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Question: On what authority does the protestant sects deny the biblical, Apostolic and Patristic teaching that all marital acts must be excused with the motive of procreation?

Answer: Protestants have no biblical basis whatsoever for practicing contraception and being against conception; neither have they any basis for this teaching from the Early Church or Christian tradition.

It is also a little known fact of history, but the protestants were actually in agreement with the Catholic Church’s teaching on marriage and family life that contraception and birth control methods is sinful and forbidden to use for married people up until the year of 1930. The watershed event that changed this ancient teaching in these apostate “churches” was a conference of Anglican so-called “bishops”.

On August 14, 1930, with 193 favoring and 67 opposing, the leaders of the
Anglican Church passed seven resolutions dealing with “marriage and sex.” The “bishops” stated in the fifteenth resolution that: “Where there is a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or to avoid parenthood, the primary and obvious method is complete abstinence from intercourse (as far as may be necessary) in a life of discipline and self-control lived in the power of the Holy Spirit.” But that same fifteenth resolution also stated that, if a couple faced “a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood” and the couple had “a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the conference agrees that other methods may be used.” (The Lambeth Conferences, 166) Thus the Anglican sect had taken a position different from any previous teaching of both the Old and New Testament Church. According to their unnatural and novel teaching, married couples could now engage in marital intercourse while taking specific measures to prevent conception. On October 4, 1930, Cardinal Francis Bourne, the Catholic archbishop of Westminster, denounced the decision made by the conference of the Anglican bishops. He declared that they “had forfeited any claim to be ‘authorized organs of Christian morality.’” (Arthur Vermeersch, “La Conférence de Lambeth et la morale du marriage,” in Nouvelle Revue Theologique 57, A.D. 1930, 850) Arthur Vermeersch, the moral theologian who played a large role in writing the marvelous statement on marriage made by the Belgian bishops in 1909 (that affirmed the biblical teaching that the marital act must be procreative), was greatly disturbed by the way the Anglican “bishops” had perverted the teaching of St. Alphonsus Liguori on conscience. Vermeersch and other theologians thought that only a “strong papal action” could put an end to the assault on Catholic doctrine regarding the purposes of sexual relations in marriage.

The strong papal action followed swiftly by the promulgation of the encyclical Casti Connubii. On December 31, 1930, Pope Pius XI (1922–1939) promulgated Casti Connubii (On Chaste Marriage). The pope provided the Catholic Church with “one of the great papal documents of all time.” This encyclical “defined not only the nature of Matrimony but also the moral duties flowing therefrom.” As he gazed out upon the world from “the watchtower” of the Vatican, Pope Pius XI observed that certain “pernicious errors and degraded morals” had spread “even among the faithful.” (On Chaste Marriage # 3) The pope wanted to remind everyone that both the Bible and the Council of Trent had declared that matrimony was created not by human beings but by God. Thus there was little scope for human decision-making when it came to contractual marriage: “the only function of . . . human freedom is to decide that each of the consenting parties in fact wishes to enter the state of matrimony.” (On Chaste Marriage # 6) Therefore, having consented to marry, the spouses were subject to the way God instituted marriage with its particular “ends, laws and blessings.” (Pope Pius XI, On Chaste Marriage # 9)

Procreation or Abstinence: The Married Couple’s Only Choice

Referring to St. Augustine as the great Christian authority on marriage, Pope Pius XI reminded his readers of the three goods of marriage: “These . . . are the blessings which make matrimony itself a blessing: OFFSPRING, FIDELITY, SACRAMENT.” (On Chaste Marriage # 10) These traditional goods provide “the law of marriage, which gives luster to the fruitfulness of nature and sets a curb upon shameful incontinence.” (Ibid) The pope next referred to the summary found in the 1917 Code of Canon Law: “The primary end of matrimony is the procreation and education of offspring.” (Canon 1013) In sum, Casti Connubii simply repeated what church leaders and theologians had asserted from the time of Our Lord and the Apostles—namely, that the purpose of marital intercourse was to produce a child. If, at any particular time, husband and wife did not want to conceive a child, they could avoid conception in only one way—namely, “by means of a virtuous continence.” (On Chaste Marriage # 53) The pope noted that some couples were using a false argument in excusing their birth control, claiming “that they can neither observe continence, nor, for personal reasons or for reasons affecting the mother, or on account of economic difficulties, can they consent to have children.” Since Pope Pius XI saw the use of birth control devices as a “criminal abuse,” (Ibid) he rejected all the reasons offered for engaging in marital acts while trying to avoid conception. Repeating the traditional teaching of the Bible, the Apostles, and the Church from the beginning, the pope taught that: “The conjugal act is of its very nature designed for the procreation of offspring; and therefore those who in performing it deliberately deprive it of its natural power and efficacy, act against nature and do something which is shameful and intrinsically immoral.” (Pope Pius XI, On Chaste Marriage # 54)

