Section — Prümmer, Manuale Theologiae Moralis
§ 3. On The Means Of Guarding Against Conjugal Onanism
Before you read this chapter
This chapter sets out plainly what the moral law permits and forbids to husband and wife. The authors wrote these pages for two readers only: for priests and those preparing for the confessional; and for those engaged to be married, or married, who have true need to understand the nature and obligations of marital relations. It is not reading for anyone else, and it is not reading for curiosity — the authors say so themselves, gravely and with one voice.
St. Alphonsus begged even his own students not to read this matter except for its one lawful end, “casting away every curiosity whatsoever”, and to commend themselves to God while they read, lest in learning to help other souls they harm their own (Wouters, Admonition). If you have no true need of these pages, the safe and virtuous course is to go back: what is written here is for a state of life, not for wondering about.
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703. The only truly efficacious means against onanism are either virtuous continence or firm confidence in God. Certainly it happens that the generation of offspring is morally almost impossible for spouses, for example, if numerous offspring are already present and sufficient means are lacking; if the health of either spouse is weak, or indeed is seriously endangered by a new generation. In these or similar cases, spouses, relying upon divine assistance, ought either to preserve continence by mutual consent or to give themselves to the conjugal act, placing their hope in God, who will certainly give sufficient graces for bearing all the burdens of the conjugal state.
Many physical means for preventing conception are circulated, but all are either illicit or not certainly efficacious.
The physician Capellmann recommends a certain means which indeed is not entirely efficacious, but sometimes produces good effects. Namely, spouses ought to abstain from intercourse during the first fifteen days after menstruation and again during the four days before a new menstruation. At another time, which is called the time of agenesis, they can complete intercourse without there being a great probability of conception. The Sacred Penitentiary declared concerning this matter on June 16, 1880: "Spouses using matrimony in the aforesaid manner are not to be disturbed, and a confessor can cautiously suggest this opinion to those spouses whom he has tried in vain by another means to draw away from the detestable crime of onanism."