Posted on 02/09/2012 10:15:13 PM PST by Brian Kopp DPM
EXCERPT:
...let's turn to another aspect of this. The reason our editor thinks Catholics shouldn't be fruitful and multiply doesn't hold up, either. The world's population, he writes, is on an "unsustainable" growth path.
The Population Bureau of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations sees (PDF, h/t Pax Dickinson) the rate of population growth slowing over the next decades and stabilizing around 9 billion in 2050…and holding there until 2300. (And note that the UN, which promotes birth control and abortions around the world, isn't exactly in the be-fruitful-and-multiply camp.)
More broadly, the Malthusian view of population growth has been resilient despite having been proven wrong time and time again and causing lots of unnecessary human suffering. For example, China is headed for a demographic crunch and social dislocation due to its misguided one-child policy.
Human progress is people. Everything that makes life better, from democracy to the economy to the internet to penicillin was either discovered and built by people. More people means more progress. The inventor of the cure for cancer might be someone's fourth children that they decided not to have.
So, just to sum up:
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
“Abtinence was the opposite of what my parents needed to survive this life - but because Mom was a loyal Catholic other methods were out of the question.’
It’s not clear to me if you are talking about your own parents or not, but clearly they were not listening to the Church. Withholding sex by a partner for what ever reason is a sin against marriage and will earn you an annulment...
I think the big tragedy in that story is that the Mother and Father didn’t ask for help and didn’t get any help. Christians should be able to help each other with situations like this. I can see where this would make someone bitter, but even in a world without contraception, there are choices which alleviate strain, and help to heal.
I have a friend whose daughter was mentally ill. When she and her husband were repeatedly having to take her to hospitals, other families babysat her four other children, no matter how sudden the call was, and got them to their activities. It would have been unbearable without the help of friends. The daughter is now an adult and my friend is still doing things for other people, in gratitude for all the people who helped her.
Are you a Quiverfull advocate?
“for whatever reason”?
No, I’m Catholic. Quiverfull is primarily a protestant movement.
I just read your earlier post. I have to say, it’s not rocket science... people should be able to figure this out.
What the hell is wrong with people? It really has nothing to do with the Catholic Church, except they just happen to be right...
It’s kind of funny in a way. Folks say they are behind the times and that they are not up to date. The fact is that they DO take hundreds of years to change course... But they are also probably always right.
Quiverfull is a movement among some conservative evangelical Christian couples chiefly in the United States, but with some adherents in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain and elsewhere. It promotes procreation, and sees children as a blessing from God, eschewing all forms of birth control, including natural family planning and sterilization. Adherents are known as "quiver full", "full quiver", "quiverfull-minded", or simply "QF" Christians. Some refer to the Quiverfull position as Providentialism, while other sources have referred to it as a manifestation of natalism. Currently several thousand Christians worldwide identify with this movement. It began to receive significant attention in the U.S. national press in 2004.
“When people do Natural Family Planning to space their children for appropriate reasons, this entails mutual witholding of intercourse for certain days. It is not something that leads to an annulment.”
The way you worded it, that is correct. The key here is if they agreed on it or one imposed it on the other. If one imposes it upon another, it’s grounds for an annulment.
Associated with which Protestant denominations / churches?
The Church (which, anglian, does include a few married people, including myself, as well) differs from Quiverfull in Humanae Vitae (Paul VI’s encyclical on the subject) in at least two ways:
(1) if one prayerfully discerns that God has put serious reasons in one’s life for avoiding pregnancy, periodic abstinence is an option.
(2) natural spacing arranged by God is to be honoured. (cf. Humanae Vitae sections 10 and 11) The natural spacing would include a traditional breast feeding pattern which normally keeps kids 18 to 36 months apart. I don’t think it a coincidence that formula began being marketed in the 20’s and began to be marketed agressively in the 50’s, with each push being followed a few years later by great pushes on the contraceptive front. Most people aren’t called to have kids every 11 months, but most people aren’t called to bottle feed either (the Church does have some things to say about this subject to, though it is not in the same category of seriousness as contraception). When one bottle feeds, one is telling the body that either (1) baby miscarried or died or (2) baby is in the process of weaning so we can now have another baby. God is one smart dude, even if He isn’t married (at least in the conventional sense).
Genesis 1:28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them. "Be fruitful, and multiply, and *replenish* the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."
