Christians have always condemned contraceptive sex.
Both forms mentioned in the Bible, coitus
interruptus and sterilization
are condemned without exception (Gen. 38:9–10, Deut. 23:1). The early Fathers
recognized that the purpose of sexual intercourse in natural law is
procreation; contraceptive sex, which deliberately blocks that purpose, is a
violation of natural law.
Every church in Christendom condemned contraception
until 1930, when, at its decennial Lambeth Conference, Anglicanism gave
permission for the use of contraception in a few cases. Soon all Protestant
denominations had adopted the secularist position on contraception. Today not
one stands with the Catholic Church to maintain the ancient Christian faith on
this issue.
How badly things
have decayed may be seen by comparing the current state of non-Catholic
churches, where most pastors counsel young couples to decide before they are
married what form of contraception they will use, with [...] quotations from the early Church Fathers, who condemned contraception in
general as well as particular forms of it, as well as popular contraceptive sex
practices that were then common (sterilization, oral contraceptives, coitus
interruptus, and orally consummated sex).
Many Protestants, perhaps beginning to see the
inevitable connection between contraception and divorce and between
contraception and abortion, are now returning to the historic Christian
position and rejecting contraceptive sexual practices.
It should be noted that some of the Church Fathers
use language that can suggest to modern ears that there is no unitive aspect to
marital intercourse and that there is only a procreative aspect. It is unclear
whether this is what some of them actually thought or whether they are
intending simply to stress that sexual activity becomes immoral if the
procreative aspect of a given marital act is deliberately frustrated. However
that may be, over the course of time the Church has called greater attention to
the unitive aspect of marital intercourse, yet it remains true that the
procreative aspect of each particular marital act must not be frustrated.
