Introduction

On Marriage and the Sacred Scripture

Sacred Scripture begins with the creation of man and woman in the image and
likeness of God and concludes with a vision of “the wedding-feast of the Lamb” as a
symbol of God’s reign about to begin. God willed to create man in his image, male and
female, and he did so. God gave male and female the commission to replenish the earth
and subdue it, so that reproduction has a theological and not just a biological and
sociological validation. In order to understand marriage, we need to understand that it
is a relationship that is instituted by God. It must be realize that the idea of male and
female was God’s idea. The Bible says, “So God created man in his own image, in the
image of God he created him; male and female he created them” 1. Marriage was
designed by God to meet the first need of the human race: loneliness. Adam had the
fellowship of God and the company of birds and animals, an interesting job, but he was
alone. So a wise and loving Creator provided the perfect solution: another creature like
the man yet wondrously unlike him. God’s plan was to supply a completeness, a person
totally suitable for Adam spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, and physically (Ibid).
Following this declaration, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother
and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Genesis 2:24. It means
marriage means oneness on the fullest possible sense, including intimate physical union
without shame. The biblical expression for sexual intercourse between husband and
wife is to know. Although it goes far deeper than the physical, becoming one flesh
involves intimate physical union in sexual intercourse. Thus, in the divine pattern of
marriage, sexual intercourse between husband and wife includes both intimate physical
knowledge and a tender, intimate, personal knowledge. This makes marriage a very
distinct relationship from that of family. Marriage, after all, is not defined as merely the
means of procreating, even though this is one outcome of marriage. Jesus Himself
repeats this verse in Matthew 19:5, and adds, “So then, they are no longer two but one
flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.” Matthew 19:6.
Married love itself is ordered to the procreation of children, for, after all, the first
command given to Adam and Eve is ―be fertile and multiply‖ (Gn 1:28). Tobiah‘s
prayer, even as it asks for a happy and lifelong union, remembers that the human race
descended from Adam and Eve. His prayer for happiness certainly includes, even if
implicitly, a prayer for offspring. God indeed sends the couple seven sons (Tb 14:3) and
long life (Tb 14:14).

1
Gen. 1: 27
 Historically in the church there have been two primary biblical texts utilized to
morally reject the use of contraceptive devices: Gen 1:28 and Gen 38:8–10. In the context
of the creation of man and woman in God’s image there is the procreative mandate,
“God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth
and subdue it’” (Gen 1:28). Some have taken the mandate to be universal in nature so
that the human race is given the task of procreation. Others have understood the
mandate to be particular in nature, so that the task is incumbent upon every married
couple, implying that nothing can be utilized to prevent conception. However one
interprets the mandate, two things The 38th chapter of Genesis tells the story of Judah,
his sons, and Tamar. One of the sons, Onan, practiced the sin of contraception--
withdrawal in this case--with Tamar, and the Bible tells us that God slew him because
he had done an abominable thing (Gen. 38:10).
It is recognized today that Judah, Onan, and another brother were all guilty of
violating an ancient Eastern brotherhood law called the law of the Levirate. However,
the punishment for violating that law was very mild and is spelled out in Deuteronomy
25:5- 10. Judah himself admitted his guilt (Gen. 38:26). It is therefore clear that the
special punishment meted out to Onan was not just for the violation of the Levirate but
rather for the way in which only he had sinned--his contraceptive behavior of going
through the motions of the covenantal act and then "spilling his seed" (Gen. 38:9).
This interpretation is backed up by the only incident in the New Testament
where immediate death is the punishment for sin--the deaths of Ananias and Saphira
who went through the motions of a giving act but defrauded it of its meaning (Acts 5:1-
11).

On Marriage and Fathers of the Church

The ban on artificial contraception in the Roman Catholic Church is rooted in the
teaching of Augustine and Aquinas, not regarding contraception, but the ends of
marital sex. Both clearly stressed that the only truly legitimate end of sex is procreation.
It was out of this framework that the church initially established its rejection of
contraception. In recent years the church has spoken of two primary ends: the
procreative and the unitive, whereby the union of the husband and wife is deepened
and solidified. But the original rationale for rejecting contraception was the procreative
priority of the sexual act. The fact that the church has included the unitive dimension
actually undermines the original grounding for rejecting contraception and may be part
of the reason that in practice the ban is so widely rejected by Roman Catholics.

