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If you read the Onan passage, it’s quite clear that God was punishing him for denying offspring to his brother—*not* for “spilling seed”. Masturbation is bad because it elevates the Flesh over concentration on the Divine. But the Onan story has absolutely nothing to do with it, and constitutes an embarrassing misunderstanding of Scripture. Why don’t you try looking up a little word called “Levirate”?

Wrong again...from http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1991/9107chap.asp

The argument against contraception, specifically coitus interruptus, based on this passage used to be considered straightforward. In recent years, both Protestant and Catholic commentators have downplayed, if not outright rejected, the anti-contraception interpretation of this text. Their argument goes like this: Onan's sin consisted solely in his abandonment of his familial obligations to his dead brother. Onan performed the act which bears his name because the child which might have resulted would have been counted as his brother's, rather than his own--something Onan found intolerable.

The difficulty with this argument is that violation of the Levirate law was not a capital offense. If a man didn't fulfill his obligations to his deceased brother's wife, she was to take the matter to the elders, who would counsel him and try to persuade him to change his mind. If he persisted, the widow was to "go up to him and strip his sandal from his foot and spit in his face, saying publicly, 'This is how one should be treated who will not build up his brother's family!'" (Deut. 25:9).

While such a punishment might be embarrassing, it falls short of the death sentence Onan received for his act. This suggests he sinned not only by violating the Levirate law, but also by the way in which he did so. The kind of act he committed was so despicable that, in the Old Testament context, it was punishable by death.

John Kippley, in Covenant, Christ and Contraception (New York: Alba House, 1970, page 19), explains it this way:

"Onan went through the motions of the life-giving act but refused to accept the consequences. He withdrew in order that the act could carry no reproductive consequences . . . [H]e went through the motions of the Levirate covenant, but he denied the reality of that covenant."

Catholic teaching regards marriage as a covenant which has as one of its constituent elements an openness to new life and the procreative good. Sexual intercourse involves a renewal of the marriage covenant. Contraceptive intercourse is a violation of that covenant because it acts directly against procreation, one of the basic goods of marriage.

By acting contraceptively, Onan robbed sexual intercourse of its life-giving meaning and acted against the good of his potential offspring's life. Both his intent and his concrete actions were against life. As a result, Onan received the Old Testament penalty for his crime.

That's the Catholic teaching from the beginning. Here is the Protastant teaching up until 1930 which agrees:

MARTIN LUTHER

(SIXTEENTH-CENTURY FOUNDER OF LUTHERANISM)

"[T]he exceedingly foul deed of Onan, the basest of wretches . . . is a most disgraceful sin. It is far more atrocious than incest and adultery. We call it unchastity, yes, a sodomitic sin. For Onan goes in to her—that is, he lies with her and copulates—and, when it comes to the point of insemination, spills the semen, lest the woman conceive. Surely at such a time the order of nature established by God in procreation should be followed. Accordingly, it was a most disgraceful crime. . . . Consequently, he deserved to be killed by God. He committed an evil deed. Therefore, God punished him" (Commentary on Genesis).

JOHN CALVIN

(SIXTEENTH-CENTURY FOUNDER OF CALVINISM)

"The voluntary spilling of semen outside of intercourse between man and woman is a monstrous thing. Deliberately to withdraw from coitus in order that semen may fall on the ground is doubly monstrous. For this is to extinguish the hope of the race and to kill before he is born the hoped-for offspring" (Commentary on Genesis).

LUKAS OSIANDER

(SIXTEENTH-CENTURY LUTHERAN)

"[Onan’s contraceptive act] was an abhorrent thing and worse than adultery. Such an evil deed strives against nature, and those who do it will not possess the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9–10). The holier marriage is, the less will those remain unpunished who live in it in a wicked and unfitting way so that, in addition to it, they practice their private acts of villainy" (Commentary on Genesis).

JAMES USSHER

(SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ANGLICAN BISHOP)

"How doth a man exercise uncleanness in [the sexual] act? Either by himself or with others. How by himself? By the horrible sin of Onan (Gen. 38:9), lustful dreams and nocturnal pollutions . . . arising from excessive eating and unclean cogitations or other sinful means" (On the Seventh Commandment).

SYNOD OF DORT

(SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CALVINIST COUNCIL)

"[Onan’s contraceptive act] was even as much as if he had, in a manner, pulled forth the fruit out of the mother’s womb and destroyed it" (Dutch Annotations on the Whole Bible, authorized by Dort).

COTTON MATHER

(SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY PURITAN)

"It is time for me to tell you that the crime against which I warn you is that self-pollution, which, from the name of the only person that stands forever stigmatized for it in our Holy Bible, bears the name of ‘onanism’" (The Pure Nazirite).

JOHN WESLEY

(EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FOUNDER OF METHODISM)

"Onan, though he consented to marry the widow, yet to the great abuse of his own body, of the wife he had married, and the memory of the brother that was gone, refused to raise of seed to his brother. Those sins that dishonor the body and defile it are very displeasing to God and evidences of vile affections. Observe, the thing which he did displeased the Lord—and it is to be feared; thousands, especially of single persons, by this very thing, still displease the Lord and destroy their own souls" (Commentary on Genesis).