By using birth control other than natural family planning, you are putting barriers on God's plan. Natural family planning IS encouraged because you are protecting yourself but still opening up to God's plan for you.

Birth control, or contraception, is not only "discouraged" by the Church, but it is deemed a mortal or grave sin. This is an important point overlooked by many of today's Catholics. Contraception, as the name implies, is "against conception." By using contraception you are effectively turning away from God by accepting your own role in pro-creation, but leaving God out of the process. It's like saying "thanks" for giving us sex, but "no thanks" for the consequences.

The Church does not believe in artificial birth control because using birth control not only says "I/we don't want to take the natural conseqeunces of sex which is for the purpose of procreation {not just for it, but a major and integral part}, but I/we don't care what God thinks about this." It's saying that you don't want to work with God and be partners with him in his will. If he doesn't want a woman to conceive, it won't happen. Birth control says that the humans involved don't want it to happen, and whatever God has planned, it's taking a backseat. NFP as a form of birth control is accepted because it encourages knowledge of self and communication between partners, and it does not artifically attempt to interfere with God's plans. As I said before, if God doesn't want a woman pregnant, she will not be. Also, there are at least three other reasons the Church does not accept non-natural birth control. Things like condoms are not acceptable, because of a relationship to the story of Onan and Tamar in the Old Testament. "(9)so when he went in to his brother's wife, he wasted his seed on the ground in order not to give offspring to his brother. 10But what he did was displeasing in the sight of the LORD; so He took his life also. (NASB Gen 38) Birth control such as the Pill and hormonal means are unacceptable becuase they can cause abortions. Finally, scientific research and logical consensus have determined that where there is a proliferation of artificial birth control, there is a surge in selfish sexual behaviors and results such as out of wedlock sex and children and abortions.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s2c2a6.htm#2370 * The fecundity of marriage 2366 Fecundity is a gift, an end of marriage, for conjugal love naturally tends to be fruitful. A child does not come from outside as something added on to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfillment. So the Church, which is "on the side of life,"151 teaches that "it is necessary that each and every marriage act remain ordered per se to the procreation of human life."152 "This particular doctrine, expounded on numerous occasions by the Magisterium, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act."153 2367 Called to give life, spouses share in the creative power and fatherhood of God.154 "Married couples should regard it as their proper mission to transmit human life and to educate their children; they should realize that they are thereby cooperating with the love of God the Creator and are, in a certain sense, its interpreters. They will fulfill this duty with a sense of human and Christian responsibility."155 2368 A particular aspect of this responsibility concerns the regulation of procreation. For just reasons, spouses may wish to space the births of their children. It is their duty to make certain that their desire is not motivated by selfishness but is in conformity with the generosity appropriate to responsible parenthood. Moreover, they should conform their behavior to the objective criteria of morality: When it is a question of harmonizing married love with the responsible transmission of life, the morality of the behavior does not depend on sincere intention and evaluation of motives alone; but it must be determined by objective criteria, criteria drawn from the nature of the person and his acts criteria that respect the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love; this is possible only if the virtue of married chastity is practiced with sincerity of heart.156 2369 "By safeguarding both these essential aspects, the unitive and the procreative, the conjugal act preserves in its fullness the sense of true mutual love and its orientation toward man's exalted vocation to parenthood."157 2370 Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality.158 These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, "every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" is intrinsically evil:159 Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality. . . . The difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle . . . involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality.160 2371 "Let all be convinced that human life and the duty of transmitting it are not limited by the horizons of this life only: their true evaluation and full significance can be understood only in reference to man's eternal destiny."161 2372 The state has a responsibility for its citizens' well-being. In this capacity it is legitimate for it to intervene to orient the demography of the population. This can be done by means of objective and respectful information, but certainly not by authoritarian, coercive measures. The state may not legitimately usurp the initiative of spouses, who have the primary responsibility for the procreation and education of their children.162 In this area, it is not authorized to employ means contrary to the moral law. The gift of a child 2373 Sacred Scripture and the Church's traditional practice see in large families a sign of God's blessing and the parents' generosity.163 2374 Couples who discover that they are sterile suffer greatly. "What will you give me," asks Abraham of God, "for I continue childless?"164 And Rachel cries to her husband Jacob, "Give me children, or I shall die!"165 2375 Research aimed at reducing human sterility is to be encouraged, on condition that it is placed "at the service of the human person, of his inalienable rights, and his true and integral good according to the design and will of God."166 2376 Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple (donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus), are gravely immoral. These techniques (heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization) infringe the child's right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage. They betray the spouses' "right to become a father and a mother only through each other."167 2377 Techniques involving only the married couple (homologous artificial insemination and fertilization) are perhaps less reprehensible, yet remain morally unacceptable. They dissociate the sexual act from the procreative act. The act which brings the child into existence is no longer an act by which two persons give themselves to one another, but one that "entrusts the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and biologists and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person. Such a relationship of domination is in itself contrary to the dignity and equality that must be common to parents and children."168 "Under the moral aspect procreation is deprived of its proper perfection when it is not willed as the fruit of the conjugal act, that is to say, of the specific act of the spouses' union . . . . Only respect for the link between the meanings of the conjugal act and respect for the unity of the human being make possible procreation in conformity with the dignity of the person."169 2378 A child is not something owed to one, but is a gift. The "supreme gift of marriage" is a human person. A child may not be considered a piece of property, an idea to which an alleged "right to a child" would lead. In this area, only the child possesses genuine rights: the right "to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents," and "the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception."170 2379 The Gospel shows that physical sterility is not an absolute evil. Spouses who still suffer from infertility after exhausting legitimate medical procedures should unite themselves with the Lord's Cross, the source of all spiritual fecundity. They can give expression to their generosity by adopting abandoned children or performing demanding services for others. Further: 2399 The regulation of births represents one of the aspects of responsible fatherhood and motherhood. Legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means (for example, direct sterilization or contraception).

