Married Love and Contraception (Osservatore Romano (English Ed.), Oct. 10, 1988) [partly updated]
For years marital contraception has been considered in the West as a normal and even natural practice. As applied to marriage, the current contraceptive mentality holds that the procreative orientation or potential of spousal sexual union can be artificially and deliberately nullified, without thereby denaturalizing the conjugal act or in any way marring its capacity to effect conjugal union and give unique expression to marital love.
Your issue of March 1 has just reached me in Rome. Louise Ni Chríodáin, in her article on High Court Judge Rory O'Hanlon, quotes me as "condemning all acts of sexual intercourse that are not for procreation".
In protesting and totally rejecting this, may I say that one would expect a more exact reading of the sources before being accused of a position that no one in the Catholic Church holds.
Your issue of September 21st has just reached me. Your Political Correspondent, commenting on a recent Judgment of Mr. Justice Rory O'Hanlon which quotes from my book Covenanted Happiness, seems to question the propriety of a High Court Judge invoking 'Catholic theology' on the matter of contraception.