Folio 623

Pius XI, 1922-1939

printed p. 591 · pdf p. 623

desires without the consequent burden; others on the ground that they can neither observe continence, nor because of difficulties of the mother or of family circumstances cannot have offspring.

But surely no reason, not even the gravest, can bring it about that what is intrinsically against nature becomes in accord with nature, and honorable. Since, moreover, the conjugal act by its very nature is destined for the generating of offspring, those who in the exercise of it deliberately deprive it of its natural force and power, act contrary to nature, and do something that is shameful and intrinsically bad.

Therefore, it is no wonder that Sacred Scripture itself testifies that the divine Majesty looks upon this nefarious crime with the greatest hatred, and sometimes has punished it with death, as St. Augustine relates: "It is illicit and disgraceful for one to lie even with his legitimate wife, when conception of offspring is prevented. Onan did this; God killed him therefor."1

2240. Since, therefore, certain persons, manifestly departing from Christian doctrine handed down from the beginning without interruption, have recently decided that another doctrine should be preached on this method of acting, the Catholic Church, to whom God himself has entrusted the teaching and the defense of the integrity and purity of morals, placed in the midst of this ruination of morals, in order that she may preserve the chastity of the marriage contract immune from this base sin, and in token of her divine mission raises high her voice through Our mouth and again proclaims: Any use of the marriage act, in the exercise of which it is designedly deprived of its natural power of procreating life, infringes on the law of God and of nature, and those who have committed any such act are stained with the guilt of serious sin.

Therefore, We admonish the priests who devote time to hearing confessions, and others who have care of souls, in accord with Our highest authority, not to permit the faithful committed to them to err in this most serious law of God, and much more to keep themselves immune from false opinions of this kind, and not to connive in them in any way.

  1. St. Augustine, De coniug. adult., 2, 12 [ML 40, 482]; cf. Gen. 38:8-10; S. Poenitent., April 3, June 3, 1916.—The following responses first appeared in the work Institutiones Alphonsianae, authored by Cl. Marc, t. II, (1917), n. 2116 f.

    In the response of April 3, it is declared: a) that a wife because of a threat of death or grave injury can cooperate in an interrupted copulation with her husband; b) but by no means can she do so, not even for the sake of avoiding death, in a sodomitic copulation.

    In the response of June 3, it is declared: a) that a wife is bound to positive resistance, when a man wishes to use an instrument to practice onanism;—b) that in this case passive resistance does not suffice;—c) that a man who uses such instruments is truly likened to an oppressor, against whom the woman should oppose that resistance which a virgin does to an invader. [See the text itself in the cited work; or, in A. Veermeersch, De castitate (1919), n. 263, and in other authors.] ↩