Family: Covenant Families | Song of Songs | Anti-God Contraception
Anti-Church Contraception | Anti-Self Contraception

Many thanks to Elizabeth Daub, Editor of Celebrate Life magazine, for her permission to publish this copyrighted article on my web site.

From Celebrate Life Magazine, September/October, 2002
Contraception is Anti-Spousal
By Msgr. Vincent Foy

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that marriage is "by its very nature ordered to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring" (n. 1601). Since it is ordered to the good of the spouses, it can and should be a means to help them pursue together their glorious call to holiness.

That one spouse ought to be the support of the other derives from the nature and closeness of their union. The two have become one flesh, a symbol of the fruitful union of Christ and His Church. The closeness of the marital union is described by St. Francis de Sales: "God joins the husband to the wife with His own blood: and therefore the union is so strong that the soul ought rather to be separated from the body of the one and of the other, than the husband from the wife." This emphasizes how tragic is that conduct by which one party would lead the other away from goodness and grace.

The mutual help that is an end or purpose of marriage is destroyed by contraception. Contraception degrades married love, defaces it beyond recognition, and transforms it more radically than was Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde. It makes the spouses deadly spiritual enemies of one another. It turns love into hate and does this in manifold ways.

Because contraception is a mortal sin, destroying grace in the soul, consent to it means consent of one spouse to the eternal damnation of the other. It is a frightful betrayal to cooperate in the exchange of the gold of grace for the dross of lust.

By contraception, one spouse is willing to unfit the other for the reception of Holy Communion, or for any supernatural merit.

By contraception, one spouse is willing to deny to the other all the great goods that might otherwise come from children and parenting.

When one party persuades the other to contracept, there is an act of seduction. When one objects, but submits under pressure, there is a violation of conscience and person, which is akin to marital rape. When the contraceptive means are known to be abortifacient, as with the birth control pill and intrauterine devices, both become murderers by intent.

Finally, if one enters marriage intending to deny to the other the right to that act which of its nature leads to procreation, the union is null and void. The marriage acts become acts of fornication.

Perhaps now we see how important it is for spouses to reject the evil of contraception. In the words of St. Augustine, we are living in the land of the dying, but this land of the dying is God's way of leading us to the land of eternal life. We ought to pray for those who are contracepting. God's mercy calls them to repentance, restoration to peace, grace, true love, and then to eternal life.

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Monsignor Foy was ordained a priest in 1939, and is an expert on Catholic teachings on marriage and family life, especially Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae. Although officially retired, Msgr. Foy, 87, is a tireless author and continually writes letters and publishes booklets, essays and articles, including this one, the last in a series on the evils of contraception.