CONTRACEPTION DEFINITION: The deliberate use of artificial methods or other techniques to prevent pregnancy as a consequence of sexual intercourse.
OUTLINE An Argument from the Bible and History The Four F’s of Marital Love Freedom, Natural Law, & Purpose NFP vs Contraception In Vitro Quotes
AN ARGUMENT FROM THE BIBLE & HISTORY
CONTRACEPTION IN THE BIBLE Genesis 38:8-10: "Then Judah said to Onan, 'Go in to your brother's wife, and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother.' But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so when he went in to his brother’s wife he spilled the semen on the ground, lest he should give offspring to his brother. And what he did was displeasing in the sight of the LORD, and he slew him also." • This involved what is known as the "levirate law": the duty to produce offspring with the wife of a dead brother. • But this is not why God killed Onan, since the penalty for that was public humiliation and shunning, not death (Dt. 25:5-10).
Married couples are to "be fruitful and multiply"; this is a blessing (Gen. 1:28; 9:1,7; 28:3; 35:11; Dt. 7:13-14; Ps. 107:38; 115:14; 128:1-4; Prov. 17:6; Ecc. 6:3).
CONTRACEPTION IN THE BIBLE Procreation is central to marriage (Mal. 2:14-15). • Has not [the LORD] made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth.
Childbearing is so sacred that women are even said to be "saved" by it (1 Tim. 2:15). • But women will be saved through childbearing--if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.
Children are a gift from God (Gen. 17:16,20; 29:32-33; 33:5; Ps. 127:3).
CONTRACEPTION IN HISTORY John Calvin • It is a horrible thing to pour out seed besides the intercourse of man and woman. Deliberately avoiding the intercourse, so that the seed drops on the ground, is double horrible. For this means that one quenches the hope of his family and kills the son, which could be expected, before he is born. ....When a woman in some way drives away the seed out the womb, through aids, then this is rightly seen as an unforgivable crime. Onan was guilty of a similar crime. (Calvin’s Commentary on Genesis, vol. 2, part 16)
Martin Luther • “[T]he exceedingly foul deed of Onan, the basest of wretches . . . is a most disgraceful 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. ...” (Luther’s Commentary on Genesis)
The Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Church in 1930 was the first ever approval by a Christian Church of contraception.
THE FOUR F’s OF MARITAL LOVE Free, Faithful, Full, & Fruitful
TO LOVE AS CHRIST LOVES In order to be “true to the sign,” spouses must speak as Christ speaks. • • • •
Christ gives his body freely (“No one takes my life from me, I lay it down of my own accord,” Jn 10:18). He gives his body without reservation (“he loved them to the last,” Jn 13:1). He gives his body faithfully (“I am with you always,” Mt 28:20). And he gives his body fruitfully (“I came that they may have life,” Jn 10:10).
This is the love a couple commits to in marriage. Standing at the altar, the priest or deacon asks them: • • • •
“Have you come here freely and without reservation to give yourselves to each other in marriage? Do you promise to be faithful until death? Do you promise to receive children lovingly from God?” Then, having committed to loving as Christ loves, the couple is meant to incarnate that love in sexual intercourse. In other words, sexual union is meant to be where the words of the wedding vows “become flesh.”
Divine love is generous; it generates. And, to put it plainly, this is why God gave us genitals – to enable spouses to image in their bodies (to “incarnate”) an earthly version of his own free, total, faithful, fruitful love. When spouses contracept – that is, when they willfully defraud their union of its procreative potential – they become “false prophets.” Their sexual act still “speaks,” but it denies the life-giving love of God.
FREEDOM, NATURAL LAW, & PURPOSE
LICENSE VS FREEDOM
License • • • • • • • •
freedom to indulge compulsions to indulge freedom to sin do what feels good sees law as the tyrant law feels imposed breaks the law any choice is a good choice negates love
Freedom • • • •
freedom from compulsion freedom from sin do what is good sees sin as the tyrant
• law is written on the heart
• fulfills the law • choice between good and evil • affords love
From "Fill These Hearts" by Christopher West MTS
NATURAL LAW We are made for a purpose. We have an end. We are made with freedom and a set of built in rules we call natural law that help us to achieve this end. • Our final purpose for which were made is to see God “face to face” (beatitude). However we have many purposes in between our final end and now that all help us to get there.
