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ZENIT, The world seen from Rome
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Catholic Teaching on Contraception: For Married Couples Only?
Condemnation of Contraception Is a Universal Norm
WASHINGTON, D.C., FEB. 8, 2012 (Zenit.org).- Here is a question on
bioethics asked by a ZENIT reader and answered by the fellows of
the Culture of Life Foundation.
Q: Does the Catholic Church’s condemnation of contraception bind only
on
married couples or is it a universal moral norm?
E. Christian Brugger replies:
The Church’s teaching on contraception can only be rightly understood
in the
context of its wider teaching on the nature and goods of
marriage. But
the norm itself against contraceptive acts, taught and defended since
the early
Church, binds universally—in the language of moral theology, semper et
pro
semper, without exception. It singles out a particular type of
freely
chosen behavior, namely, deliberate acts intended to render sexual
intercourse
infertile.
Sexual intercourse, the tradition holds, is legitimate and good (and,
for
Christians, grace-imparting) when and only when it is marital.
Marriage
is a one-flesh communion of persons with two defining goods: the unity
and
perfection of the spouses and the procreation and education of
children.
Intercourse that is marital will always respect the full one-flesh
significance
of the marital relationship by retaining a unitive and procreative
character.
The normative work this does in sexual ethics is primarily
negative.
Sexual acts that intentionally disregard either the unitive or the
procreative
goods of marriage are non-marital and therefore wrongful acts.
Intercourse between non-married partners violates the unitive good, as
do all
coercive sexual acts. Contraceptive acts will against the
procreative
good; they are therefore non-marital, even if between married persons,
and so
wrongful. They are wrongful precisely because by definition they
entail a
will against the procreative good of marriage. Let me repeat: all
non-marital
sex is wrongly chosen, both inside and outside of marriage.
Fornication
is sex between non-married persons. Masterbatory acts are
non-unitive.
Contraceptive acts are non-procreative and non-unitive, insofar as
rejecting
the procreative meaning of sexual intercourse they do not realize
between
couples an integral one-flesh union.
Therefore, whenever a man or woman, married or unmarried, engaging in
sexual
intercourse, believe they will or might bring into existence a new
human life,
and consequently adopt any action—before, during, or after
intercourse—specifically intended as an end or means to prevent
procreation,
they violate the procreative significance of sexual intercourse.
They
contracept. And contraceptive acts in Catholic tradition have
always been
judged to be intrinsically evil. (The method adopted to render
sex
sterile is incidental to the application of the norm.)
If contraceptive acts were wrong for married persons, but legitimate
for
unmarried persons, they would not be wrong per se, would not be
intrinsically
evil, but circumstantially evil. Although some Catholics hold
this, the
view seems clearly to be inconsistent with both the Church’s
theological and
doctrinal traditions.
Doctrinally speaking, John Paul II taught in Veritatis Splendor (1993)
that
“contraceptive practices” are intrinsically evil, by which he meant
that “the
choice of this kind of behavior [by which “the conjugal act is
intentionally
rendered infertile”] is in no case compatible with the goodness of the
will of
the acting person, with his vocation to life with God and to communion
with his
neighbor” (nos. 52, 80).
He was teaching no more than his predecessor Pope Pius XI taught in
Casti
Connubii (1930):“But no reason, however grave, may be put forward by
which
anything intrinsically against nature may become conformable to nature
and
morally good. Since, therefore, the conjugal act is destined
primarily by
nature for the begetting of children, those who in exercising it
deliberately
frustrate its natural power and purpose sin against nature and commit a
deed
which is shameful and intrinsically vicious” (no. 54).
It is true that when Pius XII in his Address to Italian Midwives
(1951), Paul
VI in Humanae Vitae (no. 12, 14; 1968),and John Paul II in Familiaris
Consortio
(no. 32; 1981) reformulate the negative norm against contraceptive
acts, they
do so in the context of discussions of conjugal chastity in
marriage. But
this is, as I have said, because the Catholic teaching on contraception
cannot possibly
be understood without an understanding of the nature and goods of
marriage. Its consideration therefore should always take
place—whether
for academic or pastoral purposes—within a wider consideration of
marriage.
But not one of their teachings is formulated in such a way as to
exclude the
application of the norm to non-married couples. Pius XII for
example
teaches: “Every attempt of either husband or wife in the performance of
the
conjugal act or in the development of its natural consequences which
aims at
depriving it of its inherent force and hinders the procreation of new
life is
immoral.” But since he is addressing a gathering of Italian
midwives, who
are delivering babies for married couples, his reference to “husband or
wife”
makes perfect sense. His statements should not be interpreted as
absolutely circumscribing the scope of the negative norm to married
persons.
Similarly, when John Paul II teaches in Familiaris Consortio (FC) that
the
“language” of contraceptive acts between married persons objectively
contradicts the language of marital self-giving, he intends to single
out the
objective harm that these acts do within marriage and to spouses.
But
since he taught later in Veritatis Splendor that contraceptive acts are
intrinsically evil, semper et pro semper, we know he did not intend his
teaching in FC to specifically settle the wider question of whether
contraceptive acts are legitimate for non-married persons.
If however doubt still lingers as to the scope of the authoritative
Catholic
teaching on contraception, an appeal to older formulations should
dispel
it. A penitential manual in the 10thcentury written by the
Benedictine
monk, Regino of Prüm, includes all persons, married and unmarried,
within the
scope of the negative norm: “If anyone (si aliquis) for the sake of
satisfying
sexual desire or in deliberate hatred does something to a man or to a
woman so
that no children may be born of him or her, or gives something to drink
so that
he cannot generate or she conceive, let it be held as homicide”
[1]. This
text was incorporated into canon law in the 13th century in the form of
the
decretal Si aliquis. The collection of moral norms in which this
is found
remained part of Western Catholic canon law up to the twentieth century
(nearly
700 years!).
The theological tradition is similarly consistent. When Thomas
Aquinas
formulates his argument against contraceptive-type acts, he singles out
every
deliberate attempt to render a male ejaculatory act (“emission of
semen”)
incapable of generating. In fact, his discussion of contraceptive
acts is
in the context of a discussion of why intercourse between non-married
persons
is wrong [2]. For Aquinas, this type of act is contra naturam
(against
nature). Aquinas’ contra naturam argument against contraceptive
acts
dominates Catholic theological literature on the question up until the
middle
of the 20th century.
Since texts of canon law going back 700 years, papal encyclicals in the
20th
century and the most influential theological arguments in Catholic
history
formulate the norm against contraceptive-type acts as universal,
applied to
every act by every person intended to render sexual acts sterile, the
view that
the Church’s condemnation only applies within marriage—and therefore
does not apply
to (i.e., the acts can be legitimate and even obligatory for)
fornicators,
adulterers and prostitutes—ought to be set aside as inconstant with
Catholic
traditional teaching.
---
[1] Churchly Disciplines and the Christian Religion 2.89, PL 132:301;
see
Noonan, Contraception, 1965, p. 168.
[2] Summa Contra Gentiles, book III, ch. 122, nos. 5, 9.