Posted on 02/14/2012 8:49:20 AM PST by Jake from AZ
Painting the Catholic Church as "out of touch" is like shooting fish in a barrel, what with the funny hats and gilded churches. And nothing makes it easier than the Church's stance against contraception.
Many people (including our editor) are wondering why the Catholic Church doesn't just ditch this requirement. They note that most Catholics ignore it, and that most everyone else finds it divisive, or "outdated." C'mon! It's the 21st century, they say! Don't they SEE that it's STUPID, they scream.
Here's the thing, though: the Catholic Church is the world's biggest and oldest organization. It has buried all of the greatest empires known to man, from the Romans to the Soviets. It has establishments literally all over the world, touching every area of human endeavor. It's given us some of the world's greatest thinkers, from Saint Augustine on down to René Girard. When it does things, it usually has a good reason. Everyone has a right to disagree, but it's not that they're a bunch of crazy old white dudes who are stuck in the Middle Ages.
So, what's going on?
The Church teaches that love, marriage, sex, and procreation are all things that belong together. That's it. But it's pretty important. And though the Church has been teaching this for 2,000 years, it's probably never been as salient as today.
Today's injunctions against birth control were re-affirmed in a 1968 document by Pope Paul VI called Humanae Vitae. He warned of four results if the widespread use of contraceptives was accepted:
1. General lowering of moral standards. 2. A rise in infidelity, and illegitimacy. 3. The reduction of women to objects used to satisfy men. 4. Government coercion in reproductive matters.
Does that sound familiar?
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
...
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
I think of the 4, only the last is legitimate. Without contraception, the govt wouldn’t be able to coerce anything about reproduction. The other 3 have very little to do with contraception, as they have been here since before the church or reliable methods of birth control..
The older I get the more I appreciate “Children are an inheritance from the Lord. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.”
Like most women who married in the sixties, I practiced birth control. Still, I birthed four daughters. And, there was always enough love, always enough money. Everything always got done. If I could do it again, I would allow the Lord to fill my quiver with the children of His choice; all of them!
As a Protestant, I say that this is an area where the Catholic Church has been right all along.
Well I thank God that he made women as sexual objects to satisfy men...And as disgusting as it may seem to the single, male, clergy class, God also made men as sexual objects to satisfy women...
I have to wonder if the Catholics' practice of pro-creation is with the lights off and the clothes on...
1. General lowering of moral standards
2. A rise in infidelity, and illegitimacy
3. The reduction of women to objects used to satisfy men.
4. Government coercion in reproductive matters.
As for #1, who’s moral standing? Why does Christianity get to determine what moral standards are? Ours are obviously more lax then say fundamental Islam - but even within Christianity morals differ from extreme to non-existent.
The church is the domain of God and men’s souls are the domain of the church — for those willing to acquiesce and believe.
The government is the domain of the people and the laws are the domain of government.
We’ve already tried the Patriarch method of governing and we had the same problem, however they were from the extreme, like it was a sin for a woman to wear a dress above the ankle, wear makeup, dance, sing, celebrate.
Imagine the horror of a woman staining her lips with pomegranate and the thought that that would push civilization over the threshold of moral turpitude.
Each man should look after their own soul and the Church be there, unopposed by the government for those that join the flock. The church should look after itself without imposing its standards on the unwilling.
As a Catholic I can understand why some people would use contraceptives. I can even understand why some would abort their childen. I don’t have to agree with it to understand it.
What I don’t agree with is make me pay for it.
Where does it say in the Constitution that it is right to make me pay for someone elses contraceptives, or abortion.
I dont agree that it is a right to murder a fetus
but it appears that our Government has made it a right, but now they want to make it a right to have me pay for it, and that is a bunch of baloney.
There is no free lunch. You want an abortion pay for it yourself
You want Birth Control pills, Buy them yourself.
It is not a Public Health issue that requires me to pay for it. IT isn’t the flu that you caught. It’s a self induced act.
You’re obtuse.
“... I thank God that He made women as sexual objects to satisfy men...”
Perhaps I misunderstand your post; however, God did not make women or men as “objects”. An object (IMHO) is something less than human and used for one purpose. Men and women have more purpose than to just have sex. Men and women were created as mates... a coupled pair joined together in Holy Matrimony (hopefully) to become Mothers and Fathers. Do their parts “fit?” Of course, but their view/treatment/reverence of each other is far more significant than seeing each other as an object. Viewing the opposite sex ONLY for sexual gratification is lust (not love). IMHO.
You’re too kind.
> As for #1, who’s moral standing? Why does Christianity get
> to determine what moral standards are?
Is it wrong to murder?
Why? Where do you get the antiquated notion that murder is wrong?
“Birth Control” is better understood as “preemptive abortion”. The same spirit and reasoning is behind it. Sex without responsibility. Sex without children.
Because the government says it’s “legal” does not make it right.
Even worse when the government wants those of us with this perspective to PAY for it.
> like it was a sin for a woman to wear a dress above the ankle
For those of us, admittedly very few, who believe the accounts in Genesis, clothing was intended to conceal, not to reveal.
