Contraception and Original Sin

The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, by Benjamin West, 1791.

Alice von Hildebrand wrote, regarding Satan, “Abortion is his greatest victory since original sin.” (New Oxford Review, “To the Editor,” May 2015). May I demur? Artificial contraception is. Why? Because it repeats the original sin of Adam and Eve, the source of all human sins. Original sin is the desire to be God without obeying and loving him. God’s greatest gift to humanity is allowing us to participate with him in creating new human life, in propagating humanity, over space and time, until the end of the world. The contraceptive “pill” is of our own making, and has the single intention of denying God that creative role in his own creation.

I have no philosophical or theological credentials qualifying me to challenge Dr. Von Hildebrand, so I’m merely posing this as a question for readers of Homiletic and Pastoral Review to consider.

Natural Family Planning cooperates with healthy functions of the human body, is more effective in regulating births, is free, and has the specific intention of allowing God to create new human life, even if we have reservations. The contraceptive pill has the direct intention of denying God any participation at all. So do all other artificial contraceptive methods. Practicing Natural Family Planning recognizes God’s pre-eminence in creation, despite our reservations. Using man-made contraceptives insists on our pre-eminence in creation—the only creation we know of still takes place after the Genesis account (the “Big Bang”?): The creation of our immortal souls happens when our bodies are conceived.

What are our “reservations”? We just aren’t “ready” for more (or any) children? We need to pursue an education first? Children would hinder advancement in our careers? I’ll accept life-threatening health concerns, especially if other small children are involved, but not those kinds of reservations. Those are nothing compared to working with God to create, and then nurture, new human beings whom God intends to spend eternity with him in Heaven. Abortion doesn’t slam that door shut. Artificial contraception does, and we want it to. That’s very close to Original Sin.

Professor von Hildebrand is right about one thing. Satan hates us, and hates women, in particular, because the Son of God made it possible, with the obedience of his mother, for us to occupy places in Heaven God also intended for all his angels, and which Lucifer/Satan, and those angels-turned-demons, rejected, out of pride, in their own original sin. Satan is giddy with glee whenever a pregnant woman approaches an abortionist to end the earthly life of her living baby. Every time, this enemy thinks, “Here comes another mother and child!”  How Satan must hate Advent and Christmas!

But, yet, Satan knows aborted babies have immortal souls, as did Jesus Christ, when his mother met her cousin Elizabeth, and was greeted by his cousin, John the Baptist, both babes in the womb at the time. It was the first communication between the “Word Made Flesh” and mankind. So might not aborted babies qualify for heaven, having had their own “baptism of blood,” as did the babes in Bethlehem, murdered by Herod at Satan’s urging?

Satan also knows the “pill,” and other man-made contraceptive drugs, and contraptions often also kill human beings after they are conceived. Satan knows women who have taken the contraceptive pill for many years probably aborted many of their babies. Woman routinely using artificial contraceptives have killed far more children than are murdered by abortionists. Satan also knows the contraception pill is a powerful steroid that, over time, damages a woman’s overall health—not just her reproductive system—making women vulnerable to various fatal cancers, notably breast cancer, and a host of other ailments and diseases. Satan loves that.

Abortion is murder. But so is artificial contraception, over time. Murder is serious business. It leads to lying. The medical profession, pharmaceutical companies, the media, academia, all lie when they tell women artificial contraceptives do not murder innocent human beings. After the original sin of Adam and Eve—which they tried to conceal by lying to God—the next sin reported in Genesis is murder. In the very next generation, Cain murdered his brother Abel, and tried to cover it up by lying to God. With artificial contraception, we acquire the mindset that abortion is available if contraception fails. Why? Because we have already rebelled against Our Creator. Now we are the “creators” if we so choose. Artificial contraception and abortion are results of a murderous mind—Satan’s first, then ours.

Every human being, created or not, exists first in the mind of God, from all eternity. For victims of artificial contraception, life never begins, or is terminated within days of beginning. But that fate is limited to planet earth for them. For the contraceptors, stifling human life isn’t confined to planet earth. It can extend throughout eternity for them. They have embraced death of their immortal souls. Unless they repent during their brief sojourn on earth, death of their soul continues forever, in a place of their own choosing we call “hell.” After the General Resurrection, their living bodies will be bound to their “dead” souls. Forever. Because those in hell want it that way.

Abortion is the most obvious sin directly resulting from man-made contraception. There are others, many others. Blessed Paul VI began the list in Humanae Vitae. The first is reducing women to mere sex objects, mere objects which men can enjoy for themselves only. Then comes an embrace of sodomy. Abortion and sodomy have one thing in common. No children are born, the same goal as contraception. With acceptance of sodomy comes a demand for homosexual marriages, having the same legal status as conjugal marriages. Whatever “reasoning” the U.S. Supreme Court justices gave to explain to us that the U.S. Constitution guarantees that legal status for sodomy, could it not also be applied to incest, pedophilia, sadism, masochism, necrophilia, and zoophilia?  Why not? Where does it end?

It continues with the destruction of marriage and the family, the fundamental institutions of human society; and religion, as the ultimate support for marriage; which leaves only government coercion to control human debauchery. Destruction of marriage began with so-called “no-fault divorce,” and will eventually embrace polygamy, a practice that further degrades women, and assigns a privileged status to men—men with money and power. Now, we are seeing the beginnings of an attack on organized religions, especially the monotheistic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In America, that began when the U.S. Supreme Court banned Bible reading in public schools as “violating” the U.S. Constitution. Then, it banned voluntary communal prayer at public events, beginning with athletic competitions between public schools—banning even huddled football players praying to avoid injuries. Then an open Christian witness in the military was banned, and enforced by the Obama administration. Now the intention is to confine the Christian witness to inside the walls of Christian churches. Anything else is a “hate” crime. Under Obama, Islam gets a pass. Jihad mass-murder is merely “workplace violence.” Jews don’t often witness publicly, so they are usually left alone, for now. The campaign to ban any mention of God in our national life is well under way, from our national motto—“In God we trust”—to our national “Pledge of Allegiance,” to opening sessions of Congress and the Supreme Court, to installing our presidents, to our national monuments, even including crosses marking Christian graves in national cemeteries for fallen soldiers, here and overseas.

Man-made contraception ushered into American society a “War Against God,” and has replaced a “Culture of Life” with a “Culture of Death,” as Pope Saint John Paul the Great told us it would. Who can fail to admit the fulfilled prophecies of Paul VI in Humanae Vitae, §17?  If an artificial contraceptive mentality overtook a culture, the result would be: (1) a general lowering of mortality; (2) higher rate of failed marriages; (3) the typical man’s disregard for the true dignity of woman; and (4) the government starting to impose birth control on its citizenry.  Obamacare anyone?

At this time of year, especially, we need to remember what price the Incarnate God, Jesus, paid to make it possible for us to spend eternity in Heaven, with his Father, his Mother, and his Holy Spirit.  This is the Church’s special season of the vulnerable newborn. And with this season of Christmas still surrounding us, let us be mindful of all the ways our Heavenly God wants us to defeat the “Culture of Death,” to experience true life, and to always be welcoming into our lives the weakest among us.