The Church does not merely discourage the use of birth control, it condemns it. Sexuality is a gift, designed to be shared between one man and one woman within the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. This gift is about total giving of self, mirroring, to a limited degree (so as to not be misunderstood as some sort of false implication that Christ was sexually active), Christ's giving of Himself totally in death for the forgiveness of our sins. When contracepting, you are essentially saying "You can have part of me" for giving yourself totally to another (as part of living totally for another) includes all natural elements of the beautiful, sexual act. God designed us to work precisely this way, so why tamper with it? This is where the Church stands in light of Her 2000 years of Tradition through that which has been carried down by Apostolic succession, including, but not limited to, the successor to St. Peter, our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, in accordance with Sacred Scripture.

According to Monty Python (who are always right), "Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great; if a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate"

another way for the church to try to control people's lives. sometimes worse than the govnt

The Lord commanded Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:28) indicating that he wanted them to give themselves to each other in order to allow him to bring about new life. God's command had to do with the reproductive aspect of sex, with the physical pleasure being a wonderful accompanying gift; to deny God his right to create new life out of a selfish desire for mere physical gratification is a serious sin. In fact, God slew Onan for committing this very sin (Genesis 38:6-10). Ananias and his wife Sapphira were struck down for committing the same type of sin, what St. Peter called lying to God (Acts 5:1-11); artificial birth control forces those who practice it to do just that. Before 1930, every Christian Church condemned artificial birth control as objectively evil. The Episcopalian Church was the first to relax sanctions against it, and since then every Protestant denomination has allowed it. The connection between the birth control pill, the sexual revolution, AIDS, and abortion is impossible to overlook. The pill in fact causes abortions in the event of an unwanted pregnancy by preventing the baby from attaching to its mother's womb and causing it to starve to death. "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations" (Jeremiah 1:5). Before we were ever conceived in our mothers' wombs, we were conceived in the Eternal Mind of God. We were his children even before our physical existence began; how then could we deny him the right to see his very own children born? Other forms of artificial birth control that are not abortifacients are considered immoral because they deny God the right to bring about new life if He so desires. Marital intercourse is a very sacred act. God created sex so that married people could unite in the most intimate way while continuing the human species. To separate one of these motives from the other contradicts God's purpose in giving us the gift of sex. Natural methods of birth control are moral, but only encouraged in cases of grave necessity such as financial hardship, because they do not deny God the ability to bring about life if He so desires. True financial hardship does not include postponing children until we can get our big screen TV, stereo, and new cars paid off. There is an inherent difference of attitude in the couple who says "No" to God and the couple who says "We don't think it's a good idea right now, but we leave the decision to You." (Genesis 1:28, 38:6-10; Jeremiah 1:5)

He made us to multiply. Life is one of humanities greatest and most beautiful gifts from HIM.

Most Catholics don't follow that rule, it depends on the dioces. Most belive it goes against God's plan, and his will.