On Contraception

Mr. DeMers has passed along some more questions for me that I will attempt to answer. I intend to answer in a one post to one question ratio, so things don't get too long winded or out of control.

"Why won't the church let married couples use condoms or use birth control."

For a variety of reasons including, but not limited to, the fact that condoms and other artificial means of birth control attempt to remove the pro-creative aspect from the sexual act, and also prevent the couple from truly giving themselves to each other in the intimacy of love making.

If we understand existence to be good, and things which enrich or aid existence to also be good, then we have to admit that sex, which allows human people to bring new life into the world, and life facilitates existence in a material universe, is positively awesome. Sex is an extraordinary and amazing good. This, however, doesn't mean that it is always good or that it is always used well, as it was meant to be. Sex, like all other goods, can be abused and mistreated, which deprives it of some facet of the good it is supposed to have. That's evil. The deprivation of a good it should have had.

Condoms and other forms of artificial birth control are sinful primarily because of this deprivation of the good of reproduction. If the Church is right when it teaches that existence and life are good things, then the Church by extension must teach that the sexual act, which has procreation as its first purpose and its highest good, must be open to that good always. Otherwise, what we are doing when we have sex is taking sex and depriving it of its purpose and its good. We're abusing it, most likely just to get pleasure out of it, which is a disordered understanding of the act itself.

The sexual act in the Church's teaching is also an act of perfect self-giving. A husband and a wife are supposed to be giving themselves completely to each other in love, and the sexual act is a physical expression of that. That is why unity is its second purpose, sex is meant to bring and hold a married couple in close congress and union. Human persons were always meant to exist as both spiritual and physical beings, that is the nature of our soul, of our existence. The sexual act is an act of union that is both physical and spiritual, and involves (or should involve) the whole person, not a mere piece or portion of them. Anything less is the essence of objectification. You are taking a human person and objectifying them, using them for your gratification, and reducing them to one piece or portion of the whole that they are to do so.

The conscious decision to use an artificial contraceptive means that one or both of the couple is consciously deciding to hold back a part of themselves, the reproductive part. Since sex is meant to be a union of the WHOLE person to another WHOLE person, voluntarily through love, any with-holding is a rejection of that union. Artificial contraceptives bring people to say, "I love you only enough to use you for my sexual pleasure, but not enough to truly give you my whole self, my whole being." It isn't love, in effect. It's use, which is more truly mis-use, and becomes abuse because it's mis-use of something which should never be mis-used.

Love is the willing of good for another before yourself. The usage of such contraceptives mean that the will of one or both persons is not for the good of the other, their relationship or their future child (they certainly aren't willing for good there, since they're attempting to deny that person the chance to exist, the basis of all goodness).

And these are the primary reasons why the Church does not and cannot allow the usage of artificial forms of birth control. As I said, it's not necessarily limited to this, but they're the most important reasons, others include the fact that many artificial forms of birth control involve an actual, physical barrier being placed between you and your partner, which is a direct rejection of true union. As well as the idea that we need to "protect" ourselves from what is supposed to be an act of love.