Posted on 10/30/2003 5:11:30 PM PST by Tantumergo
And again I point out that I am using the definition that you posted.
Looks like you're trying to trying to define onanism so broadly that almost anyone could be said to be practicing it, and so it really shouldn't be considered as sin.
Clearly that is not the case here. I am merely questioning why you would post a definition of something and then attempt to disregard it.
NFP also involves sowing where the ground is sterile: the womb during periods far from ovulation.
Oh good grief. If that were practicing contraception, then it would be immoral for a couple to have conjugal relations if the woman were to old to conceive, or if the woman were infertile through disease.
If the woman is infertile through an act of God, then there is nothing wrong with excersising conjugal rights. It is when the act is deliberately made infertile that they are guilty of Onan's sin. Do you and FormerLib really not understand that, or are you just trying to confuse the issue on purpose?
I am saying that there is no moral difference between using methods to determine when the woman is infertile and many other forms of contraception. Clearly, there are forms of contraception which are not permitted due to an abortiofacient effect but that does not apply to ally of them.
I know that this is hard for some to accept as it will deprive certain people of one of their preferred methods of attacking Orthodox Christianity so I am not surprised that some will choose to die on the hill of "natural contraception" versus "artificial contraception."
Also, I am aware of any teaching of either church which demands that a married couple forgo conjugal relations once the female is no longer able to conceive. Are you suggesting that it is otherwise in the Roman Catholic Church?
The patristic condemnation of the gnostic and Manichean sects who believed that engendering offspring is sinful (because it imprisons souls in the material world) hardly applies to the Orthodox approach to family planning. No spiritual father would bless a couple to remain childless throughout their entire marriage unless the woman suffered from a condition which would endanger her life were she to become pregnant.
We Orthodox judge not the individual conjugal act, but the totality of conjugal relations between husband and wife, for obedience to the divine command to be fruitful and multiply (though St. John Chrysostom himself did address the question of the world already being well-populated by our kind, suggesting that marriage now serves chastity more than procreation).
As FormerLib has pointed out, this topic is a distraction to the orginal point of the thread, so I will not now post further on the subject.
I would be glad to discuss it further, but only if you have read Fr. John Meyendorff's Marriage: an Orthodox Perspective first. That will save me having to get the copy out of our mission library and typing the patristic quote from his discussion of this issue.
to FormerLib:
See what I mean about the futility of discussing this with Latins?
When my wife and I were to be married in the Orthodox Church, one of the questions our priest asked us was if we were going to try to have children at some point. When we told him that we were (quite honestly), he informed us that we would not have been able to perform the wedding if we had said no. Odd, but that just doesn't sound like a Church which has "caved" on the issue to me.
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