Much more than 'birth control' is instructed in this verse. Wonder what God was saying to us when He said to *replenish* the earth? What I do not get is the snip and clip of the instruction given. Now which sect of the Church has dominion over the fish of the sea, or fowl of the air, or over every living thing that moveth upon the earth?
Providentialism has at least a couple of different ways that it can be defined—the term is used a lot in the circles that I run in. I like the term, my wife hates it, but in practice we have concluded that “ecological breast feeding” or the like is what Humanae Vitae is referring to in section 11 (the only other thing I can think of would be that you can’t actually get preagnant while preagnant). Someone who doesn’t breastfeed the natural way for trivial reasons is mucking with God’s plan as much as someone deliberately avoiding fertile periods for trivial reasons—if one wants to cooperate with Providence in procreating, one needs to see both sides of this coin.
While we chart and do practice a fair bit of abstinence, I don’t think we have had more than about ten fertile cycles in nearly ten years of marriage—and maybe as few as five or six (my wife is presently down with morning sickness with number five). God’s providence and our readiness have coincided.
I certainly can’t imagine homeschooling and having a baby every 12-15 months, which is where Providentialism with bottlefeeding or schedule feeding and early weaning leads. JP II has a nice quote somewhere (my wife has it at her fingertips—but she is asleep right now) about breastfeeding until at least the third year. Most “providentialists” that we know schedule feed and are supplementing at 2-5 months and are preagnant again shortly thereafter.
If people want providentialism, they should demand feed—God, in His providence, manifested through junior, wants me to be awake at 2:00 in the morning (actually—God wants us to co-sleep—it really isn’t that bad until baby somehow figures out a way of making it so that only he can find room to sleep in a Queen size bed).
Time to pack our three year old off to her own be and out of my spot.—Nice article.
At bottom is a conflict of anthropologies. The Christian view of incarnated spirits vs, the other nation of man as an organic machine. But if human beings are to be understood only in terms of the laws of mechanics, then what makes man distinct from the rest of nature is ignored. Such a view does not even give the other species their due. The silly efforts to prove that the apes can be made to act like men ignores even what biology tells us: that many, many generations separate mankind from his biological ancestors. We should focus, rather, on how ancient is human history and how the ancient art of the cave painters and the marvelous temple found in the Kurdistan part of Turkey,six thousand years before the pyraminds, show that men equipped by the most primitive tools are capable of deeds that in many way match our own. Men have been men as we know them for 100,000 years. The implications of that are not taken into account.
It is even better in the Hebrew. I am in my twelth year of teaching an Intro Scripture course, and this verse is so incredibly rich and important. Of the five verbs of command, my favourite for the last eight years or so has been the fourth—the verb is from the same root as lamb—one might also translate it as “lambify” or “make lamb like,” which makes little sense at first glance to a secular urban culture. That said, if one has spent a fair bit of time around sheep, or if one has familiarity with the Lamb of God and His ways, the verb begins to shed light on all sorts of things.
Not a coincidence that Abel, the one raising the sheep, offered something pleasing to God—he was doing his part to fulfill the fourth verb. I could go on (indeed, I do go on, probably for several hours over the course of the semester, as this verse sheds incredible light over the whole of the Pentateuch, Joshua, and Matthew, which is what we cover).
Sadly I do not speak/read the Hebrew language, but I do have my Strong's. Genesis 1:28 is loaded with much instruction as well as foundation for what was yet to be Written. That word 'replenish' sure does not get much attention these days.
I wonder if we will eventually discover that use of the pill has been a big error.
I’ve even wondered if the use of the pill could be related to the great incidence of autism today.
The time span since the release of the pill would be consistent with the second generation appearance of a recessive mutation.
I am Orthodox and we haven’t “caved” thank you very much doctor.
Amen, Dr. As a Catholic father of five (so far). 1930 was the Council of Lambeth, Anglicans. The start of all protestant denominations fall into birth control.
The Left, represented by Zer0, are proving they are amoral and cannot be given the nation’s trust in upholding the Constitution. Without a consistent morality, the Constitution becomes worthless, which is what the founding fathers warned about. If we don’t take action against this dangerous regime, the freedom of our people is at stake as well as our future generations.
They are already finding links to breast cancer and the pill, this is not
about the use of contraceptives it is about paying for them!!!!!
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