Posted on 04/14/2011 8:18:23 AM PDT by Grunthor
These "family planning" classes, are not uniformly taught the same way and by the same people in all churches.
I have 5 children, 9 years old and under, "family planning" classes, I don't need (now, help repairing my 27hp tractor engine, I could use) . The families in my SSPX chapel all have many children, many in the 9-14 children range, I'm one of the small families. Our "family planning" classes are hands on. Anyone can SEE how it's done, and ask whatever they don't understand.
re: One more thing, you need to be much more balanced in your perspective. Note the following you posted: “...mothers not having the children God has destined for them” “If you only knew the women who will go to Hell...” Why the focus on the wrongdoing of women?
I posted two quotes from saints on the matter, one for men and one for women. And next time I'll put "parents not having the children God has destined for them”
All of you, please have the courtesy to copy me when you detract against me. Salvation did this before (did not copy me)in conspiring to have me removed from your “Catholic Caucus”, which should now be called Liberal Catholic Caucus, now that Verdugo, the only voice of tradition/antiquity, has been removed from it.
Dear Cronos,
For the 100th time :
You are an Eastern Orthodox, you are not a Catholic, and yet you are standing as a judge oft my Catholcism? You are not Catholc! You know nothing about the faith.
1) Some religions consider the consumption of pork to be a grave sin, and have strict dietary restrictions. More likely than not, this is just long standing wisdom codified in religious terms to improve the health of the population. Likewise, prohibitions on contraception are there to increase populations and have more to do with raising armies and building workforces than anything else. They are for societal self preservation.
2) Contraception which does not destroy lives is not inherently evil. It is morally neutral. Having children is good. Not having any is not evil. If it were, then those who take a vow of celibacy would would be guilty of grave sin
3) The natural order of life is to get wet when it rains, die from infectious diseases, etc. and yet we subvert this by wearing raincoats and injecting ourselves with potions of protection, etc. These therefore must be evil.
4) Contraception is to NFP as flowers are to Irises.
Unfortunately, you do not know or understand the unanimous history of Christian teaching on contraception.
Some history of Christian thought on Birth Control:(Note: The quotes of the early church fathers can be researched in their entirety, courtesy of Calvin College.)
191 AD - Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor of Children
"Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly ejaculated, nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted." (2:10:91:2) "To have coitus other than to procreate children is to do injury to nature" (2:10:95:3).
307 AD - Lactantius - Divine Institutes
"[Some] complain of the scantiness of their means, and allege that they have not enough for bringing up more children, as though, in truth, their means were in [their] power . . . .or God did not daily make the rich poor and the poor rich. Wherefore, if any one on any account of poverty shall be unable to bring up children, it is better to abstain from relations with his wife" (6:20)
"God gave us eyes not to see and desire pleasure, but to see acts to be performed for the needs of life; so too, the genital ['generating'] part of the body, as the name itself teaches, has been received by us for no other purpose than the generation of offspring" (6:23:18).
325 AD - Council of Nicaea I - Canon 1
"[I]f anyone in sound health has castrated [sterilized] himself, it behooves that such a one, if enrolled among the clergy, should cease [from his ministry], and that from henceforth no such person should be promoted. But, as it is evident that this is said of those who willfully do the thing and presume to castrate themselves, so if any have been made eunuchs by barbarians, or by their masters, and should otherwise be found worthy, such men this canon admits to the clergy"
375 AD - Epiphanius of Salamis - Medicine Chest Against Heresies
"They [certain Egyptian heretics] exercise genital acts, yet prevent the conceiving of children. Not in order to produce offspring, but to satisfy lust, are they eager for corruption" (26:5:2 ).
391 AD - John Chrysostom - Homilies on Matthew
"[I]n truth, all men know that they who are under the power of this disease [the sin of covetousness] are wearied even of their father's old age [wishing him to die so they can inherit]; and that which is sweet, and universally desirable, the having of children, they esteem grievous and unwelcome. Many at least with this view have even paid money to be childless, and have mutilated nature, not only killing the newborn, but even acting to prevent their beginning to live [sterilization]" (28:5).
