Posted on 05/23/2008 6:26:42 PM PDT by Salvation
Then why is it forbidden for a male, married even, to ejaculate outside the vagina? All those little sperm have a sacred (As decreed by Holy Men of the cloth) right to implant an egg. Not natural perhaps? Why then are (Married) females allowed to climax outside of the frame of intercourse?
Questions then babble from traditions of men, which lead to even more questions.
I am not saying a man has a right to force oral sex (To climax) from his wife but why is wrong if it is mutual? Again, if it’s not natural then apply it to the female as well. Hence the sperm has some “special” little favors going for it, (I.E worthy of respect) deemed too “sacred” to “abuse”.
I’m not into debating as much as my husband petronski is. However, even I know having a conversation about the RCC with an ex-catholic is sometimes not the best thing to do. I honstly can’t answer your questions. Maybe some of the RCC experts can answer.
I would question the idea of sinful (perverse) chimpanzees. I simply raised the issue of natural example, because that is one of the bases for the Aristotelian tradition’s argument for what is ‘natural’ vs. ‘unnatural’ sex.
I provided Biblical references for my viewpoint in a previous post. As a former Anglican priest, I am sure you are well aware of the tradition’s rationale for marriage as a holy commonwealth.
Here is one source for my own Reformed, Protestant perspective on this issue.
Worldly Saints by Leland Ryken.
The Puritan doctrine of sex was a watershed in the cultural history of the West, The Puritans devalued celibacy, glorified companionate marriage, affirmed married sex as both necessary and pure, established the ideal of wedded romantic love, and exalted the role of the wife.
This complex of ideas and values received its most eloquent and beautiful expression in Miltons picture of the married life of Adam and Eve in his epic Paradise Lost. In portraying the perfect marriage in book four, Milton went out of his way to show that Adam and Eve enjoyed sexual union before the fall. As Adam and Eve retire to their bower for the evening, we read,
Straight side by side were laid, nor turned I ween
Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rites
Mysterious of connubial love refused:
Whatever hypocrites austerely talk
Of purity and place and innocence,
Defaming as impure what God declares
Pure, and commands to some, leaves free to all.
Our maker bids increase, who bids abstain
But our Destroyer, foe to God and man?
Having dissociated himself from the [Roman] Catholic tradition, Milton proceeds to give his famous apostrophe (address) to wedded love:
Hail wedded love, mysterious law, true source
Of human offspring, sole propriety
In paradise of all things common else.
By thee adulterous lust was driven from men
Among the bestial herds to range, by thee
Founded in reason, loyal, just and pure,
Relations dear, and all the charities
Of father, son, and brother first were known
Far be it, that I should write thee sin or blame,
Or think thee unbefitting holiest place,
Perpetual fountain of domestic sweets,
Whose bed is undefiled and chaste pronounced.
All the usual Puritan themes are here: the Biblical basis for affirming sex (as evidenced by several key Biblical illusions in the passage), the differentiation between animal lust and human sexual love, the domestic context into which sexual fulfilment is put, and the romantic overtones of the passage. This, and not the modern stereotype, is what the Puritans really said about sex. (Worldy Saints)
[Husband and Wife] may joyfully give due benevolence one to the other; as two musical instruments rightly fitted do make a most pleasant and sweet harmony in a well tuned consort. (an anonymous Puritans source, Worldly Saints, p. 44)
Richard Baxter is also a good primary source for a Protestant and Reformed companionate view of marriage and married sexuality.
I’m not sure the information you’re getting about RC teaching on what’s okay is, uh, okay. Can you cite some sources?
Hee for God only, shee for God in him:Well nobody bats 1000.God is thy Law, thou mine: to know no more
Is woman's happiest knowledge and her praise.
I didn't say Chimps were sinful. "Perversion" would need a will' to become sinful. And I don't think Aristotle means by "nature" the same thing that empiricists" would mean by it. For an empiricist the very concept of "perversion" would be hard to maintain. Either it happens or it doesn't. I think for Aristotle human nature means what humans should be like not what they are,like as observed.
But back to Milton. To put it jocularly, did they have ABC in Eden? More seriously, while affirming what Milton says (and despising the caricature of Puritans as much as those of Catholics), I still wouldn't bet that he'd approve of Artificial Birth Control, would you?
Again, none of the good folk supporting the Roman prohibition on contraception on this thread will directly address the issue, the infertile aside - can sex without the possibility of pregnancy be moral - should post-menopausal women or pregnant women have sex with their husbands?Sure we can. In fact we have. The answer is yes. The Catholic Church teaches BOTH uses of the marital act, procreation and mutual pleasure. That you keep pretending otherwise reflects on you and your men of straw.
I'm not sure that's exactly right. Sexual intercourse when the possibility of conception has been deliberately precluded by artificial means is a no-no.
He has it wrong. His posit that sin exists in those cases is a strawman argument. It is false-to-fact.
Of course. Here and the hereafter.
“The Roman theory of marriage as sacrament and prohibition on contraception is rooted in Aristotelian philosophy and certain of the fathers such as Clement - its rooted in the notion of what is natural vs. what is unnatural.”
Is that the sort of nonsensical drivel that is taught in protestant seminaries?
