Posted on 04/14/2011 8:18:23 AM PDT by Grunthor
Catholic women overwhelmingly use birth control, despite an official ban by the church, a new study finds......
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
It was really meant as a rhetorical question. The sin is in dismembering God’s gift of sex into two separate parts of unity & procreation. I’m not any kind of a theologian; there are far better ones right here on FR (and I’m pinging one) so I understand things as analogies (the simpler the better). If someone gives you an Armani suit, you don’t say, keep the pants, I just want the jacket.
That’s why IVF is as sinful as contraception, and why I was so concerned to find a Catholic OB/GYN who would at least understand my position, even if she didn’t agree with it.
I know I’m backtracking, but you’ve got a damn fine shovel there. Big one, too.
“Not sure what using a condom in and of itself has to do with sinning.”
Nothing, although supporting a condom company by buying one may be. Also, nothing wrong with using a condom while swimming the Amazon.
If I’m understanding correctly what you mean when you post that, then I’m glad you posted that.
See, it’s one thing to recognize that we are all sinners. It’s another thing to no longer call a sin a sin.
It’s one of the few areas were conservative Protestants and liberal Catholics can usually agree.
Freegards
The "wrong" of contraception is that the good gift of maritalsexual union is deliberately twisted apart or altered in order to contradict or deny one of the two God-given "ends" of marital sexual union, these two ends being Love and Life. Any act that intentionally undermines or destroys one of those ends, is by definition perverted.
That's why it is wrong to engage, even in marriage, in any act that is deliberately degrading, un-loving, perverted, or intentionally closed-off to the transmission of life. If you try to split off Life from Love or Love from Life, you are dismembering an act which was created, by God's design, to graciously revere and respect both.
It's like taking to that Armani suit with a scissors, and cutting out the butt of the pants. It would not only harm the design, it would insult the designer. Or, in the case of married love, the (capital D) Designer.
If you have an extra few minutes to read something which may make more sense of this, I invite you to try This Article (Link).
Blessings on uou!
To the point:
Any act that intentionally undermines or destroys one of those ends, ...
How is it that NFP does not fit that bill? It certainly does intentionally undermine the chance of producing life.
By your argument I shouldn’t take fertility medicine to try to conceive, either. Yet I have a feeling that a lot of people who have your point of view would look at me now, with only one child in 5 years of marriage, and assume that I’m contracepting.
NFP is periodic abstinence. It is not a sexual act altered in order to undermine procreation. A sexual act thwarting procreation, is a sexually perverse act, as in the sin of Onan. Abstinence is not a sex act at all: far less is it a sexually perverse act.
The difference betwen contraception and abstinence, is like the difference between destructive speech, and silence. A person who says something against you, is engaging in destructive speech. A person who says nothing, is simply exercising self-control in order--- in this analogy --- to avoid the wrong kind of speech.
What I like about NFP is that when you have sex, you engage in it "wholly," and when you abstain, you abstain "wholly." Both the intercourse and the abstinence are respectful of the "wholeness" and "holiness" of the act. Scripture says there is a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing.
And since women are designed to be periodically fertile/infertile, using the periodic ebb and flow with intelligence and grace, is respecting (not overriding) the design.
I think the patterns of women's fertility are providential, something you try to harmonize with, not somthing you try to chemically or mechanically smack down. I thank the Designer of women for the way we are designed.
There's an exciting new approach in fertility health called Napro Technology (Link) which aims for a much more profound understanding of optimal male/female health, in order to rebuild or strengthen the natural procreative function. I hope you might find this interesting,and helpful.
Campion is right. Depending on the reason, using natural means, like periodic abstinence, to limit family size is licit.
Guttmacher: A research institute named after a president of Planned Parenthood and vice president of the American Eugenics Society.
A Planned Parenthood organization.
Letting your 'yes' be 'yes' and your 'no' be 'no', as it were.
