Anti-contraception confusions

[fakename]

user "Abu":

Much of the confusion and sloppiness displayed here and there could be dispelled by a vigilant attention to a major teaching event which is conveyed through an Encyclical – such as in Casti Connubii and Humanae Vitae, and in an Apostolic Epistle Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (on male-only priests). The same goes for Ecumenical Councils Vatican I and II and wherever truth is accosted or blurred, Papal teaching and that of the Councils should be offered.

what does this mean?

And let me ask, is it okay to say that contraception is wrong (besides the bad consequences) from the POV of maleness and womaness since (normally considered and disregarding the abuses and accidents of nature) a man and a woman are designed to make humans? So using contraception is blocking the realization of what it means to exist as a male or female?

 

[Abu]

fakename #43

what does this mean?

Precisely what it says – as the Church teaches, sanctifies and governs – we must go to and learn from that teaching.

So using contraception is blocking the realization of what it means to exist as a male or female?

No, as individuals we live chastely, as religious, clerical or as lay – as married laity or single.

If married, the twofold purpose is procreation and unity of the spouses including the formation of children. That unity is a physical unity. In a marriage, contraception is the deliberate humanly distorting rupture of the intimate link between the unitive and procreative meanings of the marital act within the natural moral law which determines the rightness or wrongness of an action.

 

[fakename]

user "Abu":

Precisely what it says – as the Church teaches, sanctifies and governs – we must go to and learn from that teaching.

No, as individuals we live chastely, as religious, clerical or as lay – as married laity or single.

If married, the twofold purpose is procreation and unity of the spouses including the formation of children. That unity is a physical unity. In a marriage, contraception is the deliberate humanly distorting rupture of the intimate link between the unitive and procreative meanings of the marital act within the natural moral law which determines the rightness or wrongness of an action.

(1) but is there an obligation to read encyclicals? I don’t think there is (after all, the teachings predated the encyclicals in many cases [social teaching is basically just aristotle’s Politics, five proofs are just Aquinas’s Summa]) but maybe if there’s a definition saying that there is, then maybe there is. Is there such an obligation?

(2) What does the latter portion of you message mean? How does it refute me? And what is the reason why marriage is connected with procreation? I seem to repeat this last question a lot but the only answers that I can think of, that it is what men and women essentially do or that it is what marriage is, are clearly problematic. For the first answer was (apparently) refuted and the second answer is circular unless I defined something wrong. But there is a third option, that married people do this in order to practice self-denial, but it seems rather strange that something which is natural should primarily be a matter of self-denial; for a natural operation is never performed as such, inspite of nature. A baby doesn’t grow inspite of the baby.

 

[davidv]

(1) but is there an obligation to read encyclicals? I don’t think there is (after all, the teachings predated the encyclicals in many cases [social teaching is basically just aristotle’s Politics, five proofs are just Aquinas’s Summa]) but maybe if there’s a definition saying that there is, then maybe there is. Is there such an obligation?

No, there is no moral obligation. What made you think there might one? Regarding encyclicals post dating the original teaching. What if the encyclical uses language that is more understandable in the time it was written? What if it reveals additional development of the original teaching?

(2) What does the latter portion of you message mean? How does it refute me?

It refutes you by pointing out that your statement that the immorality of contraception is due to

fakename:

blocking the realization of what it means to exist as a male or female?

is a false claim. Contraception blocks the God given meaning of the congugal act.

And what is the reason why marriage is connected with procreation?

Because that is the way God created it. See Genesis (…the two become one flesh…, …be fruitful and multiply…, in that order).

I seem to repeat this last question a lot but the only answers that I can think of, that it is what men and women essentially do or that it is what marriage is, are clearly problematic. For the first answer was (apparently) refuted and the second answer is circular unless I defined something wrong. But there is a third option, that married people do this in order to practice self-denial, but it seems rather strange that something which is natural should primarily be a matter of self-denial; for a natural operation is never performed as such, inspite of nature. A baby doesn’t grow inspite of the baby.

Please explain what you mean with this last part. It is very confusing.

 

[fakename]

user "davidv":

Because that is the way God created it. See Genesis (…the two become one flesh…, …be fruitful and multiply…, in that order).

But the ultimate reason why anything is the way it is, is because God created it that way, yet surely things have their own natural laws or else all science would equal revelation.

