Birth Conti 
Is Wrong! 

<By 

IGNATIUS W. COX, S.J. 
*Professor of Ethics 

Fordham University 

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T T W L P 

BIRTH CONTROL 
IS WRONG! 

By 

IGNATIUS W. COX, S.J. 
Professor of Ethics 
Fordham University 

PRICE 5 CENTS 

First Printing 

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September 13, 1930. 

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Birth Control Is Wrong! 
(Talk by the Rev. Ignatius W. Cox, S.J., professor of ethics at 

Fordham University, over Station WLWL, Wednesday evening. May 
21, 1930.) , 

THERE are two kinds of birth control. Birth control through self-control, the virtue of continence, and birth 
control through the use of positive means calculated to pre-
vent conception. This latter is called contraceptive birth 
control. It is with regard to the use of physical, chemical or 
mechanical means for family limitation, or birth control 
through contraceptives, that an editorial appeared in the 
New York Herald Tribune for April 9, 1930. The editorial 
was entitled "Churches for Birth Control." From it I wish 
to quote the following: 

The wtorld does move and one of the subjects on which it moves 
is birth control. The action of the New York East Conference of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church taken on Monday, declaring birth control 
"in the interest of morality and sound scientific knowledge" and call-
ing upon legislatures of New York and Connecticut to remove the 
existing restrictions upon the knowledge of birth control, is a straw in 
the wind. The action of the Methodists of New York follows sig-
nificantly enough upon similar action taken last year by the Commis-
sion on Social Justice of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, 
the Conference of Congregational Churches of Connecticut and the 
Universal General Convention. As little as five years ago such action 
by any one of these bodies would have seemed impossible. Today it 
is certainly the forerunner of Like action by many other religious 
bodies. . . . In time, perhaps, even religious groups which have 
hitherto, perhaps on sentimental rather than on canonical grounds, op-
posed legislative action which would bring the law into harmony with 
common sense and common practice, may yield to the irresistible cur-
rent'of the age. 

Thus far the editorial from the New York Herald 
Tribune. 

CATHOLIC OPPOSITION 

Now the Catholic Church is the largest religious group 
which has been and is opposed to contraceptive birth control. 
The reasons for the Catholic opposition I will explain this 
evening and thus show how foredoomed to disappointment is 

3 • 



4 BIRTH CONTROL IS WRONG! 

the expectation of those who believe that some day the Cath-
olic Church will cease to oppose contraceptive birth control 
and thus yield to what the Tribune writer calls the "irresisti-
ble current of the age." 

First of all the opposition of the Catholic Church is most 
emphatically not founded on sentimental grounds. More 
than that, the opposition is founded on grounds altogether 
independent of the Church, on grounds with regard to which 
the Church has never claimed any jurisdiction, and, in the 
very nature of the case, can claim no jurisdiction. 

There are certain actions which are morally evil and 
wrong independently of the individual conscience and of the 
Church of God. Conscience does not make these actions 
evil and wrong; it only discovers their malice. The Church 
does not make these actions evil and wrong; it only declares 
their malice. No individual, no group of individuals, not 
even the Church of God can make such actions good and 
right. Let me illustrate this by an example. It is an evil 
and wrong thing to blaspheme God, the author of man and 
of all good. Blasphemy by its very nature, hence intrinsi-
cally, is altogether contrary to human nature which is and 
should be entirely dependent upon God. Hence, blasphemy 
is forbidden by the natural law. For the natural law is the 
command of God, the author of nature, written in man's 
nature and recognized by the light of reason. In virtue of 
this law man understands the will of the Author of nature 
commanding him the performance of actions that are in ac-
cordance with and suitable to the ends of nature, and for-
bidding actions which are out of keeping with that nature. 
This natural law is written in the being of every rational 
creature and embraces the prohibitions and the implicit com-
mands of the Ten Commandments. 