You can do whatever you want, you are free to make your own choices.
But I should not be made to pay for your choices nor to pay for the consequences of them.
Iscool, you little, little man
de profundis! you just never pass up an opportunity to bash the Catholic Church.
Lurking’
Silly Usagi...don’t yu know, it’s not the church or it’s people that get to determine moral standards...this comes directly from God. You just don’t listen right.
Well, that tells us more than we needed to know about your religious beliefs.
TMI
"Although all men are born free, slavery has been the general lot of the human race. Ignorant—they have been cheated; asleep—they have been surprised; divided—the yoke has been forced upon them. But what is the lesson? ... the people ought to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united, that after establishing a government, they should watch over it ... It is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone can be permanently free."
The current population control mechanism, to be administered by government, is not without roots in the ideology which dominates the Administration and so-called "progressive" thought.
Earlier, FR poster "livius" wrote: "What we are now being forced to pay for is essentially a government funded and (as yet) indirectly government administered population control program."
Writers have been exposing socialism's tyrannical principles and goals for over a century.
Yet, we have arrogant Americans, born in liberty, and viewing themselves as "intellectuals" and "progressives," who have embraced socialist ideas over the ideas of liberty and are determined to impose its deadly limitations on a once-free people.
Last week, my post included an excerpt from Edward Stanley Robertson's essay in which he stated that "the scheme of Socialism is wholly incomplete unless it includes a power of restraining population."
From the Liberty Fund Library is "A Plea for Liberty: An Argument Against Socialism and Socialistic Legislation," edited by Thomas Mackay (1849 - 1912), originally published in 1891, Chapter 1, excerpted final paragraphs from Edward Stanley Robertson's essay:
"I have suggested that the scheme of Socialism is wholly incomplete unless it includes a power of restraining the increase of population, which power is so unwelcome to Englishmen that the very mention of it seems to require an apology. I have showed that in France, where restraints on multiplication have been adopted into the popular code of morals, there is discontent on the one hand at the slow rate of increase, while on the other, there is still a 'proletariat,' and Socialism is still a power in politics.
I.44
"I have put the question, how Socialism would treat the residuum of the working class and of all classes—the class, not specially vicious, nor even necessarily idle, but below the average in power of will and in steadiness of purpose. I have intimated that such persons, if they belong to the upper or middle classes, are kept straight by the fear of falling out of class, and in the working class by positive fear of want. But since Socialism purposes to eliminate the fear of want, and since under Socialism the hierarchy of classes will either not exist at all or be wholly transformed, there remains for such persons no motive at all except physical coercion. Are we to imprison or flog all the 'ne'er-do-wells'?
I.45
"I began this paper by pointing out that there are inequalities and anomalies in the material world, some of which, like the obliquity of the ecliptic and the consequent inequality of the day's length, cannot be redressed at all. Others, like the caprices of sunshine and rainfall in different climates, can be mitigated, but must on the whole be endured. I am very far from asserting that the inequalities and anomalies of human society are strictly parallel with those of material nature. I fully admit that we are under an obligation to control nature so far as we can. But I think I have shown that the Socialist scheme cannot be relied upon to control nature, because it refuses to obey her. Socialism attempts to vanquish nature by a front attack. Individualism, on the contrary, is the recognition, in social politics, that nature has a beneficent as well as a malignant side. The struggle for life provides for the various wants of the human race, in somewhat the same way as the climatic struggle of the elements provides for vegetable and animal life—imperfectly, that is, and in a manner strongly marked by inequalities and anomalies. By taking advantage of prevalent tendencies, it is possible to mitigate these anomalies and inequalities, but all experience shows that it is impossible to do away with them. All history, moreover, is the record of the triumph of Individualism over something which was virtually Socialism or Collectivism, though not called by that name. In early days, and even at this day under archaic civilisations, the note of social life is the absence of freedom. But under every progressive civilisation, freedom has made decisive strides—broadened down, as the poet says, from precedent to precedent. And it has been rightly and naturally so.
I.46
"Freedom is the most valuable of all human possessions, next after life itself. It is more valuable, in a manner, than even health. No human agency can secure health; but good laws, justly administered, can and do secure freedom. Freedom, indeed, is almost the only thing that law can secure. Law cannot secure equality, nor can it secure prosperity. In the direction of equality, all that law can do is to secure fair play, which is equality of rights but is not equality of conditions. In the direction of prosperity, all that law can do is to keep the road open. That is the Quintessence of Individualism, and it may fairly challenge comparison with that Quintessence of Socialism we have been discussing. Socialism, disguise it how we may, is the negation of Freedom. That it is so, and that it is also a scheme not capable of producing even material comfort in exchange for the abnegations of Freedom, I think the foregoing considerations amply prove." EDWARD STANLEY ROBERTSON
Not sure if serious, but sure, I’ll bite. Being a woman and satisfying your man is not what they are warning against. An object is used for a sole purpose, so they are saying and it is coming to fruition, that women are not repsected as women but instead seen merely as objects for men to sex up, move along and do the same to another. You’re taking our attraction for the opposite sex, and perverting it.
Yikes. I guess so.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.