Male Contraceptives May Soon Become A Reality
This article, as well as others like it, and conversations that I have had with fellow students in the past two days have prompted me to post this.
Why is Natural Family Planning accepted by the Church while contraception is condemned? They both do the same thing--prevent pregnancy.
Because you don't judge the morality of actions by their effects or consequences. You judge their morality by what they essentially are. Using contraceptives such as condoms or diaphragms may accomplish the same end result as Natural Family Planning, but the ways they go about it are very different.
Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae defines contraception as "every action which, in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" (14). Such an action actively eliminates or withholds the procreative good of the marital act. This is sinful because "every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life" (11). Since one of the two ends of sexual intercourse is procreation (the other being unity of husband and wife, 12), engaging in sex while deliberately frustrating the procreative act is, as Pope John Paul II has repeatedly called it, "a lie in the language of the body."
If practicing contraception is to lie in the language of the body, to practice Natural Family Planning is to take the Fifth. Natural Family Planning (typically) involves restricting sexual relations to infertile periods in the woman's cycle. Although intercourse during these times is less likely to produce a conception, a couple always remains open to the possibility, having taken no action to render it impossible; therein lies the difference (see Humanae Vitae 16). During fertile periods abstinence is practiced, a sacrifice which shows respect for God's gift of sex and its proper ends. Conversely, practicing contraception during these times displays a lack of respect for this gift and a focus instead on selfish pleasure.
One further difference needs to be pointed out. Contraception is often a practice of convenience, while Natural Family Planning, to be licit, must be a practice of necessity, requiring "serious motives to space out births, which derive from the physical or psychological conditions of husband and wife, or from external conditions" (16). Thus it must not be used as "contraception Catholic style."
If you have any questions, corrections, problems or comments please feel free to comment and we'll get into it.
Apologetically yours,
D
5 comments:
Are you expressing your personal views towards contraception at any point in this post or are you just trying to make the point that the church is being hypocritical?
Great job, Brandon, but I think that this is a really really excellent analysis of half of what is wrong with contraception. I think that it's important to go the other half and explain why it violates the unitive meaning of total union (body and soul) of the spouses.
Jennifer, the Church's position is not hypocritical. A child will only be conceived in the junction of the conjugal act and female fertility, which is fairly easy to pinpoint with various methods of fertility awareness. You can either choose to engage that sacred space or you can choose to exercise prudent reserve and basically ensure that a child will *not* be conceived.
What you cannot do is to destroy that sacred space entirely by either compromising the act itself with barrier methods or spermicides (honestly, does "I love you so much, let's put latex between us for 'protection'" even possibly sound reconcilable with total, ecstatic love? If you love eachother, why on earth would you need "protection" from the total self gift of your spouse?) or you intentionally compromise the fertility, a natural state of health, in either partner by hormonal contraception or sterilization, in effect saying with your body "we can't be fully ourselves and love eachother."
Fertility is integral to both men and women and to destroy that in the name of "helping the marriage" is to say that it's perfectly fine for the man to say that the recipient (his wife) is unworthy of him totally giving all of who he is and for the woman to say that the total self gift of her husband really isn't desirable afterall. This is not about being enslaved to biology or about how sex is only for babies or any such nonsense. There could be legitimate reasons why you would use NFP for your entire marriage and never conceive a child and still be righteous before God. It's not just what the intended effect is (to not conceive) that matters, but the lengths to which you will manipulate human nature itself and contort your own love to reach that end. Contraception is an offense against love before you even start to talk about how it is an offense against the God who is Love.
-A very married Catholic woman who has contracepted in the past and knows firsthand how contraception is intrinsic evil. This is by no means an exhaustive apologetic here (that's what my senior thesis is for) but it's a start. I welcome further discussion.
I wasn't calling the church hypocritical, I was calling Brandon hypocrtical if he says this is what he believes.
Jennifer, exactly what is your understanding of the Church teaching on this? I'm getting my degree in Catholic Theology with an emphasis on exactly this issue, and he's sounding pretty dead on to me. Where are you thinking that he has gone wrong?
Hey, sorry i am a little late on this- finals season, you know how it goes. I was just wondering, what about using the condom to protect oneself from stds? in this day and age, many people have them, where does the church stand on that? Would the couple have to abstain completly from sex while there was a breakout/desiese? Or is it ok to use a condom in that case? Just wondering....
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