Contraception and Sterilization
Christians have always condemned contraceptive
sex. Both forms mentioned in the Bible, coitus interruptus and sterilization,
are condemned without exception (Gen. 38:9–10, Deut. 23:1). The early Fathers
recognized that the purpose of sexual intercourse in natural law is procreation;
contraceptive sex, which deliberately blocks that purpose, is a violation
of natural law.
Every church in Christendom condemned contraception
until 1930, when, at its decennial Lambeth Conference, Anglicanism gave
permission for the use of contraception in a few cases. Soon all Protestant
denominations had adopted the secularist position on contraception. Today
not one stands with the Catholic Church to maintain the ancient Christian
faith on this issue.
How badly things have decayed may be seen by comparing
the current state of non-Catholic churches, where most pastors counsel
young couples to decide before they are married what form of contraception
they will use, with these quotations from the early Church Fathers,
who condemned contraception in general as well as particular forms of it,
as well as popular contraceptive sex practices that were then common (sterilization,
oral contraceptives, coitus interruptus, and orally consummated
sex).
Many Protestants, perhaps beginning to see the
inevitable connection between contraception and divorce and between contraception
and abortion, are now returning to the historic Christian position and
rejecting contraceptive sexual practices.
It should be noted that some of the Church Fathers
use language that can suggest to modern ears that there is no unitive aspect
to marital intercourse and that there is only a procreative aspect. It
is unclear whether this is what some of them actually thought or whether
they are intending simply to stress that sexual activity becomes immoral
if the procreative aspect of a given marital act is deliberately frustrated.
However that may be, over the course of time the Church has called greater
attention to the unitive aspect of marital intercourse, yet it remains
true that the procreative aspect of each particular marital act must not be frustrated.
The Letter of Barnabas
"Moreover, he [Moses] has rightly detested the
weasel [Lev. 11:29]. For he means, ‘Thou shall not be like to those whom
we hear of as committing wickedness with the mouth with the body through
uncleanness [orally consummated sex]; nor shall thou be joined to those
impure women who commit iniquity with the mouth with the body through uncleanness’"
(Letter of Barnabas 10:8 [A.D. 74]).
Clement of Alexandria
"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 [A.D. 191]).
"To have coitus other than to procreate children
is to do injury to nature" (ibid., 2:10:95:3).
Hippolytus
"[Christian women with male concubines], on account
of their prominent ancestry and great property, the so-called faithful
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 [A.D. 225]).
Lactantius
"[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 [A.D. 307]).
"God gave us eyes not to see and desire pleasure,
but to see acts to be performed for the needs of life; so too, the genital
[’generating’] part of the body, as the name itself teaches, has been received
by us for no other purpose than the generation of offspring" (ibid., 6:23:18).
Council of Nicaea I
"[I]f 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 [A.D. 325]).
Epiphanius of Salamis
"They [certain Egyptian heretics] exercise genital
acts, yet prevent the conceiving of children. Not in order to produce offspring,
but to satisfy lust, are they eager for corruption" (Medicine Chest
Against Heresies 26:5:2 [A.D. 375]).
Augustine
"This proves that you [Manicheans] approve of having
a wife, not for the procreation of children, but for the gratification
of passion. 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" (The Morals of the
Manichees 18:65 [A.D. 388]).
"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" (Against
Faustus 15:7 [A.D. 400]).
"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" (ibid., 22:30).
"For necessary sexual intercourse for begetting
[children] is alone worthy of marriage. But that which goes beyond this
necessity no longer follows reason but lust. And yet it pertains to the
character of marriage . . . to yield it to the partner lest by fornication
the other sin damnably [through adultery]. . . . [T]hey [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
[children], 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 [orally or anally consummated sex], the wife is more shameful,
if she suffer it to take place in her own case, than if in the case of
another woman" (The Good of Marriage 11–12 [A.D. 401]).
...
"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. . . . Assuredly if
both husband and wife are like this, they are not married, and if they
were like this from the beginning they come together not joined in matrimony
but in seduction. If both are not like this, I dare to say that either
the wife is in a fashion the harlot of her husband or he is an adulterer
with his own wife" (Marriage and Concupiscence 1:15:17 [A.D. 419]).
John Chrysostom
"Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy
the fruit, where there are medicines of sterility [oral contraceptives],
where there is murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain
only a harlot, but you make her a murderess as well. . . . 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 condemn the gift of God and fight with his [natural] laws? . . . Yet
such turpitude . . . the matter still seems indifferent to many men—even
to many men having wives. In this indifference of the married men there
is greater evil filth; for then poisons are prepared, not against the womb
of a prostitute, but against your injured wife. Against her are these innumerable
tricks" (Homilies on Romans 24 [A.D. 391]).
"[I]n truth, all men know that they who are under
the power of this disease [the sin of covetousness] are wearied even of
their father’s old age [wishing him to die so they can inherit]; 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" (Homilies
on Matthew 28:5 [A.D. 391]).
"[T]he man who has mutilated 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 by impeding
the forwardness of the free choice in behalf of good deeds" (ibid., 62:3).
"Observe how bitterly he [Paul] speaks against
their deceivers . . . ‘I would that they which trouble you would cut the
whole thing off’ [Gal. 5:12]. . . . On this account he curses them, and
his meaning is as follows: ‘For them I have no concern, "A man that is
heretical after the first and second admonition refuse" [Titus 3:10]. If
they will, let them not only be circumcised but mutilated.’ Where then
are those who dare to mutilate themselves, seeing that they draw down the
apostolic curse, and accuse the workmanship of God, and take part with
the Manichees?" (Commentary on Galatians 5:12 [A.D. 395]).
Jerome
"But I wonder why he [the heretic 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?" (Against Jovinian 1:19 [A.D. 393]).
"You may see a number of women who are widows before
they are wives. Others, indeed, will drink sterility and murder a man not
yet born, [and some commit abortion]" (Letters 22:13 [A.D. 396]).
Caesarius of Arles
"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 woman 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" (Sermons 1:12 [A.D. 522]).
NIHIL OBSTAT:
I have concluded that the materials
presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004
IMPRIMATUR:
In accord with 1983 CIC 827
permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004
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