How could marriage then, be a simple matter of positive divine law? For if women and men and their union were just a matter of positive divine will, w/o any inherent value, then why would women and men exist anyway? Wouldn’t they exist superfluously?

But sometimes the same thing is both an object of natural science and supernatural revelation. Wherefore, the bible says that women were made as a helpmate (that is in making children) so that clearly the nature of females and males is to make kids, or at least that is how it appears to me given the evidence.

Please explain what you mean with this last part. It is very confusing.

I’m just saying that since the other two options are wrong, then maybe the third option is right. But the third option is probably wrong. And this is because the third option says that the primary and natural effect of marriage and making kids is self-denial. But the effect of something is never denial because if it were then things would happen inspite of themselves which is false.

And this is seen because denial denotes an evil. But all evil is either a disordered good or a negation of good. So that it would be absurd to say that some natural process as such results in denial since that would be like saying eating as such, results in bad health. Although I suppose that an artificial process could properly result in evil, because artificial processes don’t have a “proper” result so that they are indifferently disposed to good or evil conclusions.

 

[fakename]

newadvent.org/summa/5041.htm

This link also seems to imply that marriage is a natural institution because humans have a natural inclination (though not instinct) to marry.

So marriage is not just a matter of positive Divine law.

 

[Abu]

fakename #43
what is the reason why marriage is connected with procreation? I seem to repeat this last question a lot but the only answers that I can think of, that it is what men and women essentially do or that it is what marriage is, are clearly problematic.

Why keep repeating the obvious? Male and female are obviously designed by God for procreation and God has mandated that in the OT and made it a sacrament in the NT: Mt 19:6.

#46 So marriage is not just a matter of positive Divine law.

That fact has been stressed clearly in posts #7, 12, 15, and by others.

There is no real reason to be confused or uncertain – Catholic teaching always has been clear and certain – no one gets anywhere without taking the time and trouble to know that teaching by studying it. Re post #43: This thread is not about “social” Encyclicals it is about the errors concerning contraception. It is quite obvious that you know little about the Church’s teaching and seem to care less.

 

[fakename]

Why keep repeating the obvious? Male and female are obviously designed by God for procreation and God has mandated that in the OT and made it a sacrament in the NT: Mt 19:6.

That fact has been stressed clearly in posts #7, 12, 15, and by others.

There is no real reason to be confused or uncertain – Catholic teaching always has been clear and certain – no one gets anywhere without taking the time and trouble to know that teaching by studying it. Re post #43: This thread is not about “social” Encyclicals it is about the errors concerning contraception. It is quite obvious that you know little about the Church’s teaching and seem to care less.

care less about Church teaching, or rather, care so much about it that I’m not willing to assent to whatever someone claims that it is w/o good reasons? Sometimes different motives appear the same outwardly so again, don’t judge such absurdly difficult and uncertain matters.

So what to double check what I’ve learned so far: although male and female, by their own free will, are rationally connected to make children nonetheless contraception is not bad because it keeps men and women from performing their rational function?

Also, it is bad because it (contraception) leads to bad morals and it eliminates the nature of marriage which is of course, beyond human legislation?

But the same question re-asserts itself and I think you, Abu, should especially answer this since you say “why keep repeating the obvious”. The scope of what you said perhaps applied to my earlier statement that contraception is wrong because it interfered with marriage and since all marriage is, as such, only b/t male and female, it follows that contraception is wrong because it interfered with what it means to be male and female. Is that right?

I might just ask a priest on this too.

 

[Abu]

fakename #48
it follows that contraception is wrong because it interfered with what it means to be male and female. Is that right?

Not really – too imprecise, because males and females as individuals can live chastely, as religious, clerical (male only) or as lay, or as married laity or single.

So contraception is wrong because as Pope Pius XI teaches** "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**.” Casti Connubii, 56, 1930].

 

[fakename]

user "Abu":

Not really – too imprecise, because males and females as individuals can live chastely, as religious, clerical (male only) or as lay, or as married laity or single.

But as Aquinas says, what is a matter of human will (like marriage is) doesn’t have to happen universally but only mostly to be considered a norm.

So the norm of human male/female-hood is not going to be universal.

As a fair enough analogy just because some people can choose to starve, doesn’t mean that eating is not natural nor does it mean that there aren’t certain ways to deny the nature of eating, perhaps by regurgitating food in order to enjoy the flavor twice while foregoing the nutrition (that’s the best b/t eating and marriage I can conjure).