The natural law is the rule of conduct which is prescribed to us by the Creator in the constitution of the nature with which He has endowed us. • What are those things that are a part of us by the very fact of us being human?
The rule, then, which God has prescribed for our conduct, is found in our nature itself. • Those actions which conform with its tendencies, lead to our destined end, and are thereby constituted right and morally good; • Those at variance with our nature are wrong and immoral.
AN ANALOGY FOR AUTHENTIC FREEDOM Imagine a train that is on a set of tracks that run from San Francisco to New York. This train has the freedom to travel across the entire country from one end to the other. But one day the train says to himself that he is tired of being on the tracks and wants to go to Houston so he uses the “freedom” that he has to choose to leave the tracks and sets out for Houston. The only problem is he is a train and he is made for tracks. The minute he goes against how he was made he loses all true freedom and now cannot move or go anywhere. True freedom comes when we obey the laws of our nature and live in accordance with the purpose(s) in which we were made for.
AN ANALOGY FOR PURPOSE Do we eat purely for pleasure? Do we eat purely for health to the exclusion of taste? • God designed things so that the two elements, nutrition and taste buds, should go together. This is part of our nature.
What do we say when a person eats and then purges? • We say they have an eating disorder. But why? • Because it is against the ordering of nature to eat and then purge and thereby not use food for what food is intended to provide; nourishment.
It is obvious from all of nature that sex is ordered to a specific purpose as well; that of procreation and pleasure.
ARGUMENTS FROM “PURPOSE” What is the purpose of the sexual act for humans? • Union and Procreation (Love-making and Baby-making)
2363 The spouses' union achieves the twofold end of marriage: • the good of the spouses themselves • and the transmission of life
These two meanings or values of marriage cannot be separated without altering the couple's spiritual life and compromising the goods of marriage and the future of the family.
THE TWOFOLD “PURPOSE” OF THE SEXUAL ACT 2366 Fecundity is a gift, an end of marriage, for conjugal love naturally tends to be fruitful. A child does not come from outside as something added on to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfillment. So the Church, which "is on the side of life“ teaches that "it is necessary that each and every marriage act must remain ordered per se to the procreation of human life."
"This particular doctrine, expounded on numerous occasions by the Magisterium, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act."
VICTORIANISM & HEDONISM What happens if we separate the twofold aspect of sex? Victorianism (puritanism) • It is wrong to have sex for procreation alone
Hedonism • It is wrong to engage in it for pleasure alone
It used to be that the playboy and philanderer or loose woman was considered an abnormal person, because they separated sex from commitment and childbirth, and joined it to profit or ego and the manipulation and cruelty of selfish conquest. And we think Victorian prudery and refusal to enjoy the pleasure of sex in its proper bounds is equally odd and abnormal.
NFP VS CONTRACEPTION
WHAT IS NFP? NFP is a way of following God’s plan for achieving and/or avoiding pregnancy. It consists of ways to achieve or to avoid pregnancy using the physical means that God has built into human nature. NFP consists of two distinct forms:
• Ecological breastfeeding. This is a form of child care that normally spaces babies about two years apart on the average. • Systematic NFP. This is a system that uses a woman’s signs of fertility to determine the fertile and infertile times of her cycle.
How effective is NFP? • The effectiveness of natural family planning as a method for avoiding pregnancy is related to the type of NFP that is used, how well it is taught, and how well the couples follow the rules. • The most recent study of the Sympto-Thermal Method was published in February, 2007 ("The effectiveness of a fertility awareness based method to avoid pregnancy in relation to a couple's sexual behavior during the fertile time: a prospective longitudinal study" by Petra Frank-Herrmann and others, Human Reproduction, advance notice on February 21, 2007). • Here the German researchers found a "perfect-use" effectiveness rate of 99.6%. "Perfect-use" means that the couples followed the rules in every cycle.
