My Apologies. I missed your earlier reply.
“The *heart* should be that children are a gift, and that we should be inclined to welcome them as a gift. That should be our default attitude.”
Ok. The teaching of the Catholic church is that all sex should be open to children. For that is part of the purpose for what sex is for.
“Sometimes, though, we may choose to postpone or avoid pregnancy, because of a variety of reasons. In those instances, contraception (NFP, barriers, vasectomy, etc.) is acceptable.”
So you are ok with both contracepted sex and sterlization. So you really don’t believe that sex should be open to children.
Upon what verse of the bible do you base your opinion that using condom and sterilization is ok?
“We should recognize that some “contraceptives” actually do kill fertilized eggs, by preventing their attachment to the uterus.”
No, you are wrong here. There are no ‘fertilized eggs’. Egg and sperm cease to exist at conception.
The term for a single cell formed after the fusion of egg and sperm at conception is a zygote.
What abortifacients do, is they kill the developing embryo, as you said, by hardening the endometrium and preventing implantation into the uterine wall. In this, they are not ‘contra’ conception at all, in that they permit conception to occur. This applies to the pill and other forms of abortifacients.
Why is this relevent?
What’s the difference between sterilized sex and what homosexuality is arguing? Both are ways of removing sex from procreation.
Oh, come on now. Of course I know that a “fertilized egg” is a human, a zygote. I used the term so that readers would be more able to picture what’s going on in the womb — that a mere “egg” isn’t prevented from attaching to the wall of the uterus, but a “fertilized egg” (i.e., a “human zygote”) is prevented from attaching to the wall of the uterus.
You’re trying to pick a fight where there’s no fight. We both believe that life begins when at conception, and that some “contraceptives” are actually “abortifacients.”
You wrote, “So you are ok with both contracepted sex and sterlization. So you really don’t believe that sex should be open to children.”
Yes, I am OK with married couples using wisdom to decide that they have the number of children the Lord wills for them. If they’ve had 10 miscarriages in a row, they are free to choose to avoid becoming pregnant again. If the wife is becoming depressed to the point of suicide because of post-partum depression, she is free to choose to avoid becoming pregnant again. If the wife has developed a condition whereby if she were to become pregnant, her life would be in danger, she is free to choose to avoid becoming pregnant. If a couple is just unable to accommodate any more children, I am not going to damn them because they’ve made the decision to no longer become pregnant.
So now you’re equating a married couple that’s decided not to have any more children with homosexual “sex”?
Whew.
So, are you OK with the Roman Catholic practice of using NFP as a contraceptive? That’s now it is used in most cases — to avoid pregnancy.