3) The Morality of Birth Control - A patristic understanding

Go back

Contrary to Eastern Orthodox theologian Paul Evdokimov, who writes in his book The Sacrament of Love, “In the age of the Church Fathers, the problem of birth control was never raised,” a study of the teachings of the early fathers of the Church quickly reveals that this controversy is nothing new and that the teachings of the Church on this issue have evolved over time (174). Sex, from a patristic view, is for making babies. For many of the fathers, this is not only its primary end, it is its sole purpose.

This utilitarian understanding of sex may have roots in the Old Testament's emphasis on procreation as well as in Stoic philosophy. At any rate, the patristic understanding more strongly echoes Stoic philosophy than it does Paul. (On this topic, see Roy Ward’s article, “Paul, How he Radically Redefined Marriage.” Bible Review 4:4 (1988) 26-31). When Paul writes, "It is better to marry than to burn," he is not talking about having children, but about having sex (1Cor 7:9). He never mentions children in this passage. Given the imminent eschatology of this letter, it is clear that Paul is not here concerned with progeny or posterity. This reveals that there is more to sex, in his view, than making babies. It keeps us who are weak from burning, whether this is from burning in sexual desire or burning in hell or both, he does not say. The point is that sex, for Paul, is a good thing in service of an end other than having children. The fathers of the Church did not maintain this New Testament understanding.

Icon of St. Justin Martyr, also called the Philosopher,
in the Katholikon of the Stavronikita Monastery.

With a clear preference for celibacy, St. Justin Martyr (c. 160) writes, “If we marry, it is only so that we may bring up children” (ANF 1.172, emphasis mine). Similarly, Lactantius (c. 304-313) writes, “Whatever is sought beyond the desire of procreation is condemned by God” (ANF 7.143). Among these fathers, then, the distinction between artificial contraception and NFP is therefore moot. While they would generally prefer that people remain virgins and therefore not have any children, these fathers oppose any form of birth control within a sexually active marriage. At face value, Justin’s claim that marriage has no purpose other than the begetting and rearing of children would even render total abstinence within marriage an unacceptable behavior (the example of Mary the ever-virgin spouse of Joseph notwithstanding).

Other fathers may not oppose total abstinence within marriage as a means of birth control, but they do oppose limiting abstinence to the periods of fertility, à la NFP, and even require abstinence during periods of infertility. For example, Athenagoras the Athenian (c. 175) forbids sexual activity during the infertile period of pregnancy. Referring to this, he writes,

After throwing the seed into the ground, the farmer awaits the harvest. He does not sow more seed on top of it. Likewise, to us the procreation of children is the limit of our indulgence in appetite” (ANF 2.146).

In reference to the same issue, St. Clement of Alexandria (c. 195) writes, “To… a spiritual man, after conception, his wife is as a sister and is treated as if of the same father” (ANF 2.503). Two activities recommended by some NFP teachers are having sex during menstruation and during pregnancy, both of which the earliest extant Church canons, the Apostolic Constitutions (compiled c. 390), specifically condemn:

When the menstrual purgations appear in the wives, their husbands should not approach them, out of regard to the children to be begotten. For the Law has forbidden it when it says: “You will not come near your wife when she is in her separation” [Lev. 18:19]. Nor, indeed, let them have relations when their wives are with child. For [in that case] they are not doing it for the begetting of children, but only for the sake of pleasure. Now a lover of God should not be a lover of pleasure (ANF 7.463).

It is interesting to note here that the two reasons for having sex acknowledged by the Apostolic Constitutions are procreation and pleasure, as opposed to contemporary Catholic theology, which generally recognizes unification and procreation as the two purposes of loving marital sex. There is no mention at all here of the expression of marital love as a purpose for sex. St. Augustine (c. 388) also understands sex in this manner. He offers a fairly accurate description of what we would now call NFP in his opposition to calculating and limiting sex to the infertile periods of a woman’s cycle, which was apparently a practice promoted by the Manichæans. He writes,

Is it not you [the Manichæans] who used to counsel us to observe as much as possible the time when a woman, after her purification, is most likely to conceive, and to abstain from cohabitation at that time…? This proves that you approve of having a wife, not for the procreation of children, but for the gratification of passion (NPNF 1.4.86).

