Thoughts on Romantic Love, Sexuality and Matrimony

Written version of a talk given on April 30th, 2026, at St. Lawrence the Martyr Church, Toronto, Ontario.

Deacon Douglas McManaman

A significant problem today is that the vast majority of people see morality as a collection of do’s and don’ts: “I can’t do this, I can’t do that”. I believe that very early on in my teaching career I made the mistake of teaching morality like that, that is, issue centered, and so we looked at all those actions that the Church forbids. At the end of the semester, one student asked me: “Sir, what can we do?” I felt great frustration at the question, and after a bit of honest reflection, I realized that my anger would be better directed at myself, for his question revealed to me the mistake I’d made in focusing primarily on actions that were not permitted. My approach was fundamentally negative. 

But morality is about the good life, and the morally good life is the secret to happiness and emotional well-being. That’s the central insight of the School of Positive Psychology (Martin Seligman), a school of thought that goes all the way back to Aristotle, who said that happiness is activity in accordance with perfect virtue. And Catholic teaching on sexual ethics is not bad news at all; it is in fact really good news. It is not about restrictions primarily, but about freedom and the development of morally noble character.

Some Theology of Romantic Love

I’d like to begin with a few points about romantic love, what the Greeks called eros love. This typically refers to the experience of falling in love. Now this is an interesting experience, and I am quite convinced that the experience of “falling in love” has been misunderstood for centuries—once again, given a negative spin. I believe that Scott Peck’s treatment of romantic love in his book The Road Less Travelled is, although very insightful in so many ways, fundamentally negative.[1] I believe a more positive and theological approach is more helpful to couples. For this, I turn to Charles Williams and his analysis of romantic love in the writings of Dante.

First, allow me to distinguish between a false romantic love and genuine romantic love. False romantic love is really little more than the experience of being infatuated with another person, but genuine romantic love is something holy. We are all familiar with pseudo romantic love, and this involves a person who is fundamentally immature. Such a person is overcome by a passion for someone. He or she is obsessed, as it were, and cannot think of anything other than the person he or she is obsessed with. It is in fact a disordered love of self, the kind of love that amounts to: “I love you for what you do for me”.

We can compare this to a passionate love for certain foods. We might say I love pastries, or cake, or whatever. However, I love this pastry for what it does for me; it tastes good. But as Aquinas points out, we don’t destroy what we love, but we destroy food when we eat it. So, it’s not really the food that we love–otherwise we wouldn’t destroy it. It is ourselves that we love. And there’s nothing wrong with self-love per se. But it can become disordered, for object loved can become the center of our lives, in which case we become the center of our lives. 

Self-love becomes a serious problem when the object of this love is another human being: I love you for what you do for me; you make me feel good; you pay attention to me, you make me feel desirable, etc. When our love for a person is reduced to this kind of love, it is nothing more than a disordered love of self. For those who are psychologically immature, this is typically what their love amounts to. And this love is blind, and it is not long lasting. Eventually a person becomes disillusioned, for this pseudo romantic love was a passion that skewed the way he/she saw the world; it is as though they were under a spell of some kind. In some ways, it is like the seed in the parable of the Sower that falls on rocky ground and springs up quickly, but withers and dies as soon as the sun comes out, because it has no roots. This person loved religion because it was new and exciting, but it was rooted in the self, and so when life became difficult an account of that religious experience, the person moved on to something else. 

But genuine romantic love is a genuine love of the other in which the beloved is loved for his or her sake. This kind of love presupposes a person who is, to a certain degree at least, psychologically and morally mature. It is not a love that blinds, but is eye opening. it is a selfless love, a holy love that gives rise to the most important virtues, which are charity and humility. 

Charity is a theological virtue, it is the intimate love of God under the aspect of friendship, and humility involves a profound sense of one’s lowliness or littleness–but a joyful sense of one’s lowliness, because one sees oneself in the light of a reality that is larger than the self. The other with whom I am in love is not me, and this person is always more than what I currently know him or her to be. The lover begins to see the beloved as a mystery. That is why we feel our littleness next to this larger love. In other words, genuine romantic love is holy; it is an experience of the sacred. In many theological circles, romantic love has been misunderstood because it is a love that involves the sexual, but for centuries, we had a tendency to look upon the sexual as a kind of necessary evil, [2] something low or base, probably as a result of the influence of a dualism that regarded the body as kind of prison of the soul–the theologians of the Patristic era were very much under the influence of this school of thought. But genuine romantic love is an experience of the sacred, as I will try to explain. 

