Posted on 02/09/2012 10:15:13 PM PST by Brian Kopp DPM
EXCERPT:
...let's turn to another aspect of this. The reason our editor thinks Catholics shouldn't be fruitful and multiply doesn't hold up, either. The world's population, he writes, is on an "unsustainable" growth path.
The Population Bureau of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations sees (PDF, h/t Pax Dickinson) the rate of population growth slowing over the next decades and stabilizing around 9 billion in 2050…and holding there until 2300. (And note that the UN, which promotes birth control and abortions around the world, isn't exactly in the be-fruitful-and-multiply camp.)
More broadly, the Malthusian view of population growth has been resilient despite having been proven wrong time and time again and causing lots of unnecessary human suffering. For example, China is headed for a demographic crunch and social dislocation due to its misguided one-child policy.
Human progress is people. Everything that makes life better, from democracy to the economy to the internet to penicillin was either discovered and built by people. More people means more progress. The inventor of the cure for cancer might be someone's fourth children that they decided not to have.
So, just to sum up:
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
That was just an example. Who knows what kind of medical procedures the Muzzies might be against for “religious” reasons. Or even the Scientologists or the Mormons. Are they allowed to not offer insurance that includes those procedures. Actually my first feeling is yes they can, just as the Catholics do not have to offer birth control. It is THEIR decision, not Obama’s.
“But we were told to go forth and multiply by God in Genesis. “
Do you have 12 kids? I sure don’t. And I don’t think having one kid and adopting two means I’m a failure in God’s eyes...
I think it’s indicative that the anonymous commentator or blog-poster described his sister as “a vegetable.” That’s death-eater talk, unworthy of Christians of any kind.
I have friends who have a child with profound cerebral palsy, requiring constant and intensive attention. Their next child has Down’s Syndrome. And they have two healthy children younger than the ones with handicaps, and three older. (I’d love to see one of my teenage sons fall for their oldest daughter, because she has incredible compassion and patience, as well as brains and pretty hair.)
It is the character of the people which makes the family succeed or fail, in whatever challenges they face, not contraceptive sex.
I concur with your observations of those who are ideologically “quiverfull” or Providentialist, as opposed to couples who are largely letting nature take its course in determining their family size. (See my new baby pictures on my profile!)
They often impose a regimentation on themselves that results in very frequent births, which is physically draining and psychologically challenging. Some even deliberately reject natural breastfeeding because it might give the impression (like God is standing by looking to clobber them) that they’d like to space their children a little more widely. The ladies often seem very unhappy.
Ping!
Very good article, hits the nail on the head.
There's a dark side to that one.
There are not too many, but I believe Lutheran Church Missouri Synod holds similar views to Catholics on this subject.
The LCMS has been taking a hard look at contraception. Chemical methods are frowned upon, and there is at least some who are starting to talk about it.
I linked two articles in my post,
The vast majority of the Orthodox caved in the early 1970s.
Can you provide something that would refute the content of the two articles linked? Otherwise, I still have to conclude the vast majority of Orthodox have caved on the issue of contraception.
Yes—please do. I am very interested, from a professional viewpoint, of being informed in these areas. From what I gather from the articles and comments, it sounds to me like something akin to the Canadian Bishop’s response to Humanae Vitae, the Winnipeg Statement, has been adopted—which doesn’t explicitly say that birthcontrol is ok, but speaks a fair bit about forming one’s conscience without bothering to note that a properly formed conscience will not lead one to use artificial contraception—just as a good spiritual father will not lead one in that direction. The result, in Canada on the Catholic side, is horrible ignorance and disaster. Knowledge that birth control is publically denounced in an effective way and/or that spiritual fathers are consistent on the issue and the faithful generally have spiritual fathers would be re-assuring.
Otherwise, to borrow Dr. Kopp’s phrase, I see a concrete reason not to swim the Bosphorous—though it has been over 20 years since I seriously considered that.
Perhaps we need to look at the big picture.
One of the greatest gift God gave to the human beings was the ability provided by God to create another human being in God’s image.
What a wonderful and amazing gift that we take for granted.
I read somewhere that the former angel Satan was very envious of that gift from God.
It never fails.
When somebody prefaces an assertion with "The truth is ...", the assertion is false.
Thank you, sir, for providing yet another example.
What do Johann Sebastian Bach, Benjamin Franklin, and Maurice Hilleman have in common?
They were all the eighth child of their family. St. Catherine of Siena was the 23d in hers....
Have you ever heard of Lucy Hanks? As happens so often to young women these days, poor unmarried Lucy got into precisely the sort of trouble free access to birth control is supposed to prevent. She had no access to abortion and so carried her child to term, weaned the babe, and placed it with relatives before carrying on her own life.
The child was named Nancy, and grew up well enough that none other than Abraham Lincoln once said “all that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her”. I suppose he was a bit biased, though....
You’re obtuse.
Like Christ and St. Paul?
I'm astonished that, in those pre-sanitation days, any woman had the stamina to bear that many children and survive.
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