Contraception outside marriage

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I don’t know. Do we really need to worry at this point about being fruitful and multiplying?

Certainly, God doesn’t want 20 billion human beings crowding the planet.
 
Ron_Conte said:
…claiming that condomized fornication is less evil than simple fornication since the former has less risk of resulting in pregnancy and the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases.
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Who has made this claim?
 
Mboo said:
murder is the deprivation of a life. In contraception, you deprive a child (who exists in the mind of God) of a life he would have had.
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The Church has long categorized contraception under the commandment You shall not murder. This was partly because of a lack of understanding of when life begins in the womb. Now we know that life begins at the single-cell stage (at conception). However, it is still correct to categorize contraception under that commandment, since – as Grizes, Boyle, May, Finnis and others argue – contraception is anti-life.

Is contraception a sexual sin, such that it would be categorized under the commandment against adultery? No, it is related to sexual sins, since it deprives sex of its procreative finality. But that object of the act pertains to life, and the openness to life or deliberate deprivation thereof, so contraception is an anti-life act, not a per se sexual act.

Is contraception only immoral in marriage, because its only evil is to offend against the marital state? No. It is immoral whenever, by a deliberate knowing choice, the act itself deprives sex of its openness to life.

Mboo takes this point of view too far, though.
 
Artificial contraception separated the procreative and unitive nature of sex and in doing so, radically changed the way people defined love and marriage – most importantly, the way even Christians defined it. If people felt that any procreation could be willfully rendered optional then it’s hardly surprising that the argument would follow that people should be free just marry whoever they happen to love (gay marriage, polygamy’s probably next) – or just have free love and sex on demand with no marriage at all. “We don’t need a piece of paper to define us” – as a friend told me once. So the fact that the Church would include condemnation of contraception even outside of marriage makes sense when you get to the heart of what it is that’s being condemned.
 
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Ron_Conte said:
Maybe we could return to the original question, whether:
A. contraception is only condemned by Humanae Vitae within marriage, because it deprives marital sex of its procreative finality,
or,
B. contraception is condemned regardless of marital state, because it deprives sexual intercourse of its procreative finality?

My answer is B. Certainly, HV focuses on marriage, since that was the primary question at hand, and also because the faithful ought not to have relations outside of the marital state. But the definition of contraception as an intrinsically evil act depends on its thwarting of conception, not mainly its harm to marriage.
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You keep insisting that that the cart is able to go before the horse. There is no indication at all that HV is concerned with sex outside of marriage. That whole premise is not in keeping with the thrust of the document…that thrust being natural law. At the same time, the question of what constitutes a valid marriage is not asked in the document - but that does not mean the document is referring to sex outside of marriage. The document consistently refers to married couples, and only eludes to the consequences of contraception on society as a whole in a manner that never acknowledges sex outside of marriage, but simply acknowledges the nature of mankind without being specific to sex outside of marriage.
 
I kind of feel like the whole discussion is a touch pointless. I have yet to meet anyone who is concerned with following Church teaching on contraception, but also intends to have sex outside of marriage.
 
But following your line of reason with the shirt, if someone destroyed the thread before it was woven into cloth, then it would be ok? Wouldn’t that be the same as destroying an egg or sperm? Or if someone left the thread out to rot and it was never woven into cloth, then you don’t get to feel bad about the shirt because there was never cloth, only thread?

If the thread sits there and never gets woven then it’s all ok, but if the thread gets woven, suddenly there is loss?

It seems, following your line of reasoning, that humans are duty bound to have intercourse as much as possible so as to make sure every potential has the opportunity to come to be, and to not would be allowing thread to never get woven into cloth.
 
a wire “a” can replace a wire “b” if it will not change the quality of the shirt. But if we had a single an unique piece of fabric, which would have made the originality and the exception of the shirt, then by burning the fabric we will irretrievably destroyed the shirt that we hoped to obtain
 
Maybe this was more common back in the 80’s when I was a teen. I knew many girls who got pregnant because they didn’t want to compound the sin of sex outside of marriage by using contraception.

If they had the sex, they could claim that they were overcome by feelings or whatever, but if they used contraception, that added TWO layers of sin, the contraception itself as well as the fact that clearly the sex had been intended and wasn’t a “crime of passion”.
 
