Msgr. Charles Pope is a Catholic and is trying to sustain the Catholic belief and teachings on contraception.
Here’s the dictionary definition of contraception:
http://machaut.uchicago.edu/?action=search&word=contraception&resource=Webster%27s&quicksearch=on
There isn’t one from either the 1928 or 1913 Webster dictionaries.
It is a modern word, first recorded in 1891. Our knowledge of when human life begins has rocketed forward since that time. You may believe that contraception is wrong or immoral, but that doesn’t make it so. Nor must it naturally lead to homosexuality, adultery, fornication or abortion.
Clearly it happened long ago as well and is not a modern disease:
http://bible.cc/galatians/5-19.htm
This site is very good for understanding the Bible and what it really says in the NT Greek or OT Hebrew.
Compare what Msgr. Pope infers and what the original really says. All the verses he quotes are available.
Here’s Matthew 5:19 which he doesn’t quote:
http://bible.cc/matthew/15-19.htm
Here is Rev 21:8:
http://bible.cc/revelation/21-8.htm
My experience with Catholicism is that its adherents understand the Bible only less so than their priests. The interpretations are bent so as to buttress a doctrine with little or tangential Biblical support. If it is by divine revelation to a Pope, then so be it.
http://bible.cc/genesis/1-28.htm
Genesis 1:28 is an express command to marry and procreate. It would have been simple for God to also command that we may take no action to avoid procreation, but He didn’t. We, as a part of the natural world, may choose. That is not unnatural.
Not marrying is unnatural and against God.
You may believe as you see fit. It is, as always, your choice.
You have a nice weekend. It’s been stimulating.
You make the point that homosexuality (acted out as sodomy) was an ancient vice, well-known in the ancient world; very true. And so was contraception. The first act of contraception was done in Genesis 38; and in (dis)honor of the man who thus offended God, the word "Onanism" was used, through the 16th-19th century, by both Catholics and Protestants, to describe the sinful practice of deliberately turning sex away from procreation, Luther and Calvin, and many others, preached on the contraceptive implications of the sin of Onan.
All the violations of sex-as-God-created-it --- violations of the unitive and procreative aspect--- are sins. Contraception is a sin because it is perverting the act of sexual union by turning it against its own nature.
But you are mistaken, if you think that contraceptive perversion is comparable to chaste celibacy. You wrote:
”Genesis 1:28 is an express command to marry and procreate. It would have been simple for God to also command that we may take no action to avoid procreation, but He didn’t. We, as a part of the natural world, may choose. That is not unnatural….Not marrying is unnatural and against God.”
To reach this conclusion, my dear friend, you would have to reject a lot of New Testament wisdom. Marriage and procreation are indeed holy --- very much so, since marriage was established in Eden by God, and “Be fruitful” was one of His very first commandments and blessings.. But celibacy for God’s sake, has its own excellence and is in some cases even more suitable for His purposes.
I would have you take a good look at 1 Cor. 7:25 and Matt. 19:11. In 1 Cor. 7, St. Paul clearly teaches the advantages of the celibate state to the married state, providing a powerful refutation of any suggestion that being abstinent is against God.
1 Corinthians 7-
“Now concerning the thing whereof you wrote to me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. But for fear of fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband… But I speak this by indulgence, not by commandment.For I would that all men were even as myself [unmarried]: but every one hath his proper gift from God; one after this manner, and another after that. But I say to the unmarried, and to the widows: It is good for them if they so continue, even as I…
If anyone is worried that he might not be acting honorably toward the virgin he is engaged to, and if his passions are too strong and he feels he ought to marry, he should do as he wants. He is not sinning. They should get married. But the man who has settled the matter in his own mind, who is under no obligation but has control over his own will, and who has made up his mind not to marry the virgin—this man also does the right thing. So then, he who marries the virgin does right, but he who does not marry her does better.
St. Paul clearly identifies the state of virginity or celibacy as a state that is better than the state of marriage. We also see this in the words of Jesus Himself:
Matthew 19: 11-12 Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others ---and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Those who can accept this, should accept it.”
Jesus is clearly speaking here, not of eunuchs (castrated men) in the literal sense, but of those who live singly and chastely for the sake of the kingdom of God. There are such who are not best suited to marriage, but for leading a single and chaste life, in order to serve God in a more perfect state than those who marry, as St. Paul clearly shows (above, 1 Cor 7: 37, 38).
The Church does not claim to understand these things by means of a special revelation to the Pope. This was he common understanding of all Christendom for well over a millennium.
The teaching about celibacy is right there in the text, quite explicitly: it is not for everyone, but for those who can do it, who have the gift for it, celibacy is of great spiritual worth.
The teaching on contraception is supported by what we can reasonably know about human nature, what is good for persons, families, and societies. The evidence, and reasonable inference from evidence, shows that contraception drastically reduces the "opportunity cost" of fornication: it makes women cheap and fornication easy. When that happens, we know what behavior lamentable human weakness will dictate. Contraceptive societies are in the process of killing off marriage and are in self-inflicted demographic collapse.
Non-contraceptive societies will simply expand to fill the vacuum. And we know who they are.
Imagine a crisp-around-the-edges Margaret Sanger in hell, saying gleefully, "Inshallah."