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Second, we must also learn about the truth about that the Holy Fathers, Popes and Saints of the Catholic Church unanimously condemns all forms of birth control and contraception (in deed as well as in thought) as not only intrinsically evil and mortally sinful, but also as an act worthy of hellfire, since it is of the divine law that “the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children” (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii). In truth, some of the Saints and Fathers of the Church even condemn birth control as murder. Thus, anything or any act that is opposed to the primary end of marriage, is a sin against nature.

St. Augustine, De Conjugiis Adulterinis, Book II, Chapter 12, A.D. 396: “… intercourse, even with one’s lawfully wedded spouse, can take place in an unlawful and shameful manner, whenever the conception of offspring is avoided. Onan, the son of Juda, did this very thing, and the Lord slew him on that account. Therefore, the procreation of children is itself the primary, natural, legitimate purpose of marriage. Whence it follows that those who marry because of their inability to remain continent ought not to so temper their vice that they preclude the good of marriage, which is the procreation of children.”

St. Epiphanius, Medicine Chest Against Heresies, A.D. 375: “They [certain Egyptian heretics] exercise genital acts, yet prevent the conceiving of children. Not in order to produce offspring, but to satisfy lust, are they eager for corruption.” (Panarion or Medicine Chest Against Heresies, Book I, Chapter 26:5:2.--Epiphanius Against the Gnostics, or Borborites)

St. Epiphanius, Medicine Chest Against Heresies, A.D. 375: “There are those who when they have intercourse deliberately prevent having children. They indulge in pleasure not for the sake of offspring but to satisfy their passion. To such an extent has the devil deceived these wretched people that they betray the work of God by perverting it to their own deceits. Moreover, they are so willing to satisfy their carnal desires as to pollute each other with impure seed, by which offspring is not conceived but by their own will evil desires are satisfied.” (Panarion or Medicine Chest Against Heresies, Book I, Chapter 26:5:2-3.--Epiphanius Against the Gnostics, or Borborites)

St. Clement of Alexandria, The Paedagogus (c. 198 A.D.): “Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly ejaculated, nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted.” (The Paedagogus or The Instructor, Book II, Chapter X.--On the Procreation and Education of Children)

St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 28:5, A.D. 391: “… and that which is sweet, and universally desirable, the having of children, they esteem grievous and unwelcome. Many at least with this view have even paid money to be childless, and have mutilated nature, not only killing the newborn, but even acting to prevent their beginning to live [by birth control methods such as NFP or contraception].”

St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans 24, A.D. 391: “Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit [NFP], where there are medicines of sterility [oral contraceptives], where there is murder before birth? [birth prevention] You do not even let a harlot remain only a harlot, but you make her a murderess as well… Indeed, it is something worse than murder, and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation. What then? Do you condemn the gift of God and fight with his [natural] laws, and follow after what is a curse as if a blessing, and make the chamber of procreation a chamber for murder...”

St. Caesarius of Arles [A.D. 468-542], Sermon 51:4: “They sin still more grievously when they kill the children who are already conceived or born, and when by taking impious drugs to prevent conception they condemn in themselves the nature which God wanted to be fruitful. Let them not doubt that they have committed as many murders as the number of the children they might have begotten. … As many as they kill after they are already conceived or born, before the tribunal of the eternal Judge they will be held guilty of so many murders. If women attempt to kill the children within them by evil medicines, and themselves die in the act, they become guilty of three crimes on their own: suicide, spiritual adultery, and murder of the unborn child.”

St. Caesarius of Arles, Sermon 1:12, A.D. 522: “Who is he who cannot warn that no woman may take a potion so that she is unable to conceive or condemns in herself the nature which God willed to be fecund? As often as she could have conceived or given birth, of that many homicides she will be held guilty, and, unless she undergoes suitable penance, she will be damned by eternal death in Hell. If a woman does not wish to have children, let her enter into a religious agreement with her husband; for chastity is the sole sterility of a Christian woman.”

St. Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 9:7, A.D. 225: “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!”

St. Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 9:12, A.D. 225: “… the so-called faithful want no children [but want to have sexual relations]… [so] they use drugs of sterility or bind themselves tightly in order to expel a fetus which has already been engendered.”

John the Faster, Patriarch John IV of Constantinople (6th century): “If someone to satisfy his lust or in deliberate hatred does something to a man or woman so that no children be born of him or her, or gives them to drink (pharmakon), so that he cannot generate or she conceive, let it be held as homicide.” (Penitential of John IV Nesteutes)

St. John Climacus (c. 525-606): “God neither caused nor created evil and, therefore, those who assert that certain passions come naturally to the soul are quite wrong. What they fail to realize is that we have taken natural attributes of our own and turned them into passions. For instance, the seed which we have for the sake of procreating children [which is the natural attribute of the sexual act] is abused by us for the sake of fornication [or by any sexual act without intending having children].” (The Ladder of Divine Ascent, "Step 26: On Discernment," by St. John Climacus, p. 251)

Lactantius, Divine Institutes, Book VI, Chapter 23, A.D. 307: “God gave us eyes not to see and desire pleasure, but to see acts to be performed for the needs of life; so too, the genital [generating] part of the body, as the name itself teaches, has been received by us for no other purpose than the generation of offspring.”

St. Epiphanius, Medicine Chest Against Heresies, A.D. 375: “The like of this fornication and licentiousness may be seen in the extremely dreadful snake the ancients called the pangless viper. For the nature of such a viper is similar to the wickedness of these people. In performing their filthy act either with men or with women they forbear insemination, rendering impossible the procreation God has given his creatures—as the apostle says, "receiving in themselves the recompense of their error which was meet" [Rom. 1:27], and so on.” (Panarion or Medicine Chest Against Heresies, Book I, Chapter 26:5:19:2-3.--Epiphanius Against the Gnostics, or Borborites)

St. Epiphanius, Medicine Chest Against Heresies, A.D. 375: “But if the apostle says to bear children [1 Tim. 5:11; 14], but they decline procreation, it is the enterprise of a serpent and of false doctrine. Because they are mastered by the pleasure of fornication [fornication is often mentioned by the Fathers as the desire for sexual relations but without desiring or intending having offspring] they invent excuses for their uncleanness, so that their licentiousness may appear to fulfill Paul’s commandment. Really these things should neither be said nor considered worth mentioning in treatises, but buried like a foul corpse exuding a pestilent vapour, to protect people from injury even through their sense of hearing. And if a sect of this kind [which teaches the heresy that non-procreative sexual acts are moral or that they are without sin] had passed away and no longer existed, it would be better to bury it and say nothing about it at all. But since it does exist and has practitioners, and I have been urged by your Honors to speak of all the sects, I have been forced to describe parts of it, in order, in all frankness, not to pass them over but describe them, for the protection of the hearers—but for the banishment of the practitioners.” (Panarion or Medicine Chest Against Heresies, Book I, Chapter 26:5:14:3-5.--Epiphanius Against the Gnostics, or Borborites)

Third, we must also learn about the truth that the Fathers, Popes and Saints of the Catholic Church all teach that people who choose to get married (and that desire to have sexual relations) must also desire to beget children for the glory and honor of God, as well as educating them in the Catholic religion, since it is of the Divine Law and the teaching of the Church and of Pope Pius XI that “Christian parents must also understand that they are destined not only to propagate and preserve the human race on earth, indeed not only to educate any kind of worshippers of the true God, but children who are to become members of the Church of Christ, to raise up fellow-citizens of the Saints, and members of God’s household, that the worshipers of God and Our Savior may daily increase.” (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, # 13) This is also expressed succinctly in the 1917 Code of Canon Law: “The primary purpose of marriage is the procreation and education of children.” (Canon 1013)

The following Fathers and Saints of the Church teach the same as Pope Pius XI and The 1917 Code of Canon Law:

