Actually, the Church does NOT, NOT, NOT (get it, NOT) base the ban on CONTRACEPTION, on the EFC’s.
It did back in the day when the Early Church Fathers weren’t considered “early.” Certainly none of the ECFs who taught against birth control (unless you’ve got a reference I haven’t seen yet) did so for the same reasons the Church puts forward today.
The simple truth of the matter is that the ECFs possessed an understanding of human sexuality in which sin was a necessary accessory, even in marriage, to the sex act – sin wasn’t necessarily held to be part of the sex act itself, but sin was always present
with the sex act.
Consider all these examples from the Fathers (and I’m not even halfway done digging yet):
But God has allowed us to marry, because all are not fit for the higher, that is, the perfectly pure life… – Origen, Against Celsus 8:55
But the Son of God has no mother in any sense which involves impurity; she, whom men suppose to be His mother in the ordinary way, had never entered into the marriage bond. – Tertullian, Apology 21
For the Lord Jesus would not have chosen to be born of a Virgin, if He had conceived she would be so wanting in continence as to suffer that birthplace of the Lord’s Body, that palace of the eternal King, to be polluted by human intercourse…she was only espoused to her husband Joseph; and…she was ignorant of that carnal commerce which is the accustomed right of the marriage bed… – Ambrose of Milan, Letter on the Case of Bonosus 3-4
Such, then, was the laughter of Sarah when she received the good news of the birth of a son; not, in my opinion, that she disbelieved the angel, but that she felt ashamed of the intercourse by means of which she was destined to become the mother of a son. – Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 6:12
And we see men also keeping themselves virgins, some from the first, and some from a certain time; so that by their means, marriage, made lawless through lust, is destroyed. And we find that some even of the lower animals, though possessed of wombs, do not bear, such as the mule; and the male mules do not beget their kind. So that both in the case of men and the irrational animals we can see sexual intercourse abolished; and this, too, before the future world. And our Lord Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, for no other reason than that He might destroy the begetting by lawless desire, and might show to the ruler that the formation of man was possible to God without human intervention. – Justin Martyr, On the Resurrection 3
Let lust not go beyond the marriage-bed, but be subservient to the procreation of children. – Lactantius, The Divine Institutes - Epitome 62
The good, then, of marriage lies not in the passion of desire, but in a certain legitimate and honourable measure in using that passion, appropriate to the propagation of children, not the gratification of lust…it [is] good to use well a bad thing. – Augustine, On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants 1:57
Can there be any doubt, having all these testimonies at our disposal, that marital intercourse must, according to the views of the ECFs, have involved
some measure of sin (or “impurity”, or “pollution”, or “defilement”, etc., etc.)?
By all means, feel free to say, “That’s
not what the Church teaches about sex in marriage! The Church teaches that sex in marriage is 100% holy and good!” I can believe that. What I
cannot believe, in light of all these testimonies from the ECFs, is that the Church has
always taught this.
Like it or not, the facts are the facts, and the facts say that the Catholic Church’s teaching on sex in marriage has, over the centuries,
changed.
–Mike
So are you saying Catholics aren’t practical people? 