor do they retain
any reality of marriage, but with a respectable name cover a shame. Sometimes
this lustful cruelty, or cruel lust, comes to this, that they even procure
poisons of sterility [oral contraceptives]" (Marriage and Concupiscence
1:15:17).
Pope
Paul VI
reaffirmed the traditional teaching: "Every marriage act must be open to
procreation" (Humanae Vitae,11).
And, further, "If there are serious reasons to space out births, reasons which derive from the physical or psychological conditions of husband and wife, or from external conditions, the Church teaches that it is morally permissible to take into account the natural rhythms of human fertility and to have coitus only during the infertile times in order to regulate conception without offending the moral principles which have been recalled earlier" (Humanae Vitae, 16).
The
Teaching of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church
In A.D. 195, Clement of Alexandria wrote,
"Because
of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be
vainly ejaculated, nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted" (The
Instructor of Children 2:10:91:2).
Athenagoras of Athens, A Plea for the
Christians
"Therefore, having the hope of
eternal life, we despise the things of this life, even to the pleasures of the
soul, each of us reckoning her his wife whom he has married according to the
laws laid down by us, and that only for the purpose of having children. For as
the husbandman throwing the seed into the ground awaits the harvest, not sowing
more upon it, so to us the procreation of children is the measure of our
indulgence in appetite ... because in the beginning God made one man and one
woman, and dissolving the strictest union of flesh with flesh, formed for the
intercourse of the race."
Augustine, 354-430,
Against Faustus
"You [Manicheans] make your Auditors
adulterers of their wives when they take care lest the women with whom they
copulate conceive. They take wives according to the laws of matrimony by
tablets announcing that the marriage is contracted to procreate children; and
then, fearing because of your law [against childbearing] . . . they copulate in
a shameful union only to satisfy lust for their wives. They are unwilling to
have children, on whose account alone marriages are made. How is it, then, that
you are not those prohibiting marriage, as the Apostle predicted of you so long
ago [1 Tim. 4:1-4], when you try to take from marriage what marriage is? When
this is taken away, husbands are shameful lovers, wives are harlots, bridal
chambers are brothels, fathers-in-law are pimps"
and
"For thus the eternal law, that is, the
will of God creator of all creatures, taking counsel for the conservation of
natural order, not to serve lust, but to see to the preservation of the race,
permits the delight of mortal flesh to be released from the control of reason
in copulation only to propagate progeny"
Augustine,
354-430, The Good of Marriage
"For what gratification is there (except
perhaps for lascivious persons, and those who, as the apostle says with
prohibition, "possess their vessel in the lust of concupiscence") in
the mere shedding of seed as the ultimate pleasure of sexual union, unless it
is followed by the true and proper fruit of marriage--conception and
birth?"
and
"[We] also assert, that God forms man of
human seed."
and
"[They must] not turn away from them the
mercy of God . . . by changing the natural use into that which is against
nature, which is more damnable when it is done in the case of husband or wife.
For, whereas that natural use, when it pass beyond the compact of marriage,
that is, beyond the necessity of begetting, is pardonable in the case of a
wife, damnable in the case of a harlot; that which is against nature is
execrable when done in the case of a harlot, but more execrable in the case of
a wife. Of so great power is the ordinance of the Creator, and the order of
creation, that . . . when the man shall wish to use a body part of the wife not
allowed for this purpose, the wife is more shameful, if she suffer it to take place
in her own case, than if in the case of another woman
Augustine,
354-430, The Morals of the Manichees
"In marriage, as the marriage law
declares, the man and woman come together for the procreation of children.
Therefore, whoever makes the procreation of children a greater sin than
copulation, forbids marriage and makes the woman not a wife but a mistress, who
for some gifts presented to her is joined to the man to gratify his
passion."
Augustine,
354-430, On Concupiscence and Marriage
"[This] is God's own work--the human being
which is born of marriage."
Caesarius of Arles, Sermons
"Who is
he who cannot warn that no woman may take a potion so that she is unable to
conceive or condemns in herself the nature which God willed to be fecund? As
often as she could have conceived or given birth, of that many homicides she
will be held guilty, and, unless she undergoes suitable penance, she will be
damned by eternal death in hell. If a women does not wish to have children, let
her enter into a religious agreement with her husband; for chastity is the sole
sterility of a Christian woman."
