The following is an argument against contraception as well as self-pleasuring based on the perverted-faculty argument given in the book Contraception and the Natural Law by Germain G. Grisez, Copyright 1964 by the Bruce Publishing Company:
“ A fortiori, the suppression of the effect of the generative function seems legitimate provided that the remaining exercise of the function and the suppression itself yield an overall benefit to the whole. If the common good is invoked at this point, the arguments previously presented may be reviewed.
Apart from these theoretical considerations, the major of the perverted-faculty argument is open to numerous objections drawn from exceptions. Walking on one’s hands interferes at least temporarily with their proper function. Similarly, to hang rings in one’s ears or nose, by stretching them out of shape, may lessen their effectiveness. But no one objects in such cases that the faculties are being perverted. . .
If these examples are not sufficiently analogous to the phenomenal pattern of contraceptive behavior to satisfy someone who cannot grasp the application of a principle except it e verified in imagination, he might reflect on the conduct of women engaged in lactation.
In many cases there is excess milk and it is pumped out of the breasts and thrown away, the infant may be fed artificially during a temporary separation from his mother while she continues to regularly to empty her breasts artificially and to waste their product. No one condemns this conduct not even demands that there be a serious cause to justify it.
Yet lactation is the essential end of a very important natural faculty. And, like sex, it depends upon depositing a valuable glandular secretion in the appropriate natural receptacle. But mere convenience is a food enough reason for interfering in the process. Hence if contraception really is seriously wrong there must be some reason for its malice that has nothing to do with what these two cases have in common – i.e., preventing and important faculty from attaining its natural end.
The defender of the perverted-faculty argument may insist that even this analogy is inadequate to illustrate the mode of frustration exemplified by the practice of contraception. . .
Due to these difficulties, the Roman vomitorium has played a large role in statements of the perverted-faculty argument. This repulsive practice, presumably, is a perfect parallel to contraception, since the natural function of nutrition was frustrated while the faculty was exercised for sheer delight to such an extent that periodic induced vomiting was necessary to make room for additional courses. But the analogy is unsound on two counts.
In the first place, eating cannot occur normally without reaching its nutritive end, but sexual relations most often are not generative. The user of the vomitorium hardly can have any motive other than gluttony, while the person who practices contraception can have the good reasons for intercourse which usually justify engaging in it during naturally sterile periods.
In the second place, as soon as there is any good reason to induce vomiting, no objection is made to doing so. For example, even a small danger that one has consumed poison or a moderate discomfort which may be relieved by vomiting are sufficient justifications for inducing it.
Indeed, in such cases no moral issue even is raised, and this fact shows that gluttony rather than induced vomiting is what was immoral in the Roman practice. If the perverted-faculty argument only proves contraception immoral when intercourse is had out of sheer lust, however, either the argument is question-begging or it is inconclusive. In the latter case, there is room for reasonable exceptions here, just as there is in the case of induced vomiting.
From all of these arguments it clearly follows that if the major premise of the conventional argument is understood in the strong interpretation, which yields the perverted-facility argument, that premise becomes an indefensible proposition. As a rule we rightly consider the claims of the natural ends of our various faculties only in subordination to our well-being, on the whole. We shall see later why this is so, as well as how the principle of perverted-faculty argument can be vindicated in the unique case for which it was designed -the reproductive capacity. . .
From our examination of arguments, we also can elicit a certain methodological moral. One who wishes to show the intrinsic malice of contraception must bear in mind that the alternative to the practice he condemns is abstinence. Contraception is not intrinsically evil if it is not evil in every instance, and the instances which are most plausibly defended are those in which there are very serious indications against conception. To prove contraception intrinsically evil is much more difficult than to prove permanent sterilization intrinsically evil or to prove contraception generally evil.
Often, especially in popular writings, reasons such as the following have been given for not practicing contraception. It is said to be a violation of God’s will, a contamination of one’s bodily temple, a practice amounting to mutual masturbation or the use of one’s partner as a mere device, an intrinsically shameful practice having no reasonable end in view, a practice which will harden heats and blind minds to higher things.
It seems to me that all these condemnations are correct and that consideration of them may provide motives for avoiding the evil of contraception. But none of them is an argument showing the malice of contraception, for every one of them presupposes that it is intrinsically evil.
