FIRST, let it be clear that the Church favors "family planning," understood as the mutual agreement of spouses in generosity and love to decide on the number of children they can properly have and raise and the space between births.
Second, the Church does not oppose artificial contraception, not because it is artificial, but because there is so much that is artificial that is beneficial: artificial hearts have saved numerous lives, artificial heart-lung machines are indispensable in open heart surgeries, and the dialysis machine, so commonplace today, is one artificial kidney. But all these artificial devices save lives or improve them. It is not so with artificial reproduction. What happens in artificial reproduction is that a person manipulates his partner or himself — by the use of an artificial device (condom, diaphragm, spermicidal jelly, intra-uterine device, injectable contraceptives, tubal ligation, vasectomy) in order to be able to have sex without the danger of conception. In other words, it is manipulation purely for one's own purposes. It is this same manipulative inclination with which the Church has issues everywhere and every time there is manipulation — whether it be the manipulation of others or the manipulation of one's power and position, or the manipulation of news or of information. What is condemnable in all this is the selfishness that grounds manipulation.
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