Msg Base:  AREA 5  - ASK FATHER            CIN ECHO   AMDG
  Msg No: 228.  Sun  1-12-92 21:08  (NO KILL)  (MAILED)
    From: Father Mateo
      To: John Fisken
 Subject: Contraception

+-
| FM>God has fashioned marriage as a sacred covenant between wife and husband
| FM>to form a union so close as to make them one person.
| FM>Deliberately to frustrate God's purpose in the marriage
| FM>act through artificial interference with its lifegiving nature is
| FM>seriously sinful and contrary to the will of God.
|  
| Thank you very much for your answer, and if I can trouble you for one
| more.  I can see where contraception in a marriage can be seen as wrong,
| but, what if the couple is not married, or what if the couple cannot
| afford the cost of another child?  I knew two Catholic families when I
| was in high school, one with 9 children, the other with 11.  In both
| cases, both the mother and father worked full time, but they lived in a
| small house, and hand me down clothes.  I'm not trying to change the
| rule, just trying to understand it, as my wife comes into contact with
| many Catholic teens in her position as a high school teacher in Hawaii,
| and some students have asked her that question.
+-[JF=>FM]
 
Dear John,
 
The marriage act frustrated by artificial contraception is mortally
sinful, as I explained in my previous message.
 
The marriage act between two unmarried people is the mortal sin of
fornication.  If one or both are married (to someone else, of course),
the act is adultery, a mortal sin.
 
If fornication or adultery is committed while using an artificial
contraceptive, there is the sin of contraception as well as the sin of
fornication or adultery.  Obviously, one evil (fornication) cannot
change another evil (contraception) into a good.
 
Artificial contraception is wrong and sinful because by positive and
artificial intervention it deliberately frustrates an important purpose
of what is intended by God to be a sacred and life giving act within the
marriage covenant.
 
Your second question is: what if a married couple cannot afford the
cost of another child.  In that situation, they may practice periodic
continence: abstaining during the wife's fertile periods.  Periodic
continence is moral: 1) if the husband and wife both agree; 2) if
during times of abstinence they are not liable to fall into sins of
masturbation, contraception, or adultery; 3) if they have serious
justifying reasons for limiting the number of their children. These
reasons might be financial; they might be reasons of health, et al.
 
Your questions are thoughtful, and your wife is a high school teacher.
For both of these reasons, I give you here a list of books you can read
to explore the answers to your questions more fully:
 
1) From: Daughters of St. Paul
         1143 Bishop Street
         Honolulu, HI 96813
         (Tel. 808-521-2731),
you may order pamphlet