I am going to agree with Charles Williams, who interprets Dante’s work on Romantic love, and argue that in romantic love, the one who has fallen in love sees the beloved as God sees the beloved. But this can only happen if God gives the one who is in love (the lover) a sharing in the way He sees the beloved. And so, this is a grace; it is an illumination. And that is why in the experience of falling in love, the one in love is very much preoccupied with the beloved, thinks of the beloved a great deal more than he or she otherwise would. There is a sense in which the lover begins to see everything in light of the beloved. I believe the reason for this is that God himself loves each one of us as if there is only one of us, and a person in love has been given a partial sharing in that love for a particular person. St. Augustine writes:  

O You Omnipotent Good, you care for every one of us as if you care for him only, and so for all as if they were but one! [3] 

If God loves you as if you alone exist, then that means that everything in this universe exists for you, to serve you. It is as if God created the world and all its creatures to serve you and you alone. Now, I don’t see you like that, and you don’t see me like that, but God does. And if you and I could come to see that for only an instant, we’d be overcome with an unimaginable joy. 

Now, in genuine romantic love, God gives a person the grace of a partial sharing in that vision of the other with whom he has fallen in love, or with whom she has fallen in love, and that is the cause of the unique experience of being in love. And it is an extraordinarily joyful experience, because one is no longer the center of one’s life. One is now on the periphery, so to speak, or the circumference of a circle, and God is in the center. The lover has been displaced, which is a new experience. However, the beloved also occupies the center in a certain way. In other words, God calls the lover to himself through loving the beloved. The beloved does not compete with God, but the beloved is seen in God, as I will try to explain more fully. And that’s why the genuine experience of being in love begets charity and humility:

Dante writes of his love for Beatrice:

Let me say that whenever she appeared anywhere, the hope of her wondrous greeting emptied me of all enmity and kindled instead a flame of charity that inspired me to forgive whoever had offended me. My face was veiled in humility, and were someone to ask me anything just then, my only reply would have been “Love.” And when she was about to greet me, a spirit of Love, destroying all my other sensory spirits, would drive out my feeble spirits of sight, saying, “Go and honor your lady,” and then he’d take their place. Anyone wishing to know Love only had to look at the trembling in my eyes. And when her most gracious greeting reached me, it’s not that Love intervened to veil its unbearable beatitude from me, but rather, abundant sweetness made him such that my body, which was completely in his command, moved like some heavy, lifeless object. Thus it is manifestly apparent that my beatitude, which often filled me to overflowing, resided in her greeting.[4]

Now commenting on this text, Charles Williams writes: 

The sight of Beatrice filled him with the fire of charity and clothed him with humility; he became—and for a moment he knew it—an entire goodwill. Neither of these great virtues is gained by considering oneself; and the apparition of this glory, living and moving in Florence, precisely frees him from the consideration of himself. Love is greater than he: his soul was right when it exclaimed: ‘A stronger than I dominates me’ and trembled, and his brain was right when it said: ‘Behold your blessedness’, and even his flesh when it said: ‘O misery, how I shall be shaken’, … This love certainly does not exclude the physical reactions; his body, he says, was so oppressed by it, as by a surfeit of sweetness, that it felt heavy and lifeless; her greeting was too much for him; … [5] 

And so, in genuine romantic love, one sees the other as God sees the other–at least partially–, and one gives attention to the other in a way that approaches the way God gives you and me his attention, and of course you and I have God’s undivided attention at every instant of our lives–although he does not have our undivided attention at every moment.  

And so, we see the beloved in his or her perfection, in his or her glory, because God sees us “with rose colored glasses”, so to speak. He sees us not merely as we are today in all our imperfection and flaws, but as we are in our perfection, as He intends for us to be. He sees you and me in our completeness, for God is not subject to the passing of time and so He is not limited to the moment, to the here and now. 

