Russian Orthodox Church okays use of condoms

We Orthodox rely on the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Faith first delivered to the Apostles and preserved in the Orthodox Catholic Christian Church.

Really? When I asked Kolokotronis,

“Can the Orthodox teaching on homosexuality change too?”

he replied,

"I don’t know. It hasn’t thus far..."

The Gospel is crystal clear on homosexuality. You two better talk this over and make sure you agree whether moral theology is based on scripture and tradition or mere disciplinary canons.

For that matter, all of Christianity since the Apostles thought the Onan incident in Genesis 38 was clear in proscribing contraception. In 1930, the Anglicans broke rank with the continuous unanimous Christian teaching in this regard.

Apparently, 40 years later, so did the Orthodox. What a pity.

The idea that only the intent defines the morality is wrongheaded. Here's a comment I made on a thread a long time ago:

If my "INTENTION" is to bring home enough money to feed my family, that is a good thing. I may get a job, bring home my salary, and feed my children. The job is a licit way to achieve a licit thing.

On the other hand, I could rob a bank and get enough money to feed my family for a whole year. That is an illicit way of achieving a licit good thing.

The same is true for child spacing. If my children would literally starve if my wife were to get pregnant, it is morally licit to space children until I could afford to feed them.

NFP would be a morally licit way to acieve this necessity.

But artificial birth control is intrinsically evil. It can never be morally licit to have recourse to artificiaql contraception.

So to answer your question, the INTENTION in having recourse to EITHER artificial family planning OR "natural" family planning could be illicit or licit. One may be sinsul, one may not.

However, the method itself, in the case of artificial birth control, is intrinsically illicit, i.e. regardless of intent is it gravely sinful.

However, NFP itself is morally neutral. It becomes morally illicit when the intention itself is illicit.

4 main reasons for having recourse to NFP.

1--Physical/ mental health---a pregnancy could kill you or so physically impair you as to prevent your fulfillment of your duties in your state in life---NOT because of a widening wasteline or drooping skin! Or psychological health, i.e., mom would literally have a nervous breakdown if she became pregnant---not because she "just couldn't stand being home with the little kids all day without the personal fulfillment of her professional job..."

2--Financial constraints---your child will starve if you have another. Wanting a bigger house or designer SUV just does not cut it!

3--work on the mission fields by one or both spouses that would proclude having children temporarily

4--active persecution or war---i.e., you or your child likely to die by coercive abortion, in concentration camp, in acts of war, etc.

Clearly we say these reasons must be SERIOUS, not trivial. Only the couple and their confessor can truly decide what truly constitutes grave reason.

We've had couples sit through my talk on this subject and literally say, "Gee, we thought we were being good Catholics just for deciding to use NFP. Now we realize we don't even have grounds for recourse to NFP," then tell us a month or two later they're pregnant.

NFP vs Contraception

Spacing children may be a desirable goal that does not violate God's laws in certain serious situations such as those outlined above. But the means of achieving the goal differ.

One is intrinsically evil (abortion, abortifacient contraception, barrier methods, sterilization) while one is morally neutral (Natural Family Planning.

In one, an act is performed (sex) but its natural outcome is artificially foiled.

In the other, no act is performed (simple abstinence during fertile times) so there IS no act, therefore the practice is morally neutral.

It is then the intention of using NFP that constitutes its relative moral licitness or illicitness.

If NFP is used in a selfish manner, it too can be sinful.

If it is used only in grave circumstances, it is not sinful.

The difference is real.

Dieting (decreasing caloric intake, the "act" of NOT eating) is a moral and responsible means of losing weight to maintain the body's health.

Bulimia (the ACT of eating, them vomiting) is rightly called an eating DISORDER.

An ACT is performed (eating in this case) and its natural outcome (nutrition) is foiled by expelling the food from the body.

Likewise contraception is a disorder. An ACT is performed (sex) and its natural outcome (procreation) is foiled by expelling the sperm or egg or both (abortifacient contraceptives) from the body.

Contraception is to NFP what Bulimia is to dieting.

But just as dieting can be misused (anorexia) so too can NFP be misused in a sinful manner

You were the person who insisted that “Natural” family planning was more effective than any “Artificial” means, thus convincing me that Roman Catholic teaching could ignore intent even in achieving the same ends.

Really? When I asked Kolokotronis,
“Can the Orthodox teaching on homosexuality change too?”
he replied,
"I don’t know. It hasn’t thus far..."

