On Condoms, Intentionality, and the Natural Law

My posts on condoms have been generously commented on by Friend of Thomas.  His last one in particular made a very good point, which brings up some things crucial to the question.  I post it here along with my response.

Hi again Kevin,

I’m glad there is a Pope and those upon whom he relies to resolve these questions. Let me just mention 2 points from Aquinas that your post brings to mind, which explain why this is complicated and not settled in all cases.
First, an intention for Aquinas is “an act of the will with regard to an end”; thus, a condom doesn’t have a contraceptive intention, only persons who use them for contraceptive ends. Second, Thomas teaches that an act is unnatural to man, precisely to the extent that it is against reason, which specifies human nature. Thus, there is the question of how we today should understand Thomas’s vice against nature in light of his broader moral theory. It has to at least allow for NFP, which Thomas doesn’t explicitly address; following Thomas, the Church came only slowly to accept this in the 20th century.

Best wishes for this Holy Season

Friend of Thomas,

Thanks for your comments.  Your two points and recognition of their implications are very similar to the points and conclusions brought up by Fr. Martin Rhonheimer of Santa Croce, who has been the leading moral philosopher arguing for the legitimacy of condoms in some cases, striving to do so even from St. Thomas’ own principles, or, as you call it, his broader moral theory.  The arguments, however, I simply do not find convincing.

As you know, the good moral act requires the concurrence of moral goodness in object, intention, and circumstance.  If any one of these is bad, and the agent knows it, the act is a sin, since it indicates a bad will in the agent.  “Good is from the integral cause, evil is from any defect,” as Pseudo-Dionysius says (section xxx).

I actually agree with you that the couple who uses a condom to prevent HIV transmission does not have a contraceptive intention.  Some moral theologians, who are otherwise “on my side” on this issue, disagree with me on that, but I agree with Rhonheimer and you here.  The intention of a serodiscordant married couple that freely engages in sexual intercourse with a condom to prevent disease transmission, particularly if they are already infertile, is no more contraceptive than the homosexual couple that uses a condom.  Nevertheless, the object of the act is wrong, whether you call it objective contraception or the sin against nature.  Rhonheimer, of course, denies this, saying that the object would not be contraceptive either, since “we cannot define the moral object of an act without including in its definition (or description) a basic intentionality” (“On the Use of Condoms to Prevent Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.”  National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 5, no. 1 [spring 2005]: 45).

What Rhonheimer points out is true insofar as no act is moral except insofar as is proceeds from the will, which cannot but act with ulterior intentions.  But if this would mean that an exterior action (which, after all, is the first object of the will, making the act to be what it is, ST I-II, q. 1, a. 3, ad 3,  ST, I-II, q. 20, a. 1, ad 1) could have no rightness or wrongness independent of further intended ends, then all of objective morality falls.  St. Thomas says it well:

It happens that in those things which are ordered to something else, that something may be good from the fact alone that that it is ordered to something else, just as bitter potion is good from the fact alone that it is healing.  Wherefore, the goodness of the health and the potion are not two different goodnesses, but one and the same.  But sometimes that which is ordered to something else has in itself some notion of the good, even besides its order to another good, as tasty medicine has the notion of the delightful good aside from the fact that it is healing.  Thus, therefore, it must be said that when the exterior act is good or bad only from its order to the end, then the goodness or badness of the act of the will, which per se regards the end, is completely the same as the goodness or badness of the exterior act, which regards the end by the mediation of the act of the will.  But when the exterior act has goodness or badness according to itself, namely, according to its matter or circumstances, then the goodness of the exterior act is one goodness, and the goodness of the will that is from the end is another, nevertheless, in such a way that the both the goodness of the end from the will redounds to the exterior act, and the goodness of the matter and circumstances redounds to the act of the will (ST, I-II, q. 20, a. 3).

The intended end may be praiseworthy, but the exterior act/object chosen under that intention may still have its own disorder.  No one, after all, intends evil per se when they act.  They can’t, since evil is a privation.  The adulterer seeks the good of delight, not the disorder of “not my wife.”  Even if that gives him thrills, he seeks it for the thrills.   And yet, adultery is listed as a per se evil even by Aristotle.

But not every action nor every passion admits of a mean; for some have names that already imply badness, e.g., spite, shamelessness, envy, and in the case of actions adultery, theft, murder; for all of these and suchlike things imply by their names that they are themselves bad, and not the excesses or deficiencies of them. It is not possible, then, ever to be right with regard to them; one must always be wrong. Nor does goodness or badness with regard to such things depend on committing adultery with the right woman, at the right time, and in the right way, but simply to do any of them is to go wrong.(Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. II, ch. 6, 1107a9-17).

