NEO-MALTHUSIANISM. - A particular form of birth control (v.) which, originally taking as its starting point the theories of Malthus and freeing itself from the honest means he proposed (delay of marriage, continence between spouses, etc.), advocates absolute freedom in the use of means to avoid procreation.
Given the work of Christianization carried out from the time of the "reform" onward, the principles of n.-m. had a rapid and very widespread diffusion and are largely in use in present-day society. An insistent and widely organized propaganda, at whose foundations one cannot exclude even commercial interests, has led to an incredible diffusion of contraceptive methods, whose characteristic may be said always to be directed at vitiating the intrinsic mechanism of the sexual act. While there exist States, such as, for example, Italy (Penal Code, art. 553), which, concerned about the grave demographic, social and hygienic damages produced by unconditional limitationist propaganda and by neo-Malthusian methods, prohibit it with more or less severe penalties; in others, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon countries, it is supported and taught through specialized societies and clinics. In this sense there work in England the "Malthusian League," in Holland the "Niew-Malthusianische Bond"; with its center in America an "International Neo-Malthusian and Birth-Control Federation," etc.; many newspapers have as their specific aim such propaganda: "The Malthusian," "Birth-Control News," "Die Neue Generation," etc.
The methods proposed for contraceptive purposes are represented by artifices of a chemical or mechanical nature or by the manner of performing the sexual act, such as to bring about the death of the male sexual element after its emission, or to prevent it from reaching the ovum and fertilizing it.
All contraceptive means, while from the standpoint of efficacy, although giving a certain percentage of safety (some up to 93-98%), never succeed in being infallible, from the medical point of view are harmful more or less gravely to local integrity and general health. Gynecologists of standing have described and extensively documented the local utero-ovarian manifestations, and general ones in relation to neuro-vegetative imbalance (general malaise, asthenia, dizziness, insomnia, migraine, etc.), affecting the various organic systems (digestive: nausea, diarrhea, constipation, gastralgia, etc.; circulatory: tachycardia, palpitations, attacks of false angina pectoris, etc.; endocrine); affecting neuro-psychic equilibrium: hysteria, neuropsychasthenia, depressive psychoses, anxious states up to Freud's anxiety neurosis, apart from the sense of guilt that weighs on the conscience of persons endowed with moral and religious sensitivity (v. Frankel, Congr. della Soc. ed. d'Ostetr. e Ginec., in Arch. f. Gyn., 144 [1931], p. 86; Clivio, Atti della Soc. Ital. di Ostetr. e Ginec., 36 [1939], p. 621 and bibliography at the end of the entry). Various authors (Lanz, Schroder,
Löfler, Sellheim, Goeth, Schimitz, etc.) furthermore hold it possible that spermatozoa that have escaped killing, but are in part altered by the chemical substances used in contraceptive practice, while retaining their fertilizing power, may produce defective beings. In some forms of control, the impossibility of reabsorption of seminal fluid by the woman could give rise in her to true syndromes of sexual deficiency (of which Mattei already spoke as early as 1863) characterized by irregularity and progressive diminution of the menses, nervousness, a tendency to melancholic and anxious forms, etc. It must here be said in particular that equally harmful, and indeed far more so than the others, from the point of view of both local and general damages and particularly neuro-psychic ones, are interrupted acts, so widely diffused, particularly in the lower social classes.
From the moral point of view, while, without doubt, even to a crude judgment it appears clearly that the killing of the already conceived fetus, all the more so if sufficiently developed, is a patent violation of the right to life (v. ABORTO; EMBRIOLOGIA), less intuitive might seem the malice existing in the voluntary deformation of the human sexual act. If one considers, however, that the generative act is a natural act, ordered by God, the author of nature, to a determined end, an end which in the case in question is generation, one will easily understand how man has the freedom to perform or to omit this act, but in the positive case must perform it integrally. To corrupt such an act is a deviation from the natural order, a sin which, if the deformation is essential, is in itself grave. In the case in question there is no doubt that the deformation is essential, given that in this way the attainment of the act's proper end is rendered impossible. The means used by n.-m. are deliberately directed at introducing such a deformation into the natural act, impeding the end of the procreation of offspring, aiming instead at attaining only the instrumental pleasure, represented by sexual enjoyment. Should the deformation of the act be lacking, but the purpose of enjoyment and of the refusal of offspring remain the same, although one could not speak in the strict sense of n.-m., the individual could sin in view of the motives and the end that move his action (v. NASCITE, CONTROLLO delle).
The Church has always condemned neo-Malthusian practices as a grave transgression of the law of nature (S. Penitenzieria, various responses from 15 Nov. 1816 to 3 June 1916; S. Congr. del S. Ufficio, 20 May 1851, 19 Apr. 1853, 26 March 1897, 23 Nov. 1922). While the ministers of other religions capitulated, albeit reluctantly, before the spread of the evil, as the 15th resolution of the Lambeth Conference of 1930 proves, Pius XI solemnly proclaimed the doctrine according to which "any use of marriage, in which by human malice the act is deprived of its natural procreative virtue, goes against the law of God and of nature; that those who dare to commit such actions render themselves guilty of grave sin" (AAS, 22 [1930], p. 560). The solemn form with which the Supreme Pontiff introduces this declaration has suggested to many that here we are dealing with an infallible teaching ex cathedra (cf. A. Vermeersch, Cathéchisme du mariage chrétien d'après l'enciclique «Casti connubii», Bruges 1931, pp. 90-91). The encyclical, descending to detail, has also given specific norms regarding the behavior of the spouse constrained to cooperate materially in illicit neo-Malthusian practices (v. MATRIMONIO. VIII. USO DEL M.).
Bibliography7 works
Giuseppe De Nino-Pietro Palazzini