CONTRARY TO LAW OF NATURE 

Of this natural law the great Blackstone wrote: 

As man depends absolutely on his Maker in all things, it is neces-
sary that he should in all things conform to his Maker's will. . . . 
This will of the Maker is called the law of nature. . . . When He 
created man and endowed him with free will to conduct himself in all • 

• i 



BIRTH CONTROL IS WRONG I 5 

parts of life, He laid down immutable laws of human nature. 
These are the eternal immutable laws of good and evil . . . which He 
has enabled reason to discover for the conduct of human actions. This 
law of nature is binding all over the globe, in all countries, at all 
times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this. 

Now the position of the Catholic Church is that birth 
control through the use of contraceptives belongs to that 
class of actions which are so out of harmony with human 
nature that they are intrinsically wrong. As such they are 
forbidden by the natural law, God's will written in nature. 
The intrinsic moral evil of contraceptive birth control is 
written in human nature, and the Church has no more power 
to declare good, right or lawful what the natural law brands 
as evil, wrong and unlawful than the Church has the power 
to change human nature itself. 

HUMAN NATURE THE NORM 

The Catholic Church does not make human nature, 
neither does she by arbitrary action make certain actions to 
be in harmony with human nature and hence good, and 
others to be out of harmony with human nature, and hence 
bad. What the Church does is to examine human nature so 
as to find out the will of God therein written, and this will 
she declare to her children and all the world. Just as medi-
cal men do not make the laws of healthful living, but study 
human life, analyze and dissect, and then tell us the laws of 
health written in human nature, so the Church does, not 
make the fundamental laws of good and right but declares 
and interprets them as she finds them written by the Author 
of life in human nature itself. 

T H E PURPOSE OF MATRIMONY 

Now there is no doubt that the natural law and the 
Author of nature forbid and condemn the practise of con-
traceptive birth control. The Author of nature has gifted His 
rational creatures with the sexual faculty, the end and pur-
pose of which is clearly and manifestly indicated, the pro-
duction of human offspring* children, without which the hu-
man race would perish. It is for this purpose that matri-
mony exists, a permanent institution by the law of nature, 



BIRTH CONTROL IS WRONG I 6 

without which the race would be neither propagated nor 
educated in accordance with the God-given dignity of ra-
tional creatures and the absolute needs of the child. The 
sexual faculties are only to be exercised within the state of 
matrimony, without which the purposes of nature for the 
consistent care and development of the child would be most 
assuredly defeated. 

SOCIAL FACULTIES 

The sexual faculties are social faculties. They are given 
not primarily for the good of the individual but for the good 
of the race. Though there is an individual urge to exercise 
these faculties, and a fitting reward for the exercise of the 
same, their outcome, the child, shows nature's intention only 
too clearly, that the faculty, the urge, the exercise and its 
reward are all social, for the good and the conservation of 
the race. This is the end and purpose which nature and na-
ture's God have given primarily and above all to the sexual 
faculty. 

It is for this purpose that nature gives the strongest urge 
and for this purpose that nature offers her rewards. Now 
to use nature's faculty, to give way to nature's urge, to seek 
nature's reward and at the same time to take means by con-
traceptives to frustrate the primary purpose of nature in 
granting all these things is without all doubt to pervert na-
ture and to defeat God's will and design. That all this is to 
violate the natural law written in nature itself is so evident 
that it is marvelous how unprejudiced men can escape its 
obvious significance. I say, therefore, that birth control 
through contraceptives is so clearly intrinsically wrong, so 
clearly out of harmony with man's nature, so manifestly 
prohibited by the author of nature through the natural law 
that no conscience, no combination of consciences, no diffi-
culties, no sentimental reasons can make it right and good. 

MUTUAL SELF-SACRIFICING LOVE 

It is by nature that God give's the capacity and the im-
pulse in virtue of which His designs are fulfilled. To live 
according to the natural law is to attain the perfection of 



