A reader writes

I’m wondering if you could steer me toward any helpful books on the Church’s teaching on contraception. I struggled with this issue for years and even stopped taking communion as a result. Finally, a priest helped me put it into perspective by posing the broader question, “what do you make of the Church of Jesus Christ?” In general, I have found the Church a reliable teacher and guide. A related, but more important point is that I accept the authority of the magisterium. So I concur with the Church on sexual ethics, but only indirectly — that is, because I accept the Church’s authority in this area, as in others. (Incidentally, I am strongly pro-life and would be even if I were not a Catholic.)

Still, whenever the issue of sexual morality comes up — e.g. this bloggingheads discussion between Ross Douthat and Dan Savage — I become uneasy. It seems to me that, if social conservatives have difficulty defending their opposition to cohabitation, gay marriage divorce, and now “open” relationships, it is because they have rejected the only forceful argument against these innovations: which is that the purpose of sex is at once unitive and procreative. So it seems to me, in short, that we are faced with a stark choice between Paul VI or Dan Savage. With the following caveat: I think it is possible to argue from a sociological standpoint that the loosening of sexual mores is generally imprudent; just as it is possible from an ecological standpoint to argue that eating genetically modified tomatoes or using pesticides on crops is, while not intrinsically evil, generally not a great idea.

Here’s where I get stuck. The Church and her defenders never seem to get around to arguing behalf of their central thesis — which is that the purpose of sex is procreation. Of course, everyone understands that non-contraceptive sex results in procreation. But to say that, under certain circumstances, X results in Y is not to demonstrate that the purpose of X is Y. Part of the difficulty here is modernity’s rejection of teleology. Even as an Aristotelian, however, I don’t see how the argument holds. Suppose I argue that the purpose of a tree is to bear fruit and that it therefore follows that cutting down said tree for the purpose of building a table or chair contradicts that purpose and is therefore intrinsically evil. The obvious rebuttal is to point out that mankind’s dominion over nature allows us to subject its purposes to our purposes — provided that they reasonable purposes. (Another caveat: surely, it is important and necessary to set limits to this principle, whether with regard to sex or ecology.)

I read Elizabeth Anscombe’s essay “Contraception and Chastity” last night, which made the case that contraception is wrong because it alters the nature of the sex act, rendering it infertile. Again, this is mere assertion. What needs to be shown is that it is wrong to alter the nature of the sex act. Yet this is altogether missing from the essay. With that said, I do tend to think this assertion can be defended. After all, if it is not wrong to deny the procreative aspect of sex, why not deny its unitive aspect? Why not, in other words, embrace the Dan Savage model in which monogamy is no longer a requirement for sexual partners? Most people (including me!) would reject Savage’s thesis. And yet once you’ve denied an essential nature and purpose to sex, it becomes difficult to see why it must be unitive — apart from the preference of partners, which even Savage wouldn’t deny. The arrangement preferred under patriarchy (sex that is procreative without being unitive) also becomes available. My intuition is that, as with economics, this deregulated, laisse-faire model of sexuality is probably not the ticket to human flourishing. But how do we get from that observation to an absolute ban on contraception, or vice versa? That is what puzzles me.

I hope I don’t come across as defiant or dismissive of Church teaching. Rather, I am inclined to believe that there is something I am just not seeing here. The question is, what?

Thank you in advance for any input you might have or books you might be able to recommend. God bless.

I’m not super well-read on this, largely because the Church’s teaching on this, once I actually bothered to look at it, has always seemed to me to be intuitively obvious, for much the same reason that I have never found the moral intuition against a vomitorium to need further explanation. Beyond Anscombe’s work, the only thing I happen to know about it Janet Smith’s Humanae Vitae was Right. Also, I suspect the growing body of work about the Theology of the Body may have some thorough discussions of all this.

My own take is here, for what little it’s worth. Good luck on your research of this matter. I think it comes down to the matter of cooperating with, rather than thwarting, God’s purpose in creating nature. Grace builds on nature. Artificial contraception thwarts and destroys the purpose of God in nature. In a sacramental worldview, that make perfect sense. In a materialist worldview which regard nature as mere raw material to be manipulated by human will and technological cleverness, there is no purpose to cooperate with. Just us doing whatever we like because we can. When we apply that attitude toward the piece of nature we call homo sapiens it is indeed not the ticket to human flourishing since it reduces persons to things, which is a fine definition of sin.