393 AD - Jerome - Against Jovinian
"But I wonder why he [the heretic Jovinianus] set Judah and Tamar before us for an example, unless perchance even harlots give him pleasure; or Onan, who was slain because he grudged his brother seed. Does he imagine that we approve of any sexual intercourse except for the procreation of children?" (1:19).
419 AD - Augustine - Marriage and Concupiscence
"I am supposing, then, although are not lying [with your wife] for the sake of procreating offspring, you are not for the sake of lust obstructing their procreation by an evil prayer or an evil deed. Those who do this, although they are called husband and wife, are not; nor do they retain any reality of marriage, but with a respectable name cover a shame. Sometimes this lustful cruelty, or cruel lust, comes to this, that they even procure poisons of sterility [oral contraceptives] . . . Assuredly if both husband and wife are like this, they are not married, and if they were like this from the beginning they come together not joined in matrimony but in seduction. If both are not like this, I dare to say that either the wife is in a fashion the harlot of her husband or he is an adulterer with his own wife" (1:15:17).
522 AD - Caesarius of Arles - Sermons
"Who is he who cannot warn that no woman may take a potion [an oral contraceptive] so that she is unable to conceive or condemns in herself the nature which God willed to be fecund? As often as she could have conceived or given birth, of that many homicides she will be held guilty, and, unless she undergoes suitable penance, she will be damned by eternal death in hell. If a women does not wish to have children, let her enter into a religious agreement with her husband; for chastity is the sole sterility of a Christian woman" (1:12).
Martin Luther (1483 to 1546) -
"Onan must have been a malicious and incorrigible scoundrel. This is a most disgraceful sin. It is far more atrocious than incest or adultery. We call it unchastity, yes, a Sodomitic sin. For Onan goes into her; that is, he lies with her and copulates, and when it comes to the point of insemination, spills the semen, lest the woman conceive. Surely at such a time the order of nature established by God in procreation should be followed."
John Calvin (1509 to 1564) -
Deliberately avoiding the intercourse, so that the seed drops on the ground, is double horrible. For this means that one quenches the hope of his family, and kills the son, which could be expected, before he is born. This wickedness is now as severely as is possible condemned by the Spirit, through Moses, that Onan, as it were, through a violent and untimely birth, tore away the seed of his brother out the womb, and as cruel as shamefully has thrown on the earth. Moreover he thus has, as much as was in his power, tried to destroy a part of the human race.
John Wesley (1703 to 1791) -
"Onan, though he consented to marry the widow, yet to the great abuse of his own body, of the wife he had married and the memory of his brother that was gone, refused to raise up seed unto the brother. Those sins that dishonour the body are very displeasing to God, and the evidence of vile affections. Observe, the thing which he did displeased the Lord - And it is to be feared, thousands, especially single persons, by this very thing, still displease the Lord, and destroy their own souls.
(Examining sermons and commentaries, Charles Provan identified over a hundred Protestant leaders (Lutheran, Calvinist, Reformed, Methodist, Presbyterian, Anglican, Evangelical, Nonconformist, Baptist, Puritan, Pilgrim) living before the twentieth century condemning non- procreative sex. Did he find the opposing argument was also represented? Mr. Provan stated, "We will go one better, and state that we have found not one orthodox [protestant]theologian to defend Birth Control before the 1900's. NOT ONE! On the other hand, we have found that many highly regarded Protestant theologians were enthusiastically opposed to it."
In 1908 the Bishops of the Anglican Communion meeting at the Lambeth Conference declared, "The Conference records with alarm the growing practice of the artificial restriction of the family and earnestly calls upon all Christian people to discountenance the use of all artificial means of restriction as demoralising to character and hostile to national welfare."
The Lambeth Conference of 1930 produced a new resolution, "Where there is a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, complete abstinence is the primary and obvious method..." but if there was morally sound reasoning for avoiding abstinence, "the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of Christian principles."
