Position of the Church

Whether actual or potential, human life is sacred. What I mean is that moral law does not allow us to place impediments to the natural origins and course of human life because human life is sacred. As Pope John XIII once recalled: "Human life is sacred, from its very inception it reveals the creating hand of God". In the Encyclical Humanae Vitae of Pope Paul VI (1968) is written: "The Church calling men to the observance of the norms of the natural law, as interpreted by her constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marriage act (the Latin text: quilibet matrimonii usus) must remain open to the transmission of life" (see paragraph 11). That's the very reason why the Church has ever defended chaste relationships for each one's state of life whether married or single. It does seem that the devil is inserting into people's minds such deceptive permissiveness of unbridled sexual licentiousness and infidelities through the variouscontraceptive devices and birth control mechanisms. It's a wrong kind of tolereance of human weaknesses that only ends in mischief and broken marriages.. They want to escape the resulting responsibilites of bearing children. Let's not forget that among the meassages of the Fatima apparitions (1917) the Virgin Mother was warning us that many souls are lost in Hell because of sins of the flesh.

The following is taken from an address by John Paul II to the bishops of the United States of America:

With the frankness of the Gospel, the compassion of Pastors and with the charity of Christ, you have dealt with the question of the indissolubility of marriage, correctly stating: "The covenant between a man and a woman united in Christian marriage is as indissoluble and irrevocable as is the love of God for his people and the love of Christ for his Church". Exalting the beauty of marriage, you have rightly taken a position against both the theory of contraception and contraceptive practice, as did the encyclical letter Humanae vitae. I myself, today, with the same conviction as Paul VI, ratify the teaching of that encyclical issued by my Predecessor "in virtue of the mandate confided us by Christ".

Describing the sexual union between husband and wife as a special expression of their covenant of love, you have correctly said: "The sexual relationship is a human and moral good only within the sphere of marriage: outside marriage it is immoral".

As men who speak with "words of truth and the power of God" (2Corinthians 6,7), as authentic teachers of the law of God and as compassionate pastors, you have correctly said: Homosexual practice (which is to be distinguished from homosexual orientation) is morally deceitful".

"...Both the Church's teaching, according to its constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have stated without any hesitation that masturbation is a practice grievously and intrinsically disordered" (Declaration of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith concerning certain questions of sexual ethics, December 29, 1975, No. 9).