Are the statements against contraception truly infallible?

[thinkandmull]

In order to show what is a definite natural law argument, studies would have to be done. Word arguments, like the one I gave against organ transplants, must be more deeply rooted to be true. Its like the question of whether pink is really a feminine color, or whether that’s just custom of the mind. St Paul said it was unnatural for a man to have long hair, but it is questionable whether he was speaking of anything more than Adam and Eve, instead of actually saying there is a limit to the length a man can morally have his hair. So nature is hard to pin down in our fallen condition. You would think that natural law was black and white on marriage: one women, one man. However, the Catechism of Trent said that, although polygamy was against the “nature of marriage”, the patriarchs had an exemption from God in order to have several wives. So I think its plain that natural law argumentation, apart from obvious things like abortion, are more support arguments for the decisions of the Magisterium, like when Aquinas says at the beginning of the Summa Contra Gentiles that probable arguments for matters of faith are useful, but not definite.

 

[thinkandmull]

Maybe I should carry this discussion to the morality forum, but I was imagining before I got out of bed this morning a medieval scene in which the king, having a faulty heart, gets underworld surgeons to put someone else’s heart into him and then walks into his courtroom all sewed up and proud of his new heart. There is no doubt that back then he and all involved in the surgery would have been burned at the stack for sorcery. People slowly become accustomed to organ transplants by first getting use to blood transfusions. If that first step had not taken people, organ transplants would have been seen to be against natural law. My point is that a natural law argument does not stand alone, but is founded on an understood wisdom. “God gave you a heart, it is wrong to take someone’s else’s heart because that is playing God” is a natural law argument. However, an argument is not enough. So where do we get the wisdom-understanding in combination with natural law reasons? From the Church.