Open to Life: Contraception and Morality

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series What is Openness to Life?


First off, we must remember natural family planning is not “Catholic birth control”. In NFP: The Complete Approach (6) it states,

Christian marriage is a sacrament in which the spouses are called to be generous to each other and to be generous with God in having children and raising them in the ways of the Lord. Marriage is for family.

Children are gifts from God. Most Christian married couples can assume that much of the time, perhaps even most of the time, God is calling them to be generous and to invite another child to share family life on this earth and to share eternity with Him. The knowledge of systematic NFP is also a gift from God, and couples should use it generously, not selfishly. [emphasis mine]

Keeping this in mind, we can now discuss contraception. Most couples today wonder what type of contraceptive they should use instead of whether they should use it. Contraception has become a part of culture and has been distinguished as the “responsible thing to do”.

However, most people are unaware of contraception’s history. Before 1930, all Christian churches taught that contraception was contrary to God’s design. It was Margaret Sanger (the founder of Planned Parenthood) who lobbied for its use, and the Anglican Church was the first to concede. But it only allowed contraception for married couples with severe difficulties. [I will talk about Margaret Sanger and her mission in a later post.] Because of this, the door opened for all other protestant churches, and within thirty years, almost all denominations accepted and some even promoted birth control.

But in the pamphlet entitled “The Contraception Question”, Christopher West asserts, “In rendering sex sterile, we take the powers of life into our own hands and make ourselves like God.” We are not God and cannot assume to be. Children are not commodities that we can produce when convenient and kill when they are not. [I will talk about science and technologies in later posts.]

Admonitions made by Popes:
Pope John Paul II stated that 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” (address, Oct. 10 1983).

Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae said “To use this divine gift destroying, even if only partially, its meaning and its purpose is to contradict the nature both of man and of woman and of their most intimate relationship, and therefore it is to contradict also the plan of God and His will. On the other hand, to make use of the gift of conjugal love while respecting the laws of the generative process means to acknowledge oneself not to be the arbiter of the sources of human life, but rather the minister of the design established by the Creator.”

Pope Pius XI said on December 31, 1930, “Any use whatsoever of matrimony [the marriage act] exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin” (Casti Connubii, 56).


Up Next: Contraception and Society

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction