Post 2 of 3
In times before the invention of the printing press - before most people could even read let alone browse the magisterial documents of the Church on the internet - obedience to the Church might have been the end of the story. The faithful in modern times however, have the luxury of being able to acquire ancient works of the Church fathers such as Augustine and Aquinas, as well as works from some of the greatest theologians of modern times with same day shipping and overnight delivery. When we find ourselves at odds with Church teaching or in a position where we simply don’t understand why the Church teaches what it does, we really have no excuse not to at least make an attempt to learn.
To that end and contrary to what some might claim, there are very clear moral, biblical and theological reasons behind the Church’s teaching that contraception of any kind is a grave sin.
It should be noted that one cannot find any Christian denomination which taught that contraception was acceptable prior to the early 1900’s. In 1930, the Anglican Church began teaching that contraception was acceptable in certain circumstances and other mainstream Protestant denominations fell quickly in line. “Certain circumstances” became “Prayerfully considered” and one generation later, contraception was widely available over the counter. Legalized abortion on demand became the law of the land but one generation after that.
One has to ask who changed; the Churches or God?
To examine the moral argument against contraception, one need only consider the reason why someone seeks an abortion. Consider as well, the reason why one uses contraception. Are not the reasons the same? Not being ready for a baby, not wanting to bring another child into the world, not having the resources to care for another child… at the end of the day it all boils down wanting sex but not wanting a baby. Whether you prevent the pregnancy in the first place or terminate it afterward, the reason for doing so is the same and this certainly places those who consider themselves pro-life yet use contraception into a moral dilemma.
That contraception does not end a life and is therefore not a sin is an argument used by many Catholics. This argument is somewhat shallow however, in light of what it really means to be created in God’s image.
To paraphrase Karl Keating, (apart from the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ) God is a purely spiritual being. God has no mass, no weight, no size and no shape. He has no boundaries; you cannot touch God nor point to where He is. And God is immortal. The things that we can see, touch and feel on the other hand, are purely physical creations. Created physical objects have weight, size, color and mass. All created objects will eventually break down and turn to dust. Created things like rocks and the atmosphere and CD players do not have spirits.
Man however, is unique. Man alone unites the created world with the spiritual world. Man alone has a physical created body, and an immortal soul which Genesis speaks of as being created in the image of God. And so it is that when a human being’s spirit separates from his body, we call this death. It is in death that the body returns to dust and the immortal soul, separated from the body lives on.
When a man and a woman unite in sexual intercourse, it is the man who brings the sperm, the woman who brings the egg, but it can only be God who brings the spirit - the immortal soul. All three are present during sex and all three cooperate in the creation of a human being. Without the spirit supplied by God and created in His image, the egg may be fertilized but it is not alive. An embryo must have a spirit created in God’s image in order to be alive and if an embryo does have a spirit created in God’s image and is therefore alive, it is most certainly a human being.
Man, woman and God as co-creators of human life and of the transmission of the spirit into the fertilized egg by God at the moment of conception is the basis for the Church’s teaching that life begins at conception. To destroy the life after creation and to interfere with its creation in the first place are both grave sins.
Before he was Pope John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla wrote of what he called the “Personalistic Norm”. The peronalistic norm states that the opposite of love is not hate but use; to use another human being for personal enjoyment is the exact opposite of love. The use of contraception turns what should be an act where God and man are co-creators of human life into an act where man and woman use one another for personal enjoyment and exclude God from the process altogether.
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