John Chrysostom Homily on Matthew 28:5
"[I]n truth, all men know that they who
are under the power of this disease [covetousness] are wearied even of their
father's old age; and that which is sweet, and universally desirable, the
having of children, they esteem grievous and unwelcome. Many at least with this
view have even paid money to be childless, and have mutilated nature, not only
killing the newborn, but even acting to prevent their beginning to live."
and
"[T]he man who has mutilated [sterilized]
himself, in fact, is subject even to a curse, as Paul says, 'I would that they
who trouble you would cut the whole thing off' [Gal. 5:12]. And very
reasonably, for such a person is venturing on the deeds of murderers, and
giving occasion to them that slander God's creation, and opens the mouths of
the Manicheans, and is guilty of the same unlawful acts as they that mutilate
themselves among the Greeks. For to cut off our members has been from the
beginning a work of demonical agency, and satanic device, that they may bring
up a bad report upon the works of God, that they may mar this living creature,
that imputing all not to the choice, but to the nature of our members, the more
part of them may sin in security as being irresponsible, and doubly harm this
living creature, both by mutilating the members and be impeding the forwardness
of the free choice in behalf of good deeds."
John Chrysostom, Homily on Romans 24
"Why do you sow where the field is eager
to destroy the fruit? Where there are medicines of sterility? Where there is
murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain a harlot, but you make
her a murderess as well. Do you see that from drunkenness comes fornication,
from fornication adultery, from adultery murder? Indeed, it is something worse
than murder and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is
formed but prevents its formation. What then? Do you contemn the gift of God,
and fight with His laws? What is a curse, do you seek as though it were a
blessing?"
John Chrysostom, Homily on I Corinthians 7:3-5
"Wherefore he says, 'Now concerning the
things whereof ye wrote unto me.' For they had written to him, 'Whether it was
right to abstain from one's wife, or not'....Now what is the meaning of 'the
due honor'? The wife hath not power over her own body; but is both the slave
and the mistress of the husband. And if you decline the service which is due,
you have offended God. But if thou wish to withdraw thyself, it must be with
the husband's permission, though it be but a for short time. For this is why he
calls the matter a debt, to shew that no one is master of himself but that they
are servants to each other....
"What then can this mean? 'Let not the
wife,' says he, 'exercise continence, if the husband be unwilling; nor yet the
husband without the wife's consent.' Why so? Because great evils spring from
this sort of continence. For adulteries and fornications and the ruin of
families have often arisen from hence. For if when men have their own wives
they commit fornication, much more if yon defraud them of this consolation. And
well says he, 'Defraud not; fraud' here, and 'debt' above, that he might shew
the strictness of the right of dominion in question. For that one should
practice continence against the will of the other is 'defrauding;' but not so,
with the other's consent: any more than I count myself defrauded, if after
persuading me you take away any thing of mine. Since only he defrauds who takes
against another's will and by force. A thing which many women do, working sin
rather than righteousness, and thereby becoming accountable for the husband's
uncleanness, and rending all asunder. Whereas they should value concord above
all things, since this is more important than all beside.
"We will, if you please, consider it with
a view to actual cases. Thus, suppose a wife and husband, and let the wife be
continent, without consent of her husband; well then, if hereupon he commit
fornication, or though abstaining from fornication fret and grow restless and
be heated and quarrel and give all kind of trouble to his wife; where is all
the gain of the fasting and the continence, a breach being made in love? There
is none. For what strange reproaches, how much trouble, how great a war must of
course arise! since when in an house man and wife are at variance, the house
will be no better off than a ship in a storm when the master is upon ill terms
with the man at the head. Wherefore he saith, 'Defraud not one another, unless
it be by consent for a season, that ye may give yourselves unto prayer.' It is
prayer with unusual earnestness which he here means. For if he is forbidding
those who have intercourse with one another to pray, how could "pray
without ceasing" have any place? It is possible then to live with a wife
and yet give heed unto prayer. But by continence prayer is made more perfect.
