Q: What should I say to my Protestant friend who says the Church makes failure to go to Mass on Sundays a mortal sin to collect more money, and it prohibits birth control to make more Catholics? – Harlan
Answered by Fr. Edward McIlmail, LC
A: The Mass is the highest form of prayer in the Church. Attendance is the normal way for Catholics to keep holy the Lord’s Day, to give due worship to God as a community, to hear the Word of God, and, if a person is properly disposed, to receive Jesus in the Eucharist.
Participating at Mass is thus one of the most important ways for Catholics to nourish their faith.
And while it’s a precept of the Church that the faithful should help provide for the needs of the Church, that is not an essential part of the Mass. People can provide for the needs of the Church outside Mass time.
Besides, even people who have no money to give—such as religious with vows of poverty and the extremely poor—still are required to fulfill the Sunday obligation.
As for birth control: First, it’s good to distinguish contraception, or artificial birth control, from natural means of avoiding pregnancy (that is, abstinence or natural family planning).
The Church understands the marital act as a sign of the one-flesh union willed by God for a husband and wife. In such an act the spouses show their total acceptance of each other, including their potential fertility.
Couples who contracept fail to give themselves to each other totally. And they, in effect, slam the door on God’s participation in the act.
It’s significant that God’s first commandment to humans is “Be fertile and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). God wants children in the world!
He created this great and beautiful universe for those he makes in his own image. And he hopes that heaven will be filled with his sons and daughters.
Make no mistake: Church teaching about artificial birth control isn’t just a Catholic thing. It’s not a ploy to “make more Catholics.” If that were the case, it’s doubtful that the Church would require religious and priests to be celibate.
Rather, the teaching about birth control is valid for all people since openness to life is intrinsic to any true marriage.
Even Protestant denominations shared an opposition to contraception, until the Anglicans’ Lambeth Conference of 1930.
An aside: Even many secular economists and public officials recognize that one of the biggest problems facing many countries today is population decline.
South Korea’s fertility rate, for instance, is down to 0.7 children per woman, far below the 2.2 replacement rate. Low rates appear around the world: China (1.2), Germany (1.6), Japan and Italy (both 1.3) and the U.S (1.7).
One can imagine what nations will be like in the future when there are lots of retired people and fewer workers.
People might argue with the Church’s view on birth control. But they won’t be able to argue with nature.
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