Augustine here understands sex as done for pleasure only - “the gratification of passion” - if it is not done for procreation. This is typical of some of the fathers. He offers no mention of love or unification as aspects of the sexual embrace. Again, this is typical. For him, the pleasure of sex is tolerable only because of the good end of making babies. If that end is not present, sexual pleasure is reprehensible and he seems not to recognize the possibility of having sex with one’s spouse as an expression of love. The Church’s teaching about sex has evolved and, I believe, deepened.

Continue

2) The Morality of Birth Control - The means

Go back

The means, techniques, or methods of birth control include 1) abortion and abortifacients 2) sterilization, 3) artificial contraception, which includes barrier methods such as condoms and hormonal methods such as “the pill,” 4) behavioral methods that limit sexual activity to infertile acts such as onanism, oral sex, et cetera, 5) periodic abstinence, the most effective method of which is known as natural family planning (NFP), and 6) total abstinence.

The Catholic Church has undertaken to evaluate morally each of these means of birth control. The Second Vatican Council, in its document Gaudium et Spes (GS), defends the competency of the magisterium of the Church to make this evaluation, stating: “Sons [and, presumably, daughters] of the Church may not undertake methods of birth control which are found blameworthy by the teaching authority of the Church in its unfolding of the divine law” (51.3). The teaching of the Catholic Church on the immorality of certain means is clear in forbidding all but the last two of the six methods listed above.

Drawing from a 13th-century manuscript of Pseudo-Apuleius's Herbarium, 
depicting a pregnant woman and another holding some pennyroyal. 
Pennyroyal was historically used as an herbal abortifacient.

1) Direct abortion is the willful taking of an innocent human life which began at conception and is an “unspeakable crime” (GS 51.3; CCC 2271). In his encyclical Humanae Vitae (HV), which, from a Catholic point of view, is a foundational document on the issue of birth control, Paul VI writes “Direct abortion... [is] to be absolutely excluded as lawful means of regulating the number of children” (14).

2) He continues, “Equally to be condemned, as the magisterium of the Church has affirmed on many occasions, is direct sterilization, whether of the man or of the woman, whether permanent or temporary” (HV 14). Sterilization, which mutilates a healthy body with the intention of disrupting its natural healthy functions, disrespects bodily integrity and consequently is against the moral law (CCC 2297).

3) Regarding artificial contraception, Paul VI unambiguously writes, “Sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive [is] intrinsically wrong” (HV 14; CCC 2370). The primary reason that these acts are immoral is their deliberate disruption of one of the two primary ends of sex in marriage. There is an “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 act” (HV 12). Contraception is a deliberate denial of the procreative significance of sex. While it is true that sex is not only for making babies but also essentially for making love, it remains true that it is also essentially for making babies and that God created it for this great purpose also. For this reason, “each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life” (HV 11).

4) Recent documents of the Church have said little about behavioral methods of birth control. However, for exactly the same reasons as those presented against contraception, the consistent teaching of the Church opposes these methods as well. Their clear prohibition extends from biblical times into the twentieth century, as Pius XI demonstrated in 1930 in his encyclical Casti Connubii. Referring to patristic interpretation of the story of Onan in Genesis, he writes,

Holy Writ bears witness that the Divine Majesty regards with greatest detestation this horrible crime and at times has punished it with death. As St. Augustine notes, "Intercourse even with one's legitimate wife is unlawful and wicked where the conception of the offspring is prevented. Onan, the son of Juda, did this and the Lord killed him for it" (Casti Connubii 55; Gen 38: 8-10).

