Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists, Enlarged Edition
Description
- Noonan also wrote The Scholastic Analysis of Usury, cited in Return to Order.
- cited in ch. 2 of Petri, O.P. (2006)
- Jansenism's views of marriage discussed on PDF pp. 327 ff.
- exegesis of exactly what was/were Onan's sin(s): PDF pp. 45-6
fn. 6: "A convenient summary of the positions taken by the exegesis is given by A. M. DuBarle[, O.P.], "La Bible et les Pères ont-ils parlé de la contraception?" La Vie spirituelle 15, Supplèment (1962), 575-576" (full article: pp. 573-610)
fn. 7: "J. P. Schaumberger, "Propter quale peccatum morte punitus sit Onan?" Biblica 8 (1927), 209-212"
cited passim in Roe v. Wade (PDF)
What is the legal history of abortion in ancient Rome?
Noonan, §1.1 "Contraception in the Roman Empire" pp. 24-25:
The want of men produced a crisis. Each child was valued as a citizen "born for the state" (Digesta [PDF p. 317] 37.9.1.15). Yet the Empire in its first three centuries did nothing to check infanticide or the abandonment of children by their parents. Unwilling or unable to interfere in family life, the government's main recourse was the positive encouragement of the Lex Julia et Papia *. With this view of the possibilities of official action dominant, it is a remarkable indication of the problem created by abortion and by contraception that any laws were enacted which had some relation to those practices.
*ibid. pp. 20-21:
…as early as the first century the legislation of Augustus reflected concern with a falling birth rate in the upper class. Two enactments, the Lex Julia de maritandis ordinibus of 18 B.C. and the Lex Papia Poppæa of A.D. 9 (usually referred to jointly as the Lex Julia et Papia), represent an earnest, if mild, effort to stimulate births among the governing group by a system of modest rewards and penalties."
ibid. p. 27 n. 33:
In Marcian it is stated that the Emperors Severus and Antoninus decreed that if a woman procured an abortion in herself (the means not being specified) she should be exiled, "for it may be considered dishonorable for a woman to deprive her husband of children with impunity" (Digest [PDF p. 799] 47.11.4).
Originally published in 1965, Contraception received unanimous acclaim from all quarters as the first thorough, scholarly, objective analysis of Catholic doctrine on birth control. More than ever this subject is of acute concern to a world facing serious population problems, and the author has written an important new appendix examining the development of and debates over the doctrine in the past twenty years. Noonan traces the Church's position from its earliest foundations to the present, and analyzes the conflicts and personal decisions that have affected the theologians' teachings on the subject.