"Delightful Secrets of Sex" (Vanity)

Luke 23.27
A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him.

28 But Jesus turned to them and said,
Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.

29 For indeed the days are coming in which they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, wombs that never bore, and breasts which never nursed!’

30 Then they will begin ‘to say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!”’

I've read more than once that NFP couples rarely divorce, but I've never been able to find an actual source for that, or any statistics. Do you have any you could share with us?

I'm not the one you addressed this to, but I have a theory. I don't think the divorce rate is lower due to using NFP vs. another form of contraception. I think the divorce rate is lower due to the reasons that people practice NFP in the first place: Respect for God, Respect for Life, Respect for our God-given bodies.

I know many, many Protestant couples who use NFP. They are not willing to end an innocent life through abortifacient birth control methods (the pill, the IUD, the mini-pill, Depo-Provera, etc.). Nor do they wish to fill their bodies with artificial hormones; the effects of which are not fully known.

More often than not, a profound respect for Life is attached to a profound trust in God, and NFP (or no "method of avoidance" whatsoever) is an outgrowth of that faith.

The anti-chemical birth control crowd is growing as more people are made aware of its mechanisms. Protestants are jumping off of the birth control ship in rapid numbers. They are rapidly finding out that they were lied to. Expect to see more and more Protestant couples (those not in PCUSA, ECUSA, etc. !) having larger families than in years past.

The tide is turning!

But this is not the case with most people. If I grant that for some people, pregnancy can be life threatening, and contraceptives are allowed because they are "self-defense," this still leaves open the vast majority of people who are not in life-or-death circumstances.

I completely disagree. There is never a justification for potentially aborting a child through chemical birth control.

If pregnancy would literally cause death, then a couple should be using sympto-thermal NFP and/or a barrier method. Better yet, sterilization. While I don't agree with sterilization, it's a far better thing than chemical abortion. No one dies with sterilization.

I see no evidence to suggest contraception in of itself is a sin at all

I don't necessarily believe contraception is a sin. However, no birth control method (besides NFP and barrier methods)completely prevents contraception. They do, however,prevent implantation. "Breakthrough ovulation" occurs anywhere from 2 - 25% of the time. The IUD prevents implantation as its primary method. The pill uses it as a secondary method. The mini pill allows breakthrough ovulation more often.

Do you know that the medical definition of "conception" was changed in the 70's to mean the point at which an embryo implants in the uterine lining (about a week after conception), rather than the point at which the egg is fertilized? That is why the Pill is called a "contraceptive", when in actuality, it doesn't always prevent conception, but it does prevent birth. (Although of course it fails at even that sometimes.) So it's more accurate to call it birth control than contraception.

All in all, I do not strongly feel it's a sin to prevent conception (although it is a rejection of blessings), I DO believe it's a sin to kill the conceived child by preventing its implantation.

I am sure God agrees.

I think it helps to think of contraception this way:

Like every human act, contraception involves two elements: a means(or method)and an end (or goal.) The goal is the avoidance of pregnancy; the means is a fundamental revision of the sexual act.

The goal is not always morally wrong. Sometimes it is allowable, or even morally obligatory, for married people to postpone the next pregnancy, or even to avoid pregnancy entirely. Grave injury or illness could be the reasons; or it could be that a new baby would make it impossible to care for other family members already depending on our care (imagine you have a couple of ailing elders in the grandparent generation, a disabled husband, etc.)

But even if the goal (avoiding pregnancy at this time) is perfectly legitimate, you still have to look at the means or method, to see if it is also legitimate.

The word "perversion" means literally "turning away," and a sexually perverted act is one that has been turned away from procreation. That is what contraception has in common with ejaculating up somebody's anus or down their throat, or any other such act: it is "turned away from" fertility. It deliberately sabotages the potential fertility which is part of the act.

NFP, by way of contrast, does not involve choosing a perverted act. It simply involves waiting until the female fertile time has passed. "Waiting" is not a perverse act. There is a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing.

If you believe that the picture I have drawn would be inaccurate for most women, then you are historically ignorant.

I believe that God means for the vast majority of people to marry, almost everyone, in fact. In that scenario, smaller, more delicately built women will be physically destroyed by your prescribed path of unlimited childbirth. And, many of the remaining children will grow up in poverty. If that is the will of your god, I'm just grateful that I don't know him.

By the way, I read Pope John Paul II's book "Love and Responsibility", which I believe makes the strongest possible case that can be made for the Catholic position on love, marriage, and behavior in marriage, including contraception, and the logic collapses at the point of contraception. Right up to that point, he's absolutely spot on, but his argument fails at contraception, and reading it, I knew the reason for the Catholic position-- it has been developed by celibate men, men with a limited understanding of women and marriage. I was surprised that he got so much right, but understood then and there exactly why no other major denomination concurs with the Catholics on this issue. If you haven't, you should read that book.

Finally, it occurs to me that God has no problem unambiguously spelling out exactly what sort of behavior he prohibits-- I don't notice "Thou shalt not use contraception" among the ten commandments, and I don't see anywhere indicated that "contraception is an abomination". On this one, the Catholics are doing one heck of a stretch from two sources-- Onan, and the exhortation to "be fruitful and multiply". That's just about as big a stretch as liberals do with the U.S. Constitution.

I have studied NFP in detail, even practiced it for a while (although with a different purpose-- I was trying to get pregnant-- but the methods are the same), and I consider the difference between NFP and so-called artificial contraceptive methods to be splitting hairs-- very Pharisitical.

My previous post #148 was written to another poster, but some of the points might interest you.

