Posted on 06/07/2006 6:11:40 AM PDT by NYer
The Vatican today published a sweeping condemnation of contraception, abortion, in-vitro fertilisation and same-sex marriage, declaring that the traditional family has never been so threatened.
The document was issued by the Pontifical Council for the Family, whose head, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, is a strong opponent of the use of condoms under any circumstances.
Gay activists in Italy condemned the report as a grotesque attack against modern life, freedom and social redemption.
The 57-page document does not break any new ground but summarised traditional Vatican positions.
"Man of modern times has radicalised the tendency to take the place of God and substitute him," it states. "Never before in history has human procreation, and therefore the family, which is its natural place, been so threatened as in today’s culture."
It makes no mention of the debate within the Catholic church on whether condoms could be used in the fight against Aids, in particular to protect the wife of a man who has the virus. It reaffirms the 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae, that stated the Vatican’s opposition to contraception.
The document also condemns IVF treatment, artificial insemination and the use of embryos. "If a man takes on the power to fabricate man, he also takes on the power to destroy him," it says.
"The human being has the right to be generated, not produced, to come to life not in virtue of an artificial process but of a human act in the full sense of the term: the union between a man and a woman."
There was controversy when Cardinal Trujillo asserted three years ago that condoms do not prevent Aids and may help spread it because they create a false sense of security. The Vatican insists sexual abstinence is the only sure way to fight Aids.
Several other cardinals have argued that the use of a condom within a marriage would be the lesser of two evils if it prevents passing on HIV infection to the partner.
The document made a broad attack on what it said were threats to the "the natural institution of marriage".
"Couples made up of homosexuals claim similar rights to those reserved to husband and wife; they even claim the right to adoption. Women who live a lesbian union claim similar rights, demanding laws which give them access to hetero fertilisation or embryo implantation.
"Moreover, it is claimed that the help of the law to form these unusual couples goes hand in hand with the help to divorce and repudiate," the document said.
"Abortion and infanticide show the absence of efficient juridical protection for the conceived. Such practices in fact constitute a violation of the fundamental right to life which is the right of every human being from the moment of conception," it said.
Franco Grillini, a deputy in the Italian Parliament and honorary president of the activist group Arcigay, condemned the Vatican document as "grotesque," and said that other European countries that give legal recognition to unmarried and gay couples have done so with great benefit to society.
"To maintain, therefore ... that this would represent an attack against the traditional family is a falsehood that has been scientifically contradicted by the facts," said Signor Grillini.
what I want to know, and have never gotten a good answer, is why we're still promoting condom use among the military instead of abstinence until marriage. They don't work, and thus are dangerous. Our troops deserve better than this.
Yes. The catch is, the couple can't just say, "we're going to spend our entire marriage just having intercourse when we're least fertile". But the Church has always respected the fact that economic and practical concerns can influence individual situations, so, it is acceptable to keep track of fertility cycles since this is part of nature which was created by God. But to introduce a synthetic contraception, whose ordered design is only to interrupt any possibility of conception is considered an evil.
I understand that this seems contradictory. It took me many years to really come to an understanding of the Church's position, but it's correct.
So unreliable contraceptive techniques are OK, reliable ones are bad. Ok, I almost think I understand....
No. The rhythm method is not contraception. The natural process is still being allowed to run its course (intercourse, then fertilization or NOT fertilization). Contraception stymies the course of nature, one way or another. It's the equivalent of holding a paper bag over someone's head so they can't breathe.
Just the opposite. The Church teaches that marital intercourse makes a person, in fact, holier. The act is "meritorious" when it's a self-giving and not an act of just taking.
The pleasure of sex is certainly physical, but limiting the scope of pleasure to whatever nerve ends you can stimulate is like going to a four-star restaurant and limiting your meal to whatever shows up in the bread basket. The Church believes that the soul AND the body are good, and to limit the scope of the pursuit of pleasure JUST to the body is plainly foolish when there is much more in addition that gives man pleasure and fulfillment.
So to boil it down, the Church says, "have as much sex as you and your spouse want, but don't forget that the end purpose of sex is procreation. And disabling this purpose through contraception or selfish disposition is a sin."
The notion that the ideal Catholic sex is short, infrequent, and devoid of pleasure is an utter fallacy. In fact, there was a survey taken last year (I don't recall what outfit sponsored it - but it was NOT a Catholic group) which found that Catholic couples have the most self-described satisfying sex lives out of any other group, religiously-affiliated or otherwise. I'll have to Google it and see if I can find the report, but it pretty much echoed what the Church has been saying all along...
LOL! The monkeys might be problematic. And the rubber chicken suit might indicate that the Church position on contraception is the least of your worries at this point.
Ah. The error in this reasoning is the incorrect use of the word "nature" -- see my sigline.
By this reasoning, even though the troops that took out al-Zarqawi had a perfectly legitimate end (ridding the world of a dangerous terrorist leader), they were in the wrong because they failed to use good means (carefully executing him in a painless manner rather than blowing him away willy-nilly).
Let's look on the bright side. Even though we disagree, it's safe to say that your current views are still better than most so-called Catholics. The mere fact that you're willing to at least listen is light-years ahead of a lot of "Cafeteria Catholics" who think they've figured out the universe based on what's playing at the theatre.
Have a great day.
Hm. My curiosity is piqued. Could you elaborate?