Some exegesis is necessary at this point. The story of Onan is the only direct description of birth control in scripture, and the method described is behavioral: “when he went in to his brother's wife he spilled the semen on the ground” (Gen 38:9). The story gives us both Onan’s means – coitus interruptus, sometimes also known as onanism – and his ends: “Onan knew that the offspring would not be his,” so he avoided conception, “lest he should give offspring to his brother. And what he did was displeasing in the sight of the LORD, and he slew him also” (Gen 38:9-10). Why did the Lord kill Onan in this story? Both St. Augustine and Pope Pius XI believe that Onan’s crime was his means of avoiding conception. However, Onan’s reason for doing so was also immoral – he did not want to fulfill the conditions of a levirate marriage. He selfishly did not want to sire heirs for his deceased brother. So perhaps this was his crime. I think, however, that it is most reasonable and consistent with Christian tradition to consider that both his reason and his means – “what he did” – were immoral and that the Lord punished him for both of these reasons.

In its prohibition of these four methods of birth control, the Catholic Church is completely consistent with the fathers of the Church, who are universal in their opposition to such acts. However, the fathers went further than the Church does today and would also condemn what we now call 5) NFP. For the fathers, the only moral means of birth control was 6) total abstinence. I will examine the patristic thoughts on these issues in the next post.

Continue

1) The Morality of Birth Control - Introduction

Some ancient readers of this blog may remember my earlier writing on the morality of birth control. The next several posts will be a massive reworking of my original posts which have been deleted as my understanding of this has significantly evolved over time.

There are few issues so disputed within the Church and between Christians of all kinds as the morality of birth control. Most commonly, the dispute is about whether or not artificial contraception is a morally licit means of regulating birth, but birth control is not exactly synonymous with contraception. Birth control is the regulation of the number and/or frequency of births. This is done for numerous reasons and by numerous means, both of which need to be evaluated morally. The debate among Christians extends beyond the means of birth control to which, if any, circumstances justify its use. Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox teachings on this issue differ on significant points, which presents unique pastoral problems to Eastern Catholics. This is in addition to the many problems universal to any who would take a moral stance on this issue.

Continue

Marriage Rites

Recently, I unexpectedly attended a wedding of two people I’d never met, which puts marriage in my mind.

There are certain repeated themes in the Byzantine rites of betrothal and crowning that may be helpful to remember when thinking about the nature of marriage.

7th century Byzantine wedding ring
depicting Christ joining the right hands 
of the bride and groom.
Inscribed: ομόνοια 
- Louvre

The betrothal includes prayers for salvation, procreation, love, unity, and faith and ends with a prayer describing the bestowed rings as biblical symbols of authority, glory, truth, and compassion. Of these themes, love is the one most remember and, if understood rightly, it is the most important. Understood rightly, it includes and does not neglect any of these other essential aspects of married life.

The crowning rite then reiterates these themes. Importantly, the joining of the right hands signifies unification. The prayer here remembers the creation of Adam and Eve, which implicitly recalls the prelapsarian united and good humanity (ἄνθρωπος), now reunified by the mystery of crowning. Emphasizing this unity, the priest asks God to yoke the couple like Adam and Eve and to crown them in one flesh. He also again prays for the blessing of offspring – an essential intention of marriage.

One meaning recalled by the crowning that follows and by a troparion sung during the dance of Isaias is the crowns of martyrdom and the self-sacrificial love martyrdom entails. This kind of love - the kind that will lay down life for the other - is the kind needed also in marriage.

From the troparion, in Tone 7:

“Holy Martyrs, who fought the good fight and were crowned, intercede with the Lord to have mercy on our souls.” 

I occasionally get out the service book from my own wedding and read it. I think rereading these services prayerfully can help a marriage. They provide good instruction on healthy and holy matrimonial life and a corrective to destructive self-centeredness.

