In today’s world there are few things more contested than what constitutes the true nature of marriage. Many would have you think that marriage is just simply something two (or more) people can do when they “love” each other. The catechism states, “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.”1 Why, then, are so many people, including Catholics, divided on the issues of abortion, artificial contraceptives, and the use or misuse of natural family planning?
According to a pew research poll conducted in April 2023, 6 in 10 “Catholics” in America support abortion in most or all cases.2 This is a horrible failure on the part of Church leadership. While so-called Catholic politicians campaign on a woman’s “right” to murder her unborn child, many priests, deacons, and bishops remain silent. They administer the Eucharist to the very same people espousing these anti-Catholic views without repentance, meanwhile marriages continue to suffer and the relationship between the man and woman fractures more and more. Mother Teresa said on the subject, “America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father’s role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts — a child — as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience.”3 This idea that a child is anything other than a gift directly from God, has rotted the idea of marriage from within. It has turned marriage into a business agreement, that becomes null and void as soon as one party finds itself dissatisfied. This entire concept is luciferian, for “God alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end: no one can under any circumstance claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being.”4
Now if abortion is parasitic to marriage, would it not be prudent to prevent the child from being conceived by means of artificial birth control? Birth control was in fact only legally allowed to be used by married and not single women until 1972 in America. The answer is a resounding no, for this is contrary to the entire nature of marriage because “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”5 This is because every object and act has its perfect and final end, and for sex this end is procreation. This does not mean however that sex must only be had during fertile periods, and serves no other purpose within the marriage. It may be that for one reason or another, the right thing to do may be to space out time between children. What is the Christian to do in this case?
“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.”6 This is commonly referred to as “natural family planning.” It can be a great good which can be used for either spacing of child births as well as more reliably becoming pregnant. The method consists of monitoring the fertile periods of the woman and simply abstaining from the sexual act during these times. There is however a flip side to this practice. Many Christians fall into the idea that simply because they are using this method, it is morally licit to endlessly use with the intent of never conceiving. This is completely wrong and once again the sexual act within the marriage is being subverted. There must be just reasons to practice NFP, not just a desire for a quieter house and more money.
So what then does this demonstrate about the Church’s stance on the true nature of marriage? It demonstrates something rare in the current age, namely consistency. The Catholic Church is completely consistent in its definitions of and intentions for marriage. These ideas were common throughout the West until only a few decades ago, and as they have been rejected, the divorce rate has and will continue to climb.
- The Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York: Double Day, 2003), 1601. ↩︎
- Gregory A Smith. “9 Facts About U.S. Catholics.” at Pew Research Center (12 April, 2024), at www.pewresearch.org ↩︎
- Mother Teresa “Notable and Quotable,” Wall Street Journal, 2/25/94, p. A14 ↩︎
- The Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York: Double Day, 2003), 2258. ↩︎
- The Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York: Double Day, 2003), 2370. ↩︎
- The Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York: Double Day, 2003), 2370. ↩︎