That stuff must be some new Catholic program; my sister in law gave me the same information. Unfortunately while it may be somewhat helpful to other women it’s useless for what’s wrong with me.
But I really don’t see how take medicine to change the way my body operates - the way God made me personally - ok, but using a condom would not be. Both ways could be seen as a human saying “Thanks anyway God but I know better”.
That’s a very polished way of trying not to say that NFP is a method to have sex while reducing the probability of conception.
The only difference between NFP and contraception is that most who practice the former can’t admit that it really is the latter, albeit, a rather poor one.
"That’s a very polished way of trying not to say that NFP is a method to have sex while reducing the probability of conception."
It certainly seems that way, if you think about it hard enough.
However, the poster Dr. Brian Kopp once presented an analogy that makes it clear in my own limited mind, clouded as it is by the effects of original sin and my own personal sins.
It's the difference between refraining from overeating on the one hand and inducing vomiting after eating on the other, in order to avoid weight gain. It's difficult to say of the person who limits his food intake that he is somehow “perverting the eating process” to avoid weight gain. It's easily said of the person who induces vomiting at the conclusion of his meal.
At least to me, this analogy makes as clear as a bell why the Church teaches what she teaches.
sitetest
To: WorldviewDadIf 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 achieve this necessity.
But artificial birth control is intrinsically evil. It can never be morally licit to have recourse to artificial 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 sinful, 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 waste-line 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 preclude 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
From this post, it seems that practicing NFP is a sin, unless you're in one of these four situations:
"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 waste-line 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 preclude 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."
Honestly, there are very few people in modern America that would fit into any of these categories. There may be a few people in category 1 and a tiny amount of people in category 3, but I see practically no present-day Americans that fit into categories 2 and 4.
But from reading other sources, it seems that NFP is fine no matter when and these conditions are rarely, if ever, mentioned.
The difference is a matter of medical ethics. True medicine ---= the true "healing art" --- is a matter of curing disease, repairing injury, strengthening that which is abnormally weak or malfunctioning: in other words, getting back to normal, or as close to normal as you can. That means you have a pretty clear idea of what normal, healthy structure and function, actually is.
Contraception and non-intercourse reproductive tech does not do this. Contraception is taking a natural system and delibrately making it non-functional or ab-normal: impeding the very thing the organs and systems were designed to accomplish when functioning optimally. And non-intercourse reproductive tech by-passes normal begetting entirely, and substitutes some impersonal laboratory technique (like IVF.)
If your fertility is impaired for some reason because of disease, malformation, or injury, this does not represent God's positive will for you: it may be said that He permits disease, as He permits many other bad things, but he never positively wills it. It's an abnormality.
True healing always says "Yes" to the normal, and tries to restore it.
It's much like the situation faced by the very small minority of people who have a strong and (as far as they know) lifelong erotic drive toward the same sex. The solution isn't to say, "OK, be proud, be gay, that's the way God made you personally." In fact, it's a disorder. You are entitled to try to remdy that and get back to normal; you not entitled to make your condition an excuse to commit sin.
This hits home for me because I have beloved people in my friend-and-family circle who have to contend with this disorder. It's so important for all of us to help them realize that "No, the gay lifestyle is not God's will for you; He didn't 'make you that way.' And yes, there is hope for healing: really getting back to 'the way it's supposed to be.'"
It takes a lot of patience. That's difficult for most of us.
I wish you well.
? Not many real Catholics left in the world, just fallen away Catholics, and Catholics in name only, who go to mass twice a month (see thread article).
The punishment reserved for our times is prelates that allow the sheep to do whatever they want. Like the parents who do not direct and discipline their children, and instead want to be their buddy, and be seen as “cool”. It was never so:
If you only knew the women who will go to Hell because they did not bring into the world the children they should have given to it. ( St. John Vianney)
Among adults there are few saved because of the sins of the flesh....With exception of those who die in childhood, most men will be damned. (St. Remigius of Rheims)
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