Posted on 10/23/2010 1:50:52 PM PDT by Brian Kopp DPM
Until the Anglican Lambeth Conference of 1930 no Christian denomination had ever said that contraception could ever be objectively right. The Washington Post, in an editorial on March 22, 1931, said of the Federal Council of Churches' endorsement of Lambeth:
“It is impossible to reconcile the doctrine of the divine institution of marriage with any modernistic plan for the mechanical regulation of or suppression of human life. The Church must either reject the plain teachings of the Bible or reject schemes for the ‘ scientific’ production of human souls.
Carried to its logical conclusion, the committee’s report, if carried into effect, would sound the death knell of marriage as a holy institution by establishing degrading practices which would encourage indiscriminate immorality. The suggestion that the use of legalized contraceptives would be ‘ careful and restrained’ is preposterous.”
See Little Lost Lambeth from the Sept/Oct 1998 Envoy Magazine:
...The battle between the philosophies continues to be fought down to this very day: the battle between the eugenics, advocated in seminal form by the Church of England, and the natural law, upheld by an agnostic who saw the preposterous conclusions to which the contraceptive philosophy must inevitably lead.
The agnostic was Aldous Huxley; his book, Brave New World, would constitute not only an incredibly prophetic description of the contracepting society, but also a deft parody of the Christian church which first legalized the idea. Prior to 1930, contraception had been uniformly condemned by every Christian denomination in the world since the death of Christ.
...
By the early 1920s, Margaret Sanger and several of her English lovers were touting contraception and involuntary sterilization as a way to limit the breeding of the "human weeds," as Sanger called them: the insane, the mentally-retarded, criminals, and people with Slavic, Southern Mediterranean, Jewish, black or Catholic backgrounds (ironically, Sanger was herself raised by a Catholic mother). Though most supporters of atheistic rationalist scientific progress don't advertise it, Hitler's racial purity schemes were nothing more than the application of 1920s "cutting-edge" biology. When this attitude encountered Christianity, the results were uniformly explosive. Ever since 1867, Anglican bishops had been meeting roughly every ten years at Lambeth Palace, London, in order to discern how best to govern their Church. Mounting eugenics pressures had required the bishops in both the 1908 and the 1920 conferences to fiercely condemn contraception. But the constant eugenics drumbeat would not let up.
The 1930 conference brought even greater internal challenges; many of the people advising the bishops were eugenicists, indeed, at least one attendee, the Reverend Doctor D.S. Bailey, would be both a member of the International Eugenics Society and an active participant in the conference.
Between the general mood of society and the insistence of advisors, the Anglican bishops were placed under extreme pressure to allow some form of artificial contraception. On August 14, 1930, after heated debate, they voted 193 to 67, with 14 abstentions, to permit the use of contraceptives at the discretion of married couples. The decision rocked the Christian world — it was the first time any Christian Church had dared to attack the underlying foundations of the sacred marital act, the act in which another image of God was brought into creation through the parents' participation in co-creation with God. Pope Pius XI, deeply saddened, issued Casti Connubii, just four short months later on December 31, 1930, reiterating the constant Christian teaching that artificial contraception was forbidden as an intrinsically evil act.
H.G. Wells' stories of a scientific utopia combined with the publication of the Lambeth decision and Casti Connubii to fire Huxley's imagination. What would a society which fully endorsed contraception look like? Though Huxley was by no means a Catholic, he possessed a keen intellect and an incisive pen.
His conclusions were soon plain — society as we understood it would fail to survive. Writing in the grand tradition of English parody, he constructed a wickedly accurate portrayal of the contraceptive society, written so as to ensure his English audience would recognize his portrayal of the Church which had set them on the road toward it. In so doing, he inadvertently created an allegory which supports Catholic teaching.
How very perceptive of you to know whether a childless couple has no children because of their use of birth control or they're infertile. Just by seeing them, eh?
Or do you go up and ask them why they have no children?
Or do they just volunteer the information to you or did you hear it through the grapevine?
And people wonder why so many modern young people have fallen away from the Bible’s teachings? Onan pulling out is supposed to be worse than adultery? Worse even than incest?
The human male makes and discards ~200 million sperm per day, and yet Onan pulling out is supposed to be akin to killing a son before he is born?
Order of God in procreation? Honestly. How can anyone escape the conclusion that these writers were railing against a reproductive system they did not fully understand?
The point is quite clear “because they use birth control”.
