Is the Catholic Prohibition on Contraception Unbiblical?
"Does the Bible support the Catholic Church's teaching that artificial contraception is morally wrong?"
The Short Answer
Many claim the Catholic teaching against artificial contraception has no biblical basis. However, this teaching is grounded in Scripture's witness to the procreative purpose of marriage, the sin of Onan, natural law, and the unanimous testimony of all Christian churches until 1930.
Quick Overview
Sex has two purposes designed by God: to bond husband and wife together (unitive) and to create new life (procreative). These two purposes belong together. When a couple uses artificial contraception, they're saying 'yes' to the bonding but deliberately 'no' to babies—they separate what God joined. The story of Onan in Genesis shows God taking this seriously: Onan had relations with his wife but 'spilled his seed' to prevent pregnancy, and God killed him for it. Until 1930, every Christian church agreed contraception was wrong. Natural Family Planning is different because couples aren't doing anything artificial to the act itself—they're simply choosing not to have relations during fertile times. This respects God's design while still allowing couples to space children when they have good reasons.
Biblical Evidence
What the Scriptures say
"He knowing that the children should not be his, when he went in to his brother's wife, 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."
Why This Matters
Onan deliberately frustrated the procreative act, and God killed him for this 'detestable thing.' While some claim his sin was only violating the levirate duty, the text emphasizes his contraceptive act: 'spilled his seed... lest children should be born.' His brother Er died for general wickedness, but Onan's specific sin is described in contraceptive terms.
"And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it."
Why This Matters
God's first blessing and command to humanity is fruitfulness. Children are presented throughout Scripture as blessings, not burdens. Deliberately closing marriage to life contradicts this foundational blessing.
"Behold the inheritance of the Lord are children: the reward, the fruit of the womb. As arrows in the hand of the mighty, so the children of them that have been shaken. Blessed is the man that hath filled the desire with them."
Why This Matters
Scripture consistently presents children as rewards and blessings, not as problems to be prevented. A contraceptive mentality inverts the biblical view of fertility.
"Did not one make her, and she is the residue of his spirit? And what doth one seek, but the seed of God? Keep then your spirit, and despise not the wife of thy youth."
Why This Matters
God designed marriage to produce 'godly offspring.' The procreative purpose is intrinsic to God's plan for marriage, not an optional add-on that couples may deliberately exclude.
"Yet she shall be saved through childbearing; if she continue in faith, and love, and sanctification, with sobriety."
Why This Matters
Paul connects salvation with openness to childbearing for married women, indicating that motherhood (when possible) is part of the Christian vocation of married life, not something to be systematically avoided.
What the Church Teaches
Official Catholic doctrine
The Catechism teaches: 'Fecundity is a gift, an end of marriage, for conjugal love naturally tends to be fruitful. A child does not come from outside as something added on to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfillment' (CCC 2366). Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae (1968) reaffirmed the constant teaching that 'each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life' (HV 11). The Church teaches that the unitive and procreative meanings of the conjugal act are inseparable by God's design. Artificial contraception deliberately separates what God has joined, treating fertility as a disease rather than a gift. Natural Family Planning, by contrast, works with God's design and respects the integrity of the sexual act while allowing couples to space children for serious reasons.
Common Objections
Questions answered
Early Church Fathers
What the first Christians believed
St. Augustine of Hippo
c. 419 AD
"Intercourse even with one's legitimate wife is unlawful and wicked where the conception of the offspring is prevented. Onan, the son of Juda, did this and the Lord killed him for it."
— Marriage and Concupiscence, Book 1, Chapter 15
St. John Chrysostom
c. 391 AD
"Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit? Where there are medicines of sterility? Where there is murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain only a harlot, but you make her a murderess as well... Indeed, it is something worse than murder and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation."
— Homilies on Romans, Homily 24
St. Jerome
c. 396 AD
"But I wonder why he the heretic Jovinianus set Judah and Tamar before us for an example, unless perchance even harlots give him pleasure; or Onan, who was slain because he grudged his brother seed. Does he imagine that we approve of any sexual intercourse except for the procreation of children?"
— Against Jovinian, Book 1, Chapter 19
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