For he did not say merely, "That ye may pray;" but, "That ye may
give yourselves unto it;" as though what he speaks of might cause not
uncleanness but much occupation."
John Chrysostom, Commentary on Galatians 5:12
"Where then are those who dare to mutilate
[sterilize] themselves, seeing that they drawn down the apostolic curse, and
accuse the workmanship of God, and take part with the Manichees?"
Clement of
"We must regard the woman's crown to be
her husband, and the husband's crown to be marriage; and the flowers of
marriage the children of both, which the divine husbandman plucks from meadows
of flesh. 'Children's children are the crown of old men.'"
and
"Because of its divine institution for the
propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly ejaculated, nor is it to be
damaged, nor is it to be wasted."
and
"To have coitus other than to procreate
children is to do injury to nature."
and
"Marriage in itself merits esteem and the
highest approval, for the Lord wished men to 'be fruitful and multiply.' He did
not tell them, however, to act like libertines, nor did He intend them to
surrender themselves to pleasure as though born only to indulge in sexual
relations.... Why, even unreasoning beasts know enough not to mate at certain
times. To indulge in intercourse without intending children is to outrage nature,
whom we should take as our instructor."
and
"For many think such things to be
pleasures only which are against nature, such as these sins of theirs. And
those who are better than they, know them to be sins, but are overcome by
pleasures, and darkness is the veil of their vicious practices. For he violates
his marriage adulterously who uses it in a meretricious way, and hears not the
voice of the Instructor, crying, 'The man who ascends his bed, who says in his
soul, "Who seeth me? darkness is around me, and the walls are my covering,
and no one sees my sins. Why do I fear lest the Highest will
remember?"'"
Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses
"Let those also be of good cheer who are
married and use their marriage properly; who enter marriage lawfully, and not
out of wantonness and unbounded license; who recognize periods of continence so
that they may give themselves to prayer ... who have embarked upon the
matrimonial estate for the procreation of children and not for the sake of
indulgence."
Ephraim Syrus, The Nisibene Hymns, Hymn 3
"While on the Cross He quickened the dead,
so while a Babe He was fashioning babes. While He was slain, He opened the
graves; while He was in the womb, He opened wombs. Come hearken, my brethren,
concerning the Son of the Secret One that was revealed in His Body, while His
Power was concealed! For the Power of the Son is a free Power; the womb did not
bind it up, as it did the Body! For while His Power was dwelling in the womb,
He was fashioning infants in the womb! His Power compassed her, that compassed
Him. For if He drew in His Power, all things would fall; His Power upholds all
things; while He was within the womb, He left not His hold of all."
Epiphanius of
Salamis, 315-402, Medicine Chest Against Heresies
"They exercise genital acts, yet prevent
the conceiving of children. Not in order to produce offspring, but to satisfy
lust, are they eager for corruption"
First Council of Nicea, First Canon, 325 AD
"If anyone in sickness has undergone
surgery at the hands of physicians or has been castrated by barbarians, let him
remain among the clergy. But if anyone in good health has castrated himself, if
he is enrolled among the clergy he should be suspended, and in future no such
man should be promoted. But, as it is evident that this refers to those who are
responsible for the condition and presume to castrate themselves, so too if any
have been made eunuchs by barbarians or by their masters, but have been found
worthy, the canon admits such men to the clergy. "
Hippolytus, Refutation
of All Heresies
"Reputed believers began to resort to
drugs for producing Sterility and to gird themselves round, so as to expel what
was conceived on account of their not wanting to have a child either by a slave
or by any paltry fellow, for the sake of their family and excessive wealth.
Behold, into how great impiety that lawless one has proceeded, by inculcating
adultery and murder at the same time."
Jerome, Against Jovinian
"But I wonder why he [Jovinianus] set
Judah and Tamar before us for an example, unless perchance even harlots give
him pleasure; or Onan, who was slain because he grudged his brother seed. Does
he imagine that we approve of any sexual intercourse except for the procreation
of children?"