The Gospel is crystal clear on homosexuality. You two better talk this over and make sure you agree whether moral theology is based on scripture and tradition or mere disciplinary canons.

Sorry that you missed Kolo's joke in that response. He was being a wise guy.

Orthodoxy has no intent on changing the clear teachings on Scripture, regardless of how many Rainbow Sash wearing protesters get refused Communion.

Sorry that you missed Kolo's joke in that response. He was being a wise guy.

Good.

Now if all of Christianity including Orthodoxy has taught that contraception is morally illicit since the time of the Apostles, based on Scripture (Gen 38), Tradition and Natural Law, how is it that Orthodoxy today teaches that contraception can be morally licit (like the Protestants, starting with Lambeth in 1930.) In this regard, Kolo's comment seems to apply, "Try telling your kids, the Protestants."

How is the Orthodox position any different from conservative Protestantism?

Orthodoxy has no intent on changing the clear teachings on Scripture

Good.

As per St. Augustine:

"For it is illicit and shameful for a man to lie with even his lawful wife in such a way as to prevent the conception of offspring. This is what Onan, son of Judah, used to do; and for that God slew him" (cf. Gen. 38: 8-10).

Obviously, the Church Fathers saw the prohibition against contraception as SRIPTURAL. So why have the Orthodox changed a teaching of moral theology that was not merely a disciplinary canon but that was based on Scripture according to the Church Fathers?

“He was being a wise guy”

I do that a lot, Doc. It’s like a “Natural Law” for Greeks....It’s one of the reasons we are convinced we are the chief among sinners!

My primary concern in all this was expressed in post #23. You blogged on this subject today also, which just reinforces what I said in post #23:

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

WaPo: Pope May Be Right on Condom Failure to Stop Spread of AIDS in Africa

Folks, this according to Edward C. Green of The Washington Post":

When Pope Benedict XVI commented this month that condom distribution isn't helping, and may be worsening, the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa, he set off a firestorm of protest. Most non-Catholic commentary has been highly critical of the pope. A cartoon in the Philadelphia Inquirer, reprinted in The Post, showed the pope somewhat ghoulishly praising a throng of sick and dying Africans: "Blessed are the sick, for they have not used condoms."
Yet, in truth, current empirical evidence supports him.
We liberals who work in the fields of global HIV/AIDS and family planning take terrible professional risks if we side with the pope on a divisive topic such as this. The condom has become a symbol of freedom and -- along with contraception -- female emancipation, so those who question condom orthodoxy are accused of being against these causes. My comments are only about the question of condoms working to stem the spread of AIDS in Africa's generalized epidemics -- nowhere else.
In 2003, Norman Hearst and Sanny Chen of the University of California conducted a condom effectiveness study for the United Nations' AIDS program and found no evidence of condoms working as a primary HIV-prevention measure in Africa. UNAIDS quietly disowned the study. (The authors eventually managed to publish their findings in the quarterly Studies in Family Planning.) Since then, major articles in other peer-reviewed journals such as the Lancet, Science and BMJ have confirmed that condoms have not worked as a primary intervention in the population-wide epidemics of Africa. In a 2008 article in Science called "Reassessing HIV Prevention" 10 AIDS experts concluded that "consistent condom use has not reached a sufficiently high level, even after many years of widespread and often aggressive promotion, to produce a measurable slowing of new infections in the generalized epidemics of Sub-Saharan Africa."

Read it all here.
Commentary. Remember the big stink raised last year when the Pope said exactly this? He was condemned and ridiculed in Parliaments across Europe and, of course, at the San Francisco City Council.
But, as you see, the Pope was right.
It’s nice to see Mr. Green graciously wiping the egg from his face. I want to see the other critics eating crow publicly.
But that’s not going to happen because it wasn’t science what fed their protest, but hatred toward the Pope, the Church, and ultimately, toward God in Christ.

Knowing the abysmal failure rate of condoms in "preventing" AIDS...

Norman Hearst and Sanny Chen of the University of California conducted a condom effectiveness study for the United Nations' AIDS program and found no evidence of condoms working as a primary HIV-prevention measure in Africa.

...why would the Pope make this statement about condoms which has caused all this controversy in the first place? The idea that condom use by male prostitutes itself might be effective in stopping the spread of AIDS is a falsehood, so any statement of relative merit is moot.

It was grossly imprudent in almost every sense in which it can be considered.