St. Augustine, Sermons on the New Testament, Sermon 1:22: “The [marriage] contract is read... in the presence of all the attesting witnesses... that they marry "for the procreation of children;" and this is called the marriage contract. If it was not for this that wives were given and taken to wife, what father could without blushing give up his daughter to the lust of any man? But now, that the parents may not blush, and that they may give their daughters in honorable marriage, not to shame, the contract is read out. And what is read from it?--the clause, "for the sake of the procreation of children." And when this is heard, the brow of the parent is cleared up and calmed. Let us consider again the feelings of the husband who takes his wife. The husband himself would blush to receive her with any other view, if the father would blush with any other view to give her.”

St. Justin Martyr, First Apology, Chapter 29 (c. 160 A.D.): “We Christians either marry only to produce children, or, if we refuse to marry, are completely continent.”

St. Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Philadelphians, Chapter IV, A.D. 107: “For I pray that, being found worthy of God, I may be found at their feet in the kingdom, as at the feet of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob; as of Joseph, and Isaiah, and the rest of the prophets; as of Peter, and Paul, and the rest of the apostles, that were married men. For they entered into these marriages not for the sake of appetite, but out of regard for the propagation of mankind.”

St. Robert Bellarmine, The Art of Dying Well, Chapter XV, On Matrimony, A.D. 1619: “There are three blessings arising from Matrimony, if it be made a good use of, viz: Children, fidelity, and the grace of the sacrament. The generation of children, together with their proper education, must be had in view, if we would make a good use of matrimony; but on the contrary, he commits a most grievous sin, who seeks only carnal pleasure in it.”

St. John Damascene, On Marriage: “Marriage was devised that the race of men may be preserved through the procreation of children.” (An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book IV, Chapter XXIV)

St. Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, Section 6, A.D. 401: “Therefore married persons owe one another not only the faith of their sexual intercourse itself for the begetting of children, which is the first fellowship of the human kind in this mortal state; but also, in a way, a mutual service of sustaining one another’s weakness, [that is, paying the marital debt when it is asked for] in order to shun unlawful intercourse.”

St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies (c. 180 A.D.): “God made the male and female for the propagation of the human race.” (Book I, Chapter XXVIII, Section 1)

St. Clement of Alexandria, On Marriage (c. 199 A.D.): “Marriage is the first union of man and woman for the procreation of legitimate children.” (The Stromata or Miscellanies, Book II, Chapter XXIII)

St. Clement of Alexandria, On Marriage (c. 199 A.D.): “For every one is not to marry, nor always. But there is a time in which it is suitable, and a person for whom it is suitable, and an age up to which it is suitable. Neither ought every one to take a wife, nor is it every woman one is to take, nor always, nor in every way, nor inconsiderately. But only he who is in certain circumstances, and such an one and at such time as is requisite, and for the sake of children, and one who is in every respect similar, and who does not by force or compulsion love the husband who loves her.” (The Stromata or Miscellanies, Book II, Chapter XXIII)

St. John Chrysostom [A.D. 347-407], Homilies on Timothy: “Shall not women then be saved? Yes, by means of children. For it is not of Eve that he says, "If they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety." [1 Tim. 2:15] What faith? what charity? what holiness with sobriety? It is as if he had said, "Ye women, be not cast down, because your sex has incurred blame. God has granted you another opportunity of salvation, by the bringing up of children, so that you are saved, not only by yourselves, but by others" [cf. 1 Tim. 2:15].” (Homilies on the First Epistle of St. Paul to Timothy, Homily IX, 1 Timothy 2:11-15)

St. Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, Section 19 & 32, A.D. 401: “Marriage itself indeed in all nations is for the same cause of begetting sons, and of what character soever these may be afterward, yet was marriage for this purpose instituted, that they may be born in due and honest order… Therefore the good of marriage throughout all nations and all men stands in the occasion of begetting [children], and faith of chastity: but, so far as pertains unto the People of God, also in the sanctity of the Sacrament, by reason of which it is unlawful for one who leaves her husband, even when she has been put away, to be married to another, so long as her husband lives, no not even for the sake of bearing children: and, whereas this is the alone cause, wherefore marriage takes place...”

