Posted on 03/10/2008 10:21:49 AM PDT by Froufrou
The list came as the Pope deplored the “decreasing sense of sin” in today’s “secularized world” and the falling numbers of Roman Catholics going to confession.
The Catholic Church divides sins into venial, or less serious, sins and mortal sins, which threaten the soul with eternal damnation unless absolved before death through confession and penitence.
It holds mortal sins to be “grave violations of the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes,” including murder, contraception, abortion, perjury, adultery and lust.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into Hell.”
Although there is no definitive list of mortal sins, many believers accept the broad seven deadly sins or capital vices laid down in the 6th century by Pope Gregory the Great and popularized in the Middle Ages by Dante in "The Inferno": lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy and pride.
Christians are exhorted instead to adhere to the seven holy virtues: chastity, abstinence, temperance, diligence, patience, kindness and humility.
Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican body which oversees confessions and plenary indulgences, said after a week-long Lenten seminar for priests that surveys showed 60 percent of Catholics in Italy no longer went to confession.
He said that priests must take account of “new sins which have appeared on the horizon of humanity as a corollary of the unstoppable process of globalization.” Whereas sin in the past was thought of as being an individual matter, it now has “social resonance.”
“You offend God not only by stealing, blaspheming or coveting your neighbor’s wife, but also by ruining the environment, carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments, or allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
My point exactly!
The vatican are the lawyers of Christianity.
(The spirit of the message is what counts.)
That is a total misreading of Genesis 38.
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach Adonai
the excessive accumulation of wealth by a few
Ahh excuse me , when is that a sin ? If the money is made in a legitimate way what;’s wrong with that? Sounds like socialism is infesting he Vatican.
PS Who has more money than the Vatican anyway ?
I tend to think we are punished BY our sins and not FOR them .I think God stays out of it and lets natural consequences take their toll.
Place marker for tomorrow. I want to respond but am too darn tired tonight!!
I’ve always seen God as acting through man , in this case through science. A science that can cure disease is surely a gift from God. Like any gift it can be abused.Just my 2 cents
Basically, I've heard 3 reasons why NFP is treated differently. There are probably more that I'm not aware of, but I'll briefly summarize the ones I know:
1. Intent or mindset- It is argued that the intent or mindset behind NFP is unique in that it is open to the possibility of children and does not reduce sex to a selfish act.
2. Artificiality- It is argued that methods of birth control like the Pill or condoms are artificial interferences with the natural order, making them immoral.
3. Effect- It is argued that NFP is not an attempt to 100% preclude conception, like other methods of birth control.
Would you say this is a fair summary of the reasoning behind the Church's position on NFP and other methods of birth control? Am I missing anything?
(I'm also aware of objections to birth control based on the risk of inducing abortion...I do not include them since I largely agree with those objections).
In the area of morality, matters involving human life and the sources of life (where life comes from) are considered to be of the highest category of importance.
The question was what is the reproductive system for. For as in ultimate purpose. For as in why did God (or evolution, if you prefer) give it to us. Why is it there?
It must be admitted by anyone who isn't barking mad that the *purpose* of the sexual organs is to reproduce the species.
so what do the lips, the mouth, the tongue have to do with ‘the reproductive system’??? nothing, but, apparently, in almost NO human society do they NOT have something to do with sex
Ah, but you make the leap from organ systems to actual organs. It's patently obvious certain organs can be used for a dual purpose--in males, for example, the urethra is used by both the excretory and reproductive systems. The mouth is used for digestion and respiration.
But is the digestive system ever used for respiration? No. Is the excretory system ever used for reproduction? No. They may share pathways, but they do not share purpose.
And I am not a materialist. So I would never say that sex is purely biological. In human beings it is spiritual as well.
Finally, to answer your question, no, the "use" of non-generative organs during sex is not sinful so long as the generative nature of the act is preserved.
No, it isn't. As I said before, NFP differs from artificial contraception the way dieting differs from bulimia. In the former, you are simply restraining yourself. In the latter, you are not restraining yourself at all--you are committing the act and then deliberately frustrating its natural purpose. We call dieting a good thing, and an example of self-restraint. No one ever says that about bulimia--it's a psychological illness, a misuse of food.
Let's think this through here. If deliberately engaging in sex at naturally infertile times was just as immoral as contraception, it would be immoral to have sex after menopause. It would be immoral to have sex during pregnancy. Clearly, neither of those is the case, right? There is no immorality in having relations even when we know the act will most likely be infertile.
As long as, of course, we *do* nothing to the act itself to deliberately make it infertile. That is what Onan did. And that is why he was struck down.
But note that under the Law, Jewish women were not niddah (ritually unclean) during pregnancy--they could have relations even though they were infertile during those times. So obviously God saw a distinction between natural infertility and artificial infertilility.
Sorry, my reply was aimed at a statement that altering your body was tantamount to telling God he got it wrong. So apparently we must accept ourselves as God made us, physical defects and all.
(1) By what authority do you say that?
(2) If you're right about that, then all Christian people everywhere were wrong about it for about 1900 years. I guess the Holy Spirit was MIA?
I'm enjoying the discussion too, and thanks for your patience! After pondering it I think I got it at least somewhat sorted out.
There is no indication from Scripture or from Jewish tradition that sex during naturally infertile periods was wrong. Leviticus outlines a woman's times of niddah, during which there can't be relations. But I find it interesting that these times do not include pregnancy or menopause: two times when women are totally and knowingly infertile. If God had wanted to put a stricture on having sex during infertile periods, He could have easily done it here.
And yet He didn't. Pregnant and post-menopausal women were still having relations and they, unlike Onan, were not struck down. Women who were thought to be barren were having relations as well. So there seems to be a distinction being made here.
I'm not exactly sure how intent plays into this--one can't say that those Jewish women were avoiding conception; they really didn't have a choice in the matter. But they did know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were currently infertile. And despite that knowledge, they had relations and there was no moral problem with that.
This may well be why the Church can separate these two methods out. Having relations during a woman's natural cycles of infertility per se does not seem to raise moral issues (unless, perhaps, there's a defective intent there?). But making use of artificial means to block fertility (as in the case of Onan) is a grave sin.
It makes sense to me anyway! :)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.