BIRTH REGULATION ...For just reasons, spouses may wish to space the births of their children. It is their duty to make certain that their desire is not motivated by selfishness but is in conformity with the generosity appropriate to responsible parenthood. Moreover, they should conform their behavior to the objective criteria of morality:
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2370
Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on selfobservation 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.” Both contraception and NFP have a good end: the responsible regulation of births, however they have radically different means
WHAT’S THE BIG DIFFERENCE? What’s the big difference between rendering the union sterile yourself and just waiting until it’s naturally infertile? The end result is the same thing.” • What’s the big difference between a miscarriage and an abortion? The end result is the same. One, however, is an “act of God.” In the other man takes the powers of life into his own hands and makes himself like God. -Christopher West
Having sex during non-fertile times in the context of NFP is entirely different. It involves no frustration of nature or natural law, but rather it is acting "naturally within nature," when nature happens to be such that no conception will take place. It is not "anti-procreation" to have sex during infertile times because procreation isn't an issue then. •
We aren't saying that it is wrong to have sex unless procreation is possible; rather, we are saying that it is wrong to make pleasure an end in itself, or the other person the means to an end (purely selfish pleasure), or to separate the procreative and unitive purposes
WHAT’S THE BIG DIFFERENCE? We sin when we deliberately frustrate the primary essence of sexuality (procreation), and place our own "contralife" will above God's possible will. The will is central in the Catholic notion of what is a sin, and in considerations of degrees of culpability for sin. NFP (rightly understood and practiced) does not entail this "contralife will." It is essentially different, though the method can be abused and used in a contraceptive fashion, for the wrong motives. -Dave Armstrong
KILLING VS DYING: AN ANALOGY The following analogy may help to summarize not only the important moral distinction between contraception and NFP, but also the necessary moral attitude that must accompany the responsible use of NFP. In the case of the elderly relative, it’s one thing to suffer with him while waiting patiently for his natural death. In this situation there would be nothing blameworthy even to be grateful for his death when it occurred. But it would be quite another thing to take the powers of life into your own hands and kill him because you cannot bear his sufferings.
KILLING VS DYING: AN ANALOGY Similarly, for the couple with a noble desire to avoid pregnancy, there is nothing blameworthy in waiting patiently for the natural time of infertility, and even rejoicing that God has granted a time of infertility. But it would be quite another thing for the couple to take the powers of life into their own hands and render themselves sterile because they cannot bear the suffering of abstinence. With regard to attitude, it’s also possible that your desire for your relative’s death might be unrighteous. You may have some sort of hatred toward him that would lead you to wish him dead. You may not kill him yourself, indeed he may die of a natural cause. Nonetheless your rejoicing in his death would be blameworthy. This is akin to a couple who uses NFP with an unrighteous desire to avoid a pregnancy. Their rejoicing in the infertile time would also be blameworthy because it is motivated by a selfish, anti-child mentality. -Christopher West
"YOU CAN TELL A TREE BY ITS FRUITS" The fruits of contraception •
adultery and non-marital sex
•
divorce (and its resultant poverty)
•
degradation of women (who are now mere sex toys)
•
abuse
•
the acceptance of homosexual unions as "marriages" (through the severing of the link between love and fruit)
•
abortion (as a means to eliminate the unwanted pregnancies that can still result from contraceptive sex)
•
and the inability to love which can have eternal consequences
The fruits of NFP are •
a nearly non existent divorce rate
•
respect for the woman and the way her body is made
•
greater freedom and self control
•
which increases the capacity for love (making one more ready for heaven)
•
the possibility to make present the power of the Holy Spirit through the renewal of the wedding vows
IN VITRO
JUST BECAUSE WE CAN DOESN’T MEAN WE SHOULD 2375 Research aimed at reducing human sterility is to be encouraged, on condition that it is placed "at the service of the human person, of his inalienable rights, and his true and integral good according to the design and will of God." On the one hand, it would be illusory to claim that scientific research and its applications are morally neutral; on the other hand one cannot derive criteria for guidance from mere technical efficiency, from research's possible usefulness to some at the expense of others, or, worse still, from prevailing ideologies. Thus science and technology require, for their own intrinsic meaning, an unconditional respect for the fundamental criteria of the moral law: ... - CDF, Donum vitae intro., 2
SPECIFIC TECHNIQUES 2376 Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple • •
donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus, are gravely immoral.