This is a meaningless distinction that simply lends itself to ad hoc acceptance or rejection based on some authority's arbitrary preferences. For example, to insert an artificial knee is clearly to "re-engineer or redesign" the recipient -- not one creature on Earth has natural metal parts -- and yet I don't seem to hear any similar objections.
The wording is a condensation of a Robert Heinlein comment which notes that this error arises out of profound self-hatred, broadened to hatred of the human race generally.
There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who 'love Nature' while deploring the 'artificialities' with which 'Man has spoiled "Nature." ' The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of 'Nature' -- but beavers and their dams are. But the contradictions go deeper than this prima-facie absurdity. In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers' purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purposes of men) the 'Naturist' reveals his hatred for his own race -- i.e. his own self-hatred."--"Lazarus Long" (Robert A. Heinlein)
You wrote: "This is a meaningless distinction that simply lends itself to ad hoc acceptance or rejection based on some authority's arbitrary preferences. For example, to insert an artificial knee is clearly to "re-engineer or redesign" the recipient -- not one creature on Earth has natural metal parts -- and yet I don't seem to hear any similar objections."
This is a worthwhile point you're bringing up, steve-b. I think I wasn't very precise about my use of the word "engineering, and as a result I didn't make the ethical question very clear. Let me try again.
There's nothing wrong with engineering per se, as long as the intent is "restoring the human," or in other words, curing or repairing so as to re-establish a lost or missing or damaged function: a function that would be there in a normal, healthy human being.
So there's a huge, huge range of drugs, devices, surgeries and therapies which are totally appropriate to restore damaged or diseased organs and "normalize" the various bodily functions. That includes organ transplants, joint replacements, antibiotics, synthetic or natural hormones, pacemakers, transfusions, you name it.
Te key is restoring (as far as possible) normal health and function.
A serious ethical objection arises, though, when the aim is quite the opposite: to disable, maim, or act against the normal healthy anatomy or physiology.
Let's see if I can list some clear examples and counter-examples:
A pregnant woman at risk for early miscarriage takes progesterone to improve her chances of having a successful full-term pregnancy. This is OK.
A pregnant women uses a prostaglandin suppository to deliberately cause a miscarriage. Not OK.
An athlete has a pin put in his injured hip which enables him to continue to compete in his sport. Cool.
An athlete has bionic components installed in his body to give him 250% greater-than-normal speed and endurance. Not cool.
The problem with contraceptives is that they deliberately weaken or temporarily or permanently destroy a healthy, thriving system. They pathologize normal female (usually it's the female) sexual function. It's a technical fix for something that doesn't need to be "fixed" --- something which needs to be addressed through behavior change, not sabotaging a bodily system.
Is that a little clearer?
The quicker some of these "modern" folks are returned to the closet, the better for the rest of us....
I can see a case for not allowing the use of such an advantage in competition against others who have only their inborn abilities, but I don't see any reason why people generally shouldn't use such a "redesign" if it were to become available.
Because the pursuit of such an end is tantamount to declaring God negligent in the design of man's anatomy and biological functions. I mean, what about adding a third arm? That would certainly make it easier to do more work, but, really, how does that raise such a person to closer union with God? Essentially you end up re-engineering man beyond his divinely-ordained capabilities and capacities. Really, where would it end?
Not at all. The use of the brain is part of that "anatomy and biological functions".
Perhaps because we have been so successful as a species in (legitimately) manipulating material, changing the form and function of many things so as to make them more useful to ourselves, we tend to see the whole Universe as simply "raw material" and nothing more.
The tricky thing here is that WE are more than material; we are persons, not products; we are begotten, not made; and although we are, or strive to be, "masters of the universe," we are images and likenesses of a Maker whose purposes endow us with a destiny we've barely imagined.
I'm trying to say we're not just clever meat. We have transcendent purposes which go beyond a limited material level.
Nothing spooky-dooky here. This is something anyone who cares to give it a thought--- even a child --- can readily understand.
Can you think of: Eternity? Infinity? Prime numbers? A perfect circle? Pi? Then your mind can think of things that do not exist in this Universe. And perfectly ordinary people, in large numbers, can and do think about things that are not in this Universe, and love and prize things that go beyond their individual lifespan.
So what's the point of all this? The point is that there's something extraordinary about human existence; something amazing; something flawed, no doubt, but special, which deserves special handling.
It can be argued (endlessly) to what extent we should respect the created natures of other beings, and allow them to be just what they are. Should we turn sharks into vegans? Should we triple the corpus callosum of the baboon? Should we fill up the Pacific Basin with three quarters of the Moon? All worth debating.
Though we are masters of all we survey, we ourselves have, I would argue, no such mastery over ourselves and other humans, as if we were raw material. We are offended by cannibalism. We are offended by slavery. We are offended by Mengele (and all his works and all his pomps, and all his empty promises)--- above all, the horror of non-consenting human experimentation. We are offended, in short, by the treating of persons as if they were objects.
The best of science fiction, ever since Mary Shelley's Frankensteinand up through Brave New World and The Matrix, warn that trying to re-conceptualize and redesign basic humanity is a short trip to a major bummer: Hitler's Ubermensch falls far short of being a mensch; and if we consent to erasing our human identity line by line, replacing parts with animal and machine, we bid fair to become not superhuman, but subhuman, a horror.
That's my case. Guard as something sacred that which you received from your ancestors. Defend mere humanity.
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