Condemnation of the Anglican Bishops’ teaching

Referring to the Onan incident in the book of Genesis, the pope repeated his condemnation of contraception: “The Divine Majesty detests this unspeakable crime with the deepest hatred and has sometimes punished it with death.” (On Chaste Marriage # 55) Again citing Augustine, the bishop of Rome wrote: “Sexual intercourse even with a lawful wife is unlawful and shameful if the conception of offspring is prevented. This is what Onan, the son of Judah, did, and on that account God put him to death.” (Ibid) With his reference to the traditional interpretation of the story of Onan in place, the pope scolded the Anglican “Church” as “openly departing from the Christian teaching which has been handed down uninterruptedly from the beginning.” (On Chaste Marriage # 56) Against the unawful and unnatural teaching of the Anglican “bishops” “the Catholic Church” had to raise “her voice in sign of her divine mission to keep the chastity of the marriage contract unsullied by this ugly stain.” (Ibid)

The Pope’s warning to married spouses against loving “as adulterers love” shows us that the search for selfish sexual pleasure and concupiscence are alien to authentic marital love: “This is the rule prescribed by the Apostle when he says, ‘Husbands, Love your wives as Christ also loved the Church.’ Now Christ certainly loved the Church with a boundless charity, and not for His own personal advantage but solely for the good of His Bride.” (On Chaste Marriage # 23) According to various commentators, the high point of this encyclical is the papal declaration that spouses should perfect each other’s “interior life.” Spousal love “is not confined to mutual help; it must have as its higher and indeed its chief objective that of shaping and perfecting the interior life of husband and wife.” (Ibid) When the pope speaks of charity, it is not charity “founded on a mere carnal and transitory desire . . . it is a deep-seated devotion of the heart.” (Ibid) Thus, the perfecting of the interior life of one’s partner is good but the enjoyment of “carnal and transitory desire” is not.

Return to the Divine teaching of Matrimony

In part three the pope warned that God might well “punish men for their pride and their audacity” if they dared to tamper with the divine idea of marriage (On Chaste Marriage # 95). Relying on St. Augustine’s teaching on sexuality, Pius XI singled out “the violence of rebellious concupiscence” as the chief obstacle to carrying out God’s plan for marriage (On Chaste Marriage # 97). Such rebellion of the flesh can only be subdued by obeying the church’s leaders who know “the divine laws in marriage and in married life.” (On Chaste Marriage # 100) For this reason married persons must pay special attention to such laws lest they, by reason of their human nature, fall “prey to carnal passion” that so readily deceives and corrupts (On Chaste Marriage # 102). Married persons must be ready to sacrifice their sexual desires in order to refrain from marital intercourse: “God’s law sometimes requires of married persons difficult and enduring sacrifices, sacrifices which, as experience shows, the weak man is apt to invoke as so many excuses for not keeping with the divine law.” (Ibid) The pope also warned married couples to keep “as far as possible aloof from all idolatry of the flesh and from the degraded slavery of the passions.” (On Chaste Marriage # 107)

Dismissing the “exaggerated physiological education” advocated by “the so-called reformers of our day,” (On Chaste Marriage # 108) the pope firmly rejected the legitimacy of limiting marital intercourse to the sterile period (the rhythm method) in order to avoid pregnancy. Pope Pius XI accused the “so-called reformers” of teaching the “art of skillful sinning” instead of “the virtue of chastely living.” (Ibid) After husband and wife had given birth to the maximum number of children they could rear, the pope confirmed that they should cease having marital relations: “Whatever the theories sustained and propagated by certain persons, husband and wife must . . . use their matrimonial rights always in a Christian and sacred way, especially in the early days of wedlock, so that should circumstances subsequently require them to observe continence, their habit of self-restraint will help them more easily to do so.” (On Chaste Marriage # 110) We can see that this papal teaching relegates sexual feelings to the lowest part of the house of married living. Since the desire for sexual intimacy has always been regarded as a defect that arose from the fall of Adam and Eve, such desire has to be repressed in order to develop restraint and attention to the interior life of one’s partner and oneself.

Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii (#’s 106-108), December 31, 1930: “Certainly, if the latter day subverters of marriage are entirely devoted to misleading the minds of men and corrupting their hearts, to making a mockery of matrimonial purity and extolling the filthiest of vices by means of books and pamphlets and other innumerable methods, much more ought you, Venerable Brethren, whom "the Holy Ghost has placed as bishops, to rule the Church of God, which He hath purchased with His own blood," [Acta, XX, 28] to give yourselves wholly to this, that through yourselves and through the priests subject to you, and, moreover, through the laity welded together by Catholic Action, so much desired and recommended by Us, into a power of hierarchical apostolate, you may, by every fitting means, oppose error by truth, vice by the excellent dignity of chastity, the slavery of covetousness by the liberty of the sons of God, [John, VIII, 32 sqq.; Gal., V, 13] that disastrous ease in obtaining divorce by an enduring love in the bond of marriage and by the inviolate pledge of fidelity given even to death.

“Thus will it come to pass that the faithful will wholeheartedly thank God that they are bound together by His command and led by gentle compulsion to fly as far as possible from every kind of idolatry of the flesh and from the base slavery of the passions. They will, in a great measure, turn and be turned away from these abominable opinions which to the dishonor of man’s dignity are now spread about in speech and in writing and collected under the title of "perfect marriage" and which indeed would make that perfect marriage nothing better than "depraved marriage," as it has been rightly and truly called.

“Such wholesome instruction and religious training in regard to Christian marriage will be quite different from that exaggerated physiological education by means of which, in these times of ours, some reformers of married life make pretense of helping those joined in wedlock, laying much stress on these physiological matters, in which is learned rather the art of sinning in a subtle way than the virtue of living chastely.”