Now, the beloved with whom you are in love does not at this time exist in that state of perfection. He or she has not achieved that glorified state, and so the experience of falling in love makes possible an experience of disappointment. The reality is that this person is imperfect, and we see their imperfection against the backdrop of that original divine vision. This is very much like the transfiguration. Peter, James, and John were taken up the mountain and Jesus was transfigured before them, appearing with Moses and Elijah. Peter said: “It is wonderful (kalon) for us to be here”. The Greek word used here is kalon, which is a word very hard to translate in English; it is from the Greek word kaleo, which means ‘attractive’, and it is used in the context of the philosophical discussion of art and the nature of beauty. What is beautiful ‘attracts’ or ‘draws’ us to itself. It is probably better translated as “It is beautiful for us to be here”. For Peter, James, and John, the transfiguration was an experience of divine beauty. And of course, Peter wants the experience to continue indefinitely: ‘Let us build three tents: one for you, for Moses, and for Elijah’. Then suddenly they were overshadowed by a cloud and a voice was heard: ‘This is my beloved Son. Listen to him’. They fell on their faces, and then Jesus touched them and told them to get up, do not be afraid, and they saw only Jesus. They were back to this non-glorious state of reality, so to speak. The transfiguration was an experience given to them to strengthen them for the coming passion and death of Christ. 

The experience of genuine romantic love is given as a preparation for the difficulties that lie ahead, so that both will be strengthened for the life of love to which they may be called; for love is difficult, love is sacrifice, it is a way of the cross. It is a constant dying and rising. The couple are called to face one another–which happens when they join their right hands–and direct their lives to helping one another achieve that perfection, that glory, that is beheld partially in the experience of falling in love.  

And the primary purpose of each of the spouses in the marriage is to help the other see himself or herself as God sees him or her. If I’ve been given a partial sharing in the way God sees my spouse, then I have to be sure never to forget that and love her in that light, help her to see herself as God sees her, to build her up on the basis of that insight, and to remain faithful to her until that end has been achieved. The knowledge and the memory of that initial romantic insight must be the guiding star that leads me to God and to her as she exists in God, that is, as God intends her to be.  

As I alluded to earlier, so many people are not morally and psychologically mature enough to handle the experience of romantic love without a great deal of excess and disorder. We see this especially among the young; for moral and psychological immaturity really have to do with a disordered or excessive love of self. It’s much like the experience of becoming famous overnight. Some young celebrities cannot properly handle the fame and attention without becoming cocky, overconfident, and delusional. Fame, like power, can destroy a person. True love is healing, but attention of a certain kind and degree can ruin a person. In heaven, we will see others as God sees them, and others will see us as God sees us, but this experience will not destroy us, because by that point, we will be purified of disordered love of self; life has a way of doing that to us. And we will see the good in each one in a way that we cannot conceive of at this point. We don’t see that now, but our task is to learn to see it, to look for it in others, to see others as God sees them, and that happens the more we take on the mind of Christ. And of course, that is why there is so much darkness in this world, because we don’t see others as God sees them. We tend not to see the other as a mystery, but, at our worst, as things to be used in some way for our own ends. This is how romantic love becomes corrupted and reduced to sexual exploitation. Without even realizing it, the person is loved merely for what he or she can provide sexually and emotionally. Once that wears out, the relationship is over. This is a failure to see the other as an inexhaustible mystery who is infinitely knowable.

Marriage as a Sharing in the Paschal Mystery

I want to shift gears now and say a word about marriage, in particular the Paschal Mystery of Christ, which is the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection; for it is this mystery that reveals the true nature of marriage. Consider the time when the Egyptians enslaved the Hebrew people and God called the Hebrews to leave Egypt with its pantheon of false gods and go to the land of Canaan. God called Moses to lead them out of Egypt, as He called Abraham to leave the land of Ur of the Chaldeans. A life of holiness always begins with God calling someone to leave the familiar and the comfortable. Now in Matrimony, two people are also called to leave behind the familiar and the comfortable, to leave behind a world closed in upon itself. 

The word “consecrate” means to make sacred, but for the Jews, sacred means “to be set apart”, which involves a kind of “leaving behind”. In marriage, the couple are consecrated, which means they are set apart, called to leave their comfortable world of independence and self-sufficiency, to be given over to another, to belong to one another, to belong to something larger than their own individual selves, namely, their marriage bond. The couple relinquish their individual lives; they are no longer two individuals with their own independent existence; rather, they have become one; their lives are directed towards one another. In giving themselves entirely to one another, irrevocably, exclusively, without knowing what lies ahead, they die to their own individual plans, they die to a life directed by the individual will. In doing so, they find life, for they have become larger, that is, a two in one flesh union. 

They choose to live a life that is not merely an image of the Paschal Mystery, but a life that is made possible by the Paschal Mystery, because matrimony is a sacrament, a sign that contains what it signifies, and what it signifies is the relationship between Christ and his Bride, the Church. Matrimony is a sharing in that Paschal Mystery. 