1930 AD - Pope Pius XI - Casti Conubii (On Christian Marriage)
"Any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin."
1965 AD - Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World - Gaudium et Spes, Vatican II
Relying on these principles, sons of the Church may not undertake methods of birth control which are found blameworthy by the teaching authority of the Church in its unfolding of the divine law. (51)
1968 AD - Pope Paul VI - Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life)
Equally to be excluded, as the teaching authority of the Church has frequently declared, is direct sterilization, whether perpetual or temporary, whether of the man or of the woman. Similarly excluded is every action which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, propose, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible. To justify conjugal acts made intentionally infecund, one cannot invoke as valid reasons the lesser evil, or the fact that such acts would constitute a whole together with the fecund acts already performed or to follow later, and hence would share in one and the same moral goodness. In truth, if it is sometimes licit to tolerate a lesser evil in order to avoid a greater evil to promote a greater good, it is not licit, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil so that good may follow therefrom; that is to make into the object of a positive act of the will something which is intrinsically disorder, and hence unworthy of the human person, even when the intention is to safeguard or promote individual, family or social well-being. Consequently it is an error to think that a conjugal act which is deliberately made infecund and so is intrinsically dishonest could be made honest and right by the ensemble of a fecund conjugal life. (14)
1993 AD - Catechism of the Catholic Church
"The regulation of births represents one of the aspects of responsible fatherhood and motherhood. Legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means (for example, direct sterilization or contraception)." (2399)
These are all false accusations from a person that is an Eastern Orthodox,in other words, he is not Catholic. Moreover, he has no knowledge of the faith, which anyone can see by looking at his history of posting.
I responded to this "Catholic Church has 22 rites" mix up, by saying that this is elementary material. The problem was that the Eastern Orthodox were using the title of catholic as to include themselves.
Now, regarding the " who calls the Church the RCC",
This is at the heart of the perpetual pursuit of me, by this Cronos. I used a title of the Catholic Church, that makes it impossible for the FR Eastern Orthodox like Cronos to hide behind their use of catholic to include themselves, as if they were Catholic. The title comes from Vatican I and is a legitimate title for the Catholic Church. I quoted Pius XII using it. I could have just as easily quoted just about anyone using it, though it's not much used in the English language countries, here's what I wrote exactly:
NOTICE HOW ALL THE FALSE CATHOLICS, THE SCHISMATIC EASTERN ORTHODOX, ALL CAME OUT OF THE DARKNESS WITH MY POSTING # 59.
This is perfect proof of why Catholics have to PROUDLY use their entire TITLE, it can't be counterfeited by non-Catholics!
From: Mystici Corporis Christi, by Pope Pius XII (and the first Vatican Council):
The true Church of Jesus Christ is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear, Kosta 50; The_Reader_David;Kolokotronos; Cronos;ArrogantBustard,
Have the honesty to find a title for your national churches that does not hide behind what the WORLD has always identified as the Catholic Church, or a Catholic.
The Russian Orthodox represent like 64% of the total of all (the 10 separate national churches which are identified as the) the Eastern Orthodox. The Russian Orthodox are one religion that can really call itself united, and they are just 85 million people. A religion of 85 million does not dictate and re-define what THE WORLD has always called Catholic, and Catholic Church, a religion of 1100 million!
Have the intellectual honesty to find yourselves a proper title.
God Bless
For instance, one may think -- oh, what's wrong with using a condom? This just means that we don't have kids. So, we can do "it" anytime with no worries. So, that means that having kids is just a mistake. So, it means that kids can be a mistake. Mistakes can be corrected, right? What's the harm in that? Ok, 2% of the time the condoms don't work, so if they don't, then there must be other means to "correct", right? So, what's wrong with abortion? It's just a "correction"
and so on and so forth.
Then we get into the argument of when is life, life? 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years after birth?
