Marital Relations Quotes



This is one of the earliest Christian statements about the immorality of contraception. There was no official position of the Roman Catholic Church against contraception, until 1930 when Pope Pius XI issued his stricture. See {625105}. The reference to Onan is to the Old Testament. Onan however was not using contraception. He was masturbating. Augustine’s view was that everything sexual was designed by God for procreation. Therefore, any sexual function, not for the purpose of procreation, is inappropriate. Contraceptive techniques were used in Biblical times as well as later. The only difference was the technological sophistication and reliability of the different devices and methods.


This directive was a very enlightened improvement over the then exiting customs regarding menstruating women. The existing Jewish tradition, also observed by many others, was for men to shun a menstruating woman and banish her to a ritual bathhouse. While menstruating, a woman was not to touch anyone and could not even prepare food as she was regarded as “unclean”. While not a completely modern pronouncement—intercourse was still banned—it was a great reform where Islam led the world. It is hard for many in modern times to consider Islam as a modernizing force for reform given the archaic view of most things, but in its beginning, Islam was a great force of reform and progress. Later the religion went through a consolidation and intellectual closing and allowed no further reform. Indeed, it made reform a crime often punishable by death.