Magisterium Pronouncements
The main contentions in these documents are fairly consistent from one to the
next. Pope Pius XI in 1930 set the argument in the context of nature: “Since, therefore,
the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children, those who
in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural power and purpose sin against nature
and commit a deed which is shameful and intrinsically vicious.”15 In 1965 the Vatican
II document Gaudium et Spes said that “marriage and conjugal love are by their nature
ordained toward the begetting and educating of children.” It recognized that marriage
“is not instituted solely for procreation; rather, its very nature as an unbreakable
compact between persons … demands that the mutual love of the spouses be embodied
in a rightly ordered manner, that it grow and ripen.”16
In 1968 Pope John Paul in Humanae Vitae set forth the Church’s teaching in light of a right order
of priorities: God, the couple, their families and human society. “From this it follows that they are not
free to act as they choose in the service of transmitting life, as if it were wholly up to them to decide …
the right course to follow. On the contrary, they are bound to ensure that what they do corresponds to
the will of God the Creator.”17 The nature of marriage is clear: “God has wisely ordered laws of nature
and the incidence of fertility in such a way that successive births are already naturally spaced through
the inherent operation of these laws. The Church, nevertheless … teaches that each and every marital
act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life.”18 If there are
good reasons for spacing children, “Married people may then take advantage of the natural cycles
immanent in the reproductive system and engage in marital intercourse only during those times that are
infertile.”19 But all forms of contraception must be rejected.
Contraception is morally wrong not simply because of its direct link to
abortion; it is wrong in itself. In his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul
VI gives an authoritative definition of contraception as "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."  Paul VI goes on to reaffirm the
xii

Church's constant teaching that such actions are intrinsically evil (intrinsice
inhonestum),  explaining that contraception violates "the inseparable
xiii

connection, established by God, 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." xiv2