“Hence the sperm has some special little favors going for it, (I.E worthy of respect) deemed too sacred to abuse.”
Monty Python is not a good theological source.
The distinction is between those sex acts that are open to life and those that are not. It has nothing to do with these ridiculous claims that Catholics believe every sperm to be “sacred.”
Sex with someone you love, and which very well may result in conception, is on a completely different plane from sterile bedroom gymnastics, and I believe those who are open to God’s will can sense it.
No, it’s the nonsensical drivel taught by Rome.
I'm not sure he's a he. His or her as the case may be God is a she though
so isnt there enough wiggle room for God to get around barriers humans might throw in her way?
may I ask of what persuasion are you?
Father of three, husband of one.
There are a lot of wonderful metaphors for God in our scriptural tradition aren’t there!
God is like a father, a rock, a warrior, a mother hen, a fortress, a nursing mother who will not forsake her child, etc.
I prefer dark German beer.
For more references to primary sources and interaction with both Christian tradition and the scriptures, you could try Mark D. Jordan’s, The Ethics of Sex or L. W. Countryman’s Dirt, Greed and Sex.
Perhaps that is your problem. You should stick to Guinness.
BTW, I hope I have time over the next hours to respond to some of your posts. They do need a response and as the oldest in my long line of 43+ descendents, a convert to Catholicism since my young adulthood to my old age and a certificated teacher of Natural Family Planning for many years, I believe that I may have something of value to offer, from all perspectives.
Meanwhile, I hope this thread survives so I can do some posting on this subject.
Yeah, there are wonderful metaphors, of course. (I too went to Seminary.) However I would disagree that gender attributes for El Shaddai are interchangeable, if only because having SINCE seminary been so inculcated with RC drivel that I am no longer going to go a-haring off after a new linguistic and cultural fad when for a very long time the masculine gender has been attributed to God in preference to the feminine.
Please note I said "gender" and not "sex". And bear in mind that I'm old enough (and educated enough, he said modestly) to think of the last 30 years or so of alleged thought as a momentary fad.
“No, it’s the nonsensical drivel taught by Rome”.
No—I don’t agree with that premise at all.
While there is a lot to consider in the spiritual and philosophical value and also the various points of the NFP in practice, I would like, for the moment, to begin with Scriptual and practical thoughts re: NFP. There is more, but I will get to other aspects according to the time I have today. But for now:
Our contemporary language commonly refers to the physical expression of love as “having sex”. Scriptural language refers to human physical love as “knowing” (i.e.: Luke 1:34). The expression of “having” in man/woman relationships often conveys a sort of temporary possession—a type of “having” which has in it the quality of taking. The Scriptural “knowing” conveys a fullness of possession, so complete as to “blur” a distinction of beings and to be truly one by immersion, so to speak, into the personhood of the other.
The espression of “having’ seems to imply a personalized desire, while the expression of “knowing” conveys the self-donated “knowing-ness” of love. “Having” can leave one alone and unfulfilled. “Knowing” calls forth total self-donation, which is the fountain that never runs dry and cements a mysteriously eternal unity of two in one flesh.
Artificial contraception disrupts this unity. Even more disconcerting, it is nature-changing. The human body is “wondrously and magnificantly made” (Ps 138-139), but if pharmeceutical contraception is used, the very nature of the body as God designed, created and gave, is changed. (St. Paul refers to it in the Greek “pharmakeia”—meaning occult medicine) To change and alter the body in this way is to alter that which God made according to His own divine plan (Gen.1:27). Such a technology and/or practice to change the sexual nature given and designed by God is presumptuos to say the least. The same principle holds true for any unnatural “barriers” or cutting of the life-giving source in man.
To allow the body to remain in repose, intact with all of its potential remaining as created, is one thing. To alter its natural functions, render it sterile by human design and intent for the purpose of muting or destroying its unitive-creative essence is another thing altogether.
Without contraception, husband and wife give to each other unconditionally, just as Christ gave to His Bride, the Church. The fertility which they share is the life-giving dimension of their covenant and it finds its expression in the love-giving dimension of that covenant. Whether the couple chooses to use the full creative power of their love, which may, if God chooses, bring into the world new life destined for heaven—of whether they choose to forego making love to each other for a brief period of days because a pregnancy must necessarily be postponed for a while and therfore they draw apart for a while (1Cor.7:15)—they are, in either case, living their covenant as God does with His people. In either situation they are sharing the Master’s way, as a shadow, human reality of the Divine: “this is my body which will be given up for you”.
Covenant is the principle of gift-and-response that haunts the Christian conscience down the corridors of time.
Through God our Father and Creator we have received life. This life has been made eternal for us through Jesus, the Lord, Who gave totally of Himself, because He loved us.
This is God’s covenant with us: life and love.
From Genesis to Revelation, God refers to His love for His people in terms of the nuptials. (to mention only a few: Isaiah, Hosea, Song of Solomon, Matthew 23 and 25, Ephesians 5:22-23, Revelation19). Jesus worked his first public miracle at a wedding feast. In marriage we are convenanted in Christ Jesus as signs to the world of His unconditional life-giving and love-giving. We fulfill this covenant in a holy manner when we leave our marriages open—unobstructed and unbroken unity—to both life and love.
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