The church has always relied on the principle of double effect. Certainly in the case of etopic pregnancies, or even in the case of the Crucifixtion, a perfectly innocent man, murdered. War has always fallen under that principle. War is always an evil, but sometimes it is a necessary evil.

I think you are being unfair to Benedict here. He is saying nothing new. I don’t get the big hoopla, even among Catholic bloggers. You can’t pervert an already perverted act. You can’t make an act closed to life more closed to life. Homosexual sex is perverted because it is unnatural and closed to life. A condom isn’t going to effect the morality of that act one way or another. It’s immoral, with or without a condom.

So, if an HIV prosititute wants to wear a condom as a method of making the services provided “safer”, good. There’s a glimmer or conscience there, a glimmer that might lead to a full flame of conscience, and reformation. And that ought to be encouraged and nurtured. That’s all the pope’s saying.

For heaven’s sake, the man’s mind far exceeds most of ours. And it’s not his fault that he doesn’t alway dumb things down to our level. The whole nature of this book was a conversation, so he’s not going to be thinking, How can I make this dumb enough to that the Americans, who already embrace artificial contraception, will not take this as a endorsement of that practice.

Condoms are neither moral nor immoral. They are inanimate objects. Much like guns. Both can be used for immoral purposes. But the church has never taught that objects are right or wrong, it is the intention with which they are used. Which is why, even those couples who do not use any form of artificial contraception can still have a contraceptive mentality, depending upon the attitude with which they approach sex and each other.

I'm usually fairly good at discerning when someone is being a wise guy, but in your post, it looked like you were seriously contrasting the teachings about homosexuality (as non-dogmatic) with those regarding sacramental marriage (as dogmatic.)

I'll try to tune in my wise-guy-o-meter better for my Orthodox brethren.

Frankly, I'm so dumbfounded by your justification of Orthodoxy's change in teaching regarding barrier methods that I'm having a hard time discerning when you guys are joking around and when you're serious.

Sorry, I see I have been misunderstood. I think the term 'Natural Family Planning' has caused the confusion, because it's not the "Natural" part that makes the moral difference. It might help uf we just call it "temporary abstinence".

Abstinence, whether short-term or long-term, is not contraception, That is, it is not choosing to change the sex act in order to split off part of its function.

If abstinence were the same as contrception, then all all chaste celibate single people would be contraceptors. But this is not the case!

There are two "intents" in contraception:

(1) the intent to avoid pregnancy (which is not in itself necessarily bad: it might be good or bad) and

(2) the intent to engage in a disordered act of sex. Which is always bad.

A disordered act of sex is an act that has been turned away from its normal function. If a man chooses to ejaculate into his wife's anus, for instance, that is an act turned away from its normal function. Using a drug, a device, or surgery for the purpose of knocking out fertility would similarly turn sexual union away from its normal function.

All perversion is a literal turning-away, that's what the word "perversion" means. Contraceptive sex is turned-away from some of its normal function, like homosexual sex is turned-away from some of its normal function.

There's a difference between "non-procreative" and "anti-procreative" acts. Intercourse during an already-exising pregnancy, or after menopause, or with a spouse who happens to be infertile, is non-procreative but it's not anti-procreative.

“Frankly, I’m so dumbfounded by your justification of Orthodoxy’s change in teaching regarding barrier methods that I’m having a hard time discerning when you guys are joking around and when you’re serious.”

Always, always, always remember that Rome’s ways are not our ways and our ways are not Rome’s ways. This is why there is a schism. Remembering this will prevent you from being dumbfounded. We remember it and frankly, no one has been dumbfounded by the filioque for at least 900 years +/-, or Ineffabilis Deus for the past 160 or Pastor Aeternus for the past 140.

I've been dealing with this issue for a long time, and I find this to be extremely frustrating. See this article archived at CatholicCulture.org: "America Magazine Spreads Disinformation About Church's Position On Condom Use," by Brian J. Kopp, The Wanderer, September 28, 2000.

See also the L'Osservatore Romano articles Stopping the Spread of HIV/AIDS and Stopping the Spread of HIV/AIDS--A Response by Mons. Jacques Suaudeau of the Pontifical Academy for the Family, also published in 2000.

