Karol Wojtyla, better known as Pope John Paul II wrote in his book “Love and Responsibility” that contraception damages love and intimacy. He was not of course referring to any physical sensations but how man and wife should learn that each act of love can have a consequence: in other words every time a couple make love they should be prepared for the fact that a child can be conceived. He argued that this knowledge increases intimacy and love in a relationship. However Wojtyla was also inadvertently providing a cast iron argument in favour of contraception.

This argument assumes the false position that sex outside of marriage and stable relationships doesn’t exist. If we temporarily ignore the Ten Commandments and look at this from a secular perspective: what is wrong with recreational consenting sex?

Christianity has always looked upon sex outside of marriage as a shameful act but marriage is a relatively new institution in human evolution – sex isn’t. Marriage was created by Jews as a way of ensuring a woman had material security. It was the first piece of feminist legislation in the world.

But let’s look at the biology first. Women were designed to carry babies. Gestation takes of course nine months and for some time after most women are unable or unwilling to embark upon further baby making. This means that in terms of pure mechanics the average woman does not create life more often than every two years.

The man’s role in proceedings is relatively simple and the mother and baby can survive completely without male help after conception. Today this can disadvantage women and seemingly give men the better deal but our male ancestors had other worries. Namely survival. In order for the women and children to have a safe existence men needed to hunt wild and dangerous animals and fight other men for land or food. This meant that many men died before reaching the age of 21 that in the English speaking world is the age when you are no longer a child. For the species to survive he needed to reproduce and fast

If marriage had existed and if men had been programmed to be monogamous our species would have met the same fate as the Neanderthal. Not enough children would have been conceived because the average man simply wouldn’t have lived long enough. However when we started to be civilised and live in cities and learned to farm and trade this meant that men’s life expectancy increased greatly and in some cases men lived nearly as long as women.

Yet men and women are still programmed the same way genetically as they were when we first emerged from Africa. By biblical times in the great cities of the Middle East men were living longer lives but still following their biological instincts and moving from one woman to the next. As the world was becoming more and more commercial this meant that women were becoming pregnant and the man was often already looking for his next ‘target’ and would simply abandon the mother of his child who would have very limited possibility to earn enough money to feed her child. Marriage was created merely to protect women and has no biological or spiritual purpose – apart from its later sanctification by first the Jews, then the Christians.

Today in modern Britain possibly due to a decline in morals, and a rise in promiscuity and alcohol and the growing benefit culture many men are echoing their ancestors’ behaviour and spreading their seed and not taking the responsibility. John Paul II was right in so many ways about responsibility but what he ignored was that as sex and marriage are historically and genetically unconnected so therefore within a marriage why does it decrease love to practice contraception?

It is very easy to argue that the late pope was being hypocritical by stressing the immorality of contraception when at the same time not discouraging what he himself referred to as “periodic continence” i.e. avoiding sex on a woman’s most fertile days. I cannot honestly see any ethical difference.

Contraception can actually increase responsibility both in a relationship and in the wider world. Our species is in no longer in danger of extinction and the word is already greatly overpopulated so it could be argued that contraception shows responsibility to the future of our planet.

Returning to my earlier question: what is wrong with recreational sex? Simply if it is not degrading or has no unwanted or unplanned consequences to either adult party, there is nothing wrong.  It is the most natural thing in the world.

So when the current pontiff expresses views as he has done recently that the use of condoms in Aids-ridden Africa is immoral he is showing that as spiritual leader of over half the world’s Christians that he and his organisation are either completely ignorant of human nature or worse: indifferent to suffering. You cannot stop people having sex and surely we all have a responsibility not to spread sexual diseases.

If sex is pleasurable to both parties but neither want the financial, emotional burden of parenthood or the curse of AIDS how is contraception not the ultimate act of responsibility?

It is time that the Catholic Church moved out of the Middle Ages and addressed the issues of the modern world.