History of Birth Control

In presenting this chronology of Catholic teaching on human sexuality and birth control, we ask the reader to keep two facts in mind:
1. The woman's natural cycle of fertility and infertility was not well understood until the 1930s, after which time only do effective methods of natural family planning become available.
2. Effective devices for artificial contraception did not exist until the 18th century, and even these were rather crude. The birth control pill was made available only in the 1960s.

Biblical Perspective

The Bible has virtually nothing to say about birth control per se. The story of Onan (Gn 38: 1-11) being condemned to death for practicing coitus interruptus pertains more to his refusal to father children for his deceased brother (as Jewish Law required) than the practice of a form of birth control.

Biblical teaching does affirm, however, the goodness of human sexuality, the covenantal nature of married love, and the primacy of love in human relationships.

The Early Years

306-Council of Elvira, Spain, decree #43: a priest who sleeps with his wife the night before Mass will lose his job.
325-Council of Nicea: decreed that after ordination a priest could not marry.
385-Pope Siricius left his wife in order to become pope. Decreed that priests may no longer sleep with their wives.

The Teaching of St. Augustine (354-430)

Prior to St. Augustine, the teaching of the Church on marriage and human sexuality was more pastoral than philosophical. The early Fathers affirmed marriage as an institution blessed by Christ, and stressed the importance of fidelity and lifelong commitment. Augustine the philosopher and theologian gave the Church its first (and persisting) codified teaching on human sexuality.

Prior to his conversion to Christianity, Augustine was a lustful youth who lived for years with a woman who bore him a son. He was also enamored with a dualistic philosophy called Manichaeism, which viewed matter as an evil opposed to spirit. Unquestionably, these experiences colored his views on marriage and sexuality. Some of the key features of Augustine's teaching on sexual morality are summarized below:

1. The primary end of marriage and human sexuality is the procreation of children. This reasoning is based more on stoic philosophy (a chief reservoir of natural law teaching) than reflection on the biblical/covenantal view of marriage and sexuality. It will dominate magisterial teaching on sexuality up to Vatican Council II.
2. The purpose of human sexuality is to be found in the end to which it is ordered: the procreation of children. Augustine condemned periodic abstinence when it was used to avoid conception (a practice now accepted by the Church). He also condemned coitus interruptus for this reason.
3. Pleasure was an acceptable by-product of sex, but not as a primary motive for sex (There isn't really much in Augustine about sex as a means of expressing and celebrating love).
4. Although the sex act itself is not inherently evil, it is the means by which original sin is transmitted from one generation to the next. Later writers, using Augustine as their source, will build on this point to the extent that sex itself becomes viewed as inherently tained with sexual pleasure as the chief sign of the fallen nature of sex.

Fifth Through Tenth Centuries

567-2nd Council of Tours: any cleric found in bed with his wife would be excommunicated for a year and reduced to the lay state.
580-Pope Pelagius II: his policy was not to bother married priests as long as they did not hand over church property to wives or children.
590-604-Pope Gregory &Mac179;the the Great&Mac178; said that all sexual desire is sinful in itself (meaning that sexual desire is intrinsically evil?).

Seventh Century
France: documents show that the majority of priest were married.

Eighth Century
St. Boniface reported to the pope that in Germany almost no bishop or priest was celibate.

Ninth Century
836-Council of Aix-la-Chapelle openly admitted that abortions and infanticide took place in convents and monasteries to cover up activities of uncelibate clerics.
St. Ulrich, a holy bishop, argued from scripture and common sense that the only way to purify the church from the worst excesses of celibacy was to permit priests to marry.

The Scholatic Period (11th to 15th Centuries)

The scholastic writers (chief among whom was St. Thomas Aquinas) affirmed the goodness of sexual pleasure, provided it was not divorced from reason. The primary procreative end of marriage and sexuality was also affimed. Basing their understanding of sexuality on the philosophy of Aristotle, they taught that the made semen was the active principle in transmitting life, while the female was merely a passive receptacle who provided the matter for the fetus. Manuals for moral and pastoral guidance based on Scholastic theology encouraged leniency toward couples who struggled with sexual impulses, however.

Eleventh Century
1045-Pope Boniface IX dispensed himself from celibacy and resigned in order to marry.
1074-Pope Gregory VII said anyone to be ordained must first pledge celibacy: 'priests [must] first escape from the clutches of their wives.'
1095-Pope Urban II had priests' wives sold into slavery, children were abandoned.

Twelfth Century
1123-Pope Calistus II: First Lateran Council decreed that clerical marriages were invalid.
1139-Pope Innocent II: Second Lateran Council confirmed the previous council]s ds decree.