The main reason why the Church and Her Popes and Saints all teach that a man and a woman who intends to marry and have sexual relations must also desire to beget children and educate them in the Catholic religion for the glory and honor of God, is that a “marriage” without this desire would be similar to the cohabitation of unmarried people who only live with each other for the motive of gratifying their sensual desires. In truth, “the aforesaid [marital sexual] act does not differ from the act of fornication... But the act of fornication is always evil. Therefore the marriage act also will always be evil unless it be excused...” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Supplement, Q. 49, Art. 5) Thus, what separates fornication from a true marriage is the active wish to beget and educate children for the love and honor of Our Lord Jesus Christ. This is also why St. Augustine writes that “the [marriage] contract is read... in the presence of all the attesting witnesses... that they marry ‘for the procreation of children’” (On the New Testament 1:22).

The necessity to beget and educate one’s offspring in the true Catholic Faith cannot be understated; and especially so today since almost all people reject the true Catholic Faith, which is also why the world has been allowed to fall into such degradation. Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Arcanum (on Christian Marriage) teaches that: “the Christian perfection and completeness of marriage are not comprised in those points only which have been mentioned. For, first, there has been vouchsafed to the marriage union a higher and nobler purpose than was ever previously given to it. By the command of Christ, it not only looks to the propagation of the human race, but to the bringing forth of children for the Church, ‘fellow citizens with the saints, and the domestics of God’; so that ‘a people might be born and brought up for the worship and religion of the true God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.’” St. Clement of Alexandria further explains that, “for the married He [the Lord] goes on to say, "My elect shall not labour in vain nor bear children to be accursed; for they are a seed blessed by the Lord." [Isaiah 65:23] For him who begets children and brings them up and educates them in the Lord, just as for him who begets children by means of the true teaching, a reward is laid up, as also for the elect seed. … Those who are in truth the Lord’s elect neither teach doctrines nor beget children to be accursed, as the [heretical] sects do.” (The Stromata or Miscellanies, Book III, Chapter XV, Section 98)

If we take upon us the heavy burden of Matrimony, we are obligated under pain of mortal sin to educate our children in the Catholic Faith. “For a person does not become a father simply because he helped to bring about the birth of a child, but by raising the child correctly.” (St. Chrysostom, Sermon regarding Anna, Homily 1, PG 54, 636) In truth, St. Chrysostom is completely right in saying that those who refuse to educate their children in the true Catholic Faith are the very reason for all kinds of evils in society. “The reason for the overturning of all things is that we aren’t caring for our own children. We take care of their bodies, but we ignore the upbringing of their souls.” Chrysostom goes on to ask, “Do you want a child that is obedient? From their first steps, feed them on the wisdom and counsels of the Lord.” If we showed the same interest in the spiritual education of children as we do in their education in other spheres, we would forestall many evils. “When the father of a very gentle child only gives him sweets, refreshments, and whatever he likes when he’s ill, but not what he actually needs for his sickness; or if a doctor checks him out and confesses, “What can I do? I can’t stand to see the child cry.” Poor, foolish traitor! The only name I can’t give such a person is that of father. How much better it would be for you if you upset your child a little bit so that he might be healthy for all time, rather than making this fleeting pleasure the foundation for continuous sorrow.” (St. Chrysostom, On the Acts of the Apostles, Homily 30, PG 60, 226) With the satisfaction of the child’s every desire, we make him egocentric, and with such a character, he will be unhappy in the world. The Saint encourages us to “be like sculptors and make every effort to make your children wonderful sculptures that look like God. It will happen if you take away everything that is unnecessary, if you add whatever is necessary, and if you check daily to see what physical defects they have that you can fix.” (St. John Chrysostom, On Vanity and the Upbringing of Children)