Posted on 04/08/2002 5:52:41 PM PDT by Brian Kopp DPM
Why can't people see the big picture? Christian sexuality is simple...if you're not married, man and woman, in the eyes of God, and/or you can't get pregnant doing it, its wrong. That's Natural Law in a nutshell re sex. That's what God made it for.
Here's a little illustration. If you eat something just for the pleasure of the taste and the texture, then vomit it up, that is called an eating disorder, namely bulimia. It is a disorder because the reason God gave us food is twofold, 1) for our pleasure, and more importantly 2) for the nourishment of our bodies.
If you partake of sex, then vomit forth the natural consequences of that act, it is a disorder, like sexual bulimia. Yes, God made it for pleasure. Equally important, God made it for babies.
The Creation of God serves ONE primary purpose:
the creation of the body and eternal soul of men. Man's last end is God. It was God's first and foremost desire in Creating the universe that men should live forever with Him in Heaven.
And what is scripture's first commandment? It ain't in the Decalogue. It comes much earlier, and it says, "Be Fruitful and Multiply."
If that's what Creation was for, the populating of Heaven with Eternal Souls of men, why can't Christians comprehend what a rebellion and revolt non-procreative sex is?
What do all the sexual sins in the Old Testament have in common?
They are all non-procreative, and/or outside of a covenantal man-woman relationship. They are all a fundamental violation of Natural Law, a violation of the reason God gave us our sexuality, i.e., for the creation of Eternal Souls to populate Heaven.
Only Catholicism still sees this foundational Truth, this family covenantal model. We are here to get THERE, to Heaven. And to bring as many there as possible.
And until 1930, all of Christianity understood this, all of Christianity embraced this, and all of Christianity taught this, universally (see below), protestant, orthodox, Catholic, as well as orthodox judaism and islam.
But if you start teaching that one form of non-procreative sex is OK, while others are not, you introduce schizophrenia into Christian sexual morality.
If you accept one, you no longer have any grounds to condemn the rest.
And no one can contest the relationship between the acceptance of contraception by Christians in this once Christian country, and the legalization of abortion (see below).
Today, equal numbers of RCC and NC Christians contracept.
But there is one vital distinction.
Scripture says that in the end there will be a general falling away, so it should surprise no one that there is gross sin in all churches.
But Christ promised one Church, His Church, would not teach error, and that the gates would not prevail.
Absolute Orthodoxy in moral theology can only come from Absolute Orthodoxy in Salvific Theology. Heterodoxy in Moral Theology will always, eventually, arise from Heterodoxy in Salvific Theology.
If Catholics will reclaim the traditional teaching of Christianity on contraception, a teaching their Church has NEVER apostacized on, and evangelize the culture regarding WHY the Church still teaches it, then we have at our disposal the single greatest evangelization tool in the history of the war between Christian sects. Why? Because Catholicism has never fallen into heterodoxy on moral theology issues. ALL other Christian churches now have.
It is so easy to prove from history that Christianity always uninanimously taught contraception to be inherently evil (see below, Appendix 2). Then it is such a short step to understand that heterodoxy in moral theology completely undermines the validity of the sola scriptura/personal interpretation of scripture manntra that hatched that heterodoxy. This is the foregone conclusion when men reject the authority Christ gave His Church, and replces it with the doctrines of men.
This is the number one reason given why over a thousand protestant ministers have become Catholic over the last ten years. When you examine the culture of death, and the roots of abortion, and the inability to effectively fight the homosexual juggernaut, you realize very quickly there is only one Church that will both bring folks closest to Christ and cure the ills of the culture.
I'm not willing to avoid the contraception issue because its unpopular, taboo, or for fear of offending both Catholic and protestant alike, when this is the single greatest evangelization/apologetics tool ever handed to us on a silver platter by the Holy Spirit.
Plus the obvious...folks who live in sodomitic sin glass houses, where the same type of sin is not only tolerated but taught to be acceptable, better stop to think before they criticize the sodomitic sin in our Catholic ranks, especially when we are the only ones condemning both on the world stage.
Yes, there are sodomites in the Catholic priesthood, and bishops hid them and protected them. They violate the very foundations of sexual morality that the Church STILL TEACHES today.
But the remainder of Christianity has embraced the sodomitic sin of contraception, teaches it as acceptable, and refuses to turn back.
In the end, many on both sides have sinned, are sinning, and will sin. But only one Church perseveres in Truth, both in Salvation Theology and Moral Theology.
Straw man question, full of bait.
God will be my and YOUR judge, not YOU.
BigMack
YOUR not willing to avoid the contraception issue because its unpopular, taboo, or for fear of offending both Catholic and protestant alike, when this is the single greatest Straw Man, Baiting/apologetics banning tool ever handed to us on a silver platter by our apologists.
BigMack
Yes, that is only done in China as far as I know. Liberals here are most likely very envious of that power.
Not only do they want into the bedroom, they want to put "sex police" at the door....
Sounds like you take the Carville's and Begala's of the world at their word. Please cite for me any documentation that any pro-life group, any "religious right" group that has proposed sex police at your bedroom door. That is a bald-faced lie. I recently heard that real freedom is the capacity to choose what is good. Oppressed people don't have the ability to make the good choice. All that the article that initiated this thread advocates is the excercise of your free will to make the good choice. No mention of sex police. You are merely perpetuating falsehoods that liberals would be proud of. Perhaps you would be better served by augmenting your sense of morality from sources other than MTV.
Anyway - my question to non-Catholic Christians:
Do you dispute the fact that for the entire history of Christianity, up until 1903, the body of Christianity believed that it was a very serious sin to use artificial contraception? If so, please supply facts to back up your belief to the contrary.
