Catholic Quarter

Conception, Not Contraception

By Drew Castel on May 28th, 2010

Children are a blessing from God.

God shares with man His creative ability to bring about life. A man and woman bearing a child mirror the Trinity, in where two in mutual and complete love, join together to create a third person, yet are not three but one in flesh, family, and love.

We know from John 1:1 that, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” We know that God in His love, begot an eternal Son and Holy Spirit. This is the Trinity, three persons, but one family, one life. The joining love of the Father and Son is the Holy Spirit.

In no other way does the mankind reflect the Godhead Trinity as through conception and family. A man and his wife (made from man himself, Adam to Eve), share mutually themselves with undivided love, where two become one flesh and make a third flesh, yet they are still all one in family and love and flesh. The child is no separate in flesh from the parents, but is one from having coming their own flesh. We mirror the Trinity, where two become one and then are three, yet still one; in flesh; in family; in love. A complementary article to the love of husband and wife, intimately established between Jesus Christ and His Bride, the Church, can be found in article, “Critique: John MacArthur’s ‘Marriage, Divorce, and Singleness’“.

Yet some will stand-fast and say that contraception is not in opposition to God’s will. Before we jump to this conclusion or that, we must always see first what the Bible says. Let’s begin in the first book of our blessed Holy Writ.

• Genesis 1:27, 9:1, 35:11 – be fruitful and multiply.
  • Man was called to foster children when able. Not doing so was not only considered to be a great travesty, but was used as a curse. Women were made barren by their transgressions and iniquities. We know that on the contrary, it was a blessing to have children, for God had blessed obedient women who were barren with fertility. As we read on, we will see further God’s intent woven in through scripture.

• Psalms 127:3 – Children are a gift from God; blessed is a full quiver.
  • What man has the right to deny a gift from God? Gifts were to be utilized, not wasted or remain stagnant, as in Christ’s ‘Parable of the Talents’ (Matthew 25:14-30; Luke 19:12-28). As we see, the discretion of using the gift wasn’t up to the servant, but the master who bestowed it. What was the command? Be fruitful and multiply.

• 1 Chronicles 25:5 – God had given 14 sons and 3 daughters to exalt him.
  • Should man have the choice to deter these gifts from God?

• 1 Chronicles 26:4-5 – God indeed blessed Obed-edom with 8 sons.

• Hosea 9:10-17 – Israel is punished with childlessness.
  • The Bible emphasizes that children and the life of them are solely gifts by God, and to not have them is a punishment or great misfortune.

• Exodus 23:25-26 – blessing promised; no miscarriages or barrenness.
  • No barrenness, that means every womb was with child. It doesn’t only stop when saying that no woman shall miscarry, but that none should be barren; and that every child is a blessing! God promised them they would impregnate as a blessing, instead of leaving them to be the authors of their own body.

• Deuteronomy 7:13-14 – Israel would be blessed, no male or female barrenness or sterility.
  • This is to fulfill that we should be fruitful and multiply, one of the very first commandments given to man.

• Genesis 38:9-10 – Onan killed for spilling his seed on ground.
  • He had wasted a gift, as did the man of the Parable of the Talents, and was severely reprimanded by the master.
  • But we see in Deuteronomy 25:5-10 that there is a penalty for defying Levirate law, but it wasn’t death. A man was allowed to refuse marrying his late brother’s widow, which would consequently forgo rearing a child in his brother’s name.
  • It is of utmost importance to realize that Judah the father, nor the following son who was to succeed Onan, was not killed for disobeying God’s law considering Tamar, marriage, and childbearing. Only Onan’s offense incurred death. Judah’s offense and his sons offense against the law did not bring about the same punishment, death, upon them. Onan’s sin alone, coitus interrupts, enflamed God’s anger to smite him.

• Leviticus 20:13 – if a man lies with a man, put him to death
  • In Deuteronomy 22:28-29, we see that no similar penalty is described for lesbian action or relations between single men and single women

• Leviticus 20:15 – if a man lies with an animal, put to death.
  • This was sterile sex.

• Leviticus 20:16 – if a woman lies with an animal, put to death.
  • This was sterile sex.

• Leviticus 21:17-20 – crushed testicles is called a defect and a blemish.

• Deuteronomy 23:1 – no one who is castrated shall enter the assembly.
  • They would be unfruitful, defective, and blemished.

• Deuteronomy 25:11-12 – shows that this is a grave matter, for it has repercussion for attempts to potentially damage the testicles.

• Romans 1:25-27 – Tells us that the natural function of women is childbearing.
  • We are not to hinder or be governors of what God’s natural law is.

• 1 Timothy 2:11-15 – woman is saved through bearing of children.
  • Who can say that we can decide when to bear a child, when a woman is saved by the means of conception and birthing, in obeying the law of “be fruitful and multiply.”

• Acts 5:1-11 – Anasias and Saphira slain for withholding part of gift.
  • Aren’t children considered a gift from God? If so, do we have the right to retain that gift from anyone, from ourselves or others. The only time we are excused from this is living a devote chaste life, as did Christ, Paul, etc..
  • This harkens back to those who lost much for their withholding of a gift: Onan (Genesis 38:9-10); the man in the Parable of the Talents

• Galatians 6:7 – God is not mocked in accepting pleasure and denying fruit.
  • We cannot commit ourselves to intimacy to only be of sexual disposal to our partners. We have to honor God with His intent that upon copulation, we be open fruition and bare the eligibility to receive His gift of life.

