In 1930 the Anglican Church held it’s Lambeth Conference. They decided that contraception should be allowed in extreme circumstances for married couples. According to an article in the evangelical magazine Touchstone (which I recommend btw) the reason this decision was made in the face of Scripture and Tradition was that many anglican clergy were already contracepting and wanted the okay for the sin they were committing. I can’t find the article at the moment.

The decision caused Pope Pius XI to immediately respond and Casti Connubii was written in the same year. If you haven’t read it-take the opportunity.

In CC the Holy Father reiterated the holiness of marriage and its place in our relationship with God the giver of Life. 

But the door had been opened and more and more Christians began to see contraception as a possibility and as in the West material wealth increased there was less willingness to have children.

The most well known and widely used modern contraception is The Pill as it has become known. It is a group of pills of various mixtures of synthetic hormone designed to make a woman infertile. The history of the Pill is well told and very ugly. The side effects and damage done to the health and lives of women-including those who died-did nothing to stem the tide of use. In her lecture ‘Contraception, Why Not?’ Dr Smith gives a pretty thorough overview of history post 1930 and the fall out from contraception.

You can listen to it on MP3 HERE

I am not having the time to write about this properly so I will leave it there for now.