BIRTH CONTROL IS WRONG I 7 

the individual and the fulfilment of the Divine purpose. 
The sex impulse which God gives man is only the first step 
of nature towards a mutual love befitting rational creatures, 
a love characterized by the mutual self-sacrifice of husband 
and wife. This mutual self-sacrificing love expresses itself 
in parenthood. Husband and wife are God's chosen instru-
ments to whom He communicates .His own fruitfulness. In-
deed, the Author of nature cooperates in a wondrous way 
with His creatures by the creation of the human soul, so 
that the child is the living output of the creative love of God 
and the procreative love of His human instruments. By 
the presence of children the mutual love of husband and 
wife is urged to still higher degrees of self-sacrifice and self-
forgetfulness. Their interests, their hopes, their joys are 
centered on the output of their love. Sex is elevated, en-
nobled, sanctified by the higher, self-forgetting love to which 
it leads and by which in God's designs man is brought to a 
perfection worthy of his dignity in the scale of creation. 
Children thus check and control sex. Motherhood and fa-
therhood are unspeakably more than self-gratification. The 
virtues that are developed by the honest fulfilment of na-
ture's intentions are amongst the finest flowers born of 
earthly existence and a promise of a reward to come beyond 
this earthly world. 

F I N E R PURPOSES DESTROYED 

Contraceptive birth control is pernicious precisely be-
cause it runs counter to all the finer purposes of nature. 
Nature and nature's God assign a fitting reward or punish-
ment even in this life to those who observe or violate her 
laws. The reward of those blessed married couples who ob-
serve nature's laws is seen in the nobility of character, the 
mastery over self with the consequent joy and peace which 
comes from unselfish right living. 

The punishments assigned to violations of nature are 
equally obvious. First of all the use of contraceptives iso-
lates pleasure and gratification from the purposes assigned 
to them by nature itself. Pleasure is separated from the 
higher love towards which it should tend, and the link of this 
higher love with parenthood :is brutally sundered. George 



8 BIRTH CONTROL IS WRONG I 8 

Bernard Shaw, I believe, somewhere speaks of Contraceptive 
birth control as reciprocal vice. That is an exact designa-
tion of it. The reason why the universal conscience con-
demns solitary as well as other unnatural vice is precisely 
because, in isolating pleasure from nature's purposes, it frus-
trates the very end and intent of nature. Contraceptives 
put all the emphasis on mere pleasure. 

PRELUDE TO DIVORCE COURT 

Hence, instead of sex being ruled and regulated and 
dominated by a higher God-given purpose, it is made an end 
in itself contrary to the manifest design and intent of na-
ture. Man is thus degraded and brutalized by the succes-
sive satisfactions of a lower faculty uncontrolled and un-
sanctified by any higher purpose. Self-domination is lost as 
hopelessly, as ultimately, as rational love itself is lost. 
Woman is degraded from being the co-instrument with man 
in the duty of sharing the fruitfulness of God, and, by the 
unnatural divorce of sex from motherhood, becomes a mere 
tool of passion whilst she loses all the womanly heroic vir-
tues of self-denial and self-sacrifice. Human love which is 
founded on lust does not endure. Hence contraceptive 
practises are a fitting prelude to the divorce court. Let me 
quote here the words of the Rev. John A. Ryan, D.D.: 

It is doubtful whether any normal man or woman ever began such 
practises without suffering a severe moral shock, or continued with-
out serious moral degeneration. I t is not surprising that men and 
women who thus pervert one of the highest functions of life, and the 
most intimate relation of marriage, should grow obtuse in their per-
ceptions of the sacredness and exclusiveness of wedlock, and of the 

0 f t h e ? o n j u g a I obligation. It is not a mere coinci-
dence that childless marriages should form such a large proportion of 
the cases in which divorce is sought on "statutory grounds" 

I might mention here in passing that contraceptive birth 
control is a practical atheism which stultifies when it does 
not annihilate conscience. The use of contraceptives is the 
denial m practise of the purposefulness of life and life's 
faculties. It is a rebellion against the Author of nature and 
a practical refusal to admit that life and its faculties are 
not our own to be disposed of as if we were masters, but 



BIRTH CONTROL IS WRONG I 9 

that they are to be used by us only as responsible stewards 
of whom a strict account will be exacted. 

