Then what about all those married couples that use contraception?..Are they going to be damned as well?..I am kind of confused on this matter…
Sadly, from an objective standpoint, purely looking at the action and its gravity, yes, they will.
Now, the caveat comes in at whether or not they know it’s wrong to use contraception. If they’ve heard the Church’s teaching and still choose to ignore it, then they are likely culpable. If they haven’t heard the teaching then, while it’s still grave matter, it may not necessarily be mortally sinful. That doesn’t give them a free pass, as each person has an obligation to educate themselves on the teachings of the Church, but it does mean they
may not be be committing a mortal sin.
There’s also the potential that an unfaithful priest is telling them wrongly. If that’s the case they again
may not be culpable, though that priest will be culpable for teaching them wrongly, the same as a priest who says masturbation is no big deal, or that there’s no risk of Hell, or any other heterodox teaching like that.
In the end, we can’t know for sure. That is why judgment is God’s domain and not ours. However, given how widespread the teaching is on the subject, and the ease with which a person can educate themselves on the teachings of the Church, it seems unlikely that a couple could claim ignorance of the teaching as justification for contraceptive use. As such, looking as an outside observer based purely on the actions themselves, it doesn’t look good.
This is probably hard to read, and the mind certainly recoils as the implications, but the saints have never shied away from warning about the dangers of damnation, Jesus spoke on the risk of damnation more than any other topic, and we shouldn’t stop teaching on it just because it makes people uncomfortable. If it makes them uncomfortable, it’s probably because their conscience is trying to tell them something about the way they’re living.
www.cathdal.org