And indeed, the pope said that it was a crime against nature. So what did he mean by nature? I would say that it is precisely the human nature of marriage and the sexes which he indicated.

 

[Nate13]

And indeed, the pope said that it was a crime against nature. So what did he mean by nature? I would say that it is precisely the human nature of marriage and the sexes which he indicated.

scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s1c3a1.htm

Nature as in the “natural moral law”

 

[Abu]

fakename #50
the pope said that it was a crime against nature. So what did he mean by nature? I would say

No one can “say” without the knowledge. Do your homework. Anyone acquainted with St Thomas Aquinas and the Fathers would know that “against nature” = against the natural moral law. The ancient Egyptians and the pagan Cicero, before Christ, acknowledged the natural moral law: Cicero (died 43 B.C.) wrote in De Republica, 3.22: “True law is right reason in agreement with nature. It is of universal application, unchanging, everlasting. We cannot be freed from it by Senate or people. This law is not one thing at Rome and another at Athens, but is eternal and immutable, valid for all nations and for all times. God is the Author of it, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient to it is abandoning his true self and denying his own nature.”

Post #12:
The doctrine against contraception is based on the natural moral law.
The Natural Law is “a law that is in principle accessible to human reason and not dependent on (though entirely compatible with and, indeed, illumined by) divine revelation.” (The Clash of Orthodoxies, Professor Robert P George (Princeton),2001, p 169). So that’s where you have to start – with reason, and the effects of acting against reason and the natural moral law.

There is a comparable connection between the fact that contraception is against the natural law, as is any other wrong action: stealing is; framing someone is; oppressing people is. The institution of property has the law of nature as its corollary — a law of morality which forbids stealing. The general principle being that good is to be pursued and evil avoided. But the idea of rupturing the bond between the uniting and procreative aspects of the marital act in contraception has opened the door also to other grave inhuman and unnatural, sexual perversions as well.

The natural moral law imposes on both parties the duty of not positively frustrating nature’s vital processes. God is the Author of life and of the means adapted to the production of life; and man is not free here to take the law into his own hands. We are the one animal that must think even to survive, and the one animal whose actions are not governed by instincts but are judged by standards of good and evil. We don’t consider it cruel not to teach your dog to read, but we think that keeping children from getting an education deprives them of something they should have. We don’t jail rambunctious roosters for forcing themselves on beleaguered hens, but we send men to the slammer for rape.

You have seen already what is taught in Casti Connubii.

 

[fakename]

No one can “say” without the knowledge. Do your homework. Anyone acquainted with St Thomas Aquinas and the Fathers would know that “against nature” = against the natural moral law. The ancient Egyptians and the pagan Cicero, before Christ, acknowledged the natural moral law: Cicero (died 43 B.C.) wrote in De Republica, 3.22: “True law is right reason in agreement with nature. It is of universal application, unchanging, everlasting. We cannot be freed from it by Senate or people. This law is not one thing at Rome and another at Athens, but is eternal and immutable, valid for all nations and for all times. God is the Author of it, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient to it is abandoning his true self and denying his own nature.”

Post #12:
The doctrine against contraception is based on the natural moral law.
The Natural Law is “a law that is in principle accessible to human reason and not dependent on (though entirely compatible with and, indeed, illumined by) divine revelation.” (The Clash of Orthodoxies, Professor Robert P George (Princeton),2001, p 169). So that’s where you have to start – with reason, and the effects of acting against reason and the natural moral law.

There is a comparable connection between the fact that contraception is against the natural law, as is any other wrong action: stealing is; framing someone is; oppressing people is. The institution of property has the law of nature as its corollary — a law of morality which forbids stealing. The general principle being that good is to be pursued and evil avoided. But the idea of rupturing the bond between the uniting and procreative aspects of the marital act in contraception has opened the door also to other grave inhuman and unnatural, sexual perversions as well.

The natural moral law imposes on both parties the duty of not positively frustrating nature’s vital processes. God is the Author of life and of the means adapted to the production of life; and man is not free here to take the law into his own hands. We are the one animal that must think even to survive, and the one animal whose actions are not governed by instincts but are judged by standards of good and evil. We don’t consider it cruel not to teach your dog to read, but we think that keeping children from getting an education deprives them of something they should have. We don’t jail rambunctious roosters for forcing themselves on beleaguered hens, but we send men to the slammer for rape.