I carefully wrote "divorced and re-married". In Catholic doctrine, a person who is divorced from a valid marriage and re-marries, is living in perptetual mortal sin, which even confession can't remove. Only separation from the second marriage, or death of the first spouse AND CONFESSION, can remove the sin. Therefore, they can't be saved while they remain in that condition. (if they die with ONE mortal sin unconfessed)
Your rational is quite silly that you know what only those 2 people know.....You must be pulling our leg to get some nasty reply from someone....you were asked intelligent questions by metmom and I also want to know HOW you know these things...LOL
They also have no sanctifying grace from God. The Holy Ghost does not make His aboad in a soul in mortal sin. That is why I said "I know they have not God's grace".
I know because they tell me they use birth control. They argue in it’s favor, and even criticize people who have children or “too many children”. I’ve been married 8 years and have 5 children, the subject of birth control, is like the first thing brought up by strangers that come up to us in public places. They volunteer the information.
Also, the sadness of not being able to have children or less than they would have been taken on had God sent them is always brought up.
Walk around with 5 properly dressed, well behaved children and the world sees something unique, today. That's what they will talk about. They know we are Catholic by what they see. "By their deeds you shall know them".
Remember the movie (the book) Cheaper by the Dozen, the original real one about the Gilbreth's? The public's subject of discussion around them, was always about birth. Same thing happens with my family.
I survived 5 children in their teens at the same time...big deal...I don't ever remember telling anyone about my and my husbands bedroom sessions or weather we used BC or not. It never came up even with friends...who do you hang around with for goodness sake..
Regarding Christian Europe, and how they viewed births, the gift of children, birth control, and the time when it was abhorred, through the time it was starting to become a fashion, and it's development till it became almost the norm (1880's till 1940's), I highly recommend the book:
All for the Love of Mothers - Memoirs of a Catholic Midwife by Lisbeth Burger, like 40 short stories about the real life experiences of a Catholic midwife in a small German village. You won't be able to put down the book till you've read it from cover to cover. Fascinating to be placed in what appears today as another world, and it was just 100+ years ago. The world has been slow boiled, cooked, into something else, and no one noticed it.
Do you think artificial birth control is acceptable under certain situations?
See the link, The Connection between Contraception and Abortion
Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the recent Supreme Court decision that confirmed Roe v. Wade, stated, “in some critical respects abortion is of the same character as the decision to use contraception . . . . for two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail.”The Supreme Court decision has made completely unnecessary any efforts to “expose” what is really behind the attachment of the modern age to abortion. As the Supreme Court candidly states, we need abortion so that we can continue our contraceptive lifestyles.
If you think the root cause of legalized abortion is no big deal, then we probably don't have much common ground on which to discuss the evils of our day.
Desire for the perfection of our neighbour is, doubtless, very good; the pain that is felt interiorly 202at the sight of his defects is good also, provided it proceeds from a pure desire for his perfection, But with all this there must needs be mingled much secret self-complacency, confidence in one’s own superior light, and severity towards one’s neighbour. Zeal such as this cannot, you must well understand, come from God; it is an illusion of the devil, hurtful to yourself and to others....
In the second place I command you never to speak of God, or of anything good, unless in a spirit of humility and meekness, in an amiable and gracious manner, with moderation and 203encouragement, and never with bitterness and severity, or in a way to wound and repel those who hear you, because, although you may only say what is in the Gospel and in the best books, I believe that in your present state of mind you might say it very badly and in such a way as only to do harm.
...
If you have nothing kind to say keep silent, and leave the care of deciding to others. They can avoid better than you too much laxness, and will be exact without being severe. If exactitude be praiseworthy, severity is blamable, it does nothing but revolt people instead of convincing them, and embitter their souls instead of gaining them. As much as true meekness, with the help of God, has power to repel evil and to win to good, so much has an excessive harshness power to make goodness difficult and evil incurable. The first is edifying, the latter, destructive.
Thank you for posting that.
My pleasure. Lord save us from the triumphalism of an indiscreet zealot.
My goodness, you are a mine of infortation.
This is exremely important and I hope many ping listees will read this.
Without doubt the haters of life - eugenecists - were the driving force behind the accepts of contraception. Fie on the bishops for surrendering to evil. Why did they have advisors who were non-believers in the first place? Why did they listen to evil godless men?
What does that have to do with what I posted? All i can think of is that you think that I go up to people and ask them how it is they don’t have more children? I don’t get it.
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