the act of marital love also participates in God’s creative love.  The couple who has
become a new creation by becoming husband and wife, one flesh, may also bring about the
creation of new life in accord with God’s will.  Vatican II asserted, “By its very nature the
institution of marriage and married love is ordered to the procreation and education of the
offspring and it is in them that it finds its crowning glory” (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in
the Modern World, #48, cf. #50).  The Council acknowledged that while not diminishing the
importance of sacramental union symbolized in marital love, “it must be said that true married
love and the whole structure of family life which results from it is directed to disposing the
spouses to cooperate valiantly with the love of the creator and Savior, who through them will
increase and enrich His family from day to day” (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the
Modern World, #50).
2 xii
  . Humanae Vitae, 14.
  xiii. Ibid. The Catechism of the Catholic Church reiterates Paul VI's condemnation of all forms of contraception as
intrinsically evil in number 2370.
  xiv. Humanae Vitae,  12. Catechism of the Catholic Church,  2336.
 Given this understanding about the sacrament of marriage, Pope Paul VI in his
encyclical Humanae Vitae stated, “Each and every marriage act must remain open to the
transmission of life (#11).  The Holy Father continued, “This particular doctrine, expounded on
numerous occasions by the Magisterium, is based on the inseparable connection, established
by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the
procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage pact” (Humanae Vitae, #12).
In Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II lamented about the effects of contraception: 
“Sexuality too is depersonalized and exploited: from being the sign, place, and language of love,
that is, of the gift of self and acceptance of another, in all the other’s richness as a person, it
increasingly becomes the occasion and instrument for self-assertion and the selfish satisfaction
of personal desires and instincts.  Thus, the original import of human sexuality is distorted and
falsified, and the two meanings, unitive and procreative, inherent in the very nature of the
conjugal act, are artificially separated: in this way, the marriage union is betrayed and its
fruitfulness is subjected to the caprice of the couple.  Procreation then becomes the ‘enemy’ to
be avoided in sexual activity:  if it is welcomed this is only because it expresses a desire, or
indeed the intention, to have a child ‘at all costs,’ and not because it signifies the complete
acceptance of the other and therefore an openness to the richness of life which the child
represents” (#23).
The Second Vatican Council described marriage as “an intimate partnership of
life and love” which was “established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own
proper laws” (Gaudium et Spes 48). What a marriage is derives not just from social
conventions but “from the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand
of the Creator” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1603).
Marriage is also the natural basis of the family and thus of the care of children
and the continuation of human society. Properly understood, marital love “demands
indissolubility and faithfulness in definitive mutual giving” (John Paul II, Familiaris
Consortio: Apostolic Exhortation on the Family (1981) 13).
"Parents should regard as their proper mission the task of transmitting human
life and educating those to whom it has been transmitted. They should realize that they
are thereby cooperators with the love of God the Creator, and are, so to speak, the
interpreters of that love" (Gaudium et Spes, 50).
The Church speaks of an inseparable connection between the two ends of
marriage: the good of the spouses themselves as well as the procreation of children. The
Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that unitive and the procreative purposes are
meant to be inseparable separated without altering the couple‘s spiritual life and
compromising the goods of marriage and the future of the family.‖17 This
inseparability arises from the very nature of conjugal love, a love that ―stands under
the twofold obligation of fidelity and fecundity.‖18 Conjugal love expresses the unitive
meaning of marriage in such a way as to show how this meaning is ordered toward the
equally obvious procreative meaning. The unitive meaning is distorted if the
procreative meaning is deliberately disavowed. Conjugal love is then diminished. This
love is, by its nature, faithful, exclusive, and intended to be fecund. As Pope Paul VI
says, ―It is not confined wholly to the loving interchange of husband and wife; it also
contrives to go beyond this to bring new life into being.‖ 19 Without its ordering
toward the procreative, the unitive meaning of marriage is undermined The Catechism
of the Catholic Church states that God‘s creative power is not a power of force or
manipulation, but a power of love.20 It is a power of self-gift. God is eternally happy in
himself because he is a loving communion of three persons. He is self-sufficient and
needs nothing else to be happy. Yet he wills to share his life and happiness with
creatures who would have no existence were it not for this creative self-gift.
Participating in the creative work of God means participating in the self-emptying or
selfgiving love of God, the rendering of one‘s whole being into a gift. If procreation is a
true participation in the creative activity of God, it is a work that is inseparable from
self-gift.
Since the “one flesh” union of man and wife foreshadowed Christ and the
Church right from “the beginning,” John Paul II speaks of marriage as the primordial
sacrament. “All the sacraments of the new covenant find in a certain sense their
prototype in marriage,” says the Holy Father.[12] This is why Baptism is a “nuptial
bath”[13] and why the Eucharist is “the Sacrament of the Bridegroom and of the
Bride.”[14] When we receive the body of Christ into our own, in a mysterious way, like
a bride, we conceive new life in us – life in the Holy Spirit. It is this same Holy Spirit
that forms the bond that unites spouses in the Sacrament of Marriage.
 In Humanae Vitae, the first-named form of illicit or unnatural method of birth
control is abortion (n. 14).[3]
Then, "equally to be excluded, as the teaching authority of the Church has
frequently declared, is direct sterilization, whether perpetual or temporary whether of
the man or woman" (Humanae Vitae, 14). This condemns tubal ligations, vasectomies,
and the Pill.
"Similarly excluded is 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"
(Humanae Vitae, 14). Such unnatural forms include the Pill, the intrauterine device,
foams, diaphragms, condoms, withdrawal, mutual or solitary masturbation and
sodomistic practices.
Are some forms of unnatural birth control worse than others? Yes. Those forms
that act after conception has occurred to prevent the continuation of the pregnancy
participate in the additional evil of abortion. "From the moment of its conception life
must be guarded with greatest care, while abortion and infanticide are unspeakable
crimes" (Gaudium et Spes, 51).
Surgical abortion is the most obvious but not the only form. The intrauterine
device (IUD) acts primarily as an early abortion agent by preventing implantation of the
week-old human life.
 The birth control Pill makes the inner lining of the uterus very hostile to
implantation. It is not known how often the Pill acts in this way, but it cannot be denied
that the Pill may be acting as an early abortion agent in any given cycle in any given
woman. "If there are serious reasons to space out births, reasons which derive from the
physical or psychological conditions of husband and wife, or from external conditions, the
Church teaches that it is morally permissible to take into account the natural rhythms of human
fertility and to have coitus only during the infertile times in order to regulate conception
without offending the moral principles which have been recalled earlier" (Humanae Vitae, 16).
Thus, the same teaching of the Church which condemns the use of the unnatural
methods of birth control explicitly approves of the use of Natural Family Planning
when there is a sufficient reason to avoid or postpone pregnancy. With its emphasis on
the necessity of a serious reason to use even the natural methods, the Church is warning
against selfishness in family planning.

The earliest reference to contraception and abortion is in the Didache, a document

from the second half of the first century or early second century. Didache reads: “You
shall not practice birth control, you shall not murder a child by abortion, nor kill what
is begotten” (2).

Many translations read “practice sorcery” because the Greek word sometimes has that
meaning (see Wisdom 12:4, Galatians 5:20, Revelation 18:23). However, it also
means practice medicine or use poison, and the term may refer to contraceptive
measures, as is the case in a number of the following texts.

Another early text is the Epistle of Barnabas: “You shall not slay the child by
procuring abortion, nor shall you destroy it after it is born” (19). This also shows that
the earliest Christians forbade abortion.

In the second century, St. Clement of Alexandria wrote in the Paedagogus (2.10.96):

“Women who resort to some sort of deadly abortion drug kill not only the embryo, but
along with it, all human kindness.” This passage supports our translation of
the Didache by mentioning the use of drugs to induce abortion.
In 177, Athenagoras of Athens wrote in the Supplication for the Christians: “And
when we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder,
and will have to give an account to God for the abortion, on what principle should we
commit murder?”

