Dear Father Angelo,
I wanted to ask you:
If a married couple uses contraceptives when they have intimate relations (such as condoms), do they commit a sin? Is it a mortal or venial sin?
If the use is due to some health problems for the woman, who cannot sustain a pregnancy, is it licit?
Thank you very much for your availability and remember me in prayer
Francesco
Priest’s answer
Dear Francesco,
I answer you by reporting the teaching of the Church without adding anything of my own.
I only remind that the judgment that is given by the magisterium is about the matter, that is, the sin in itself. It is the so-called objective evaluation.
The concrete evaluation also takes into account the full awareness of the mind and the deliberate consent of the will. This is the subjective evaluation.
2. Regarding contraception, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “The spouses’ union achieves the twofold end of marriage: the good of the spouses themselves and the transmission of life. These two meanings or values of marriage cannot be separated without altering the couple’s spiritual life and compromising the goods of marriage and the future of the family.
The conjugal love of man and woman thus stands under the twofold obligation of fidelity and fecundity.” (CCC 2363).
3. And again: “Fecundity is a gift, an end of marriage, for conjugal love naturally tends to be fruitful. A child does not come from outside as something added on to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfillment.
Therefore the Church, which is on the side of life, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life. [Paul VI, Humanae vitae, 11].
This doctrine, expounded many times by the Magisterium of the Church, is based on the inseparable connection, willed by God and which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act” [Humanae vitae, 11] (CCC 2366).
4.. In my edition, in addition to Humanae vitae, the encyclical Casti connubi of Pius XI is also cited.
In any case, the encyclical of Paul VI refers to it.
And here is what Pius XI says: “any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin” (CC 20). CC57
5. The declaration Persona humana of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (29.12.1975) says with particular reference to sexual sins: “A person therefore sins mortally not only when his action comes from direct contempt for love of God and neighbor, but also when he consciously and freely, for whatever reason, chooses something which is seriously disordered. For in this choice, as has been said above, there is already included contempt for the Divine commandment: the person turns himself away from God and loses charity.” (PH 10).
Charity is the vivifying principle of grace because it brings God into us and us into God, as is evident from 1 John 4:16.
By losing charity, one loses grace and finds oneself in grave sin.
Therefore, on the part of the Magisterium there is no doubt that the various sexual disorders, including contraception, objectively constitute a grave and that is, mortal sin.
6. Regarding the second question, it is important to keep in mind what John Paul II teaches, namely that “contraception must be judged objectively so profoundly illicit that it can never, for any reason, be justified.
To think or say the opposite is equivalent to believing that in human life there can be situations in which it is licit not to recognize God as God” (17.9.1983).
Contraception alters the meaning of sexuality, making it different from God’s holy plan for human love and marriage.
7. In the case in which the woman cannot sustain a new pregnancy, there is objectively the possibility of observing the moral law by referring to the rhythms of fertility and infertility of the woman’s monthly cycle.
The legitimate plan of the spouses not to increase the number of children should not be accompanied by contraception but by recourse to the rhythms of fertility and infertility. This is the so-called periodic continence or conjugal chastity.
In this regard, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says: “Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality..
These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom.
On the contrary, “In contrast, “every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible” is intrinsically evil:” [Humanae vitae, 16].
Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality. … The difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle … involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality” (CCC 2370).
Here, dear Francesco, is the thought of the Church on the problems you have presented.
The supreme objective is that of sanctification, of the union of man with God in the supernatural bond of charity.
Wishing you all the best, I bless you and remember you in prayer.
Father Angelo