Jerome, Letters
"They drink potions to ensure sterility
and are guilty of murdering a human being not yet conceived."
Lactantius, Divine
Institutes
"[Some] complain of the scantiness of
their means, and allege that they have not enough for bringing up more
children, as though, in truth, their means were in [their] power . . . .or God
did not daily make the rich poor and the poor rich. Wherefore, if any one on
any account of poverty shall be unable to bring up children, it is better to
abstain from relations with his wife."
Human Reason
The apostolic tradition’s condemnation
of contraception was upheld by all key Protestant Reformers.
Martin Luther said,
"[T]he
exceedingly foul deed of Onan, the basest of wretches . . . is a most
disgraceful sin. It is far more atrocious than incest and adultery. We call it
unchastity, yes, a sodomitic sin. For Onan goes in to her; that is, he lies
with her and copulates, and when it comes to the point of insemination,
spills the semen, lest the woman conceive. Surely at such a time the order of
nature established by God in procreation should be followed. Accordingly, it
was a most disgraceful crime. . . . Consequently, he deserved to be killed by
God. He committed an evil deed. Therefore, God punished him."
John Calvin said,
"The
voluntary spilling of semen outside of intercourse between man and woman is a
monstrous thing. Deliberately to withdraw from coitus in order that semen may
fall on the ground is doubly monstrous. For this is to extinguish the hope of
the race and to kill before he is born the hoped-for offspring."
John Wesley warned,
"Those
sins that dishonor the body are very displeasing to God, and the evidence of
vile affections. Observe, the thing which he [Onan] did displeased the Lord—and
it is to be feared; thousands, especially of single persons, by this very
thing, still displease the Lord, and destroy their own souls." (These
passages are quoted in Charles D. Provan, The Bible and Birth Control,
which contains many quotes by historic Protestant figures who recognize
contraception’s evils.)
Few realize that up until 1930, all
Protestant denominations agreed with the Catholic Church’s teaching condemning
contraception as sinful. At its 1930 Lambeth Conference, the Anglican church,
swayed by growing social pressure, announced that contraception would be
allowed in some circumstances. Soon the Anglican church completely caved
in, allowing contraception across the board. Since then, all other Protestant
denominations have followed suit. Today, the Catholic Church alone proclaims
the historic Christian position on contraception.
Human
Experience
Pope Paul VI predicted grave consequences
that would arise from the widespread and unrestrained use of contraception. He
warned,
"Upright men can even better
convince themselves of the solid grounds on which the teaching of the Church in
this field is based if they care to reflect upon the consequences of methods of
artificially limiting the increase of children. Let them consider, first of
all, how wide and easy a road would thus be opened up towards conjugal
infidelity and the general lowering of morality. Not much experience is needed
in order to know human weakness, and to understand that men—especially the
young, who are so vulnerable on this point—have need of encouragement to be
faithful to the moral law, so that they must not be offered some easy means of
eluding its observance. It is also to be feared that the man, growing used to
the employment of anti-conceptive practices, may finally lose respect for the
woman and, no longer caring for her physical and psychological equilibrium, may
come to the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment,
and no longer as his respected and beloved companion" (HV 17).
No one can doubt the fulfillment of these
prophetic words. They have all been more than fulfilled in this country as a
result of the widespread availability of contraceptives, the "free
love" movement that started in the 1960s, and the loose sexual morality
that it spawned and that continues to pervade Western culture.
Indeed, recent studies reveal a far greater
divorce rate in marriages in which contraception is regularly practiced than in
those marriages where it is not. Experience, natural law, Scripture, Tradition,
and the Magisterium, all testify to the moral evil of contraception.
The growing use of unnatural birth control since 1913 has been accompanied by an almost 500% rise in the divorce rate. Among Catholics, the divorce rate formerly was much lower than the national average, but the divorce rate has risen sharply sincethe mid-1960s when Catholics began using unnatural birth control at about the same rate as the rest of a culture that is no longer Christian.[15] Even if other factors have contributed to the breakdown of family stability, there are ample indicators that the use of unnatural birth control has been a significant factor.
Resources
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©
2011 Robert J. Schihl
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