The Church's position is that we need to respect the concept of sex -- enjoy it, yes, but remember that there is a reason for the act -- not that every time we do it, it needs to result in kids, but we need to know the main, higher purpose of the act. Sex is not just something to satisfy our animal needs, but is something given by God for a higher purpose.
Yay! YAY! How far along?
Are you saying Cronos is not Catholic?
The foundation of which was based on the incorrect assumption that semen was necessary and sufficient to generate life inside a woman. We know now that this is not true. And besides, my sisters-in-law don’t need impregnating.
Knowledge of biology has progressed.
So when God inspired Genesis 38 to be written, i.e., the Onan incident on which Christians have always based the prohibition on contraception, God didn’t know where babies came from?
OK, whatever you say ;-)
None of us are Catholic for the lad. We are all “papists” or “RCC”s... But, if it makes him feel better that I acknowledge our Orthodox brethern as well, brethern, so be it. No other poster has done so much to bring Catholics and Orthodox together as our dear “traditional Catholic” here.
Given: Dad’s first son dies and he wants grandchildren so bad that he tries to force son two to do the deed with his sister- in-law. No dice - God Smites him. Sister-in-law wants it so bad that she secretly prostitutes herself to dad. Bingo - twins.
Therefore: contraception is an abomination.
Yeah, that follows (o.O)
It's always a little awkward to explain things like this in a general forum (where you feel you're talking about your gynecological exam in a loud voice in a Greyhound bus station) but OK, I'll explain further: you're not to deposit semen up somebody's butt, down their throat, into their shoes or pieces of beef liver or little latex balloon-thingies.
Now foreplay, and after-play, and play-play and any other kind of friskiness, is not dealt with or mentioned here, because all those thing are ad libitum ("as you like it") as long as they are muturally agreeable and not disgusting or dangerous to either party. Frisk away, by all means. But the marital act per se, can be described as either procreative or perverted in form, and procreative in form means ejaculation into the wife's vagina.
Obviously in form doesn't alwsys mean in effect. Vaginal intercourse cannot result in procreation if the woman is already pregnant,or post-menopausal, or in her infertile time (which is most of the time), or if the man hasn't a minimum count of live sperm, etc. etc. And that's all OK, if that's the way it is. Whether there is effective fertility present or not, marital intercourse is still an honorable thing and a blessing to the husband and wife.
A little rejoiceful jigging here .... :o)
And why is it so important to avoid perversion? Because it' a matter of meaning. Honest-to-God lovemaking "means" lifegiving even when it doesn't "achieve" lifegiving. Perversion has a different meaning: it means slamming the door, hard, on sanctity. Meanings are important, and meanings are embodied.
I hope that makes some sense.
Good love keeps things beautiful. It keeps intact the natural heart-to-heart delight that God intends for us. It can be expressed better, I suspect, in poetry than in doctrinal definition: as e.e. cummings said,
...The text (in the Douay-Rheims version) reads as follows:
(7) And Her, the firstborn of Juda, was wicked in the sight of the Lord: and was slain by him.Now, it has been fashionable among twentieth-century exegetes to maintain that in these verses the Bible condemns Onan's coitus interruptus only insofar as it in effect violated the so-called levirate marriage custom endorsed by the law of Moses at a time when polygamy was not forbidden.7 According to this ancient oriental practice, a man - whether he was already married or not - was expected to marry his deceased brother's wife if she was still childless at her husband's death; and the first-born son of this union was then regarded as a legal descendant of the dead man. In other words, according to those exegetes who focus their attention exclusively on this custom in their reading of Genesis 38, Onan's sin is presented here as consisting only in his selfish intent to deny offspring to his brother's widow Tamar, and not even partly in the unnatural method he employed in doing so.
(8) Juda therefore said to Onan his son: Go in to thy brother's wife and marry her, that thou mayst raise seed to thy brother.
(9) He, knowing that the children should not be his, when he went in to his brother's wife, spilled his seed upon the ground,6
lest children should be born in his brother's name.