• Matthew 12:19; Mark 11:14 – Jesus curses a fig tree for being barren

• Galatians 5:20; Revelation 9:21, 21:8 – uses the Greek word pharmakeia, meaning “abortifacient potions”
  • This is in regards to the sanctity of life. We should not prohibit life from taking it’s course, nor should we deter life from existing, or coming into existence. Remember, it is a gift, a gift in which we are fruitful. This is why God promised not to flood the world, that life may take it course, for it is beautiful, no matter how desolate man had become, or the condition of his living, whether rich or poor, righteous or lowly; God would not withhold us from reproducing again by flooding. He promised because He wanted to show the sanctity of life, to allow it to be.

• 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 – our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and with it, we are to use it to glorify God.
  • Our body is a temple. From it, we are to produce things of fruitful nature. God sees children as a blessing. Christ acknowledges this when He says that if we are not like children, we will not enter nor inherit His kingdom of heaven. Children are most precious, and remember, the body is the temple of our Lord, which is made for His works. Our body is not our temple, we do not decide by contraception when to be fruitful and give the gift of life; we should always be subject to God.
  • If we are truly made in His image, than we know that Christ and God come together, unconditionally, to unite in love, which is the Holy Spirit. We who are made in this image are to replicate it, by coming together as two persons, becoming one body, creating a third person; the family becomes one, as the Trinity is one, in flesh, family, and love.

Contraception makes void the oaths sworn in Holy Matrimony, that husband and wife accept each other unconditionally. When a man may not enjoy the intimacy of his wife because they’re conjugal love is based on a foreign inanimate object, contraception, then they have invited into their deepest love something foreign that should only be between the man and wife. When the acceptance and reciprocation of conjugal love becomes dependent upon contraception, it no longer becomes total self giving, but a condition that is invaded by a foreign object. Husband is to accept with; wife is to accept husband. Spouses aren’t to accept spouses if only under the condition and dependency of a contraceptive. That is a violation of becoming one, because love is not fully given but withheld.

Some will ask, ‘is there really a difference between contraception and natural family planning (NFP)? And aren’t they both intended to avoid having children’? The answer is no. John Paul II conveys this in Familiaris  Consortio:

“When… by means of recourse to periods of infertility, the couple respect the inseparable connection between the unitive and procreative meanings of human sexuality, they are acting as “ministers” of God’s plan and they “benefit from” their sexuality according to the original dynamism of “total” self-giving, without manipulation or alteration.

“In the light of the experience of many couples and of the data provided by the different human sciences, theological reflection is able to perceive and is called to study further the difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle: It is a difference which is much wider and deeper than is usually thought, one which involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality. The choice of the natural rhythms involves accepting the cycle of the person, that is, the woman, and thereby accepting dialogue, reciprocal respect, shared responsibility and self-control. To accept the cycle and to enter into dialogue means to recognize both the spiritual and corporal character of conjugal communion and to live personal love with its requirement of fidelity. In this context the couple comes to experience how conjugal communion is enriched with those values of tenderness and affection which constitute the inner soul of human sexuality in its physical dimension also. In this way sexuality is respected and promoted in its truly and fully human dimension and is never “used” as an “object” that, by breaking the personal unity of soul and body, strikes at God’s creation itself at the level of the deepest interaction of nature and person.”

John Paul II further emphasizes the fruition of family, not the necessity of temporal riches. In his speech at the Capitol Mall in Washington D.C, on October 7, 1979, he states , paraphrasing, that it is best for a child to be reared with brothers and sisters, not the temporal and technological luxuries of life. Family, not inanimate things, help us grow in humanity  and to realize the beauty of life at all its ages and in all its variety. At the origin of every created being is stationed a creative bit of God’s nature, Who created us out of love. From this fundamental truth of faith and reason it follows that the procreative capacity, inscribed in human sexuality, is – in its deepest truth – a cooperation with God’s creative power. Men and women are not to be arbiters or masters, for as participants, it is only God’s decision. They assume the qualification not of being cooperators in God’s creative power, but the ultimate depositories of the source of human life. To think or say the contrary is equal to maintaining that in human life situations may arise in which it is lawful not to recognize God as God..

Contraception was accepted into diverse realms of Protestantism in the early 1900′s; predating this, all branches of Christianity considered it a sinful and unethical act to use contraception in marital conjugation. It is a forerunner for abortion; by it’s very nature, it assumes authorship of life and is intimate with the desire that lacks responsibility for life. With this notion, we have seen an advancement not only toward abortion, but death outside the womb – also seeking to be irresponsible to another, whom is life -, this we know as euthanasia.

John Paul II elaborates in Evangelium Vitae:

“…the pro- abortion culture is especially strong precisely where the Church’s teaching on contraception is rejected. Certainly, from the moral point of view contraception and abortion are specifically different evils: the former contradicts the full truth of the sexual act as the proper expression of conjugal love, while the latter destroys the life of a human being. But despite their differences of nature and moral gravity, contraception and abortion are often closely connected, as fruits of the same tree. It is true that in many cases contraception and even abortion are practiced under the pressure of real- life difficulties, which nonetheless can never exonerate from striving to observe God’s law fully. Still, in very many other instances such practices are rooted in a hedonistic mentality unwilling to accept responsibility in matters of sexuality, and they imply a self-centered concept of freedom, which regards procreation as an obstacle to personal fulfillment. The life which could result from a sexual encounter thus becomes an enemy to be avoided at all costs, and abortion becomes the only possible decisive response to failed contraception. The close connection … between the practice of contraception and … abortion … is being demonstrated in an alarming way by the development of chemical products, intrauterine devices and vaccines which, distributed with the same ease as contraceptives, really act as abortifacients in the very early stages of the development of the life of the new human being. [T]here exists in contemporary culture a certain Promethean attitude which leads people to think that they can control life and death by taking the decisions about them into their own hands.”

“It is necessary to go back to seeing the family as the sanctuary of life” Pope John Paul II in Centesimus Annus.

Your’s,

Drew Castel.