From: "Sound of Trumpet" 

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1803121/posts


Contraception: Why It's Wrong

Catholic Culture ^ | 3/15/2007 | Dr. Jeff Mirus


Posted on 03/19/2007 5:46:55 AM PDT by markomalley


The recent debate over contraception between Fr. Thomas Euteneuer of Human
Life International and nationally syndicated talk-show host Sean Hannity
has brought to center stage an issue which most Americans-and most
Catholics-simply do not understand. Let's review what's wrong with
contraception.
The intrinsic moral issue of artificial contraception is a marriage issue.
Contraception has little or no intrinsic moral relevance outside of
marriage. This contributes to the difficulty our culture has in
understanding the problem, because our culture doesn't understand marriage
either. After all, only about half of all couples are formally married. For
this reason, it is perhaps best to start with what we might call the
extrinsic moral issues associated with contraception, which apply to all
sexual relations.

The Consequences of Contraception

I am using the word "extrinsic" to apply to the consequences of
contraception as opposed to its own essential moral character. Catholics
are not consequentialists, and we don't determine the morality of an act by
attempting to foresee all its consequences. But we do determine the
prudence of an act by assessing its potential consequences. For this
reason, it is highly instructive to examine the extrinsic moral issues
associated with contraception.

Even morally neutral acts can have good or bad consequences and should be
selected or avoided accordingly. It is a morally neutral act, for example,
to dam a river, but one wants to be pretty sure of the consequences before
one builds the dam. So too, many moralists have argued (I believe
correctly) that contraception is morally neutral in itself when considered
outside of marriage. But contraception suppresses the natural outcome of
sexual intercourse, and in so doing it has two immediate and devastating
consequences.

First, it engenders a casual attitude toward sexual relations. An action
which, because of the possibility of conceiving a child, makes demands on
the stability of the couple is stripped by contraception of its long-term
meaning. The mutual commitment of a couple implied by the very nature of
this intimate self-giving is now overshadowed by the fact that the most
obvious (though not necessarily the most important) reason for that
commitment has been eliminated. This clearly contributes to the rise of
casual sex, and the rise of casual sex has enormous implications for
psychological and emotional well- being, personal and public health, and
social cohesion.

Second, it shifts the emphasis in sexual relations from fruitfulness to
pleasure. Naturally-speaking, the sexual act finds its full meaning in both
emotional intimacy and the promise of offspring. For human persons, sex is
clearly oriented toward love and the creation of new life. By eliminating
the possibility of new life and the permanent bonding it demands,
contraception reduces the meaning of human sexuality to pleasure and, at
best, a truncated or wounded sort of commitment. Moreover, if the meaning
of human sexuality is primarily a meaning of pleasure, then any sexual act
which brings pleasure is of equal value. It is no surprise that pornography
and homosexuality have mushroomed, while marriage has declined, since the
rise of the "contraceptive mentality". Abortion too has
skyrocketed as a backup procedure based on the expectation that
contracepton should render sex child-free. All of this, too, is
psychologically, emotionally and physically damaging, as well as
destructive of the social order.

The Intrinsic Evil of Contraception

Now all of these evil consequences apply both inside and outside of
marriage. Within marriage, however, there is an intrinsic moral problem
with contraception quite apart from its horrendous consequences. Outside of
marriage, sexual relations are already disordered. They have no proper ends
and so the frustration of these ends through contraception is intrinsically
morally irrelevant. Outside of marriage, contraception is to be avoided for
its consequences (consequences surely made worse by the difficulty of
psychologically separating contraception from its marital meaning). But
within marriage, the context changes and the act of contraception itself
becomes intrinsically disordered.

Within the context of marriage, the purposes of sexual intercourse are
unitive and procreative (as Pope Paul VI taught in his brilliant and
prophetic encyclical Humanae Vitae). It is worth remembering that there is
no proper context for sexual intercourse apart from marriage; this is why
it is impossible for human persons to psychologically separate
contraception from the marital context. But the point here is that marriage
has certain ends (the procreation of children, the stability of society,
the mutual happiness of the couple, and their mutual sanctification) and so
does sex within marriage. The purposes of the marital act are the
procreation of children and the progressive unification of the spouses.
These two purposes are intimately related, for it is through marriage that
a man and a woman become "two in one flesh", both through sexual
relations and, literally, in their offspring.

It is intrinsically immoral to frustrate either of these purposes. Let me
repeat this statement. It is immoral to choose deliberately to frustrate
either the unitive or the procreative ends of marital intercourse. It is
immoral to make of your spouse an object of your pleasure, to coerce your
spouse, or to engage in sexual relations in a manner or under conditions
which communicate callousness or contempt. These things frustrate the
unitive purpose. It is also immoral to take deliberate steps to prevent an
otherwise potentially fruitful coupling from bearing fruit. This frustrates
the procreative purpose.

Related Issues

Because it causes so much confusion, it is necessary to state that it is
not intrinsically immoral to choose to engage in sexual relations with your
spouse at times when these relations are not likely to be fruitful. The
moral considerations which govern this decision revolve around the
obligation married couples have to be genuinely open to children insofar as
they can provide for their material well-being and proper formation. There
is nothing in this question of timing that frustrates the purposes of a
particular marriage act.

Statistically, couples who avoid contraception find that their marriages
are strengthened, their happiness increased, and their health improved.
Some of these considerations are topics for another day. But Fr. Euteneuer
is clearly correct and Sean Hannity is clearly wrong. Contraception is a
grave evil within marriage and has grave consequences not only within
marriage but outside of marriage as well. Both individual couples and
society as a whole will mature into deeper happiness by freeing themselves
from the false promises of contraception, and from its moral lies.

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