“So they are no longer two, but one flesh.” (Mt. 19:6)
The Church teaches that the use of contraception is “intrinsically evil” (CCC 2370). To most, this is a harsh reality and one that seems wildly out of place in today’s society. Recent surveys have shown that Catholics disagree the most with the Church’s teachings on contraception out of any other of the Church’s moral teachings.
As St. John Paul II emphasized in his encyclical Humanae Vitae, today’s society promulgates a “culture of death.” Issues ranging from contraception to euthanasia reflect a mentality that devalues life in all its stages. The Catholic response to this culture of death is, conversely, a culture of life, a culture that promotes human flourishing and growth while respecting the dignity of every human being.
The Church does not teach that contraception is wrong because, as some claim, she wants to control everything that people do in their bedrooms. She teaches this because it is the truth and thus what brings about the greatest human flourishing.
The Church has come to know that all of moral theology is highly interconnected and if you try to remove one piece, the entire system comes crashing down sooner or later. When the Anglicans first gave leeway to contraception (the first Christian group to do so) at their Council of Lambeth in 1930, they did not foresee how quickly they would begin having debates on abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, and many more issues.
The problem with contraception, apart from its social and historical consequences, is that it removes an essential component of marriage. Marriage is unlike any other human institution. The sexual act forms a bond of union between a man and a woman which is not replicated anywhere else. Someone can have intimate and loving relationships with their friends and family, but only between a married man and woman is the fullness of intimacy expressed.
Using contraception is fundamentally contrary to the purpose of the sexual act. Most people are disturbed when they hear that Roman parties consisted of gorging oneself with food, just to promptly throw it all up so that he could go on eating more. On a basic level, this repulses us because we understand that the purpose of eating is to gain nutrition, not simply to please our taste buds. So too, we can understand that the purpose of sex is procreation, not simply to please our bodies.
The first commandment in the Bible is for Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:28). As the first married couple, God is expressing to the pair that reproduction will play an integral role in their relationship. God calls married men and women to be partakers in His work of creation by creating images of them in their children. To use contraception is to essentially reject this call of God, which is His call for us to be like Him.
Since God is love Himself, and since God is the Giver of Life, to truly love is to cooperate with God in propagating life. When couples use contraception, they are in effect saying to God, “stay out of the bedroom, we don’t want your gift here.” Contraception is an attempt of man to divorce pleasure from true love, to have his cake and eat it too.
At its core, love is an act of pure self-sacrifice. Our Lord gave up His life on the cross to show what true love is. St. Paul says that when two are joined in marriage, their bodies are no longer their own, but belong to the other (cf. 1 Cor. 7:4). Contraception is an act of reservation, it holds something back from the other person. It is like they are saying to one another, “I am willing to give you everything, except the total and complete gift of myself.” Love is not conditional, it gives freely and entirely of itself.
Featured Image courtesy of the Blue Diamond Gallery
James Pritchett is a Sophomore studying History and Classics with a deep affinity for his native land, the Golden State. Despite being the most recent lover of Catholicism on the Torch staff, he is the C101 editor and his main interests consist of reading Dostoyevsky, playing devil’s advocate, and correcting people on niche theological heresies.
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