With regard to contraception, the measurement of whether it takes place or not is more to be measured by the exterior action than by the intention.  Why do I say that?  Well, precisely because of the permitted use of periodic continence, as you point out.  While Rhonheimer does plenty of mental gymnastics to prove that periodic continence is not sinful because it really doesn’t involve an intentional closure to procreation, Pope Paul VI simply disagrees:

It cannot be denied that in each case [i.e., contraception and periodic continence] the married couple, for acceptable reasons, are both perfectly clear in their intention to avoid children and wish to make sure that none will result (Humanae Vitae 16).

So why is it allowed?  Because the exterior act implies no disorder of reason in itself.  The contracepting couple makes use of the marital act while rendering impossible its primary end (as Pope John Paul II still calls it).  The couple practicing periodic continence does not do this.  Indeed, if their intention is excessive, they, too, may be sinning.  This would be the case if, despite their use of periodic continence alone, they have fallen in to what has come to be called the “contraceptive mentality.”  But if its reasonable to forego conceiving for a while, they are not sinning.  Neither in object (exterior action) do they contracept, nor is their intention unreasonable.

Whether you call it objective contraception or the sin against nature (to be honest, with the barrier methods, I see no difference), the exterior action (sex with a condom) is against the natural law.  Investigating the intention will not change that.  It is true that the natural law is a law of reason, as you and Rhonheimer point out.  But reason sees an order in nature that it is reasonable to follow as it strives to actualize the potencies that are present in nature.  After all, the institutor of nature was wise. Furthermore, He gave us our liberty so that we would also be agents in our own journey toward Him, our final end, not so that we could wield it as we will to set ourselves up as deities beside him.  And the order of nature is far more important to follow when certain natural potencies touch upon the common good.

…it must not be counted a light sin if someone procures the emission of seed outside the due end of generation and education, because of the fact that it is either a light sin or so sin if someone uses some part of his body for another use other than that to which it is ordered according to nature, as, for example, if someone should walk with his hands, or do something with his feet that is normally to be done with one’s hands: since through such disordered uses, the good of man is not impeded much. But the disordered emission of seed is repugnant to the good of nature, which is the conservation of the species (Summa Contra Gentiles, Bk. 3, ch. 122).

Lastly, I do believe in the development of doctrine.  But in the notion of development, reversals of previous doctrine are not included.  I think Humanae Vitae is very much based on the traditional view of the natural law, just as many of its critics claim.  You say that the Church only permitted periodic continence in the 20th century.  St. Alphonsus permits it in the 18th:

That coitus may be licit in matrimony, it suffices that the act be per se suitable for generation; but that it does not come about, is per accidens…
From the cases mentioned, we consequently resolve that it is licit to use matrimony: firstly, for the sake of generation, although this does not necessarily have to be intended while it is being exercised, as long as it is not positively impeded.  Nay, sometimes it may even be excluded by a simple desire, for example, by a poor man, lest he be burdened too much with offspring (Theologia Moralis, Lib. VI, tr. vi, cap. ii, dub. ii, art. 1, 924, 927).

It was permitted by the Sacred Penitentiary in 1880:

Q.: Whether it the use of matrimony may be licit on only those days in which conception is more difficult?
A: The spouses using the aforesaid mode are not to be troubled… (DS 3148).

This was repeated by Casti Connubii 59, again by the Sacred Penitentiary in 1932, by Pope Pius XII in his Allocution to Midwives, and of course by Humanae Vitae.  Furthermore, while you are correct that Thomas couldn’t address NFP in his time, I certainly think he would see no problem with it.  St. Thomas certainly saw sexual intercourse as a marital right, as long as at least one of the goods of marriage was intended, and none was obstructed:

Just as the goods of matrimony make matrimony decent and holy insofar as they are possessed habitually, so also they make the act of matrimony decent when they are actually intended so far as concerns those two goods which respect the act itself.  Wherefore, when spouses come together for the sake of procreating offspring or so that they may give what is due to each other, which pertains to conjugal faith, they are totally excused from sin. (In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 2, a. 2)

Having said all of this, I am very grateful for your discussion, Friend of Thomas, and I enjoy the conversation.  After all, “there can be disagreement among friends without prejudice to friendship, because to agree or disagree in speculative things is not subject to the will, since the intellect is forced by reason” (In III Sent., d. 27, q. 2, a. 1).