Like them id the statement that contraception is wrong because it is against the natural law. This is not completely uninformative, since it asserts that the practice is immoral in itself rather than by mere imposition of authority. However, this classification, like that of contraception among sins against nature, presupposes rather than proves its immorality.
To show that contraception is against natural law we must show that it is immoral in itself. The opposite course is not open to us since natural law cannot be consulted except by examining the morality of various species of human action. Like civil law, natural law can be violated only by violating a specific precept of it, so that a violation is against the law only by being against a law.
The question also is begged if one asserts that contraception is wrong because it separates sexual pleasure from reproduction. The assumption here either is that sexual pleasure as such is evil of that the pleasure of contraceptive intercourse is evil.
The former is indefensible. In practice it leads to the conclusion that since this evil is necessary one may as well enjoy it. Moreover, any sound theory will hold that the pleasure of sex has the same mora quality as the act to which it belongs, and do the very pleasure of good sexual activity itself must be considered good.
It is true that one should not seek sexual pleasure for tits own sake, and this is equally true of all other kinds of pleasure – they should be sought only in subordination to the functions which they perfect. However, those who defend contraception claim that contraceptive intercourse can have the same good purposes as other licit though unfruitful sexual relations.
On the other hand, to assert that the sexual pleasure of contraceptive intercourse is evil is simply to assume what needs to be proved – that contraceptive intercourse is evil. If it is so, no doubt its pleasure and the enjoyment of that pleasure also is evil. Partly because of dissatisfaction with the arguments examined above, various authors to recent years have proposed an altogether different mode of argument against contraception. The new approach has ben called “phenomenological” because it proceeds by describing the experience of Marital intercourse and then by analyzing this description, rather than by arguing from the end of the sexual function.
Presumably this argument will show that contraception involves the violation of the intrinsic meaning of sexual relations. Its proponents sometimes have contrasted their way of arguing with the conventional way, claiming that the latter reduces sexual activity to the status of a mere function performed in view of an extrinsic goal.
The gist of the phenomenological argument is that sexual intercourse reveals itself directly as an act in which man and wife cooperate in personal immediacy to accomplish in fleshy union the most perfect possible expression of their special conjugal love. Ghis love primarily is a special mode of mutual benevolence, a wish to perfect one another in every possible way. Human sexual intercourse represents objectively the mutual, total self-giving of man and woman.
No reservation and obstacles must be allowed to interfere with the definitive and exclusive surrender of man and wife to one another. But contraception introduces such an obstacle, for it represents a limitation on the giving and receiving of selves. Hence the practice is an offense against the very meaning of the conjugal act, and for this reason it must be avoided.
One way to understand this argument is to assume at the beginning that the withholding of one’s effective generative power, whether or not one’s partner approves, is a withholding of part of what ought to be given in the mutual self-giving. If the argument is understood in this way, however, it will not prove that contraception is immoral, for it proceeds on the supposition that it is.
However, this argument gives a persuasive reason for avoiding the practice of contraception if one admits it to be immoral, because it describes in concrete form how such immoral behavior corrupts the natural beauty and even the deepest satisfaction of the marital act. One who believes that contraception is wrong could hardly engage in contraceptive intercourse as an expression of genuine benevolence and affection for his partner. Cooperators in sin are not true friends, because the same selfishness which leads to sin also precludes genuine mutuality.
A second way to understand this argument is to take it as an effort to emphasize the personal and interpersonal psychological and moral function of sex apart from any direct reference to its reproductive function. Mature sexuality is a expression of the transcendence achieved in sound interpersonal relationships. It is not merely self-indulgent pleasure-seeking.
If this theory is not pushed to extremes, we must concede that it has a certain value. It illuminates and aspect of sexuality which was largely neglected until this century. The psychological function of sexual activity can be of value in itself. It can render worthwhile the conduct of sexual intercourse by married couples during times of natural sterility. Moreover, the satisfaction for psychological rather than reproductive needs is the reason that human sexual associations tends toward the normal pattern of permanent and exclusive union of one man with one woman.