These techniques (heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization) infringe the child's right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage. They betray the spouses' "right to become a father and a mother only through each other.“ 2377 Techniques involving only the married couple (homologous artificial insemination and fertilization) are perhaps less reprehensible, yet remain morally unacceptable. They dissociate the sexual act from the procreative act...."Under the moral aspect procreation is deprived of its proper perfection when it is not willed as the fruit of the conjugal act, that is to say, of the specific act of the spouses' union .... Only respect for the link between the meanings of the conjugal act and respect for the unity of the human being make possible procreation in conformity with the dignity of the person."
A GIFT TO RECEIVE While there are many acts through which a child can be conceived (the marital embrace, rape, fornication, adultery, incest, various technological procedures) only one is in keeping with the dignity of the child as a divine “gift.” To desire a child not as the fruit of marital love, but as the end result of a technological procedure is to treat the child as a product to obtain, rather than a gift to receive and a person to be loved “for his own sake.” - Christopher West
“RIGHT TO A CHILD”
2378 A child is not something owed to one, but is a gift. The "supreme gift of marriage" is a human person. A child may not be considered a piece of property, an idea to which an alleged "right to a child" would lead. .... 2379 The Gospel shows that physical sterility is not an absolute evil. Spouses who still suffer from infertility after exhausting legitimate medical procedures should unite themselves with the Lord's Cross, the source of all spiritual fecundity. They can give expression to their generosity by adopting abandoned children or performing demanding services for others.
QUOTES
QUOTES ON CONTRACEPTION Theodore Roosevelt: Contraception is "the one sin for which the penalty is national death, race death; a sin for which there is no atonement." (Cited in Good News About Sex and Marriage, by Christopher West) Ghandi: Contraceptives are "like putting a premium on vice. They make men and women reckless." "Nature is relentless and will have full revenge for any such violations of her laws. Moral results can only be produced by moral restraints… As it is, man has sufficiently degraded woman for his lust, and [contraception], no matter how well meaning the advocates may be, will still further degrade her." (Ibid.) The Washington Post: The acceptance of contraception "would sound the death knell of marriage as a holy institution by establishing degrading practices which would encourage indiscriminate immorality." (Ibid.) Pope John Paul II: "Contraception is to be judged so profoundly unlawful as never to be, for any reason, justified. To think or to say the contrary is equal to maintaining that in human life, situations may arise in which it is lawful not to recognize God as God."(Ibid.)
QUOTES ON CONTRACEPTION "The teaching of the Church on the regulation of birth, which promulgates the divine law, will easily appear to many to be difficult or even impossible of actuation. And indeed, like all great beneficent realities, it demands serious engagement and much effort, individual, family and social effort. More than that, it would not be practicable without the help of God, who upholds and strengthens the good will of men. Yet, to anyone who reflects well, it cannot but be clear that such efforts ennoble man and are beneficial to the human community.“ - Pope Paul VI Humanae Vitae 20 "Contraception was not invented to prevent pregnancy. There already existed a perfectly safe, infallibly reliable way of doing that; it's called abstinence. Upon deeper reflection it becomes clear that contraception was invented to indulge sexual instinct. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. the necessity that mothered contraception was our "need" for sex." - Christopher West's Good News about Sex and Marriage , p.110
‘Living out the Church’s teaching on contraception seems to many an impossible task. However, it only seems this way because it is difficult and requires sacrifice.’ - Pope John Paul II
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