Contraception use is rampant. Even among Catholics, the rate of birth control use remains high.
It can be easy to think that because something remains common, then it must be excusable.
Despite its popularity, contraception sex will never be deemed morally permissible by the Catholic Church. The Church even considers it a grave offense.
I thought I would compile this list of eight lies you may have fallen for, if you choose to engage in contraceptive sex.
1. There’s Nothing Sacred about Conjugal Love
To engage in contraceptive sex means having to put blinders on. It is saying that the act itself holds no unique value.
You must ignore the fact that new human life, and a new, immortal soul can come into being.
You have to ignore that there is just one natural way for such children to come into this world. You must pretend there is nothing special about the type of conjugal union that brings them forth.
2. Your Sexual Partner Is a Means to the End of Sexual Gratification
If babies can be prevented from the conjugal act, then the act becomes merely for sexual gratification.
Contraceptive sex is like sexual bulimia. A bulimic enjoys the taste of food, but then vomits it out before it can nourish the body.
Likewise, for you to enjoy sex but cut yourself off from the possible consequence of a child, you are using your sexual partner as a means to an end. Not to the end of commitment, but to the end of sexual indulgence.
3. You Can Be Reduced to Being Objectified
An object is a thing that is used for a purpose but has no value in itself. The object is other useless, since it is not used for its purpose.
When you have contraceptive sex, you allow yourself to be degraded to being a sexual object. What happens when you fail to bring sexual pleasure to your partner? You cease being valued.
4. Children Are Not a Natural Byproduct of the Act
Going back to the natural law argument here. We know how babies are made. The very fact that babies come from the conjugal act shows the primary purpose of that act.
No, not every conjugal act must result in fertilization of a child. However, to purposely close off the act from achieving that end by using contraception frustrates the act from its primary purpose. Contraceptive sex is an unnatural act.
5. Exclusivity Is Unimportant
If sex is to the exclusion of children, then for what reason would sex need to be exclusive?
If sex is merely for pleasure, then wouldn’t it hold that the more partners, the more pleasure?
If sexual intimacy is merely for how it makes people free, then what happens when those feelings dry up? It appears it is time to move on to someone new to find that high feeling once again.
6. Permanence Is Unnecessary
Because the conjugal act can result in children, every culture has ordered society around their upbringing. Children do best when raised by a husband and wife who are committed to each other for a lifetime.
But if sex and babies can be separated, then why does a sexual relationship need to be life-long? If sex and babies do not go together, then what prevents people moving from sexual relationship to sexual relationship?
7. Your Sexual Activity Is So Much Better Than Homosexual Sex or Other Perversions
If your argument is that contraceptive sex is moral, then how can you argue against homosexual sex or other perversions?
If babies can be detached from sex, then what limits to sex remain? If sex is not to be inherently open to life, then why can’t two homosexuals have sex?
If you reduce sex to be merely about how people feel, then masturbation ceases to be a sin, since that too brings a momentary feeling of joy.
Why would adultery be a sin, if there is no reason for marriage to be a permanent institution?
And why would sex need to be limited to two people? If someone finds more sexual gratification from having multiple sex partners, then who is to say they cannot do that?
Why would the step of getting married be necessary, if a family is the last thing anyone should want to start? Pre-marital sex and promiscuity flow from a view of sex as anything but sacred.
And how is contraceptive sex (even between a husband and wife) all that better than any of these perversions?
8. Contraceptive Sex Is Love
Add all this up and you can see why contraceptive sex cannot be considered an expression of love.
As Pope Saint John Paul II says, “In the conjugal act it is not licit to separate the unitive aspect from the procreative aspect, because both the one and the other pertain to the intimate truth of the conjugal act. The one is activated together with the other and in a certain sense the one by means of the other. This is what the encyclical teaches (cf. Humanae Vitae, 12). Therefore, in such a case the conjugal act, deprived of its interior truth because it is artificially deprived of its procreative capacity, ceases also to be an act of love” (General Audience of August 22, 1984, emphasis added).
YOUR TURN
So, please tell me you thoughts on this list.
Did I leave an obvious one off?
Disagree with the inclusion of any or all of these?