You have seen already what is taught in Casti Connubii.

I agree, and already knew, everything which you just typed.
So where do we disagree w/ each other?

Is it because I said that marriage was a matter of human will or nature? That is far from a denial of God’s action in creating marriage or instituting it. For obviously the same thing can be both a natural inclination of human reason and an institution of God. And marriage is one of these things.

 

[fakename]

No one can “say” without the knowledge. Do your homework. Anyone acquainted with St Thomas Aquinas and the Fathers would know that “against nature” = against the natural moral law. The ancient Egyptians and the pagan Cicero, before Christ, acknowledged the natural moral law: Cicero (died 43 B.C.) wrote in De Republica, 3.22: “True law is right reason in agreement with nature. It is of universal application, unchanging, everlasting. We cannot be freed from it by Senate or people. This law is not one thing at Rome and another at Athens, but is eternal and immutable, valid for all nations and for all times. God is the Author of it, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient to it is abandoning his true self and denying his own nature.”

Post #12:
The doctrine against contraception is based on the natural moral law.
The Natural Law is “a law that is in principle accessible to human reason and not dependent on (though entirely compatible with and, indeed, illumined by) divine revelation.” (The Clash of Orthodoxies, Professor Robert P George (Princeton),2001, p 169). So that’s where you have to start – with reason, and the effects of acting against reason and the natural moral law.

There is a comparable connection between the fact that contraception is against the natural law, as is any other wrong action: stealing is; framing someone is; oppressing people is. The institution of property has the law of nature as its corollary — a law of morality which forbids stealing. The general principle being that good is to be pursued and evil avoided. But the idea of rupturing the bond between the uniting and procreative aspects of the marital act in contraception has opened the door also to other grave inhuman and unnatural, sexual perversions as well.

The natural moral law imposes on both parties the duty of not positively frustrating nature’s vital processes. God is the Author of life and of the means adapted to the production of life; and man is not free here to take the law into his own hands. We are the one animal that must think even to survive, and the one animal whose actions are not governed by instincts but are judged by standards of good and evil. We don’t consider it cruel not to teach your dog to read, but we think that keeping children from getting an education deprives them of something they should have. We don’t jail rambunctious roosters for forcing themselves on beleaguered hens, but we send men to the slammer for rape.

You have seen already what is taught in Casti Connubii.

I agree, and already knew, everything which you just typed.
So where do we disagree w/ each other? And just to double check, something can be part of the natural moral law, because it is a law of nature. After all, the law of human nature is morality and yet the laws of human nature are a subset of the more general laws of nature.

Is it because I said that marriage was a matter of human will or nature? That is far from a denial of God’s action in creating marriage or instituting it. For obviously the same thing can be both a natural inclination of human reason and an institution of God. And marriage is one of these things.

 

[fakename]

user "fakename":

“And just to double check”

Should read “just for your information”

 

[fakename]

Not really – too imprecise, because males and females as individuals can live chastely, as religious, clerical (male only) or as lay, or as married laity or single.

I asked a priest this question and as I suspected, contraception is wrong because for both of our reasons.

 

[fakename]

Not really – too imprecise, because males and females as individuals can live chastely, as religious, clerical (male only) or as lay, or as married laity or single.

EDIT: corrected word repetition

I asked a priest this question and as I suspected, contraception is wrong for both of our reasons.

 

[ryecroft]

Even if you take all moral theology out of the debate on contraception, ALL FORMS OF IT HAVE SIDE EFFECTS except for Natural Family Planning. The Pill and all forms of hormonal contraception have so many side effects, some of them deadly in those who have them,

As for IUD’s I got two words for you to google “dalcon shield” I can remember the neighbor across the road when I was younger laying in her living room watching a grotesque yellow spreading across her abdomen where she was bleeding internally as her baby died inside of her from her IUD… They say they have gotten safer bit are still not without risks…serious risks.
/QUOTE]
**
You make it sound like the Dalkon Shield is still around - although not necessarily the topic, the IUD of today only uses a monofilament shield which prevents the type of infection or sepsis which you described. I hope those that equate ‘dalkon sheild’ with IUD DO google it and find that it’s not necessarily the night mare you seem to make it out to be. I get it - Catholic teachings say no IUD, but that doesn’t mean people should be mislead about what happens with devices TODAY.
God Bless
Rye**