(10) And therefore the Lord slew him, because he did a detestable thing.
But, as I hope to show, this reading of Genesis has so little to recommend it exegetically that one can only assume that its popularity in recent decades is due mainly to the modern prejudices of theologians and exegetes who see intrinsically sterile types of sexual activity as morally unobjectionable in themselves (or even as necessary at times) - and who therefore have a strong vested interest in minimizing whatever biblical evidence there may be against these practices.
The classical Jewish commentators - who can scarcely be accused of ignorance regarding Hebrew language, customs, law, and biblical literary genres - certainly saw in this passage of Scripture a condemnation of both unnatural intercourse and masturbation as such.8 A typical traditional Jewish commentary puts it thus: "[Onan] misused the organs God gave him for propagating the race to unnaturally satisfy his own lust, and he was therefore deserving of death."9 And this is undoubtedly in accord with the natural impression which most unprejudiced readers will draw from the text of Genesis 38.
But is this first impression correct? Is the truth really more subtle? Was Onan perhaps slain merely for refusing to give offspring to his deceased brother's wife, as most contemporary exegetes maintain? In answering these questions one must take cognizance of the following significant fact: the penalty subsequently laid down in the law of Moses for a simple refusal to comply with the levirate marriage precept was only a relatively mild public humiliation in the form of a brief ceremony of indignation. The childless widow, in the presence of the town elders, was authorized to remove her uncooperative brother-in-law's sandal and spit in his face for his refusal to marry her. He was then supposed to receive an uncomplimentary nick-name - "the Unshod."10 But since he nonetheless became sole owner of his deceased brother's house and goods,11 it is evident that his offence was scarcely considered a serious or criminal one - much less one deserving of death. Death, however, is precisely what Onan deserved, according to Genesis. It follows that those who say his only offence was infringement of the levirate marriage custom need to explain why such an offence was punished by the Lord so much more drastically in the case of Onan than than it subsequently was under the Mosaic law. If anything, we would tend to expect the contrary: i.e., that after the law was formalized as part of the Deuteronomic code its violation might be chastised more severely than before, not more mildly. Indeed, while it is clear from the Genesis narrative that the practice of levirate marriage already existed in Onan's time, there is no biblical evidence that he would have been conscious of any divine precept to observe that practice.12 This problem seems to have been simply ignored, rather than confronted, by those exegetes who cannot or will not see in this passage any Scriptural foundation for the orthodox Judæo-Christian doctrine against masturbation and contraception...
I’m around 24 weeks.
He’s number 4, so I’m passing into the crazy big family in the eyes of the world. I’m also reaching almost respectable family size at church. :)
.
Did my remarks above, about procreative form, make sense to you, my multiparous mockingbyrd?
Hey, you tried cute first.
As for my reply to the last, see my item 1) in post 83 above.
False premise. Those within a marital vocation have a positive duty, barring grave reason to the contrary, to contribute to the begetting of offspring.
As Pope Pius XI stated in Casti connubii:
“Since, therefore, the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children, those who in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural power and purpose sin against nature and commit a deed which is shameful and intrinsically vicious.”...
“Small wonder, therefore, if Holy Writ bears witness that the Divine Majesty regards with greatest detestation this horrible crime and at times has punished it with death. As St. Augustine notes, “Intercourse even with one's legitimate wife is unlawful and wicked where the conception of the offspring is prevented. Onan, the son of Juda, did this and the Lord killed him for it.”
“Since, therefore, openly departing from the uninterrupted Christian tradition some recently have judged it possible solemnly to declare another doctrine regarding this question, the Catholic Church ... proclaims anew: any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin.”
Well, I considered this reply to have started the cuteness:
Knowledge of biology has progressed.
God leads His Church in these teachings. Human knowledge of biology is not necessary for the Holy Spirit to guide the moral theology of the Church.
Besides the obvious: the teaching regarding the Onan incident has nothing whatsoever to do with your assertions about human understanding of the biology involved.
Very much so.
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