NATURE SHOWS ABHORRENCE 

There are other sanctions by which nature shows in no 
uncertain way her abhorrence of methods taken to defeat 
her purposes and by which she registers her disapproval on 
the physical and nervous constitutions of those who offend 
against her. Far-seeing doctors have not been slow to. call 
attentions to those effects in details which cannot be men-, 
tioned here. To pass over medical testimony that might be f 
cited, Dr. Arthur Vernon Davies recently declared in the 
English House of Commons that "competent medical 
opinion in this country is overwhelmingly against birth con-
trol." He said: "Let honorable members talk to any ob-
stetric surgeon or a medical man or woman accustomed to a 
large gynecological practise, and almost without exception 
these people will say that birth control is detrimental to the 
woman and detrimental to the child." But the final sanc-
tion of nature, as far as this world is concerned, is unmis-
takable. Nature punishes with annihilation the groups that 
frustrate her purposes. The conflict between group» that 
practically advocate contraceptive birth control and those 
that practically oppose them will be shortlived. The birth 
controllers will in a short time breed themselves out of exist-
ence, which is another way of saying that nature will annihi-
late them. 

OVERPOPULATION FALSE 

I am conscious that all the arguments in proof of the 
sin of contraceptive birth control will be swept aside by the 
protagonists of this movement in favor of the short-sighted, 
irrelevant and sentimental reasons that are dinned into our 
ears in season and out of season. There is first that oft-
told tale of overpopulation. It would argue astonishing 
simplicity on the part of any one to believe that those who 
indulge in contraceptive practises are in the slightest degree 
influenced by the fear that population will in a brief time 
exceed the food supply. First of all, the fear of overpopula-



BIRTH CONTROL IS WRONG I 10 

tion is at present unfounded, and, even if it were not, con-
traceptive birth control would be no legitimate way to meet 
the difficulty. That would be to do wrong that good might 
come of it. Economic and social conditions are not the de-
terminants of morality. 

" T H E S E ARE M Y J E W E L S " 

It is urged that contraceptive birth control is lawful be-
cause of the poverty of so many married couples. Let us 
honestly distinguish between real poverty and an assumed 
poverty due to unnecessarily high standards of living. 
Poverty of the latter class is but too thinly disguised selfish-
ness. People of even the lower middle classes today think 
necessary things which were luxuries only of the rich a few 
years ago. Let me remind my listeners of that Roman 
matron who, when asked by her friends to let them see her 
jewels, called her children and exclaimed: "These are my 
jewels; here are all my treasures!" She knew far better 
than many moderns where wealth and happiness were truly 
to be found. The answer to this class appealing to economic 
conditions in favor of immoral birth control is too obvious 
to need formulation. If immoral birth control is legitimate 
for the relief of economic conditions so are theft and mur-
der. Amusements, pleasures, mechanical comforts formerly 
classed as luxuries are now considered necessities even by the 
so-called poor and are offered as a vindication of contracep-
tive birth control. It is but another form of the tempta-
tion, "All these things will I give you, if falling down you 
will adore me." 

T H E REALLY POOR 

But there is a large class of really poor about whom 
Leo XIII wrote so sympathetically in his letter, "On the 
Condition of the Working Classes." These people have a 
right to a living wage from that very natural law to which 
we appealed in the beginning. There is something sardonic 
in the propaganda of the birth controllers. These poor peo-
ple have the same right to life, love and children as the 
rich. They have the right to all that which makes this pos-



BIRTH CONTROL IS WRONG I 11 

sible. Instead of a fiery agitation for a social justice which 
would alleviate the conditions of the really poor these latter 
are told: "You do not earn enough to rear children; there-
fore, you must practise contraceptive birth control." Would 
that the birth controllers would expend their magnificent 
energies in advocating social justice instead of leading the 
multitudes into a betrayal of nature and disobedience to the 
will of God. 

But real poverty, even though the result of social in-
justice, neither legitimately defends nor makes right and 
good contraceptive divices. The Church is filled with tender 
sympathy for the poor and for suffering humanity. She can 
never in the interest of that sympathy declare as good, right 
and lawful practises which betray and defy nature and 
which in the long run will without a doubt work greater 
havoc than all the ills of poverty and physical suffering. 
The Church knows that in all this birth-control propaganda 
the multitudes are being deceived by a lie that comes 
straight from the father of lies. Hence, she does not hesi-
tate to brand contraceptive practises by their true name, 
not kindnesses, not mercies to overburdened mothers or 
pocketbooks, but deadly immoral wrongs to God and human 
nature, serious sins punishable in this life and in the next. 