The psychological aspect of sexuality also seems to me that source of one of the pillars on which a reconstructed sexual ethics might rest. Loveless indulgence in sexual release is mor directly opposed to the psychosocial function of sex than to its procreative value.
The inherent malice of masturbation, for example, is that it reduces the only bodily capacity which naturally leads one out side himself into complete and fruitful cooperation with another person to the status of a mere device for supporting self-enclosure in isolation against any genuine mutuality with others.
Masturbation, having this psychological significance, naturally accompanies a childish reluctance to assume the risks and responsibilities of adulthood. The adolescent naturally undergoes a conflict between felling and intelligence, fear and aspiration. This conflict is a moral one, because it occurs in consciousness and must be resolved by self-commitment.
The habitual practice of masturbation generally is a clear sign that this conflict has not yet been faced squarely and resolved properly. The end of the habit is in sight when a meaningful alternative is developed to the device of diverting tension into sexual channels to be released in a displacement activity whose only satisfaction is the very release of tension itself.
The normal, mature alternative to this childish device is generous cooperation with others in a serious commitment of effort to the pursuit of values transcending the self. This “sublimation” should not be regarded as a mode of draining off into other channels energy of itself sexual, but as a return to purposeful use of the intrinsically indeterminate energy which a kind of error of psychic control often concentrates too heavily in sexual channels.
This discussion of masturbation is not irrelevant to the morality of contraception. As we saw earlier, if it is shown on other grounds that contraception is intrinsically immoral it will be clear that contraceptive intercourse between persons aware of its immorality never could be a genuine expression of love. While still pretending to express and communicate love, such perverse activity will in reality represent a kind of selfish indulgence. This experience will them substitute for real cooperation in the work and real sharing in the responsibility proper to the married state.
In other words, to those aware of the immorality of the contraception, contraceptive intercourse clearly appears for what it is – a device employed by married couples which is related to their resistance to continued growth as the adolescent’s masturbation is related to his resistance to adulthood.
This is not to say that contraceptive intercourse, even for those who know it to be wrong, has the same psychic quality and effects as solitary masturbation. No, an interpersonal relationship is never the same as no relationship at all. Instead, this kind of sexual experience among adults is similar to and continuous with adolescent heterosexual activities such as petting.
In such relationships there is a certain reciprocity – of exploitation. Each uses the other both as a masturbatory instrument and as a social tool. The boy’s attentions prove the girl’s popularity while the girl’s concessions prove the boy’s masculine prowess. This whole relationship, of course, also is dignified with the name “mutual love,” since mutual exploitation demands the romantic mask of sentiment in order to allow each partner to feel that he is successfully exploiting without himself merely being exploited.”
The essence of the above argument is that if you are using contraception, you are using your partner as a masturbatory tool, not expressing your deepest love for the other person through allowing him or her to possibly assist in God’s will to produce another human being, an immortal being and candidate to be a citizen of heaven. If you time your sexual relations to coincide with a natural cycle, not intentionally putting some additional “insurance” in to proactively. prevent conception, and assuming a good reason such as maybe an economic downturn inhibiting the possibility of raising the child in a more ideal environment, the wife’s period could still be off and God could exercise His option to use this. With timed abstinence people are effectively working within Gods natural law to influence the best outcome. God is in control and if He decides you should have a child, He will give you what you need to raise that child well enough to become a good citizen of heaven.
The other argument is that God could get pass that anyway if He wanted too because He is all powerful. This is true but your soul puts itself in danger of damnation for purposely trying to interfere with the natural law, assuming that you are unable to go to confession. A woman’s cycle is part of the natural law and to use timing to take advantage of that, something anybody from any time, of any economic strata, could do (assuming they had the rudimentary knowledge of a woman’s natural cycle, knowledge which has been known for a long time, at least since the time of Christ), could likely successfully implement this for a good reason such as the one mentioned above.
The above also hints that masturbation is wrong because it is a misappropriation of man’s procreative power.
As one can see again from the above quote, the book is very meticulous in covering every angle and objection that might have bearing on the reasoned argument the author is using. This book appears to be very through in its covering of why contraception is wrong, appearing to leave almost no stone unturned!!!
This book has a 9 November 1964 Imprimatur.
Traditional Thomistic Catholic 