The Bible condemns contraception

2. In the Bible, babies are always a blessing, never a curse.

Lo, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons of one’s youth.

Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate (Ps 126:3-5).

The Catholic Church has always agreed with the words of this Psalm: “children are a heritage from the Lord. Happy is the man who has a quiver full of them!” To this effect, Saint Paul teaches:

Yet woman will be saved through bearing children, if she continues in faith and love and holiness, with modesty (1 Tim 2:15).

Granted, this is an obscure passage, but it highlights the esteemed role that women have in bringing new souls into the world. The Christian wife is exhorted to possess “faith and love and holiness, with modesty” but her personal sacrifice of bearing children is esteemed as the greatest response to the grace of God in her life. Just as God the Father is always open to more and more children whom he loves, so also the Catholic parent remains open to this precious gift of life.

The emphasis on the gift of life and the rules and norms for protecting it are essential to Catholic moral teaching. The sexual abuses condemned by the Apostle Paul can be summed up as an abuse of one of the greatest gifts given to humanity—the ability to cooperate with God’s creative power. God could have continued to create human beings just like he created Adam; instead He chose to bring about new persons through the institution of marriage and the family.

3. The case of Onan. Catholics (and pre-1930 Protestants) condemn both masturbation and contraception by appealing to the case of Onan who "spilled his seed on the ground":

He knowing that the children should not be his, when he went in to his brother’s wife, he spilled his seed upon the ground, lest children should be born in his brother’s name. And therefore the Lord slew him, because he did a detestable thing. (Genesis 38:9–10, D-R)

Here, God directly kills Onan for performing coitus interruptus. Onan's crime included gaining the pleasure of sexual relations with Tamar but the refusal to see the act through as a natural act intended for procreation. Hence, intentional spilling of seed, either in the form of masturbation or contraception is gravely sinful - so much so that God killed a man for it.

Some may object: "Yes, but God killed him for not fulfilling Levirate duties - not for contraception." This objection is poor since Judah also failed in executing the Levirate obligations - but he was not killed by God. So then, it was the contraceptive act in particular that proved both sinful and mortal for Onan.

4. The New Testament condemns contraception, which it calls pharmakeia. As I detail in my book The Catholic Perspective on Paul, Saint Paul condemns contraception by the name of "pharmakeia," the word from which we derive our term "pharmacy."

Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery {pharmakeia}, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God (Gal 5:19-21).

Surely, Paul does not mean to condemn those who prescribe herbs for those suffering from gout. Looking back to Saint Paul’s list, we see that the sin of pharamakeia follows sexual sins and the sin of idolatry. These ancient witchdoctors or pharmacists were especially popular in idolatrous cultures, since pagan fertility rites often involved sexual orgies. Obviously, the women involved in these depraved rituals would not wish to bear children to strangers, and so they sought to become sterile or sought to relieve themselves of the responsibility of a child through abortion. The ancient Greek pharmacists could provide drugs to meet these goals.

The book of Revelation also condemns those who practice pharmakeia along with those who practice idolatry, murder, and sexual immorality (Rev 9:20-21). The grouping of pharmakeia with the three sins of idolatry, murder, and sexual immorality further confirms that pharmakeia is sin relating to killing and sexual impurity. The second-century physician Soranos of Ephesus, in his book Gynecology, uses the Greek term pharmakeia to refer to potions used for both contraception and abortion. In a similar manner, the third-century theologian Hippolytus condemned certain Christian women who employed “drugs {pharmakois} for producing sterility.”

Learn why contraception is sinful.