Moral Life
Contraception and the Dignity of Life
The Church teaches that the unitive and procreative meanings of the marital act belong inseparably together, so deliberately closing it to new life distorts its meaning.
Catholic teaching
Marriage's conjugal act is meant to express total self-gift between spouses and remain naturally open to the transmission of life; contraception intentionally severs these two dimensions, treating fertility as an obstacle rather than a gift. Natural family planning, by contrast, respects the body's natural rhythms without acting against the act's inherent structure.
Biblical foundation
Genesis presents the marital union and the command to 'be fruitful and multiply' as intrinsically linked from the beginning. The account of Onan, struck down for deliberately spilling his seed to avoid conceiving, has been read by the Christian tradition as a sober warning about frustrating the procreative purpose of the act.
Scripture references
Historical evidence
Every Christian denomination, without exception, condemned contraception as gravely sinful until the Anglican Lambeth Conference first permitted it in limited circumstances in 1930; Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae reaffirmed the Church's unbroken historic teaching against this modern departure.
The Church Fathers
“Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit? ... you turn the vessel of procreation into a vessel for murder.”