Stopping the Spread of HIV/AIDS--A Response

by Mons. Jacques Suaudeau

With regard to the article "Prophylactics or family values? Stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS", which I published in the Italian daily edition of L'Observatore Romano on Wednesday, 5 April 2000, p. 7, and in the English edition of 19 April 2000, there have been certain erroneous interpretations concerning the following passage:

"In the case of Thailand, the effort of the health-care authorities was focused on prostitutes and their clients. The use of condoms had particularly good results for these people with regard to the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. {22} However it is unclear whether or not the promotion of condoms in this country has had an effect on the overall advance of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.{23} The use of prophylactics in these circumstances is actually a 'lesser evil', but it cannot be proposed as a model of humanization and development. Perhaps Thailand's authorities might have asked themselves first about the reasons for the particular growth of prostitution in their country".
22. R.S. Hanenberg, W. Rojanapithayakorn, P.m. Kunasol, D.C. Sokal, "Impact of Thailand's HIV-Control Programme as Indicated by the Decline of Sexually Transmitted Diseases", The Lancet 1994, 344 (8917):243-245.
J. Richens, J. Imrie, A. Copas, "Condoms and Seat Belts", ibid., p. 401.

The following should be clearly pointed out:

1. Any interpretation of my article as claiming to attempt to cast doubt on the Church's official teaching on this point has absolutely no foundation. I have already published many articles in this regard against the use of condoms in the prevention of HIV/AIDS in scientific and moral publications which can attest, beyond any doubt, to my attitude on this issue, on which I have been working for many years.

2. The use of condoms, as I state in my article, "cannot be proposed as a model of humanization and development", because it is always an intrinsic objective moral disorder.

3. The expression "lesser evil" (in inverted commas), was used in the strictly medical sense of public health, in the context of the epidemiological medical articles quoted in notes n. 22 and n. 23, and must consequently be understood not in the moral sense, but exclusively in an epidemiological sense.

Rome, September 22, 2000

Fr. Jacques Suaudeau

I think many of us Catholics (myself included) have made an honest mistake about how contemporary Orthodoxy views contracepted sex. For instance (reaching for an item on my bookshelf) in an early (1963) edition of "The Orthodox Way," Bishop Kallistos Ware stated:

"Artificial methods of birth control are forbidden in the Orthodox Church."

That was stated so unambiguously I assumed it meant, "This is the position of the Orthodox Church" Adding to that impression was the fact taht the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople wrote to Pope Paul VI back in 1968 to assure him of the Orthodox Church's "total agreement" with the encyclical's contents:

"We assure you that we remain close to you, above all in these recent days when you have taken the good step of publishing the encyclical Humanae Vitae. We are in total agreement with you, and wish you all God's help to continue your mission in the world."

The firm tone of this assertion made us think that in this, the Patriarch was speaking for Orthodoxy.

Plus, there are others who write often and persuasively from an Orthodox perspective (I'm thinking of Fr. Patrick Reardon) who say that Orthodoxy has taught since Patristic days, and teaches now, that sexual intercourse ought not to be deliberately turned away from its procreative end.

So that gave us Catholics the impression that our Orthodox brethren were holding firm to the Patristic understanding, etc. etc. and that those Orthodox who dissented from this perspective were just that, innovators and dissenters.

Evidently, this is not the case. We were mistaken. According to OrthodoxWiki (Link), this pro-contraceptive innovation is now widely considered the "new consensus."

But some Orthodox strongly disagree, including both laity and hierarchs. And as far as I can see, there is nobody in Orthodoxy who actually has the authority to say what is, or is not, "THE" Orthodox teaching on this and other disputed questions.

If there is, I would like to know who that would be.

Correct me, Brother K, if I have expressed this incorrectly.

No, I was distinguishing between contraception and non-contraception. Natural family planning does not contracept. The difference between it and condoms or the Pill is that they do contracept, NFP does not.

The “natural” in NFP misleads some people to think that the distinction is that one is natural and the other is not.

It’s true that the one is natural and the other is not.

But that’s secondary. The real difference is that one contras something and the other does not contra anything. The latter’s naturalness consists in not contra-ing.

NFP is NOT natural contraception whereas the Pill is artificial contraception. One is contraception and the other is not.

According to OrthodoxWiki (Link), this pro-contraceptive innovation is now widely considered the "new consensus."

Moral theology by new consensus?

That never ends well...

Right. I was responding to FormerLib, agreeing with you.

Sad but true.

I'm not convinced that anyone within Orthodoxy has or had the authority to make this change on a moral theology issue that has been constant and universal since the early Christians, based on Scripture. Calling it nothing more than "disciplinary" doesn't make it so. We're not talking about changing a church discipline like not eating meat on Fridays, or even the discipline of a married vs celibate clergy.

Another word for a "new consensus" on settled moral theology issues might just be apostasy.