When Christ himself leaves this world of sin behind to go to the Father, immolated on the cross, the new Israel is born. Christ is indeed married; his Bride, his Mystical Body, the Church, is born as a result of that dying and leaving. Holy Matrimony is an icon of that mystery; divorce is a contradiction of that testimony, a counter witness. But in marriage, the two grow together through stages. There are moments of darkness and drab, difficulties, and there are glorious moments. Married life is a constant dying and rising. Married love is hesed, the Hebrew word for perpetual and steadfast love, the kind of love God has for Israel. Matrimony is a profoundly religious vocation precisely because it is a sharing in the Paschal Mystery. 

Romantic Love and Sexual Union

Love of its very nature is unitive, that is, it tends to union. No matter what kind of love we are talking about (philia, eros, storge, agape, etc), that love expresses itself in physical union of some sort. For example, friendship love, what the Greeks called philia, is often expressed by a handshake or a hug; storge, which is affection, is often expressed by a kiss. Conjugal love involves a complete and total giving of the self to another, and because it is a total giving of the self, it includes the giving of one’s body. And so, the natural expression of married love is the act of sexual intercourse in which the two become reproductively one organism. They become one body in the act of sexual union–and this is true even if the couple are unable to conceive a child. They still become reproductively one organism, for a male is reproductively incomplete, a female is reproductively incomplete, but in the act of sexual union, the two become reproductively complete.

Now, if genuine romantic love is holy in that it begins with a kind of divine illumination, and if marriage is a sharing in the Paschal Mystery, then the sexual act between husband and wife is holy. In fact, St. Thomas Aquinas writes in his Summa Theologica that the sexual act between husband and wife merits an increase in divine grace. [6]  

Not only is love unitive, love is also effusive. It spreads beyond itself, seeks to communicate itself to others outside itself. Love is not self-contained, like an egg, but pours itself out, like an egg broken open. And so there is a twofold goodness to the sexual act: it is 1) an expression and celebration of the couple’s one flesh union, and 2) it is procreative (effusive, ordered to new life). 

These two human goods, conjugal love and human life, constitute the single good of marriage. As was mentioned above, romantic love begins with an insight into the glory of the beloved, which is followed by what might feel like a “return to reality”, so to speak, in which one beholds just how much the beloved falls short of that perfection. The purpose now is to help one another to achieve that perfection, that holiness. Dante speaks of the two virtues that the grace of romantic love gave rise to as he was greeted by Beatrice (charity and humility), and these are the two virtues needed to make it through married life; for it is through charity that one is committed to the salvation of the beloved, and humility is the virtue needed to persist–for the other sees me in all my imperfection, flaws, quirks and idiosyncrasies, and so this relationship requires a tremendous amount of humility and trust. 

But this mutual help is precisely the primary purpose of marriage. In 1930, Pope Pius XI wrote:  

This mutual inward moulding of husband and wife, this determined effort to perfect each other, can in a very real sense, as the Roman Catechism teaches, be said to be the chief reason and purpose of matrimony, provided matrimony be looked at not in the restricted sense as instituted for the proper conception and education of the child, but more widely as the blending of life as a whole and the mutual interchange and sharing thereof. [7]  

Hence, the sexual act is an expression of that conjugal love, that love of one’s spouse for his/her sake. The act of sexual union is a marital act (the act of marriage). If God calls a person to be married, he calls that person to participate in the Paschal Mystery in a particular way, to leave behind that world that is closed in on itself, the world in which you cater to your own individual needs and wants, and turn to another. One sees the other romantically, with the divine vision, but at the same time with the real vision of one another’s imperfections, and the two help one another towards achieving that eschatological perfection. He gives himself to her completely, totally, for her sake, for the sake of that perfection that he beholds, and she as well. Outside of that sacred union, the sexual act is abused and trivialized, and to abuse the sex act is to abuse a person.

