A-okay according to church teachings. The couple need only be open to the procreative element, should God be bored one day and decide to miracle a baby at them. No demerits for post-menopausal intercourse, provided they don’t stubbornly deny God the opportunity. Seriously.
Okay. This
“all sexual acts should be open to the possibility of procreation”
is what threw me.
Funny how God’s decision to miracle a baby into someone might be thwarted by the Trojan corporation, but I digress.
That’s fine according to the Catholic Church because no one is taking any steps to prevent pregnancy. Because that’s the problem according to the Catholic Churches view- not that pregnancy is unlikely or even impossible in the absence of a miracle. The problem is that if you are using contraception for the purpose of contraception , you are not open to having a child. That’s why the Catholic Church does not forbid taking the pill for PCOS - it’s for medical treatment , not contraception. Think of it as depending how the people would react if a pregnancy occurred even though one was on the pill, or the woman was past menopause or one was believed infertile. If the reaction is " That wasn’t supposed to happen" , for the CC that’s a problem.
Using a condom is making an active, willful choice to thwart conception through artificial means, hence being classified as sinful.
It’s not - the sin is not being open to pregnancy. Which is evidenced by using medication or devices for the purpose of contraception.
Or by the man deliberately “finishing” anywhere but, well, you know where. Sorry to be blunt, but any such sexual act is right out.
Is there anything against a man getting a vasectomy as birth control!
Yup; it’s seen as an even greater sin, because it is damaging an otherwise healthy organ.
see Onan
Here is the study (unpaywalled):
I knew a teacher at a Catholic schoolmany years ago once who mentioned that one of the other teachers occasionally had severe pain from her IUD. I assume an IUD because getting a prescription for birth control pills would show up as a regular item on her benefits paid for by the Catholic School Board. (Not sure how private that information was way back when). Most Catholics I knew did not really care what the church said otherwise, when it came to regulating the number of children.
I should also point out the experience of Romania as an example. One year Ceaucescu suddenly realized that with free abortions, the number of future good socialist working class was declining precipitously. (Like the USSR and other socialist countries, since consumer goods were in short supply, the favoured method of birth control was abortion) The government abruptly forbade not only abortions but all birth control, and IIRC even instituted regular medical checks on women to ensure that nobody was performing illegal abortions. (Something the USA would never do, right?) There was a massive spike in births, that particular cohort resulted in school classes double the normal size - for that one year as it worked through the school system.
Within a year, the birth rate was back where it used to be. Women just relied on other methods to control pregnancies.