Birth-control

Some Arguments of Neo-Malthusians and Other Advocates of Contraception.—(a) Necessity for the Individual.—“This practice is demanded by comfort (e.g., in order to have a good and easy time, to have more opportunity for pleasures and occupations outside the home, to preserve form and beauty, to escape the troubles of child-bearing and child-rearing), or by utility (e.g., in order that suffering wives be freed from the slavery of excessive child-bearing, in order that children receive more attention and care than is possible in large families).” This argument from comfort is unworthy of any but a pagan or materialist, for the end of existence is something higher than pleasure or escape from all hardship. But even if happiness alone be considered, the childless home is not the most cheerful, and it often happens that parents who have sinfully limited their parenthood will lose an only child and be left sterile and desolate. The argument from utility proves only that sometimes (not often) it is inadvisable for a couple to have any or many children, but it does not prove that family limitation through means forbidden by the laws of God and of nature is permissible. The normal woman is not harmed but helped by child-bearing, whereas onanism and other unnatural vices are fearfully damaging both to mental and physical health. Experience too shows that mothers of five or more children live longer, and that children from large families are very often superior in qualities and achievements and stand a better chance in life. Exceptions only emphasize the rule.

(b) Necessity for the Family.—“Large families are impossible to many persons because the high cost of children today (expenses for clothing, food, medical care, schooling, etc.) is beyond their means.” The inability to support many children is often due to extravagance or to insufficient wages, and the remedy lies in prudent economy or in improvement of the economic condition of workers, not in the abuse of marriage. The weakness of the objection is shown from the fact that race-suicide is more common among the well-to-do than among the poorer classes. However, in a genuine case of inability to maintain a large family, limitation of children is a duty, but not by means of the sin of contraception or onanism.

(c) Necessity for the Community.—“The cause of unemployment, destitution, famine and war is the overpopulation of the world. Moreover, if the poorer classes would practise contraception and the better-to-do classes have larger families, the standard of living of the former would be raised, the culture of the latter would be preserved, and the quality of the whole race be greatly improved.” The resources of the earth are easily adequate to support many times the present population, and the misfortunes referred to are due, not to the number of people who inhabit the earth, but to accident or to human greed or imprudence. The eugenic argument is a vain dream, for the history of nations and modern facts show that the ideal of race improvement makes little appeal when the easier way of indulgence has been learned. As said above, it is the wealthy and educated classes who have the fewest children.

(d) Necessity of a Moral Kind.—“Contraception is a useful control of nature similar to that employed by physicians, surgeons and other scientists; it is not a contradiction of nature, since it preserves the end of the sexual faculty in expressing physical love. The motives of those who use it are not necessarily carnal, but may be of a very Christian kind (e.g., the need of limitation of family in order the better to practise one’s vocation, or in order to spare one’s wife, or to keep her from abortion), and they may sincerely believe it to be lawful.” Contraception does not control, but defeats nature, by voluntarily frustrating the primary end which nature has in view, and, if permitted, it logically leads to every kind of sensual indulgence. The motives or conscience of those who use it cannot change its character, for the end does not justify the means and a wrong conscience does not change the law. Those who have not been spoiled or misled by contraceptive propaganda or advice, instinctively regard artificial birth-control as well as onanism with disgust.

Is Birth-Control Ever Lawful?—(a) If this refers to an end (viz., the limitation of the number of children or the spacing of their arrival), it is not unlawful in itself (see 2617); and it is sometimes a duty, as when the wife is in very poor health or the family is unable to take care of more. But in view of the decline and deterioration in populations today, it seems that couples who are able to bring up children well should consider it a duty to the common welfare to have at least four children, and it should be easy for many to have at least a dozen children. The example of those married persons of means who are unable to have a number of children of their own, but who adopt or raise orphaned little ones, is very commendable.

(b) If birth control refers to a means of family limitation, it is lawful when that means is continence or abstinence from marital relations, not if it is onanism or the use of mechanical or chemical means to prevent conception. The objection that husbands cannot restrain themselves is really an insult to God’s grace and is contradicted by numerous facts. A man of manly character should be ashamed to admit that he is the slave of passion, and the fact that God commands chastity and that millions obey Him both in the wedded and single state is sufficient proof that, even though hard, sexual abstinence is not impossible, if there is a real resolve and the right means are employed, such as rooming apart and concentration on other and higher things.

Continence or abstinence is counselled by the Church should conditions make the conception of children inadvisable. It is counselled, not commanded, since it involves heroic sacrifice which makes it all the more meritorious and praiseworthy: “It is wronging men and women of our times to deem them incapable of continuous heroism. Today, for many reasons—perhaps with the goad of hard necessity and even sometimes in the service of injustice—heroism is exercised to a degree and to an extent which would have been thought impossible in days gone by. Why. then, should this heroism, if the circumstances really demand it, stop at the borders established by the passions and inclinations of nature? The answer is clear. The man who does not want to dominate himself is incapable of so doing. He who believes he can do so, counting merely on his own strength without seeking sincerely and perseveringly help from God, will remain miserably disillusioned” (Pope Pius XII, Allocution to the Italian Catholic Union of Midwives, Oct. 29, 1951).

Another lawful means of family limitation is “periodic continence” or “rhythm,” the deliberate avoidance of conception by restricting intercourse, temporarily or permanently, to the days of natural sterility on the part of the wife. Many of the faithful are under the impression that the system has received the unqualified approval of the Church, that it constitutes a form of “Catholic Birth-Control.” This is not completely true.

