Una Vita

The tide is turning.

People are slowly understanding that while the short-term fruit of secularism is infinite pleasure and “freedom,” the long term fruits are despair, hopelessness, and nihilism. Young people especially are beginning to long for the objective truth in a world where subjectivity has reigned for several decades.

But the battle is only beginning.

There are many evils that need to be defeated before the battle is ultimately won.

The one we’ll be focusing on today is birth control.

The use of contraceptives is not at all a modern practice.

Various ways of engaging in sexual intercourse while blocking the ability for life has unsurprisingly been occurring for thousands of years.

Whether it was animal intestines, linen sheets, acacia leaves, and crocodile dung in Ancient Egypt or the story of Onan in Genesis 38, humans have been attempting to satisfy the desires of the flesh while blocking the gift of life bestowed upon us by the Creator for a long time.

This story of Onan makes it very clear where God stands on this issue: it is a no go. The earliest Christians interpreted this in this manner as well.

As the Church grew a bit older into the Middle Ages and Enlightenment, it of course held firm in its stance, as theologians like St. Thomas Aquinas upheld the view of contraception being a violation of natural law, equating it with abortion or sodomy in moral seriousness.

More importantly, due to Church’s influence over Western society, birth control was viewed by the public as immoral—no questions asked.

As we moved into the 19th and 20th century, a few developments altered the conversation regarding birth control.

First, the idea that the world was overpopulated began to swirl around, mostly thanks to Thomas Malthus and his works like An Essay on the Principle of Population that primarily argued that the main contributor for low wages was high population growth that increased the labor supply.

Charles Knowlton also wrote Fruits of Philosophy, promoting contraceptive use as a means to slow population growth and prevent the “inevitable” collapse that was around the horizon.

These works from these pseudo-intellectuals in the 19th century opened the door for the arrival of Margaret Sanger, who coined the term birth control and helped open the first birth control clinic in the mid 1910s. We’ve covered Sanger in the past in “That’s All She Sang,” and let’s just say she’s not exactly your daughter’s role model.

Unsurprisingly, Sanger and her shenanigans were not received well by the general public. Although there was a general acknowledgement about the convenience of birth control, there was fear of the negative impacts it would have on the social fabric of the country through inevitably degrading its moral standards.

Also, more practically, the Comstock Laws made it illegal to distribute contraceptives or information about them, proving to be Sanger’s real obstacle.

Immediately, Sanger and the rest of the pro-contraceptive cabal knew there was only one way for contraception to become widely adopted.

It needed to be approved by at least one group or segment of the Christian Church leadership.

In 1908, at the Lambeth Conference, a gathering of the Anglican Church leaders, the topic of contraceptives emerged for the first time. The conference acknowledged the issue of birth control as a potential remedy for low living standards and family planning, but reaffirmed the tradition of opposing it.

However, just a few decades later in 1930, the group did the unthinkable: they permitted the use of birth control between married couples in special situations.

The conference proclaimed that “in those cases where there is a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, the method must be decided on Christian principles.”

In essence, you're asserting the right to disregard clear Christian teachings, provided you do so in a way that appears Christian.

The Protestant ethos perfectly summed up.

While the Lambeth Conference took place in England, the Federal Council of Churches in the States quickly followed suit, co-signing the use of contraception in “limited circumstances” the following year.

The Washington Post, before transforming into the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party, quickly condemned the Council’s move, warning it would lead to moral decay.

The true Church of Christ was quick to respond.

Pope Pius issued the legendary encyclical Cast Connubii in 1930, reaffirming the immorality of contraception and emphasizing that the Church would never change its stance.

Over time, each denomination would eventually fold to the pressure, creating a domino effect, creating the reality that most Christians today refuse to condemn contraception as immoral.

Once the Christian leaders of the country began to soften on the issue, it became the slippery slope of all slippery slopes.

The birth control pill was approved by the FDA. Then, Griswold v Connecticut struck down laws banning contraception for married couples. Soon after, Eisenstadt v Baird legalized birth control for unmarried individuals. Fast forward to today, it has become the norm for young women—especially those in relationships—to regularly use it.

The key to understanding how policies and agendas that are simultaneously subversive and unpopular at first is to tell the public that it will only be for a limited time or scope.

Then, the next item on the agenda is to continuously take two steps forward and one step back until you reach your final destination.

