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I’m going to try to ease out of this thread - so I’ll leave it at this.

As to the unanswered question - I was simply curious to see if any Roman Catholics would affirm the notion that sex betwen two heterosexual, married people - whether genital intercourse with contraception, or oral sex, anal sex, masturbation, etc. - if those constituted grave sin or not. Just a question.

Legalistic - calling married intercourse or sexuality ‘sterile gymnastics’ if family planning is used to me, frankly, seems legalistic and just sort of sad. I can’t speak for other folks sex life, but mine is a bit more rich, meaningful, life-giving and blessed than ‘sterile gymnastics.’

But if one views sex between a married man and woman as legitimate and moral only if pregnancy is a realistic possibility as the result of orgasm, then it makes sense. To me, to many, that perspective is extrabiblical and legalistic. The use or non-use of contraception is a matter of personal conscience.

Birth control is more available in Europe and one doesn’t see the same level of unwanted and unintended pregnancies between unmarried folk - such as those you transported to ‘juvie.’ You label the babies they sired - god bless that procreation - bastards. Huh. Should we abort the bastards? Should they bear the label bastard through their lives. So - abortion is evil, but contraception is also evil. You’re going to wind up with babies then - why label them bastards?

Condoms are shunned in Africa, the AIDS rate is very high and the notion that having sex with (i.e. - raping) a virgin will cure it is current. Wouldn’t wider availability and more education as to the use and application of family planning and the biological facts of sex be a positive good?

Correlation is not causation. You suggest contraception abets divorce or illegitimacy. Perhaps it is cars, the ability to travel outside the bounds of community; the anonymity of cities and suburbia? The avoidance of realistic sexuality education among many Christians? The longer time between the onset of puberty and the average age of marriage? It is a complicated and complex issue. Blaming the availability of birth control seems a very superficial answer.

Finally, the NFP “all contraception is sin folks” don’t mind throwing labels and judgments around but you balk at the perception that it is legalistic to condemn other Christians who in good conscience utilize contraception in family planning? Sorry.

That said - Have a blessed sabbath day and Memorial Day, I bow out. It is an intramural debate among sistren and brethren. We’re all in it together against Islam, etc, etc, etc. Blessings.

If your parting shots are going to be questions or judgments phrased as questions, then it seems to me you owe my response a reading. I call the kids in question bastards because it is a term of art, possibly archaic, used to describe precisely the marital status of the parents of the child in question -- for example, William the Bastard who conquered England. Bastardy is no deserved shame to the child in question, but it is often a handicap or a disadvantage. The shame properly belongs to the parents. Bastardy, that is the getting of kids without marrying the mother, used to be considered criminal and shameful. Now for some it is something to boast about.

I'd suggest that "label" is a word like "legalistic" which conveys little meaning but does convey an evaluation or judgment. I think "legalistic" pertains to rules the speaker doesn't like and "label" to designations the speaker doesn't like. So the words do not advance the argument so much as re-posit the point of view of their speaker.

Raising the issue of abortion in the case of illegitimacy is, I think, clouding the issue, as is the AIDS problem in a country where Christian notions of chastity seem not to be considered. It's wrong to rob banks. It's wrong to engage in sexual intercourse without being hitched. I suppose in a way IF one is going to rob banks, using rubber bullets or other non-lethal ways to do it is better than using a machine gun. But it's still wrong.

Similarly when someone argues that unmarried women have a right to contraception when they have sex, I don't have an answer to that, because I'm still back at "when they have sex" and "unmarried". I don't counsel bank-robbers on safe ways to rob banks. I advise them to quit robbing banks altogether.

I don't know about "Sterile gymnastics" except that the word "Sterile" would seem to be uncontroversial in this context. Wasn't sterility the point?

I was simply curious to see if any Roman Catholics would affirm the notion that sex between two heterosexual, married people - whether genital intercourse with contraception,
or oral sex,
anal sex,
masturbation, etc. -
if those constituted grave sin or not. Just a question.

Just a question, huh?

I think they are all illicit, if they lead to ejaculation outside the vagina. The standard would be getting the sperm somewhere in the same county as any ova that might be floating around. As to gravity, I don't know.

It seems to me we need to separate out orgasm and ejaculation, and to talk more about possibility and intention. As I said earlier there's a difference between something being unlikely and the intention to make is exceedingly unlikely or impossible.

I have at least one pretty good friend who is a bastard. I guess some aspects of the cartoon version of Puritanism are still with us, only it might be more Victorianism. But I'm not going to acknowledge attempts to put me on the defensive for calling a spade a spade. The kid's parents weren't married. That father didn't see the relationship between siring kiddies and commitment and responsibility. In one case of which I know, the mother didn't see that having a loving father around was something that a loving mother would try to provide for her child. She wanted to have sex. Having a kid wouldn't be so bad, she thought. Plenty of others in her etended family had gotten kids without getting wed. I think that is at the very best thoughtless, a kind of negligence and imprudence. At the worst I think it viciously selfish.

I know Juvenile and Domestic Relations court can give one a slanted view, but, wow, did I see a lot of Daddies who seemed neither willing nor able to contribute to the welfare of the kids whose daddies they were. I guess we are going to have to hope for some good data on how many Europeans entered into marriage before having children and before the wide-spread adoption of ABC compared to how many ditto but AFTER the ditto. And likewise for divorce. My guess is divorce and unmarried parenthood are on the increase. But I'm open to data, since I'm just guessing about Europe.

It just seems silly the kind of moral approaches people take to this question. To say that there might be a sin, even a grave sin, involved in intercourse undertaken with a concomitant intention to make conception impossible does not imply that there is no good in the intercourse at all. Stolen food still nourishes.

If we're "unbiblical", I'd suggest that a careful reading of the OT gives ample evidence of people saying, "God won't mind if we do this or that," and in a couple of generations, Looky there! Assyrians as far as the eye can see! Whooda thunk it? I'd imagine that there were plenty of people eager to call Elijah archaic and legalistic?

But we've seen what's happened since Lambeth 1930 and Griswold v. Connecticut. Roe v. Wade, that's what happened. NOT what was promised, but rather the opposite.

Given a choice between being legalistic and not being able to see what's in front of my eyes, I'll go with legalistic. It's just like womens ' ordination in the Episcopal Church. WHen the issue is raised a bunch of fuddy-duddies say, "Next thing you know, they;'re going to want to ordain homosexuals." And the proponents of women's ordination, of which I was one, say, "Don't be ridiculous! That's SUCH a straw man! There's no connection between the two issues at all. What a crock!"

And within a couple of decades what do you get? Bishop J.S. Spong and Bishop Vicky Gene!

So here are two cases where the legalistic fuddy-duddies said, YOu do that and bad stuff is going to happen." They get sneered at and laughed at and called legalistic. And when the bad stuff DOES happen, who remembers what the widely scorned and suppressed fuddy-duddies said?

I do.

but you balk at the perception that it is legalistic to condemn other Christians who in good conscience utilize contraception in family planning? Sorry.

Nope. I have no problem with disagreement as such. I just balk at the word "legalistic".

Corpus Christi for us. A BIG day, which will be observed with the obligatory nap. Scuse typos. Eyelids heavy ....