If you do not believe it was the historical position of Christianity, do you admit that it was believed by the major Christian Reformers of the Reformation: Calvin, Luther, et al.? If you believe that the Reformers thought contraception was perfectly moral, please supply some evidence to support that claim.
And finally, if you now believe that the entire body of Christianity was just plain wrong on this particular issue of morality up until 1903, what do you think caused the paradigm shift in morality among non-Catholic Christian beliefs, and can you explain, or do you have any reasonable guess as to why the Catholic Church did not go along with it?
I have no problem with him requesting an answer to a question. I have a serious problem with him demanding an answer to a question, and commanding another freeper to shut up. Before you tee off on me, AlguyA, perhaps you should read the rest of Brian's posts to me on this thread.
You will note that I pinged Brian over there.
I have. And I stick by my original point, angelo. I said the 'be silent' part may have been a little tough. But I maintain that when a thread is posted on one topic and someone tries to drag it off-topic, the person who started the thread has a right to focus the attention of those responding to the issues at hand.
You are a good man, angelo, but you, too, have not been granted a license to police the forum. For you to demand a poster to post according to your rules is no different than that poster demanding someone answer his question.
Peace be with you.
From the Homiletic and Pastoral Review article (in post number 4)
In his 1798 "Essay on the Principle of Population," Malthus created the modern "population explosion" scare, saying that unless it were checked, population would outgrow food supplies and result in mass starvation. He recommended only moral means of family limitation, i.e., late marriage and sexual self-control, but his scare would outlive his morality. The discovery of vulcanization of rubber in 1839 led to the production of cheaper, more effective condoms, and armed with this technological breakthrough, the neo-Malthusians of the 1860s substituted condoms for the self-control of Malthus and beat the drums of the population scare. (Fear of the future generally provides a good rationalization for sins of the present.) I call this Stage I of the sexual revolution because at the time it was truly revolutionary to advocate separating the unitive and procreative aspects of marital relations.
In the United States, this led to a reaction led by a Protestant reformer, Anthony Comstock, who persuaded Congress in 1873 to legislate against the distribution and sale of contraceptive devices in federal territories. Many states followed suit, and the conglomerate of anti-contraceptive legislation became known as the Comstock laws.
If thats not the "sex police", then what is?
When conducted in a private residence it is a private matter and should be of no concern to others. When conducted in public it is another story and those engaging in public acts should be prosecuted.
One particular poster who shall remain nameless (to protect the stupid) even wants to make premarital sex illegal and FORCE those that engage in it to marry! And if the father of the girl is opposed to her getting married, then the boy is to pay him restitution! I am not making this up. I dont think even Serpent and Forehead could come up with such wacky ideas.
The good Dr. does post freepmail without permission at times.
"and I despise dishonesty more than any other human failing. "
How can anyone take you seriously?
Griswold v. Connecticut, (1965), in striking down (7-2) a Connecticut law banning the distribution, use, etc., of contraceptives, the court, per Douglas, developed the "penumbra" ["shadow"] doctrine, which held that certain rights, though fundamental and not actually written in the Bill of Rights or the 14th Amendment, nonetheless exist in the Constitution and are enforceable against the federal and state governments. This doctrine states that new rights can be found between the gaps, or "between the lines" of the rights actually written in or "enumerated" by the Constitution. Douglas wrote that the right to marital privacy is fundamental and lies between the gaps of the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 9th Amendments.
Black and Stewart dissented at length, holding that a right that is not in the Constitution can not be a "Constitutional right," and that just because a law is bad or stupid, does not make it "unconstitutional."
This case was the genesis of the "right to privacy," being the first time a majority of the court had embraced it.
Roe v. Wade, building upon the legal foundation of v. Connecticut, became the landmark (7-2) abortion decision that voided the abortion laws of nearly every state.
Planned Parenthood v. Casey, (1992) the Court (5-4) upheld a 24-hour waiting period, an informed consent requirement, a parental consent provision for minors and a recordkeeping requirement, while striking down the spousal notice requirement of a Pennsylvania statute.
Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the US Supreme Court decision that confirmed Roe v. Wade [U.S. decision to permit abortions] stated “in some critical respects, abortion is of the same character as the decision to use contraception… for two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail”.
The Supreme Court decision has made completely unnecessary, any efforts to “expose” what is really behind the attachment of the modern age to abortion. As the Supreme Court candidly states, we need abortion so that we can continue our contraceptive lifestyles.
How can anyone take you seriously when you lie like this?
Nice try doc, but you had never freepmailed me or have I ever posted someones mail.You're being dishonest again.
To wit, is it merely coincidental that the Supreme Court abortion ruling directly referenced and based itself on the legal ruling regarding contraception? If not, why not?
I just checked that thread. See this post
If you do not, on what scriptures do you base your belief?
If your church does not teach contraception to be sinful, by whose authority did it change the continual teaching of Christianity on the subject?
See 1 Corinthians 6:19 - 6:20...
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If it did not have such authority (which it obviously does not and cannot) then your system is in apostacy, and you have no grounds whatsover to challenge the scriptural interpretations and doctrines of Catholicism. Period.
Your Biblical and doctrinal assertions are most solid. It is not my intent to disparage individual Catholics when I reference Thomas Hobbes. It is my intent to lay criticism at the feet of the false Catholics who base not their doctrines upon Scripture, but upon the political dogma of Mammon or ecclesiastical power (something which I do not see you doing).
Catholicism needs to have a Pope with your attitude. I personally was rather fond of Cardinal O'Conner...
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