O N L Y O N E LAWFUL METHOD 

There is one and only one method of birth control which 
is permitted and licit and that is birth control through self 
control. It is the practise of that marital continence men-
tioned by St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians. "Such 
continence is not easy. It is possible. And it is actually 
practised far more than is often imagined. To look upon 
sex hunger as an overmastering impulse which will brook no 
control within the marital bond is to justify prostitution and 
infidelity." ("Birth Control," John M. Cooper, Ph.D.) 
There is too much insistence on the utter incapacity of man 
to resist the sexual impulse. "I can do all things in Him 
who strengthens me," says St. Paul. God who has written 
His will in man's nature will give him the strength to fulfil 
that will in whatsoever conditions he may be placed. 



BIRTH CONTROL IS WRONG I 12 

T H E "IRRESISTIBLE C U R R E N T " RESISTED 

I started out in the beginning to make answer to the 
question why the Catholic Church has set her face in stern 
and unalterable opposition to contraceptive birth control,, 
why she can never yield to what the Herald Tribune writer 
calls "the irresistible current of the age." The Church will1 

not yield to that current and sanction contraceptive birth 
control because she has no competency in the matter; be-
cause the law of God written in man's nature declares that 
such practise is evil and wrong, because it is a positive frus-
tration of a faculty designed and given primarily not for 
self-gratification but for race preservation; because only by 
the proper use of this faculty will be preserved "the inner 
sanctities of home life and the maintenance of those higher 
and loftier and nobler sentiments and affections which dis-
tinguish the home from the barnyard or the house of pros-
titution" (John M. Cooper, op. cit.); because she knows 
that nature takes terrible toll in this life and the next on 
those who violate her laws. 

The Catholic Church is opposed to contraceptive birth 
control because she recognizes the flimsy logic and the illogi-
cal sentimentality which sugar-coats the insidious poison in 
all contraceptive propaganda. She is opposed because she 
has tender sympathy for the overburdened mother and the 
afflicted poor which she has learned from the tenderest of all 
human hearts, the Heart of Jesus Christ, a sympathy which 
is founded on the knowledge that contraceptive birth con-
trol far from relieving the ills of mankind will increase them 
a thousand-fold. She is opposed because she is sure of her-
self and of her stand as the God-appointed custodian of hu-
man morals. She is opposed because she recognizes the true 
but hidden source of all contraceptive propaganda, the ser-
pent who in the beginning tempted Eve by a fruit which was 
passing fair but which brought a curse upon her womb. The 
Catholic Church is opposed, as she has been in the past and 
will be in the future, unalterably opposed to the so-called 
"irresistible current of the age." To this opposition she 
commands her children and invites all other right-thinking 
men and women. 



Catholic Evidence 
What Catholics Do Not Believe—T. J. McGrath , S.J.—5c 
The New Morality and the National Life—Jones I. Corri-

gan, S.J.—5c 
Christ and Mankind—M. J. Scott, S.J.—5c 
What Is a Catholic Attitude?—F. P. LeBuffe, S.J.—5c 
W h y Apologize?-—W. I. Lonergan, S.J.—5c 
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Man's Destiny—T. Brosnahan, S.J.—5c 
Use and Misuse—T. Brosnahan, S.J.—5c 
Temples, Polluted and Ruined—T. Brosnahan, S.J.—5c 
The Word Made Flesh—T. Brosnahan, S.J.—5c 
The Catholic Doctrine of Matrimony—F. J . Connell, 

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Catholicism True as God—M. J. Scott, S.J.—5c 
Stumbling Blocks to Catholicism—W. I. Lonergan , S.J. 

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ON MARRIAGE 
Birth Control is Wrong!—I. W. Cox, S.J.—5c 

The Church and the Sex Problem—R. H. Tierney, 
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The Catholic Doctrine of Matrimony—F. Connell, 
C.SS.R., S.T.D.—10c 

Race-Suicide and Birth-Control—Revs. Dowling, 
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Eugenics: Problems of Sex—W. I. Lonergan, S.J.— 
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