Also, the Church forbids Catholic hospitals from cooperating in or dispensing contraception, even to unmarried persons, even when the physician and the patients are non-Catholic or non-Christian. The reason is that contraception is intrinsically evil, regardless of marital state.
 
All the magisterial acts I am aware of define the as an intrinsic evil the use of matrimony or the conjugal act in a contraceptive way (“conjugal” means its relation to marriage; fornication is not a conjugal act.), rather than considering all intercourse–fornication or conjugal relations–the same species of act to be judged as per se or intrinsically evil.

Roman Catechism: “…married persons who, to prevent conception…”
Casti Connubii: “…any use whatsoever of matrimony…”
Pius XII, Address to Midwives “…every attempt of either husband or wife in the performance of the conjugal act…”
Humanae Vitae: “We base Our words on the first principles of a human and Christian doctrine of marriage…”

I think the Church has deliberately not weighed in on the issue at hand is because she is not in the business of telling people how to sin well–theologians can argue among themselves about degrees of mortal sins, but I don’t think the Church will ever tell us the best way to fornicate. (The decretal cited in one link above appears to be related to an act of sterilizing another person.)
 
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  • Casti Connubii: “Intercourse even with one’s legitimate wife is unlawful and wicked where the conception of the offspring is prevented.” The phrasing “even with” implies it is immoral outside of marriage also.
  • Humanae Vitae defines contraception, an intrinsically evil act, in this way: “any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means.”
  • The decretal (Si aliquis) condemned contraception using the language “anyone” “man or woman” and no reference to marriage. That condemnation stood in each version of the decretals (a collection of judgements and teachings of the Church) from the 13th century (700 years).
  • Aquinas condemns contraception specifically in a discussion about unmarried persons (Summa Contra Gentiles, book III, ch. 122, nos. 5, 9)
  • St. John Chrysostom and St. Jerome condemned contraception used specifically in acts of fornication or adultery.
  • The Church opposes govt programs to distribute contraceptives, even to unmarried persons or non-Christians.
  • The Church does not permit hospitals to dispense contraceptives to unmarried patients, even when those patients are non-Catholic [Quaecumque Sterilizatio], and the language used is “sexual act” [actuum sexualium], not conjugal or marital.
 
For the first one, I think “even with” can refer to intercourse–ie contraception removes the “lawfulness” of intercourse that marriage usually provoides (I think the sentence structure makes this the appropriate interpretation).

For Humanae Vitate it says “similarly excluded” referencing back to the paragraph which places it in the context of marriage.

For the decretal, that seemed to be a matter of making another person sterile.

For the saints cited, I don’t argue this is not a permissable permission in the Church, just that the Church’s definitive judgments have avoided it.

As for the Church opposing their distribution, there is also the concern as to the evils that spring from the mentality contraceptives engender and the fact that they can make sins “easier” to commit, as opposed to judgments as to additional sinful weight being attached to a particular act.

My point is simply to say the Church does not seem to have a definitive judgment on this because it should be a moot point.
 
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Genesis315 said:
I think the Church has deliberately not weighed in on the issue at hand is because she is not in the business of telling people how to sin well–theologians can argue among themselves about degrees of mortal sins, but I don’t think the Church will ever tell us the best way to fornicate.
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Exactly. And it doesn’t even lend itself to common sense. If we are to accept that fornication is graver with contraception use… the corresponding logic that fornication is a lesser sin using NFP is a natural recipe for the human temptation to rationalise around sin.
 
Fornication and contraception are both grave matter. So with NFP it would be only the sin of fornication. But one should avoid it all.
 
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One poster above specifically says that adultery is more grave if compounded with the added sin of contraception. Yet…I think even the most Catholic spouse will be relieved that their cheating partner used a condom.
“Oh don’t worry honey, I was open to life with the neighbour. Heck, it’s a blessing! She is carrying my kid!”

Technically, from a purely natural law perspective, perhaps it’s true… but surely not in terms of temporal consequences / ramifications.
From a strict Thomist understanding of natural law, a teen unmarried couple who “just” do “oral” sin more gravely than an unmarried couple who go “all the way”… but no one is going to say that in a pastoral setting.
 
Contraception is still grave matter. That hypothetical scenario isn’t very realistic.
 
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