[Question:]{.underline} Can the use of artificial birth control ever be without culpability?
[Answer:]{.underline} An action which is in itself intrinsically evil can never be objectively moral or permissible, no matter how good the intentions of the person who performs the act. However, it does not necessarily follow that a person is subjectively culpable for the act. This is really a question of ignorance, and whether this ignorance is culpable or not. It is certainly true that there are many persons, both Catholic and not, who are ignorant of the gravity of this mortal sin. Does this exempt them from the subjective imputability of formal sin or not?
There can be no doubt that ignorance can and frequently does reduce the culpability of an act, for it is opposed to the advertence or knowledge required for an act to be truly human and a mortal sin. The typical case is when a man shoots at what he thinks to be a deer, and it turns out to be his friend that he kills. Ignorance excuses from the culpability, provided that it was not from negligence of hunting rules that the error occurred. However, it is also clear that ignorance is not just a wound of original sin that darkens the intellect from seeking and perceiving supernatural truth, but it is frequently willful, at least in its source, and consequently deliberate and culpable. It is the case of a person who simply does not want to know what the Church teaches on moral issues, such as artificial birth control..
Consequently, some distinctions have to be made to elucidate the gravity of the ignorance.
The first distinction is between vincible and invincible ignorance. Invincible ignorance is not culpable, and it is the ignorance of the person who is in good faith. It is without any fault of his own that he is in error.
There are three different degrees of vincible ignorance, of increasing gravity: simply vincible ignorance (where there is slight negligence), and then crass or supine ignorance (due to grave negligence0, which is a mortal sin, and finally affected or deliberate ignorance, when a person deliberately choses to be ignorant. This is the most frightening state of all, for it closes a person`s soul to the influence of the truth and grace.
The fundamental question is whether or not there can be invincible ignorance over the immorality of artificial birth control. This is resolved by the distinction that St. Thomas Aquinas makes, between the primary and the secondary precepts of the natural law. No man is invincibly ignorant of the primary precepts, which are the ten commandments as they stand. No man can be invincibly ignorant of the immorality of adultery, abortion or murder, or be excused by ignorance. However, men may be ignorant of the secondary precepts of the natural law, which flow logically from the commandments, but are not necessarily evident to everyone. This is the case with polygamy and divorce, for example, for which Almighty God gave dispensations in the Old Law, account of the Israelites` hardness of heart.
The immorality of artificial birth control is likewise a secondary precept of the natural law, flowing from the first purpose of marriage: children. This is not a moral law that is immediately obvious to everyone. In fact, a vast number of those who believe in God, such as Protestants, cannot see a problem with it, although it is manifestly against the natural law. This is, alas, also not infrequently the case with Catholics in our present time, since they are being told that nowadays the priests unofficially tolerate these practices. With Pope Benedict XVI stating that now condoms “can be the first step in the direction of a moralization“, implicitly allowing them, it can hardly be doubted that it is possible for even Catholics to be in invincible ignorance on this particular question. If they are in invincible ignorance, they are not culpable for the material sin that they commit by using them, although the grave offense to Almighty God still exists.
However, this does not mean that those who use artificial contraceptives are always or even frequently exempt from fault. Sometimes, especially in the case of practicing Novus Ordo Catholics, the ignorance will be simply vincible. They make do not hear from their priests that artificial contraception is wrong, and do not see why they should research it themselves. Their ignorance is due to the lack of application to the correct living of the Catholic Faith, but not from any contempt of the Church`s moral teachings. There is at least venial culpability. Sometimes, it will be crass or supine ignorance, in which a person makes no effort to know the Church`s teaching on such subjects, by such false reasoning as to say that the priests have no right to control my life. This is clearly a mortal sin of ignorance, as is not infrequently the case of those who do not practice the Faith. Finally, there is the possibility of affected to deliberate ignorance, in which a person has only contempt for the Church`s teachings, nor any desire to know what they are.
As a consequence of these distinctions, we need to be careful on how we judge and how we respond when we hear that couples are using artificial birth control. If they are not Catholic, they will not infrequently be invincibly ignorant. Consequently we should avoid personal judgments of culpability, and rather focus on more fundamental issues of the natural law and of Faith. Novus Ordo Catholics might admit also to using such artificial birth control, and also be in invincible or simply invincible ignorance. In such a case, a clear explanation of the reasons why it is immoral should suffice to set them on the right path. Those whose ignorance is supine or deliberate are going to require prayer and penance, for they are unlikely to accept correction.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.