One word describes a recent set of posts about contraception on a blog I frequent called Bad Catholic, written by a guy named Marc Barnes:
From part 1:
“The natural end of sex is both unity and procreation. Love and life. Shocking, but true. If this is denied, and it is claimed that sex is solely about making babies, then you’re a jerk in the vein of Henry VII, and a Puritan besides. If, on the other hand, it is claimed that sex is solely about pleasure, one must contend with the shocking fact of what — precisely — leaves a man and enters a woman.
To argue otherwise is to look at a farmer casting seeds upon fertile ground and claim that he is casting the seed for the pure joy of seed-casting. This is not to say there is no joy, even a wild joy, to be found in planting a field. It is simply to note that it would be an insane man who would plant his field by the logic that throwing seeds is fun, and then become shocked and annoyed when his field bore grain in due season. Every part of the action of sex speaks to the creation of new life.”
From part 2:
“Not one, single Protestant denomination before the 1930?s held that the use of artificial contraception was anything but sinful. May I ask, what on earth has changed, besides the fact that we now live in a culture that really, really wants birth control?”
Before you click off my site and on to Barnes’s posts, you should know that because the Catholic Church is opposed to contraception does not mean the church expects couples to have sex so willy-nilly that they wind up like the Duggars. The church does teach that if a couple is sexually active, it should a) be married and b) be open to children (Click here and refer to the third question the priest asks an about-to-be-married couple right before the vows at a Catholic wedding.). But the church is not opposed to family planning. It is not opposed to your own deciding when you will and won’t have kids. It is opposed to your own deciding when you will and won’t be fertile (as well as to rendering a womb unsafe for and/or discarding fertilized eggs [which are a.k.a. super tiny babies]). Sex, according to the Church, is for babies and for bonding, until God says otherwise.
So much more I’d like to say about sex and contraception. In due time. But in the meantime, if you’re wondering how a couple can decide when to and not to have kids without deciding when to and not to be fertile, click on the third and fourth links below for a couple old posts about natural family planning. But first, go read Bad Catholic:
Click here to read Why Contraception Is a Bad Idea #1 — Natural Law in full on Bad Catholic.
Click here to read Why Contraception is a Bad Idea #2 — Scripture Prohibits It in full on Bad Catholic.
For more about natural family planning, click here and here.