The Moral Difference between Natural Family Planning and Contraception

The Apostolic Exhortation on the Family, n. 32. The translation cited is that which appears in Origins 11. nn.28-29 (December 24. 1981): 437-468. The italics are mine.

I am heavily dependent in this section on the philosophical analysis of contraception by G.E.M. Anscombe: “You Can Have Sex Without Children: Christianity and the New Offer.” in Vol. III of her collected papers; Ethics, Religion, and Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981), pp. 82-96 and a later version which appeared in pamphlet form as Contraception and Chastity (London: The Catholic Truth Society, 1977). I shall cite the first as YCHSWC and the second as C&C. I have been helped also by an analysis of Anscombe's position by Jenny Teichman: “Intention and Sex” in Intention and Intentionality, ed. Cora Diamond and Jenny Teichman (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1979), pp. 147-161. Anscombe's work is of tremendous importance because it clearly analyzes contraception as a human action. Most of the moral theologians who write about contraception either neglect to undertake this task at all or they erroneously redescribe it in terms of the agents’ ultimate intentions. In this regard, see the comments by William E. May on p. 54 of his Sex and the Sanctity of Human Life (Front Royal. Virginia: Christendom College Press, 1984).

The question of the infallibility of the received Catholic teaching on contraception is much disputed. Perhaps the most significant recent attempt at defending an infallible interpretation of the Church's leaching on contraception is that of John C. Ford S.J. and Germain Grisez in “Contraception and the Infallibility of the Ordinary Magisterium.” Theological Studies, 39 (1978): 259-312. Their argument has been challenged by Francis A. Sullivan S.J. in the sixth chapter (pp. 119-152) of his Magisterium: Teaching Authority in the Catholic Church (New York: Paulist Press, 1983). Grisez's response and defense can be found in “Infallibility and Specific Moral Norms: A Review Discussion,” The Thomist, 49 (April 1985): 248 287 I do not propose to enter into this dispute and shall therefore abstract from the issue without prejudice to either side. Thus the position of John Paul II, in both its pre-papal and papal forms, will be deemed worthy of assent only because of its intrinsic intellectual merit rather than on the basis of any special authority.

See the Majority Report of the Papal Commission translated as “The Question is Not Closed” in The Birth Control Debate, ed. Hoyt Robert (Kansas City: National Catholic Reporter, 1969), p. 72.

This is a paraphrase of Anscombe's definition on p. 84 of YCHSWC. Note also the definition of contraception by Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae, n. 14: “Every action which, either 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,”

As Anscombe notes, this new possibility meant that it would no longer suffice to condemn contraception as a sin against nature. This felicitously required the Church to rethink its opposition according to intention. See YCHSWC, pp. 84-85 and C&C, pp. 16-17.

C&C, pp. 17–18.

This important insight is offered by Teichman on p. 155.

YCHSWC, p. 96.

See Gaudium et Spes, n. 51 and Humanae Vitae, n.16.

Gaudium et Spes, n. 50.

YCHSWC, pp. 87ff. and C&C, pp. 21ff.

Humanae Vitae, n. 12.

“The virtuous character of the attitude which is expressed in the ‘natural regulation’ of fertility is determined not so much by fidelity to an impersonal ‘natural law’ as to the Creator-Person, the Source and Lord of the Order which is manifested in such a law.” John Paul II, Reflections on Humanae Vitae (Boston: St Paul Editions. 1984), pp. 39–40.

Grisez Germain “A New Formulation of a Natural Law Argument Against Contraception.” The Thomist 30 (1966): 343–361. See also the presentation of this argument and the references provided in Catholic Sexual Ethics by Ronald Lawler O.F.M., Joseph Boyle, Jr., and William E. May (Huntington. Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor. Inc., 1985), pp. 159-165.

See the analysis of contraception by the avowed proportionalist Philip S. Keane S.S. in his Sexual Morality: A Catholic Perspective (New York: Paulist Press, 1977), pp. 120–140 Note especially the following: “In other words, contraceptive measures, both because of their non-openness to procreation in individual acts and because of problems with various birth control methods, are always ontically evil. They always lack the fullness of human possibility that might be associated with sexual intercourse … At the same time, however, it does not seem arguable that the ontic evil of artificial birth control becomes a moral evil in all sets of circumstances. If a couple face serious medical, psychological, or economic problems, their need for the human values involved in sexual communion would seem to give moral justification to their use of birth control devices. Such a decision will be undertaken with some regret (due to the ontically evil elements in birth control), but with a good conscience and with the conviction that, all things being considered, their action is objectively) moral.” pp. 124-125.

I cannot engage in a detailed critique of proportionalism here. I have found particularly helpful the trenchent analysis of consequentialism by Anscombe in her “Modern Moral Philosophy” in Ethics, Religion and Politics, pp. 26-42 (especially pp. 36-37) and the treatment by John Finnis in Fundamentals of Ethics (Washington, D.C: Georgetown University Press, 1983), pp. 80–108. See also the discussion and references in Lawler. Boyle, and May's Catholic Sexual Ethics, pp. 66-97.

Grisez p. 353.

Note the following remarks of Anscombe: “If it is indeed all right to do this for good ends, then it is excessively difficult to see why after all the act need closely resemble a normal conplete act of copulation: supposing that to have been made very difficult, say by a crippling accident to the wife, why should the couple not achieve sexual climax by mutual stimulation, rather than hold themselves obliged to a heroic degree of continence?” (p. 96) If the object of sexuality is reduced merely to pleasure, then there is no reason to exclude any kind of sexual behavior.

Wojtyla Karol Love and Responsibility, translated by H.T. Willetts (New York: Farrar. Strauss. Giroux, 1981), pp. 224–244. The following analysis is dependent upon these ideas.

Wojtyla Karol Love and Responsibility, translated by H.T. Willetts (New York: Farrar. Strauss. Giroux, 1981), p. 41.

Wojtyla Karol Love and Responsibility, translated by H.T. Willetts (New York: Farrar. Strauss. Giroux, 1981), p. 228

See Anscombe's discussion of illicit intercourse “purely for pleasure” on pp 88ff. of YCHSWC Note especially the following: “The presence of a positive intention of not procreating when desire leads to intercourse is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for this form of unchastity, but must raise the suspicion of it.” p. 90.

Familiaris Consortio, n. 32.

Familiaris Consortio, n. 32

Richard Hogan . “A Theology of the Body.” Fidelity v. 1. n. 1 (December 1981): 12

Reflections on Humanae Vitae, pp 33–34.

See, for example, “The Question is not Closed.” pp. 70–71

See Chapter One (pp. 1-31) of William E. May's Sex, Marriage, and Chastity: Reflections of a Catholic Layman, Spouse, and Parent (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1981), for a critique of the separatist philosophy of sexuality. The meaning of separatism here is any view of sexuality which severs the existential and psychological bond between the life-giving (procreative) meaning of human sexuality and its person-uniting (unitive) meaning in such a way that the former is subordinated to the latter as the sub-personal (which can be made personal by conscious choice) to the truly personal.

May, Sex and the Sanctity of Human life, p. 61

Familiaris Consortia, n.32.

Paul John II Reflections on Humanae Vitae, p. 80.

Paul John II Reflections on Humanae Vitae, p. 64.