I would also note that my God is VERY powerful-- if He wants a particular act of sex between a man and a woman to produce a baby, it will. His will CANNOT be overcome by any contraceptive method, including sterilization.

As I said before, He gave us brains and intends for us to use them. We are meant to discover the miracle of all of His creation, including our own bodies. Once we do so, we have obtained greater power to cultivate them, but we have simultaneously assumed a greater ethical burden to use our knowledge wisely, and in accordance with His will. And, as always, the best way for us to know His will is to pray unceasingly, and ask Him. We will get the real answer for our own lives, one specifically tailored to us, rather than a cookie-cutter answer created by man to apply to everyone equally.

I also pray for the best for you and your family. It sounds to me that on this issue, the doctrinaire answer IS God's will for you and yours, but I am equally certain that it isn't His will for everyone. And, this debate on such an intimate marital question, regarding such a biblically undefined activity, reminds me of Jesus' response to Peter concerning John at the end of the gospel according to John: "If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?" Indeed, what is it to any of us what another married couple does in this area?

If I grant that for some people, pregnancy can be life threatening, and contraceptives are allowed because they are "self-defense," this still leaves open the vast majority of people who are not in life-or-death circumstances.

I completely disagree. There is never a justification for potentially aborting a child through chemical birth control.

I said "if." I was taking the special pleading off the table in order to focus on the normal situation, people who use contraception without some perceived special medical necessity for it.

It was a rhetorical gesture to focus on the main issue.

If you believe that the picture I have drawn would be inaccurate for most women, then you are historically ignorant.

I stand by what I said. You believe children to be a burden. I don't.

I believe that God means for the vast majority of people to marry, almost everyone, in fact. In that scenario, smaller, more delicately built women will be physically destroyed by your prescribed path of unlimited childbirth.

First of all, I never said that all women have to have "unlimited childbirth." The rest of what you have written is rubbish as well.

It is astonishing how pervasive the contraceptive mentality is, how far Christians have fallen in accepting this evil. I know your heart is not open, but at least you can know you were told.

The brains that God gave us does not include the right to re-engineer our sexual design. Nothing in Scripture gives us the warrant to fundamentally change our sexuality: to add or subtract parts or powers from the healthy body; to try to change males into females -- or the other way around --- or to outsource or redesign or disable our power of fertility.

There are things you can properly do to animals that you cannot properly do to humans. This is because they are not rational animals, and ---although they were created good ---- they were not created in the image and likeness of God. That is why for instance, you can breed or castrate or spay or neuter an animal: because its sex does not have any spiritual significance.

Contraception is veterinary medicine.

This is because, unlike animals, uman beings' bodies have, not only utility, but significance. In particular our sexuality has very great significance: because we are being capable of thought and of love, and we express this with our bodies; because we are capable of being procreators, co-creators with the Creator in bringing new human beings into the world; and because sexual intercourse itself is a constitutive element of a Sacrament (the Sacrament of Matrimony): the bodily sign of our giving of ourselves as a gift to God and to our spouse.

It is not right to take something so significant and deliberately damage it by weakening or destroying one of its powers. It is a sacrilege to do such a thing to an "image and likeness of God."

"It is He who made us, and we are His." We can use our "brains," as you say, to heal what is injured, cure the diseased, to strengthen what is weak or restore the natural to its proper function.

But nothing gives us the right to deliberately subvert or destroy part of our healthy sexuality, which includes fertility. That is not medicine. That is anti-medicine. We should not deliberately damage or weaken any healthy bodily power God gave us: it's the same as saying,

"Forget it, God; You made a mistake in the way you made the healthy human body. What you deigned us to have as a wonder, we regard as an inconvenience; what you gave as a blessing, we see as a curse; what you granted as a sharing in your creative power, we see as a damned nuisance. Fertility is your error, Lord. We don't want to learn to live with it harmoniously. For the time being --- or maybe from now on in--- we'd just rather be rid of it."

You are both Catholic, are you not? If you haven't, please read "Love and Responsibility". It is truly a wonderful book, and right on so much of what it covers, but I very much believe that any happily married person who reads it will see in it exactly what I saw.

I'm going to leave the discussion here. Neither of you dealt with my stated objections to traditional Catholic doctrine on this issue. I can truly understand, and have no objection to your passionate conviction that the Catholic position on this issue is right and proper to your lives and your families, but until you deal with my specific objections to the argument that it is right and proper to all people and all families, I have nothing more to say.

And, Dave, your contention that I see children as a burden is uncharitable. I have two much-beloved daughters, and your comment is simply ugly.

Neither of you dealt with my stated objections to traditional Catholic doctrine on this issue. I can truly understand, and have no objection to your passionate conviction that the Catholic position on this issue is right and proper to your lives and your families, but until you deal with my specific objections to the argument that it is right and proper to all people and all families, I have nothing more to say.

"Catholic" specifically does not mean good for some people in some circumstances. It means "universal." You may think it OK for things to be true for some people, and false for others; but I believe in objective truths.

And, Dave, your contention that I see children as a burden is uncharitable. I have two much-beloved daughters, and your comment is simply ugly.

How is it uncharitable to simply reiterate what you have already said? That childbearing is a sentence of death, drudgery and poverty for the vast majority of women, who were only freed when technology allowed them to divorce conception from intercourse.

Maybe you need to look up "burden" as well as "catholic."

I leave you with your own words, your own testimony to the burdensomeness of children:

The terrible poverty of families too large, the maternal deaths, the women with broken down bodies and no teeth, looking like old women at 30, the children lost and overlooked amid too many children with parents too tired from the struggle of it all, the widowers struggling on alone with so many children.

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