What 10 Priests Say About Contraception

Fr. Ezra Sullivan from Rome
The purpose of contraception is to allow a man and woman to experience sexual pleasure without experiencing the full effects of the sexual act. It is very much like chewing food without allowing it nourish one’s body. Therefore, contraception is a sort of “sexual bulimia.” It leads to malnourishment of individuals, couples, and society.

Fr. Donald Calloway from Massachusetts
Contraception is wrong for many reasons, one of which is because the pinnacle and pattern of marriage is the union between Christ and his Church. And Jesus does not use us as objects or treat us with indignity, but makes us fruitful for eternal life by giving himself totally and completely to us through the teachings of the Church and the sacraments. This model of true love needs to be more present in marriages today. Marriages that practice contraception are not truly grounded in the selfless pattern of Christ and his Church, but base their conjugal relations upon a self-gratifying moment of pleasure, preferring to use each other as objects rather than give themselves completely to the other, and this contraceptive way of life produces little, if no, fruit (children) at all.

Msgr. Charles Pope from Washington, D.C.
At the root of contraception is the flawed and fatal notion that there is no necessary connection between sex and procreation. We have divided what God has joined. In sowing the wind we have reaped the whirlwind of sexual confusion, selfishness, and irresponsibility. Contraception is a catastrophic rebellion that has undermined Marriage by fostering promiscuity, and caused untold suffering to children born into a culture increasingly unprepared and unwilling to raise them.

Fr. Shenan Boquet from Virginia (President of Human Life International)
At the heart of the destruction of the family is the widespread use of artificial contraception. When the complete gift of self between spouses is denied, families fall apart and innocent life is reduced to a disposable commodity, as was predicted in Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae. As I travel, I find that most Catholics are still unaware of this prophetic, truthful, and loving teaching on the gift of human life and find themselves trapped by these same errors as the rest of the culture has suffered. But there is growing awareness of the problem and signs of hope: fertility awareness-based methods can space or achieve pregnancy and are a beautiful option for married couples to live fully their sacramental vows in union with our Creator by being open to the gift of life.

Fr. Peter Junipero Hannah from California
The Church’s teaching on artificial contraception seems to most people today archaic and silly. But here as elsewhere, the Church finds herself having to defend common sense: sexual intimacy is associated with babies, and the use human reproductive organs presumes a context where the result might just be reproduction. The severing of these two human happenings—sexual activity from procreation—is the hidden and not-talked-about-in-polite-conversation ill font of the current chaos in marriage and family life. If children can in principle be excluded from sexually intimate activity, then all manner of perversion becomes possible to defend, and even (as we have seen) attempt against nature, reason, and God, to baptize.

Fr. Edward Murphy from Florida
The whole scale acceptance of contraception by Catholics combined with the silence from the pulpits has contributed to the diminishment of marriage. Marriage is no longer revered as a sacred union. Children are now considered a financial commodity and a distraction for married couples. By neutering fertility, we are destroying the bedrock of a healthy society.

Fr. John Hollowell from Indiana
It looks like people are starting to recognize the utter disaster that has come about in the wake of the contraceptive generation. We’ve learned from the generation before us that when sex is reduced to pleasure, the family and marriage as an institution quickly disintegrates. I see in my generation an eager desire to be open to life, and to keep the marital act natural and open to life. My friends are having lots of children and I am inspired by them all the time.

Fr. Thomas Longua from Texas
Contraception is a lie. It is designed to put barrier in the middle of an act that is about a total self-giving, a sharing of all that one is. “I give you my whole self, and invite you to become one with me—except that most important part, that part which is made to give life, generated by love.”

Fr. Edward Connolly from Pennsylvania
If I were a married man, I’m sure I would offer to hold hands with my wife from time to time. But if she insisted that I wear rubber gloves whenever we held hands, I think I would find it odd. Same if she rubbed sanitizer on her hands whenever I touched them. I might wonder if she really loved me. In fact, I might wonder if she were really my wife!

Fr. Christopher Pollard from Virginia
Is there a difference between between health and sickness, food and poison, surgery and mutilation, anesthesia and drug abuse? That illustrates one of the differences between respecting a woman’s health and contracepting. The former regards her potency for motherhood as good; the latter treats pregnancy as an illness. Intimacy was designed to be always about the certainty of being loved and the possibility of a new beloved.