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To: walden
Granted that the improvements had other causes as well, but even so, no reasonable person could argue against the proposition that the ability to put the brakes on fertility within marriage was an enormous contributor to all of that.

I certainly would, and I'm usually pretty reasonable. In fact, the use of birth control has led directly to widespread abortion, among other evils. Look what Pope Paul VI predicted in 1968 in Humanae Vitae:

Consequences of Artificial Methods

17. Responsible men can become more deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the Church on this issue if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control. Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.

Finally, careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. [see China, public funding for PP, sex ed, etc.] It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife.


73 posted on 03/24/2005 12:06:27 PM PST by Aquinasfan (Isaiah 22:22, Rev 3:7, Mat 16:19)
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To: Aquinasfan

Certainly, contraception enables people who wish to do wrong to do so with fewer consequences, and it can (and certainly has) been abused by coercive totalitarian governments, but to argue that it has not lengthened and enriched women's lives as well as enhanced the happiness of both men and women in marriage is just unhistorical. We live in a licentious age, but ours is not the first-- modern history reads a lot like Old Testament Jewish history, periods of all sorts of bad practices interspersed with periods when people turn back to God and His law. At least today, no man can tell himself that he's doing his wife a favor when he visits a prostitute, and for most of human history that has not been true.

For the record, I also think Viagara is a gift from God. :-D


74 posted on 03/24/2005 12:33:20 PM PST by walden
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