Moreover, in baptism we are anointed priest, prophet, and king, and so the faithful exercise a genuine priesthood. The sexual act within marriage is a priestly act, a genuine exercise of that priesthood, in that the act of sexual union between husband and wife is an offering. Priesthood is about offering a sacrificial victim to God, and the married couple offer themselves to one another. This offering, however, is at the same time an offering to God, because this is how God has called the two to love Him, that is, by loving one another. And so, just as the ministerial priest offers to God bread and wine that he may change those substances into the substance of Christ, to return them to us as the Bread of Life, in the act of sexual union husband and wife offer their matter to God, so to speak (sperm and egg), and God receives what is offered and changes it, infuses into it a human soul, so that it becomes a person. What God does with that offering at that moment is out of our control; the couple can only hope that this offering will be completed in the conception of a child, but they do not exercise any dominion over it. That, of course, does not mean that the couple must intend to conceive a child every time they engage in the sexual act. 

Contraception and NFP

There is no doubt, one of the most difficult teachings in the area of sexuality and marriage has to do with contraceptive birth control. The Church is probably the only voice in the world today that teaches that contraception is morally wrong. There was and still is a great deal of controversy surrounding this issue. Personally, I’ve studied this issue for over 40 years now. The reason is that I was fascinated by it. When I first learned of this teaching, I thought it was simply ridiculous–akin to forbidding the taking of a Tylenol. But there were some very good professors who assured me that it was not as ridiculous as it might appear at first. So, I began to look into this moral issue. As a teacher, I was determined to find ways of making this teaching intelligible for my students and friends. So, I’m going to offer here what I regard as the best explanation I can provide as to why the Church’s teaching on this is in my mind correct and is rooted in the Holy Spirit, which guides the Church in her teachings on faith and morals, despite the sinfulness and imperfection of the hierarchy. 

Over the years I have, in the face of objections from students and couples in marriage prep, second guessed myself many times. But nobody yet has been able to explain to me how the use of contraception is morally justified, and I wish someone would, because it would make my life much easier. So far, however, it hasn’t happened. Furthermore, I always tell couples in marriage prep that we are not here to impose anything; rather, we propose this. Personally, I think the Church’s teaching on openness to life is really quite beautiful, and I am quite convinced that it really does promote and strengthen couples’ relationships. In fact, the divorce rate for couples who use NFP is under 4%, which is an interesting statistic. It is a statistic, however, and statistics have to be interpreted. What are the factors for this? It’s hard to say, but perhaps we can leave this to the end and attempt to offer some possible reasons for this. 

But Catholic teaching is that every marital act must be open to new life. But what does that mean? We can certainly tell you what it does not mean. It does not mean that every act of sexual union between a married couple must result in the conception of a child. That would be absurd; for that would mean that if a couple end up having four children, they can only engage in sexual intercourse four times in their married life. 

What else does it not mean? That every act of sexual union must be open to life does not mean that controlling birth is morally wrong. Couples must control birth; for no couple is obligated to have as many children as is physically possible. My mother grew up in the province of Quebec in the 30s and 40s, and that was common teaching in the Church at that time. My mother knew a lady who had fifteen children already, and if she was not pregnant the following year, she would receive a visit from the parish priest inquiring of her as to why that is the case. 

What it does mean, however, is the following: a couple engaging in sexual union must not intentionally or willingly sterilize the sexual act, by using a contraception: a condom, birth control pill, or any other contraceptive method. A couple can certainly control birth, choose not to have a child at this time for whatever good reason–and there are many good reasons–, but contraceptive methods of birth control involve intentionally closing the sexual act to new life as a means to some further end. But why not? What is so wrong with that? And, isn’t the couple doing the same thing when they use NFP and engage in periodic abstinence?

A couple that uses NFP is able to determine when ovulation will occur or is occurring. Ovulation only occurs once every cycle, and the ovum, when released, has 24 hours to be fertilized, otherwise it disintegrates. So, there is a relatively small window in which a woman can conceive a child. Before ovulation, there is the early non-fertile phase, and after ovulation, there is the late non-fertile phase (which lasts approximately 16 days), and so if a couple engage in sexual union during that time, for example in the late non-fertile phase, they will not conceive a child, because there is no ovum to fertilize (during the early non-fertile phase, however, cervical mucus can keep sperm alive up to about five days, so although there is no ovum to fertilize yet, conception can occur days later). 

A common objection is that couples who use this method, who abstain from sexual intercourse during ovulation and instead engage in the sexual act during a non-fertile phase, are also deliberately closing the act of intercourse to new life. What I’d like to try to show is that this is not necessarily the case. The couple who abstains from acts of sexual union during ovulation and instead engages in the sexual act during one of the two non-fertile phases of the female cycle is not intentionally closing the act to new life; rather, the woman’s fertility cycle is such that she cannot conceive during these two phases, so they don’t have to close the act to new life. 