Sixteenth Century
1545-63-Council of Trent states that celibacy and virginity are superior to marriage.

Renaissance Period (16th to 19th Centuries)

Writings reaffirmed the primacy of the procreative end of marrage and sexuality. Manuals for moral and pastoral guidance assumed a highly legalistic context with respect to sexual acts. St. Alphonsus Liguori (a doctor of the Church) affirmed that one of the purposes of marriage was to provide an outlet for sexual expression.

Twentieth Century

1930. The Lambeth Conference. Anglical bishops formally declare that couples are free to decide for themselves which methods of contraception they wish to use for purposes of family planning. They also condemned the use of contraceptives for "motives of selfishness, luxury or mere convenience."

1930. Casti Connubii. Encyclical by Pope Piux XI. Reaffirmed procreation as the primary end of human sexuality. "Our voice promulgates anew: any use of marriage whatever, in the exercise of which the act is deprived of its natural power of prcreating life, violates the law of God and nature, and those who commit anything of this kind are marked with the stain of grave sin." The encyclical was ambiguous in condoning natural forms of contraception, affirming the importance of love between husband and wife, "provided matrimony be looked at not in the restricted sense as instituted for the proper conception and education of the child, but more widely as the blending of life as a while and the mutual interchange and sharing thereof."

1951. Address to the Midwives. Pope Pius XII. Condemned the use of artificial contraceptives. "This precept is as valid today as it was yesterday; and it will be the same tomorrow and always, because it does not imply a precept of the human law but is the expression of a law which is natural and divine." The Pope seems to be saying that the teaching cannot be changed. In this address, he also affirmed the lawfulness of natural methods of contraception (rhythm and NFP) in a clear, unambiguous manner. This was the first time in the history of the Church when sex apart from an explicit procreative intention was condoned in a magisterial teaching.

1965. Vatican Council II. Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. Poposed that the governing principle in human sexuality be "the nature of the human person and his acts." Pope Paul VI requested that no developed teaching on sexuality be presented until he heard from a commission on birth control that had been established by Pope John XXIII.

1963-1966. Meetings of the Birth Control Commission established by Pope John XXIII. The Commission consisted of theologians, priests, bishops, cardinals and laypeople from a variety of professions. They met to consider issues of marriage and sexuality, with special emphasis on the birth control question. After numerous meetings, prayer, and consultation with professionals on all sides of the issue, the commission agreed that the current teaching of the Church was not infallible, that artificial contraception was not intrinsically evil, and that Catholic couples ought to be given the liberty to decide for themselves concerning methods of family planning. The report was taken to the Pope on June 28, 1966 after the Comission agreed that there was to be no majority or minority report. Two Commission members broke this agreement and issued a so-called "minority report," in which they disagreed with the conclusions of the Commission and urged Pope Paul VI to uphold the traditional teaching lest the Papal authority be diminished.

1968. Humanae Vitae. Pope Paul VI's response to the Birth Control Commission, in which he re-affirmed the pre-Vatican II teaching that "the Church, calling men back to the observance of the norms of the natural law, as interpreted by her constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life." The encyclical also affirmed the unitve aspect of human sexuality, giving it equality with the procreative. Theologians and even councils of bishops criticized the teaching for its heavy reliance on a narrow interpretation of natural law, and for rejecting the recommendations of the Birth Control Commission.

1975. Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics. Published by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, this work also distances itself from maintaining that human sexuality is primarily procreative. It did reaffirm the ban on artificial contraception, however.

1981. Familiaris Consortio. Pope John Paul II's encyclical on the family reflects a more personalist approach to moral theology in considering sex to be a "language of love." The Pope condemns artificial contraception because "the innate language that expresses the toal reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, anamely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a postive 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 (#32)." In other words, what the Pope is saying is that those who use artificial contraception are not really capable of giving themselves fully to one another in sexual lovemaking.

1993. Veritatis Splendor. Pope John Paul II's encyclical on "The Splendor of Truth," in which he forcefully argues for the existence of moral absolutes. About this encyclical, Rev. Bernard Haring, CSSR (one of the chief architects of Vatican Council II), wrote: ". . . the whole document is directed above all towards one goal: to endorse total assent and submission to all utterances of the pope--and above all on one crucial point: that the use of any artificial mens for regulating birth is intrinsically evin and sinful, without exception, even in circumstances where contraception would be a lesser evil." (National Catholic Reporter, November 5, 1993).

1994. The Catechism of the Catholic Church. The modern compendium of Catholic teaching upholds the ban on artificial contraception while affirming the unitive and procreative apsects of marriage and sexuality to be equally important.