Birth Control and the Catholic Conscience

Birth Control and the Catholic Conscience

by Philip St. Romain

Copyright 2023: Philip St. Romain

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-312-88957-7

Published by Lulu.com for

Contemplative Ministries, Inc., Wichita, KS

Table of Contents

Birth Control and the Catholic Conscience

Introduction

1. What is Conscience?

2. Conscience and the Superego

3. Steps to Forming Conscience

4. The Issue of Intrinsically Evil Acts

5. The Three Fonts of Morality and Conscience Formation

6. A Few Common Questions

Summary

Acknowledgement and Bio

Introduction

Sometime during the summer of 1993 I received a call from the editor of the newspaper for the Catholic Diocese of Wichita, where I was serving as Family Life Coordinator at the time. That year was the 25th anniversary of Humane Vitae, the encyclical by St. (Pope) Paul VI on human life and best known, perhaps, for its teaching that only natural methods of spacing children were approved by the Church¹. Contraceptive methods like birth control pills and barrier strategies like condoms and diaphragms were considered unacceptable and immoral. The editor was highlighting this anniversary with several articles and wondered if I’d look over one sent to him on Natural Family Planning, also known as NFP. I do not recall if it had been written by someone in our diocese, or was a syndicated piece he was considering, but he was clearly ambivalent about publishing it and the bishop had suggested he run it by me to see what I thought. He either faxed it or delivered it (life before the Internet and email!) and within an hour I had the article.

The piece was written by someone who was obviously knowledgeable of NFP and had experience with both living and teaching the practice. It explained in detail ways to detect when a woman of child-bearing age is in the fertile time during her monthly cycle and when she is not. This knowledge can help couples either enhance or avoid the likelihood of pregnancy, depending on where they are in their discernment about the timing of children, which Humane Vitae affirmed as legitimate². All fine and well, including an engaging writing style, until the end of the article, when the author stated that NFP was God’s gift to the human race to help in family planning, and Catholic couples who knowingly chose to reject NFP in favor of contraceptive approaches were guilty of serious sin and were being selfish with their sexuality. Those were the statements that bothered the