21 October 2005

By now all of us should be very aware of the Catholic Church’s teaching regarding contraception. Although a perennial teaching, it was formulated in our time most cogently by Pope Paul VI in his 1968 encyclical “Humanae Vitae.”

In that landmark letter Pope Paul reiterated Catholic teaching for a new age, an age in which medical science had recently presented the oral contraceptive. The pope wisely saw that the introduction of “the pill” would have profound repercussions in marriages, families and society in general.

In “Humanae Vitae” Pope Paul first reminded us that abortion is always and intrinsically evil and that direct sterilization for purposes of regulating birth (i.e., non-therapeutic sterilization) is to be equally condemned. He then went on to say that “there must be a rejection of all acts that attempt to impede procreation, both those chosen as means to an end and those chosen as ends. This includes acts that precede intercourse, acts that accompany intercourse, and acts that are directed to the natural consequences of intercourse” (No. 14). As with abortion and non-therapeutic sterilization, Pope Paul reaffirmed that these acts of contraception are intrinsically evil.

Why does the Church call contraception evil? Simply put, because contraceptive acts violate the intrinsic unity of the two purposes or ends of marriage — mutual love, and the procreation and education of children. Contraception undermines the second of these ends. The necessary link between the two ends of marriage must be honored not only in marriage in general, but in each and every act of marital intercourse. This two-fold meaning of marriage is not the invention of society or even of the Church, but of God Himself. We read in “Humanae Vitae”: “The doctrine that the Magisterium of the Church has often explained is this: there is an unbreakable connection between the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning [of the conjugal act], and both are inherent in the conjugal act. This connection was established by God, and Man is not permitted to break it through his own volition. . . . Thus, anyone who uses God’s gift [of conjugal love] and cancels, if only in part, the significance and the purpose of this gift is rebelling against the most intimate relationship; for this reason, then, he is defying the plan and holy will of God” (Nos. 12,13).

Contraception is immoral in and of itself. The Church’s teaching could not be clearer in this regard. However, in addition to contraception’s violating the divinely established nature of marriage, contraceptive acts and the now well-established contraceptive mentality so prevalent in our culture have shown themselves to be destructive of human life through abortion as well as destructive of marriage and family life.

The advent of the oral contraceptive was touted as a virtual panacea that would prevent unplanned pregnancies in marriage and extra-marital births, thereby reducing — if not eliminating — abortion as a means of doing away with unwanted children. Five decades later we now know that exactly the opposite is the case. Unwanted pregnancies increased in our country, as did the number of abortions. Studies have shown that over 80 percent of women who have had abortions were experienced in contraception. What, in fact, happened was an effective severing of the link between the two purposes of marriage. Because of the availability of the oral contraceptive, sexual relationships outside of marriage increased. The growing contraceptive mentality assured more and more people that the unitive and procreative dimensions of marriage were not necessarily connected, and couples could now have one without the other.

Certainly contraception has contributed to the well-being of marriage and family life by eliminating the stress of anticipating unwanted pregnancy in the marriage. Not at all! Any number of studies has shown that fully one half of contracepting marriages end in divorce, while less than 4 percent of married couples who do not use contraception end up divorcing. In a 1977 study in the International Review of Natural Family Planning “the investigator concluded that fertility-awareness methods of natural family planning were perceived as contributing positively to the marital relationship by 98 married couples who had used natural methods for an average of 1.76 years at the time of the study.”

Joseph Tortucci, in a 1979 study published in the same journal, found that “Catholic couples in this study who are at present using natural methods of conception regulation demonstrate higher levels of self-esteem than do couples, grouped as a whole, who are using other methods. . . . Catholic couples who use natural methods demonstrate higher levels of marital satisfaction than do couples who are using other methods of conception regulation.”

Pope Paul VI pointed out the serious consequences of the use of artificial birth control in “Humanae Vitae,” including a rise in marital infidelity, increased promiscuity, loss of respect for wives by husbands, enforced contraception to control the populations of states, and the continued use of abortion as an alternate form of birth control. All of these have come to be sadly true.

Sometimes even religious people wonder whether God’s plan for us is really for our good. The widespread use of artificial contraception and its results should answer that question for us.