New Laws Conflict with 2,000 Year Old Church Laws

The Catholic Church has long prohibited contraception, forbidding any kind of temporary or permanent sterilization of women for 2000 years. Even in the New Testament St. Paul and St. John condemned the mixing of contraceptive potions.  In their lists of sins against purity, they include the word “pharmakeia” which is sometimes translated as “sorcery,” but in context seems to mean the mixing of potions to prevent birth (Gal. 5: 19-26, Rev. 9:21, Rev. 21:8). The use of sterilizing drugs was common in the ancient world. In the Ephesus of Paul’s time, a physician named Soranos (98-139AD) described seventeen medically approved methods of contraception.But Christians did not approve of contraception. Many of the early “Fathers of the Church” explicitly condemned contraception, including St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, Barnabas, St. Basil the Great, Clement of Alexandria, St. Jerome, St. John Chrysostom, Hippolytus, Origen, Tertullian, and the assembled Bishops at the First Council of Nicaea. Even Luther and Calvin wrote against it. No Protestant church ever approved of contraception until Anglicans at their Lambeth Conference of 1930 began to allow it in limited circumstances. From Apostolic times, the Catholic Church has condemned contraception.

The Obama administration is a relatively recent phenomenon. Even the government of the United States was established only 200 years ago. But the Catholic Church was established 2000 years ago! It is ironic that such a young administration in a young country is now presuming to tell the Church what to believe. The Obama administration is saying to the world that contraception is necessary health care, that it is the right of every woman, and that it has nothing to do with religion. Proponents of the HHS Mandate act as if everyone knows this and thinks this way. They point to statistics and opinion polls to suggest that only the Pope and a few bishops disagree. The Obama administration is telling us that our prohibition of contraception is something extraneous to our religion. But our teaching on contraception is part of our religion. Long before the laws of this country were written down, the Catholic Church’s laws were hundreds of years old. In 1140 AD, for example, a Church law known as the Decrees of Gratian states: “If someone either for the sake of satisfying his sensuality or because of pre-meditated hate will have done something to a man or woman or will have given something to drink such that he or she cannot either generate or conceive or that it be impossible that a child be born, may it be considered as a homicide.” This canon was valid until the 1917 Code of Canon Law was published. It is amazing that this ancient text is so thorough in describing the three stages of the reproductive process: conception, gestation and birth. The text is also amazing in that it describes the willingness to commit contraception as being something akin to the willingness to kill. Whether before, during or after the conception, the intention in the heart is the same, and is therefore gravely sinful as is homicide. This ancient text is amazingly prophetic in view of what we now know about contraceptive use. We now know that many contraceptives are abortifacients. We also know that when contraceptives fail, there is often a willingness to commit abortion as a backup.

Despite all of this historical evidence, the Obama administration of late is declaring that our prohibition of contraception is not a part of the Catholic religion that deserves protection under the law. Let us pray that the new laws of civil government will respect the time-tested laws of the oldest institution on earth. In the words of the traditional prayers after Mass, we ask God to hear our prayers “for the liberty and exaltation of our holy Mother the Church.”