For today's feast of Ss. Constantine and Helen, Equals to the Apostles

Perhaps so his baptism would cleanse as many sins as possible, St. Constantine the Great, ἰσαπόστολος, postponed it until he was near death. In the meantime, just for example, he ordered the poisoning of his son Crispus and the scalding suffocation of his wife Fausta (326). His sins were great. Then his glorification shows God’s great mercy. His baptism was by the Arian Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia (337). Then his canonization demonstrates one significant thing that extra ecclesiam nulla salus does not mean. This implicit acceptance of a baptism from a heretical hand shows the mysterious workings of God’s grace.

Confession and Eucharist

The mysteries of the Church - like the Church herself - are each human and divine. They are each an act of God performed through humans upon humans. As with the rest, this is also so of confession and eucharist. Each is both of God and of man. Each is both of the God-man. If I may say so, however, there is a manner in which confession more greatly emphasizes the human and eucharist the divine.

This is so in reference to the forgiveness of our sins. Both confession and eucharist are for the forgiveness of our sin, so why do we need both? Because the Church, which is the assembly of those in Christ, is both human and divine.

God knows what you’ve done. He knows your sin. He knows also whether you approach him in penitence. If you do, He receives you in mercy and forgiveness into communion with himself in the eucharist, which we receive for the remission of our sins and for life everlasting. If you do not, perhaps you eat and drink judgment and condemnation upon yourself. The eucharist offers you the divine seal of your forgiveness in Jesus Christ by uniting you to him - by making you a part of his own body. The miracle of the eucharist - to paraphrase Taft - is not simply to make bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus, but more importantly, to make you, together with all the people of God, the members of his Church, into the body and blood of Jesus.

The human members of this body, however, do not know what you’ve done. They do not know your sin. The Church, as both a human and divine institution must offer its members both human and divine forgiveness. For humans to forgive, they must hear confessions, and so James taught us in our apostolic infancy to confess our sins to one another, not only to whisper them into the wind that only God can hear. God has become a man and he is acting through men in his Church. As a man, he waits to hear your confession spoken with your lips. Your lips, and the ears of the priest who hears what they speak, are entirely human. They are dust and to dust they shall return. It’s true. But it is also true that they are taken on by God himself in his incarnation. They are being raised up and given eternal life. They are being divinized. For the Church in her humanity to offer you human forgiveness and reintegration into her human community, she must hear your human confession. This human forgiveness is necessary for you because it is being made divine and what sins humans forgive are forgiven also by God.

Blessed are those like Christ

            In his hymn, “On the birth of our Lord,” the thirty-first of the Hymns of Virginity, St. Ephrem the Syrian, whose feast is today, employs many images to describe poetically the one who surpasses our everyday speech. He describes Christ as atoning Hyssop, Libation, and Lamb (str. 4-5). Christ is the Priest and the Sacrifice (str. 5). He is the Treasurer and the Treasure (str. 2, 7). He is Fountain, Instruction, Remembrance, Trust, Rock, Curdled Milk, and Justifying Wall (str. 7-8). He is the Gate and the Yoke (str. 9, 11). He is represented by the Eucharistic images of the Grape-Cluster of mercy and the Ear of Wheat (str. 13-14). He is the Furnace, the Mirror, and the skilled Sailor (str. 10, 12, 15). It would be easily possible to multiply images of Christ endlessly, and Ephrem has begun to try. “Christ [is]… above every name that is named” (Eph 1:20-21). No single poetic image, however profound, can ever completely contain or express the inexhaustible mystery of Christ. The use of many, therefore, benefits the attempt to grow in understanding.

Icon of St. Ephrem writing

            Each of Ephrem’s images of Christ has in common a salvific character. Characteristically, in this hymn, he presents an image of Christ at the beginning of each strophe and ends each strophe with the exclamation, “Blessed is…” the one who benefits in the way particularly emphasized by this particular image.  In other words, blessed is the one whom Christ saves or blessed is the one who becomes more like Christ. Many of these images emphasize Christ’s redemptive and atoning role. Others, three in particular, especially struck me and seem to emphasize theosis – becoming like Christ – as the means of salvation. These are the Furnace, the Mirror, and the Sailor (str. 10, 12, 15).