But, why is this distinction so significant? This is where things become a bit abstract and difficult to explain. And I understand that many couples today just don’t see it, but my task is to continually find ways to better explain this as clearly and easily as possible. There are certainly medical differences between the two, for example, NFP has no adverse medical side effects, whereas the birth control pill has all sorts of risks involved, which every birth control pill package will list: the risk of permanent infertility, the risk of deep vein thrombosis, certain kinds of cancers, but I am not an expert in this area; one can find a great deal of information about this online. I limit myself to the moral question, that is, the moral difference between the two. And the difference is very subtle, perhaps too subtle for some people, but I will go over this regardless. 

If this is going to make any sense, we need to begin with a very important distinction. What is it that makes an action a morally significant act (either good or evil)? The answer is: the will. Without a will, one is not a moral agent. Now let’s imagine that you are a gun enthusiast and enjoy target shooting. You set up a target in your backyard out in the country and begin practicing. You have put in place all sorts of safety measures, but someone decided earlier in the day to sneak onto your large piece of property and hide among the trees in the backyard, in order to rob the house later on when you leave to run some errands. While practicing, you miss the target and you end up shooting the man hiding in the bushes. Of course, you didn’t know he was there. Are you guilty of homicide? The answer is no; you are not. You did not will or intend that this person cease to exist, that is, cease to live. Murder is an action that involves a will that this person no longer be (it is the adoption of a proposal that includes the death of a person). That is why animals, although they can kill, cannot commit homicide; they don’t have a will, but are governed by instinct.

However, imagine that you hire someone to kill your wife. You meet with this hitman and enter into a contract. You agree to pay him $20,000 for the murder. You meet again at a certain time, and you hand him $10,000 as a down payment–he’ll get the rest when he carries out the deed. He does so, shows you a picture. You pay him the remaining $10,000. Now, it turns out that your hitman is really an undercover police officer; the polaroid snapshot that she showed you is of your wife made up to look dead. You didn’t know this. No one was killed. The question now is: Are you a murderer? The answer is, yes, morally speaking. Although no one was killed, the act of handing over an envelope with the cash so that she will be killed is an act of murder, morally speaking. One adopted a proposal that included the death of the spouse.

You and I determine our moral identity, our moral character, by the moral choices that we make. If I choose to lie to you, I become a liar; If I choose steal money from your purse when you are not looking, then I become a thief; If I choose to kill, I become a killer. That’s my moral identity, my character, which is very different from personality–one can have a great personality, but morally bad character. Most psychopaths in fact have great personalities, but they are depraved characters.

What does this have to do with contraception? Let us compare the series of choices made by a couple who use contraception to a couple that uses NFP. We will assume that in both cases, the couple have a good reason to avoid conceiving a child and that their act of intercourse is intended to be a genuine expression of conjugal love. The contracepting couple 1) consider having sex (as a genuine expression of married love). They remember that they have a good reason to avoid conceiving a child, and so they 2) project a possible baby as a consequence of their act of intercourse. At this point, they 3) choose to have sex, but they make a further choice in taking steps to prevent that possible baby from becoming an actual baby. Now, in choosing to prevent that possible baby from becoming an actual baby, they will or intend that this possible baby not become an actual baby. This is to act with a contra life will, a will that this possible baby not come to be. That is to act with contra life intent. 

It is important to emphasize here that contraception is not homicide (homicide involves willing that an actual living human being no longer be, or cease to be). However, what homicide and contraception have in common is a contra life intent, or a contra life will. If I kill someone without a contra life will, as in the scenario involving target practice, I have not necessarily done anything morally significant, certainly not murder. But if you kill someone with a contra life will, that act becomes an act of homicide. As we said, contraception is not homicide, because the will does not bear upon an actual human life, but only a possible human life. However, it is this contra life will or intention that makes killing immoral, so too it is this same contra life intention (or will) that makes contraception immoral. I positively will that this possible baby not become an actual baby. That describes a contra life intention or will, which is why it is fittingly called contraception (contra: “against”, the conception of new life). Although one is not willing that an actual baby not come to be, but a possible baby, nonetheless a possible baby is a basic intelligible human good, just as a possible friendship is a basic intelligible human good, an aspect of human flourishing. In other words, if I do something to willingly prevent a possible friendship between two people who do not yet know one another from becoming an actual friendship, I am willing contrary to the good of friendship, which is not yet an actuality.