This is the first of many patristic texts identifying abortion with murder, thereby
indicating a high value to the personhood of the fetus. Tertullian’s Apology in 197,
while he was still in union with the Church, says, “In our case, murder being once for
all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human
being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth
is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that
is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth.”

Tertullian was himself a married man and understood the dignity of the fetus in the
womb.

In the third century, Minucius Felix (226) wrote in Octavius: “There are some women
who, by drinking medical preparations, extinguish the source of the future man in
their very bowels, and thus commit a parricide before they bring forth” (30).

Around 228, St. Hippolytus wrote about unmarried women, including some reputed

to be Christians, who became pregnant from illicit relationships. In his Refutation of
All Heresies, he says, “Whence women, reputed believers, began to resort to drugs for
producing sterility and to gird themselves round, so to expel what was being
conceived on account of their not wishing to have a child either by a slave or by any
paltry fellow, for the sake of their family and excessive wealth. Behold, into how
great impiety that lawless one has proceeded by inculcating adultery and murder at the
same time! And withal, after such audacious acts, they, lost to all shame, attempt to
call themselves a Catholic Church” (9.7).
He considers their behavior an effectual refutation of their status as Christians. A
document known as the Constitutions of the Holy Apostles reads “You shall not slay
thy child by causing abortion, nor kill that which is begotten; for ‘everything that is
shaped and has received a soul from God, if it be slain, shall be avenged, as being
unjustly destroyed’” (7.1).

This states the belief that the fetus has a soul and its life must be protected from
conception forward.

In the fourth century, the Latin and Greek authors addressed these issues. St.
Augustine wrote On Marriage and Concupiscence (419). Though he was already the
bishop of Hippo when he wrote it, he is equally famous for having lived with a
concubine for 14 years and had a son with her. Therefore, he had an experience of
living in a sort of family and he learned from his mistakes. He wrote: “I am
supposing, then, although you are not lying [with your wife] for the sake of
procreating offspring, you are not for the sake of lust obstructing their procreation by
an evil prayer or an evil deed. Those who do this, although they are called husband
and wife, are not; nor do they retain any reality of marriage, but with a respectable
name cover a shame” (1.15.17).

St. Basil the Great wrote in his First Canonical Letter, Canon 2: “The woman who
purposely destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder. With us there is no nice
enquiry as to its being formed or unformed. In this case it is not only the being about
to be born who is vindicated, but the woman in her attack upon herself; because in
most cases women who make such attempts die. The destruction of the embryo is an
additional crime, a second murder, at all events, if we regard it as done with intent”
(374).
The reason he mentioned the “nice enquiry as to its being formed or unformed” is that
some theologians thought that the rational soul did not develop in the fetus until the
third month or even later. St. Basil simply notes that this is not an issue because at any
stage the destruction of the embryo is a “crime” and a “murder.” Pace Nancy Pelosi,
who had claimed that since St. Augustine had thought that the rational soul began late
in the pregnancy, therefore abortion would be acceptable in the early stages. St. Basil
shows that such false reasoning was unfounded.

St. Jerome, Letter 22 to Eustochium (396), said: “Some, when they find themselves

with child through their sin, use drugs to procure abortion, and when (as often
happens) they die with their offspring, they enter the lower world, laden with the guilt
not only of adultery against Christ, but also of suicide and child murder. Yet it is these
who say: ‘Unto the pure all things are pure; my conscience is sufficient guide for me.’
A pure heart is what God looks for” (13).

Here St. Jerome denies that the conscience of the abortion is a sufficient guide. As
will be clarified in later centuries, the conscience must be correctly formed so that the
Lord can truly find a pure heart in the individual.

Not only did many of the great theologians address abortion and contraception, but so
did some councils. The Council of Elvira in Spain (305) decreed two canons
forbidding the sacraments to women who committed abortion: “If a woman becomes
pregnant by committing adultery, while her husband is absent, and after the act she
destroys (the child), it is proper to keep her from Communion until death, because she
has doubled her crime” (63). Canon 68 reads: “If a catechumen should conceive by an
adulterer, and should procure the death of the child, she can be baptized only at the
end of her life.”
A similar decision was reached at the Council of Ancyra (314): “Concerning women
who commit fornication, and destroy that which they have conceived, or who are
employed in making drugs for abortion, a former decree excluded them [from
Communion] until the hour of death” (29)

None of the Fathers or councils offer contradictory opinions on contraception or

abortion. Popes Pius XI, Paul VI and Blessed John Paul II were simply presenting the
teaching of the Church in the same line of thought that began in the earliest
generations, continued through the Middle Ages, and was taught by the Protestant
reformers. (Martin Luther called people who use contraception “logs,” “stock” and
“swine.” John Calvin said contraception was “condemned and “doubly monstrous,”
while abortion was “a crime incapable of expiation.”)

The popes hav