All theologians agree that the use of marriage during the sterile period is not per se illicit. The act is performed in the natural way; nothing has been done positively to avoid conception; and the secondary ends of matrimony, mutual love and the quieting of temptation, have been fostered. “If the carrying out of this theory means nothing more than that the couple can make use of their matrimonial rights on the days of natural sterility, too, there is nothing against it, for by so doing they neither hinder nor injure in any way the consummation of the natural act and its further natural consequences” (Pope Pius XII, ibid.).

“If, however, there is further question—that is, of permitting the conjugal act on those days exclusively—then the conduct of the married couple must be examined more closely” (ibid).

The following points summarize papal teaching on this aspect:

1. A premarital agreement to restrict the marital right and not merely the use to sterile periods, implies an essential defect in matrimonial consent and renders the marriage invalid. 2) The practice is not morally justified simply because the nature of the marital act is not violated and the couple are prepared to accept and rear children born despite their precautions. 3) Serious motives, (medical, eugenic, economic and social), must be present to justify this practice. When present, they can exempt for a long time, perhaps even for the duration of the marriage, from the positive obligations of the married state. 4) The married state imposes on those who perform the marital act the positive obligation of helping to conserve the human race. Accordingly, to make use of the marital act continuously and without serious reason to withdraw from its primary obligation would be a sin against the very meaning of conjugal life (ibid.).

Pope Pius explicitly confirmed the common teaching of theologians: 1) Rhythm, by mutual consent, for proportionate reasons, and with due safeguards against dangers would be licit. 2) Without a good reason, the practice would involve some degree of culpability. Not expressly confirmed, but simply an expression of common moral principles is the common agreement: 3) That the sin could be mortal by reason of injustice, grave danger of incontinence, serious family discord, etc.

Since the Allocution, the more common opinion in this country asserts that the Holy Father taught: 1) that married people who use their marital right have a duty to procreate; 2) that this duty is binding under pain of sin; 3) there are, however, reasons that excuse the couples from this obligation and, should they exist for the whole of married life, the obligation does not bind them at all; 4) the sin does not consist in the exercise of marital rights during the sterile periods; but in abstention from intercourse during the fertile periods precisely to avoid conception, when the couple could have and should have made its positive contribution to society. Sin is present when the practice is unjustifiedly undertaken; 5) the formal malice of illicit periodic continence is not against the sixth commandment; i.e., against the procreation of children or the use of the generative faculty, but against the seventh commandment, i.e., against social justice. The couple is not making its contribution to the common good of society; 6) from 4 and 5 above, it follows that the individual acts of intercourse during a period of unjust practice of rhythm do not constitute numerically distinct sins. Rather, granting the continuance of a single will act to practice rhythm, there is one sin for the whole period of illicit abstention during the fertile periods.

Since the Pope abstained from an explicit statement on the gravity of the sin, the controversy of whether the practice intrinsically is a mortal sin or not continued. The opinion in this country which holds the greatest authority states that mortal sin is involved in the case of continued practice with a total exclusion of children and frequent use of marital rights during the sterile period.

Diversity of opinion has arisen as to the means of estimating when a serious sin has been committed. Some have used a temporal norm, e.g., unjustified use of rhythm for five or six years would constitute a serious matter. Undoubtedly most of the proponents of this norm would not accuse a couple of certain mortal sin if they already have one or more children; after that, indefinite use of the practice without excusing causes would not be a mortal sin. (This is admitted by most theologians.) Others have proposed a numerical norm as a basis to determine whether or not a couple has made its contribution to the conservation of the race. Concretely the proponents of this theory regard four or five children as sufficient to satisfy the obligation in such a way;

a) that the use of rhythm to limit the family to this number is licit provided the couple is willing and morally able to practice it;

b) that the limitation through rhythm to less than four requires a serious justifying cause. The intention involved to prevent conception would be seriously sinful in itself, since it causes great harm to the common good and involves in practice subordination of the primary to the secondary end or ends of matrimony. At the present time this opinion seems to be more favored in America than the first which places the gravity of the sin in the unjustified practice of rhythm for five years. (For a survey of recent opinion, see the Conference Bulletin of the Archdiocese of New York, Vol. XXXIV, No. 1, pp. 36 ff.)

On the other hand, some European theologians have denied that the practice constitutes a mortal sin in itself, independently of circumstances such as injustice and danger of incontinence.

The present state of opinion, then, is definitely undecided and calls for caution both in dealing too severely with penitents or too readily recommending the practice. The response of the Sacred Penitentiary of June 16, 1880, affords a safe guide in practice: “Married couples who use their marriage rights in the aforesaid manner are not to be disturbed, and the confessor may suggest the opinion in question, cautiously, however, to those married people whom he has tried in vain to dissuade from the detestable crime of onanism.”

As to the theological censure to be attached to “rhythm,” it is not approved, nor recommended, but seems to be tolerated for sufficiently grave reasons. “Instead of being freely taught and commended, it is rather to be tolerated as an extreme remedy or means of preventing sin” (Official Monitum, Patrick Cardinal Hayes, Sept. 8, 1936, Conference Bulletin of Archdiocese of New York, Volume XIV, No. 2, p. 78).