Take income tax as a case study. The initial version of income taxes were ratified during the Civil War as an emergency measure to ensure the country would not be saddled with a burdensome debt load.

Just as they promised, the government repealed it in 1872 and everything went back to normal. A few decades later, the push for income tax was once again promulgated, but it was extremely unpopular, and the Supreme Court struck down peacetime income tax in 1895.

But soon after the turn of the century, there was another push. This time, they had to be clever. The solution was obvious, using a slogan that will never be unpopular: “We are only going to tax the rich!”

The highest tax bracket was a 7% tax on anyone earning more than $500,000. A 1% tax would be levied on anyone earning $20,000 or less, with individuals earning less than $3,000 and married couples earning less than $4,000 being completely free from taxation.

Given the average income was between $800 and $1,000, most Americans were initially spared and shrugged it off.

Fast forward to today, and it is common for effective tax rates to be north of 30%.

How was the ground covered? By slow, incremental pushes forward and the occasional step back until the final destination was reached.

The euphemism of “give them an inch and they’ll take a mile” could not ring more true when it comes to agenda implementation.

While there were many factors that influenced the proliferation of contraceptives that we see today, the impact of Christian churches lifting their prohibition cannot be understated.

Simply put, when you stray away from the light of the Church, you inevitably end up in darkness.

While everyone used to agree with the Church, we seem to be the only ones standing firm in the truth.

Even the “based” Orthodox Churches that are similar to the Catholic Church in theology can’t agree on contraception, as the Greek Orthodox Church and Orthodox Church in America—among others—either take a “case-by-case” approach or allow the use within marriage for “serious reasons” and with “spiritual discernment.”

Now, for all of the non-Catholics reading this, you may be thinking: “okay, I get it, contraceptives bad…but why?”

I’m glad you asked my friend.

To fully understand why, the concepts of human nature, divine purpose, marriage, sexuality, and natural law must be understood at a deep level.

For those who are not experts of natural law or human nature, a SparkNotes version will have to suffice.

As a starting point, the marital act has both a unitive and procreative purpose that cannot be separated.

The unitive function is the physical representation of the spiritual reality that two separate people become one flesh through the sacrament of marriage.

The procreative function is more straightforward, as we all know that—besides the modern scientific advancements—the creation of new life proceeds from sexual union between two people.

More concisely, since sex is not just for pleasure or emotional intimacy, but rather a sacramental sign, it reflects God’s procreative and self-giving love. Also, in the same way that Christ’s dual nature of being fully God and fully man cannot be separated like many heretics have tried to do in the past, the unitive and generative aspect of sexual relations must not be separated as well.

Birth control obviously separates the two, as seeking to enjoy the pleasure while rejecting the natural outcome of the possibility of life is immoral.

Both Pope Pius XI and Pope Paul VI dive deep into the theological minutiae of why birth control is disordered. What is arguably more interesting, however, is three specific quotes from Paul VI in Humanae Vitae that are eye-opening.

In the same section of his work, Pope Paul VI identifies the inevitability of three externalities that will naturally emerge from ubiquitous contraception use: widespread adultery and divorce, sexual degeneracy and objectification of women, and the state being involved in the promulgation of birth control.

Safe to say he went three for three.

Now, there is another thought that will likely come to the heads of many: “don’t most Catholics use birth control too?”

The unfortunate answer is yes.

However, while this is not ideal, there is still a major reason to be optimistic: the tide is shifting.

These quasi-Catholics who are likely to use contraception are—for the most part— the same Catholics who don’t believe in the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist. To put it simply, they don’t represent the faithful Catholics. But as the tide shifts, the number of Catholics in this boat will continually decrease.

The easiest way to prove the negative correlation between genuine faith in Catholicism and birth control use is to attend Traditional Latin Mass.

Among the various differences between the Novus Ordo (regular version) and the TLM is that those who attend TLM are much more likely to take their faith seriously.

With this in mind, the first thing you notice when walking into a TLM service is the amount of young children present. Families at TLM will typically have four, five, six, seven, or more children in attendance. While there are a few factors at play, the main one is obviously the rejection of contraception that leads to larger families.

As more young Catholics begin to take their faith seriously, it is no surprise the popularity of TLM has been skyrocketing.

A full breakdown on the past, present, and future of TLM will be coming soon.

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Thanks for reading and until next time.

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