“It seems to me that the burden of proof lies in showing that it is biblical to contracept.”
It seems to me that the Bible is silent on the issue, and therefor it probably is an area where folks are free to choose.
“It seems to me that the Bible is silent on the issue, and therefor (sic) it probably is an area where folks are free to choose.”
First of all, we are always free to choose because God gave this freedom to us.
How we choose is what matters.
As regards the silence —or not—of the Bible. There is an important significance of the two “senses of Scripture, which are the “literal” and the “spiritual”.
#116 of the Catholic Catechism says that the “literal sense” is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of a sound interpretation
The “spiritual Sense” is subdivided into
allegorical
moral
anagogical
#117 The allegorical sense gives us a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ
The moral sense lead us to act justly (written for our instruction)
The anagogical sense portends to eternal significance
In short
The Letter speaks of deeds;
Allegory to faith
The Moral how to act;
Anagogy our destiny
Viewed in the light of the Four Senses of Scripture, the Scriptural understanding of marital love is very clear.
To say that the Bible is silent on this issue is to miss—or bypass—Scripture in its Four Senses.
Catechism of the Catholic Church on 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