This is not necessarily the case with Natural Family Planning, however. In the use of NFP, the couple becomes familiar with the female fertility cycle, they chart that cycle from month to month, and they choose to engage in sexual union during the non-fertile phases of that cycle, of which there are two. The NFP couple also consider having sex as a genuine expression of married love, and they too project a possible baby as a consequence of their act of intercourse. But it is at this point that they choose differently, for they choose not to have sex. The couple abstains from the act of sexual union during the ovulation phase of the cycle, because there is a good reason to avoid conceiving a child. Choosing not to have sex does not involve preventing a possible baby from becoming an actual baby. The couple simply chooses not to cause a baby, and there is nothing contra-life about choosing not to cause a baby; we do it all the time every time we choose to go to work or watch TV, etc. The only time a baby becomes a real possibility is when the couple choose to have sex at a time when conception is a real possibility. This is a very subtle distinction, but it is significant. The couple have not taken steps to close the marital act to new life by wearing a condom or taking a progesterone/estrogen pill, for example. 

We should point out that not every device referred to as contraception is truly a contraceptive. For example, the IUD, the intrauterine device, is not a contraceptive, but an abortifacient; an IUD allows sperm and egg to meet, but it prevents implantation on the lining of the uterus. So human life has already been conceived, but it aborts its development. So too, the low dose birth control pill has three mechanisms: 1) it prevents ovulation. However, a woman on the pill can still ovulate as a result of stress factors; 2) the pill thickens cervical mucus so that no sperm can get through; but one sperm is all it takes to fertilize an ovum. If fertilization does occur, 3) implantation on the lining of the uterus will be very difficult, because the pill changes the uterine wall. At this point, the pill is no longer a contraception, but an abortifacient, because life has been conceived.

As for the less than 4% divorce rate for couples that use NFP, it may have something to do with the fact that the couple are willing to practice periodic abstinence, which is good for a relationship. It may also have something to do with the fact that the pill treats the woman’s fertility as a disease, as something to be protected from, while NFP fosters a certain reverence for a woman’s fertility. Instead of cancelling that fertility with artificial hormones, the couple choose to adjust their own behavior and live in accordance with the woman’s physiology. 

Also, a woman who is taking the birth control pill for medical reasons, to raise her estrogen level, for example, is not engaging in contraceptive behavior, but is choosing a medical course of action that has an undesirable side effect, namely infertility. Also, a woman who has had three c-sections and who chooses to have her tubes tied because a fourth c-section would be dangerous is not, I have argued elsewhere, engaging in contraception, any more than a surgeon removing an ectopic pregnancy is performing an abortion. 

Notes

1. He writes: “Of all the misconceptions about love the most powerful and pervasive is the belief that “falling in love” is love or at least one of the manifestations of love. It is a potent misconception, because falling in love is subjectively experienced in a very powerful fashion as an experience of love. When a person falls in love what he or she certainly feels is “I love him” or “I love her.” But two problems are immediately apparent. The first is that the experience of falling in love is specifically a sex-linked erotic experience. We do not fall in love with our children even though we may love them very deeply. We do not fall in love with our friends of the same sex—unless we are homosexually oriented—even though we may care for them greatly. We fall in love only when we are consciously or unconsciously sexually motivated. The second problem is that the experience of falling in love is invariably temporary. No matter whom we fall in love with, we sooner or later fall out of love if the relationship continues long enough. This is not to say that we invariably cease loving the person with whom we fell in love. But it is to say that the feeling of ecstatic lovingness that characterizes the experience of falling in love always passes. The honeymoon always ends. The bloom of romance always fades.” The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth. By M. Scott Peck, M.D. Touchstone Books. 1978. p. 84-90. 

2. See Derrick Sherwin Bailey. Sexual Relation in Christian Thought. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers. pp. 19-102. 

3. Confessions, 3, 11. 19. (Tr. Albert C. Outler). “o tu bone omnipotens, qui sic curas unumquemque nostrum tamquam solum cures, et sic omnes tamquam singulos”.

4. Dante Alighieri, Vita Nuova: A Dual-Language Edition with Parallel Text. Kindle Edition. p. 33.

5. Charles Williams, The Figure of Beatrice: A Study in Dante, II. Kindle Edition. p. 18.

6. See S.T., Supplement, Question 41, a.4.

7. Casti Connubii, 24.